The atmosphere immediately became tense.
The gods here would have to be absolute fools and not worthy of the status they held if they couldn’t feel the power radiating off the dragon that suddenly appeared.
It caused them all to freeze in place.
Even Zeus felt himself stiffen and his breath hitch.
He felt that tingling sensation down the back of his spine, the kind of feeling that he hadn’t felt for a very long time.
In fact, the last time he felt this feeling, it was when he battled Typhon.
Now, a dragon he had never seen before stood in front of him.
It had blocked his strike with relative ease. While not close to his full power, it was still not something a normal beast should have been able to accomplish.
It was a blast of lightning that would have had Ladon begging for mercy.
“Uncle Ddriag!” Arachne ignored everything and shouted out happily. She ran up and grabbed his very large leg, doing her best to hug it.
“Sup, brat," he said casually.
She was about to say something, but her eyes widened in realization. “Wait, why are you here!?”
“Damn, thought you would have been distracted.”
“Mum and Da said I was going by myself!”
Ddraig flinched as she went straight for the main point.
“No fair! They said I could come by myself! Stupid Ddraig, you were here the whole time!?” She kicked him.
Of course, he didn’t feel it physically.
“Come on.. “ He used the tips of his claws to pick her up by her collar. Arachne crossed her arms in a huff, pouting angrily. “Did you really think your mom and dad were going to let you come anywhere near this group of fuck-ups without someone watching over you?”
“But they promised.” Arachne whined.
“I wasn’t going to appear unless something like this happened. But that dumbass over there couldn’t go a day without throwing a tantrum.” Ddraig sighed, knowing he was going to get the brunt end of his niece's whining until they got home.
Just as Ddraig said that, the world filled with lightning again.
Ddraig let out a snort and opened his mouth as a burst of lightning came right at me. “Fus.”
An invisible force rippled out, slamming into the lightning, pushing through it, and dispersing the divine power with a thunderous boom before it continued forwards right at the source.
Zeus didn’t expect that.
He acted almost on instinct.
He was insulted right to his face, dismissed, and ignored.
He lashed out.
Divine lightning enveloped him, and he braced himself as the unseen force slammed into him, tearing apart the ground.
His feet dug into the ground, charring the earth, melting it, turning it to lava at the sheer heat radiating off his lightning.
Once the force dissipated, he looked down and noticed he had been pushed back several feet.
“See? Just like that.” Ddraig used that as an example for her.
The gods were silent.
They were unmoving.
Some of them were afraid.
They watched as Zeus, their king, their idol of what meant power and authority, had been pushed back without any concern or care.
It wasn’t that the response was something worth balking over. It wasn’t anywhere close to Zeus’s best, but it was the fact that the dragon that just appeared was so completely uncaring.
Zeus as well trembled.
As a god, it was rare, very, very rare, that he was disrespected so directly.
His pride wouldn’t allow it.
His fury boiled over.
The divine weapon in his hand surged, and the sky above roared in response to his own anger.
“I Am Zeus!” He bellowed, as if to remind the world that he wasn’t one to be trifled with.
The other gods, those that snapped back to reality, grabbed their proverbial shit and made distance.
Apollo picked up Ares and flew him far away.
Dionysus grabbed Mr. Blueberry, as if protectively, and quickly made his escape too.
Arachne, seeing this, wasn’t worried at all.
Ironically, she trusted the God of Madness.
Ddraig wasn’t oblivious to the God of Wine’s movements. He held Arachne up and flicked her in the god’s direction.
Dionysus didn't even look back as he snatched her out of the air and tucked her under his arm.
“Welp, guess we’re doing this.” Ddraig rolled his neck back and forth before blowing air out of his nose. “You are Zeus?” The Ancient Dragon said mockingly. “Yeah, so what?”
Zeus slammed his foot into the ground.
Like a spearman, his right arm pulled back, Lightning Bolt in hand, his muscles flexed as he used his full strength and threw his Lightning Bolt forwards.
Just the movement of his arm caused the earth beneath him to get pulled away, rupturing and breaking apart from the vacuum it created.
It took the sound several seconds to catch up with a thunderous boom that shook the world.
The lightning bolt turned into a streak of light as it went right for the large red dragon.
Ddraig didn’t dodge.
He didn’t deflect.
He didn’t stop it.
Instead, Ddraig let out a roar to welcome it.
The lightning bolt hit his body, and the world erupted in a bright light; an expanding dome of pure light cascaded outwards.
Dionysus looked back, seeing it, and panted as he picked up the pace and shot forward with his full speed to barely escape the aftermath.
The dome exploded, and lightning burst out in all directions.
Zeus had taken a step back, landing on the ground some distance out of the proverbial kill zone.
He held his hand up, and his trusted Lightning Bolt returned to him.
