The drakaina slowly opened her eyes, looking around with a tired stare. She was asleep over her hoard of gold and gems, hearing the gargle of the small water fountain she had in the corner. This was indeed her lair and the inner room at that.
"Hey you, you're finally awake." Arad called staring down at her face in his draconic form, "You were fighting that female hydra... Walked right into their ambush. You would've been dead if I didn't show up."
She roared, crawling away, "What are you doing here? This is my lair!" She cried, hissing as she started charging a breath. Her magic started spiking, but it quickly dropped as she started coughing, and the breath failed to launch.
"Sit down, don't exert yourself. Your breath would only melt your hoard, not me." Arad said, sitting ahead of her. "Calm down, you're a dragon, not a mindless animal."
She glared at him. "What did happen?"
"You were fighting the female hydra, and your fight ended in a draw. The male she called then showed up, and so did I." Arad started explaining.
"So you carried me and retreated here?"
"No, I killed them." Arad replied.
"There were two, a female and a male." She gasped.
"No, there were eight; she called seven males to gang up on you. I guess she didn't want to take risks against a drakaina." Arad waved his tail and pulled all the corpses from his stomach, dropping them at the corner of the drakaina's lair. "See?"
She stared at the eight massive corpses unable to speak, mumbling for a while before turning toward Arad, "You beat them all?"
What shocked her more was that none of them had any traces of being hit with magic or a breath. All were clawed and bitten to death.
With a second look at Arad, she noticed that he was strangely massive, with wide shoulders, huge wings, thick tail, massive black horns, obsidian claws, muscular, and far more balanced across his whole torso.
It's true that male dragons grow larger than females, but that is usually due to their large bones. But due to them naturally having too much physical power than they could ever need, they rarely work on their bodies, ending with a decent amount of muscles but nothing too extreme. Arad on the other hand looked as if he was actively working out even his arms almost looked thicker than her torso.
"All of them alone?" She mumbled she could've doubted it if he looked like any other male dragon, but due to how large and muscular he was, she was willing to believe he clawed all of those hydras to death with raw violence. Those muscles aren't for show, they are a massive part of his raw strength.
"They weren't that big of a threat to me." Arad replied, pushing one of the hydras' corpses to her.
"What's the meaning of this?" She glared at him.
"Eat, not only you're sick, you're starving. You're far too thin and frail for a dragon." He stared at her, she indeed looked famished.
She stared at the drakaina's corpse, "You hunted them. They are yours."
"They were caught in your land so you at least own a part of them. I don't really need them, they belong to you." He extended his claw toward the other corpses and pulled them toward her with gravity magic. "Eat up. My wives would be here soon. One of them is a holy magic user, she should be able to give you a look and see what's wrong with you."
Chromatic dragons know of their goddess's existence, she's Tiamat, the avaricious dragon goddess. But they rarely pray, so there is almost not a single cleric or paladin among them, making healing magic of a caliber enough to work on them extremely hard to come by. Add to that the arrogance and pride of chromatic dragons and you'll find them more willing to slowly die in their lair than to ask a powerful humanoid to heal and cure them.
But as a dragon, Arad wasn't oblivious to the main concern of dragons. Wealth belongs to those strong enough to take it. Instead of healing the dragon, humanoids would almost always seek to slay the sick dragon and rob their hoards.
Humanoids always glorified the act of hunting and killing dragons, albeit on the surface, it was something that was never done fairly. And that was for valid reasons. They usually target wyrmlings and young dragons, the sick dragons, dragons in their twilight who await their natural death, pregnant drakainas, steal eggs, and scheme to pit dragons against each other rather than kill them when injured.
Humanoids, and especially humans rarely ever dare to fight a healthy adult dragon, and the only exception was Alcott who was infamous for being the only human that fought healthy greatwyrm dragons and won several times. That became so well known in the dragons' culture that it became akin to ghouls in human culture.
Dragons started scaring their wyrmling with stories of Alcott as if he were some mythical monster, albeit it was only in the past four or three decades that Alcott was known for hunting dragons. If you go too close to the cities, Alcott would come and hunt you down.
"I don't want anything to do with your hoard. I've only come to help as I'm staying here, and your death would throw this area out of balance." He said, pushing the hydra's corpse toward her. "Eat."
The drakaina started eating while keeping an eye on Arad. He wasn't acting like a true dragon, but that could be wrong. She knew how chromatic dragons act, but not magic dragons. Considering that there is a vast difference between metallic and chromatic, it won't be strange for magic dragons to have different habits.
"Your wives are coming…What kind?" She asked. Wanting to know the color as that would help her figure out a plan to escape if they attacked her.
"The one to heal you is a half-purple dragon. The others are an elf and two humans. A Halfling with light draconic bloodline, but she isn't one of my wives." Arad replied and the drakaina choked on her food, "Wait, not a single true drakaina?"
Arad shook his head. "No, I haven't met any…No, I have a red wyrmling I left at home, but she's more of an adopted child."
"So you're raising a red wyrmling…what are you, a retired greatwyrm grandma?" When drakainas reach the greatwyrm stage, they lose their ability to have children due to age. It's common to find them raising stray wyrmlings to satisfy their maternal instincts. This strange act is the only thing giving stray wyrmling of the chromatic dragons hope.
Arad remembered the red dragon that was trying to kill Ignis for hunting in his land. "Chromatic kill their kind a lot." He sighed.
"That's normal for us. I think you're the problem." She stared at him. "Normally, you would've taken over my hoard, killed or made me your mate, and taken this land for yourself."
"I don't think like that." Arad looked at her. "By the way, I haven't introduced myself properly yet. Arad Orion, a void dragon, and I own the region around Alina; I've even got King Baltos's approval."
"Wait!" She gasped, standing up and taking a few steps back like a scared cat, "Arad Orion? Uranus, the dragon of the end? The one that blew Vlad's kingdom to ash?"
"That's me." Arad nodded.
"No, that can't be…no one knows how Arad Orion looks besides that he's a jet-black dragon." She mumbled.
Arad lifted his front claw and pulled a small [Ho-white Nova] that he'd been making inside his stomach. Since they take some time to compress, he always keeps one or two ready. The one he held in his hand was almost a quarter of the power of the one that blew up Vlad's kingdom, but it was still horrifying.
The drakaina gasped, covering her face with her wings.
Arad smiled, "Those won't save you if I blew this here." He sucked the spell back into his stomach. "I don't intend on harming you so calm down."
"That magic, I felt it yesterday." She stared at him.
"Probably when I blew the dungeon with a breath. I can shoot this as a beam." He smiled. "Want to see it?"
She shook her head, "No, please no, you'll destroy my whole lair, no, the whole area." She got convinced he was him.
"They are here." As Arad looked up, the girls appeared in the middle of the room with a bright flash. Arad turned his head toward them, Betty had teleported them to Arad's location.
"What was that spell?" He said with a smile.
"Seventh-tier, [Mass Teleport]." Betty replied.
The girls looked around and Eris turned toward the drakaina, glaring at her with glowing purple eyes. "This is the drakaina?"
The drakaina could feel it, this was the half-purple dragon Arad talked about. But, what's this feeling? She didn't feel like a half-dragon, her aura was more refined but unstable, as if trying to balance something huge. In a second, she found out that Eris was also a vampire, which made her even more confused.
"She can use holy magic?" She pointed at Eris with a claw and looked at Arad.
The drakaina stared at Eris, "ZulFurNar the name. I ruled this land for over five hundred years."