The two of us were staring at each other for what felt like minutes. Tiamat, in disbelief, and I, in anticipation, with barely hidden glee at meeting a true dragoness. She was the only powerful female dragon alive, along with Ophis, whom I counted on a technicality, since she could simply decide to switch genders at any second.
There were other, weaker female dragons, but they were nothing more than intelligent animals, kinda like apes and humans. The resemblance was there, but it was very clear that one was a higher and more evolved being than the other.
"Are you insane? Who attacks as a greeting?!" When it became clear that I won't attack anymore, Tiamat shifted into her human form mid-question, and goddamn, she was the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen. Everything about her screamed cold elegance. From her long, pale blue hair, her deep blue eyes, to the multitude of silver jewelry adorning her body.
"You did."
"What?" She jerked backwards, as if struck by something. Maybe by my audacity?
"Now, if my memory serves me correctly, and it does, I simply called out to you. You were the one to hurl a fireball at me." That's right, baby, this is the classic. Gaslighting.
"Simply called out to me? I'm going to ask again, are you insane? That, frankly, impossible aura of yours fundamentally altered everything it touched! Look around you. Does the flora look or behave like anything you've ever seen?" She asked, gesturing wildly around herself and sounding flabbergasted.
And now that she said that, the trees did look a bit strange. Who am I kidding? They were weird as fuck.
Growing, sprouting new branches, only for them to wither and die instantly. The grass and the weeds were doing the same thing. Just growing quickly, dying, and growing again.
"Oops!" I've never used both sides of my power at once against anything, not even when I fought against Red because he theorized that if I hit him with everything I had, it would give him some kind of super special dragon god cancer, and neither of us wanted that.
After pulling its remnants from our surroundings, the vegetation calmed down significantly. It still looked weird, though, and I didn't even want to think about what it did to the few familiars that were around, so I'm not gonna.
"See? Fixed. Now onto more important things. Hi! It's very nice to meet you." I waved cheerfully, fully intending to move on.
"Huh? H–Hi? What the hell is going on?!"
"I'm greeting you?"
"I can see that… Why?" Her confusion confused me, and I was starting to lose the plot a bit.
"That—That's what people do when they meet a new person? I'm sorry, but did I punch you that hard?"
"I– You know what? No, just no. What do you want? I assume you must want something from me, correct?"
"Eh, not really? I just wanted to meet you." I said with a shrug, and Tiamat pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration.
"And this is how you did it? Where are your parents, girl? Better yet, who are your parents? They failed somewhere in your education."
"I'm sorry?"
"*sigh* You are young and you are strong, I understand, but you cannot behave this way, young lady. Who is your father? Is it Tannin? Crom? Please don't tell me it's Yu-Long…" She started exasperatedly naming the few dragons capable of producing a child with the power I displayed.
"Y–You want to… You want to talk to my family?" I was barely holding back the laughter that was threatening to burst out. Oh god, she doesn't realize what she is walking into. This is going to be hilarious.
"Obviously. So? Which one is it?"
"Are you sure?"
"Quit stalling, girl, and tell me."
"Hahaha~ You asked for it… Hey, RED! Come here, I'm in trouble!" And like the good brother he was, Red instantly appeared right next to me in his human form, and ready to fight. The second the words left my mouth, somehow, the already pale-skinned Tiamat appeared even paler.
"WHAT HAPPENED, TAKUMI?" He frantically looked around, his aura leaking everywhere, and then he finally spotted Tiamat, who was looking at him with a look of both reverence and horror.
"Oh." She swayed a bit, but managed to catch herself on a nearby tree.
"Tiamat?...*sigh* What did you do, Takumi?" He took one good look at her and then at the partially destroyed surroundings before turning to me.
"Hey! I just fought her a little. You know, as a greeting?" I defended myself.
"Understandable. Then why did you say you were in trouble?"
"Tiamat here, wanted to speak to my family. I'm not educated correctly. Right?"
"Now hold on for a second! I didn't say it like that, Red-sama!" She waved her hands in panic while looking between Red and me.
"Kay~ I'm holding."
"Takumi, unless you want to be the cause of this woman's untimely demise, I suggest you stop now."
"Oh, right… she is freaking out way too hard. Thanks for the assist." I gave Red a thumbs-up, and he disappeared with a slight eye roll thrown my way, which made it easier for Tiamat to simply exist.
"HAHAHAHAHA~ Wow! You should've seen your face, girl."
"How— How did we get here in five minutes?" She muttered to herself and shakily stood up.
"I kicked your ass, and you wanted to snitch on me to mommy and daddy. You're a pretty sore loser, aren't you?"
"Excuse me?! How was I supposed to know that— that Great Red is your father?" She bristled, and I think she got the wrong idea about Red's and my relationship.
"He is not my father, and I don't mean that in the rebellious slash melodramatic teenager way. I mean it literally."
"What?"
"Red is not my dad. He's my brother… and don't freak out!" I saw the realization hit her, but thankfully, my voice snapped her out of whatever strange spiral she was about to go down.
"But then— you? Are you the same?"
"Yep."
"Like Great Red and the Ouroboros Dragon." She added for clarification. You know, just in case I was utterly stupid and didn't understand what she was implying.
"Yes." I nodded again.
"Then why act like this?"
"Simple. For some reason, people get really scared when they find out about us. I mean, you nearly fainted when Red showed up, thanks for walking into that one by the way, and yet, even now, you're not scared of me."
"So you…"
"Acted like a dumbass on purpose? Yep, I sure did… Kinda. Not at the beginning. That was all me, completely unfiltered, and overly excited to meet you." I said happily, only for me to trail off at the end because of the unimpressed look she gave me.
"*sigh* I need to sit down for a moment."
Yeah, fair enough. I wasn't stupid, so I knew that despite how nicely I went about it, I still threw the poor dragoness into the deep end, and boy oh boy, was that end really deep.
Still, she took about ten more minutes to collect herself, with the occasional side glance in my direction, which I sometimes caught and returned with a grin.
As she sat there, I couldn't help but take in her appearance once again. I really mean it when I say this, but she was the most gorgeous creation of whatever it was that sculpted her at the dawn of time. Even while slightly disheveled and just sitting down among the destroyed surroundings, the woman was… almost ethereal.
"So, let me get this straight. You are a Dragon God. One, we normal dragons know nothing about. Red is your brother. And you desperately wanted to meet with me. Did I miss anything, or was that all?" She spoke as if reciting a list of things she made up in her head. Which she most likely did in those ten minutes we spent in silence.
"Uh— Nope. You got that right. Almost frighteningly so, might I add… Ta-da~?" I said while doing a little flourish with my hands, to hopefully detract from the seriousness of the situation even more.
"*sigh* Why me? Not that I actually mind. It's just that… Well, it makes absolutely no sense, no matter how I look at it." She said, studying my face.
"But I already told you, though! I just wanted to meet the only other female dragon that's still alive. I kinda wanted to make friends?" I said, unsurely, maybe a bit too vulnerably for my tastes, but it was the underlying truth of the matter.
I mean, I really only had one friend, and that was Serafall, and that woman was incredibly busy with her duties and all. So we had no time to hang out in the physical space yet. We just texted each other. You know, funny pictures, and stuff like that.
"And you attacked me?" She asked skeptically.
"Well… Look, the thing is, my only real role model on dragon behaviour was Red, and no matter how you slice it, the guy is pretty strange. I'd go as far as to call him an eccentric even. He kinda attacked me, as a greeting? In fact, he did it one thousand and seventy-four times, and believe me, I counted." I was starting to ramble a bit because the more she looked at me, the more I got the sinking feeling in my stomach that I might have just fucked this whole meeting up from the very beginning.
It might seem whiny and weak to some, but I did not want to spend the eternity I had in front of me alone. Hell, that was the reason I took the damn suggestion to start teaching a bunch of stinky teens in the first place. And yeah, true, there were some people in that school, once all grown up, who would make fine friends. I just did not want to wait that long. I was impatient, and I wanted friends now.
"I honestly don't know what to say, but I do have one question."
"Yeah, sure, fire away."
"Are you dumb?" She gave me what I could only assume was her best deadpan expression.
"I don't think so?" I replied unsurely.
"Then why did you not just approach me like a normal person? Why go through all this, and do pardon me, bullshit, just to get to talk to me? Wouldn't the normal way have been easier?"
"Yeah, it would have, and it might have even worked out for a while. But tell me this, Tiamat. How would you react when your new friend turned out to be a fucking Dragon God who was hiding that from you? Anger? Disappointment at the lack of trust? This whole approach might have been the height of stupidity, but it accomplished its goal. You do not fear me, you do not revere me, and you speak to me like I am just a normal, albeit slightly unhinged, person." Her immediate lack of response told me everything I needed to know.
"See? Even you don't know. Now it's all out in the open, and the ball is in your court."
"*sigh* It is, isn't it? You did go through all that effort… and you are the only other female dragon… How do you like your tea?"
Boys, girls, and everybody in between, Takumi scores!
I couldn't, and wouldn't, hide the grin that appeared on my face as Tiamat led me back to what I was pretty sure was her lair. Turns out, the place I picked was pretty close to it. And when I say it, I mean a giant cave, or more likely a grotto, because the whole place was an immaculate spectacle of molten stone shaped into intricate sculptures of many things. Animals, people whom I did not know, and obviously, dragons. All capped off by a clean, white, marbled floor. She did settle in the forest permanently, after all.
"Damn~ This place is sick." I couldn't help but marvel. It might one-up the opulence I saw in the mansion owned by Rias.
"Oh, this little old thing? That's nothing. Wait till you see my home." She said in dismissal, but I heard the proud and pleased undertone in her voice. She liked the compliment a lot.
"What do you mean? This is not it?" I asked confusedly because from what I was seeing, this was everything a dragon could ever ask for. Even the ceiling was high enough for her to stretch her wings if she wanted.
"No, silly. This is just the reception room. My actual lair is further back." She giggled, pleased.
"You uh— You get a lot of guests?"
"Well, no, but you do need a reception room. Do you not have one?" She asked with curiosity, and that question made me want to curl up on myself and hide in some shadowy corner. Goddamint! All I had was the fucking kitchen table…
"Haha~ O–Of course! I do have one, but it's also my kitchen… and my living room… and kinda also my hallway? I have an open floor house! It's an upper-middle-class home!" I got really defensive for some reason. Who am I kidding? I know the reason. I just feel inadequate in front of this woman. Fuck.
"Oh? You reside in the human world, then? How… novel." Okay, so I just won't mention the fact that I have no hoard whatsoever, YET, or I might actually die from shame.
"Yeah… novel."
As we moved through the space, my head was on a swivel. There were so many nice things everywhere, and I'm not talking just those pretty statues either. No, I mean paintings from authors I thought I recognized, busts, each showcasing an immaculate piece of jewelry and weapons, so many weapons. Why, you could probably equip a whole medieval army with just those I saw.
Then we came upon a sleek and smooth wall, with Mesopotamian runes carved all around the outer portion, right where it met the rougher, slightly darker stone of the grotto.
Her hand touched the middle of it, glowed with pale blue light that slowly spread out to all the corners of this sleek stone, and then a loud thud.
It slowly started to lift itself, and disappeared, who knows where, inside the high ceiling.
What was on the other side would be the stuff of many of my more pleasant dreams.
Hordes of gold, silver, and precious stones. Weapons crafted from material that I have not recognized, each pulsing with unimaginable power and so much more, all neatly organized, all placed along the golden path leading to another, this time wooden, door.
"Welcome to my home, Dragon God Takumi."
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The latter part might seem a bit more rambly, and there is a great explanation for that! You see, I wrote that while partaking in some of that sweet, sweet ambrosia some of you call beer.
And let me tell you, I had so much fun writing her conversation with Tiamat.
Also, I'm officially on my summer vacation for the next two weeks, and while I won't promise a chapter every single day, there should be an uptick in chapters, at least for those two weeks.