Zeus stilled.
Because he saw, through the dust and drifting debris in the air that was charged with remnants of his lightning, two glowing eyes stared back at him.
A tail whipped through the obstructions, dispersing everything so he could see clearly.
Ddraig stood there; his clawed feet had dug into the ground, tearing it apart, and his chest scales were scorched and some ruptured, but he was still standing.
“Oh wow, I felt that," the Mighty Dragon stated.
"What...who are you!?” Zeus demanded.
He didn’t know who or what this dragon was; he had never heard of him. This dragon didn’t match the descriptions of any he knew about in the world. And he was very sure he would have remembered a dragon that could take a blast of his symbol without blocking.
Ddraig’s wings flapped, and any remnants of Zeus’s attack were blown away as he took to the air, hovering in place.
“I fought both Heaven and Hell in my eternal war with my rival. It took the combined might of the Lord above and the devils below to bring me low.”
His wings spread out, and the green jewel on his chest glowed brightly.
“I stood in front of the Beast of Apocalypse and the Beast of Pity—"
Zeus shuddered as those titles were spoken, a weight to them that for some reason had images flash in his mind.
Like an echo left upon creation.
A beast with six heads, of evil, of monstrous power. It held nothing but hate and rage at the world, unreasonable, impossible to sympathize with or understand. A being of pure destruction.
Another.
A beast in the guise of a human that peeled away and revealed its true demonic nature with the collective deaths of the entirety of humanity at its feet, yet was filled with nothing but pity.
“-- And I challenged the Beast of Regression.”
Lastly, one more unconscious image flashed in Zeus’s mind.
A goddess turned monster.
Gigantic, immortal, undying, undefeatable. The very concept of life itself was woven into an entity that carried with it the collective idea of life in its body. With every step it took, it twisted the world, turning it back into a primordial incubator.
“I am Y Ddraig Goch, the Red Dragon Emperor.” Ddraig roared, announcing his name to all who were present and all who were watching from a distance.
That wasn’t just the Greeks anymore.
What was happening had drawn the attention of many other Pantheons who were watching from a safe distance.
Ddraig’s eyes bore down on Zeus. “I have one person I consider a partner, someone who I fought with, journeyed with, and was willing to die with. And you tried to kill his daughter in front of me.”
Zeus didn’t know when his heart started beating quickly.
When his neck became wet and cold.
When he truly began to feel fear.
But the moment the dragon infront of him took a deep breath, Zeus realized that he could die here.
Ddraig released the breath he took, and Zeus could feel it. As a sky god, he could feel the air around him vibrate.
It wasn’t flames that were spewed; it was too condensed. Wrapped around itself, concentrated.
Zeus didn’t fight it head on.
For one of the first times in his life, he dodged out of panic. He turned into a streak of lightning, stepping into invisible thresholds in the air, climbing high into the clouds above.
He looked down and saw.
The laser that had narrowly missed him and torn through the hastily remade barriers of the garden, treating them like they were cardboard.
The dragon's eyes found him, and it tilted its head up.
Zeus moved away as fast as possible as the same laser was tilted up and split the sky, cutting all the thunderclouds in half.
He knew that he couldn’t just run away, though.
As soon as the Dragon’s attack ceased, Zeus went on the offensive.
Lightning began to rain down from the sky. They were formed by his power, but they weren’t his strongest.
Some of them hit Ddraig; some of them missed.
The Red Dragon grunted as a few collided with his hearty scales, but not enough for him to be troubled.
Though, one bright light caught his eye, hidden amongst them.
Zeus threw his lightning bolt again, hiding it within the flurry of attacks.
“Wuld Nah Kest.” The words were heavy, impossibly loud. It was as if, regardless of the noise, the rumbling of thunder and lightning, they could be heard.
Zeus watched as the large dragon’s body shifted.
Like most, no, like wind.
It twisted and warped like a cyclone as it flurried around his attack—his lightning bolt. A powerful gust of wind that defied logic and ascended upwards at impossible speeds and reformed back into the dragon’s true shape, barreling forward at him.
Zeus couldn't believe how fast the dragon just moved; in the blink of an eye, it had left the ground and was now right in front of him, its claw raised up and slamming down on him.
The King of Gods was smacked out of the sky and sent downwards into the earth.
The ground shattered on impact, creating a crater that was easily the size of a sports field.
At the center Zeus trembled, wobbling to his feet as he steadied himself and wiped away divine ichor that spilled from his mouth.
The King of Gods quickly looked up because his instinct was screaming at him; his centuries of living, his experience, were telling him something was coming.
His lightning bolt returned to his hand, and with a shout, he thrust it forward.
“Fus Ro Dah!”
His lightning collided with the invisible force that descended downwards.
For a second, Zeus was pushed back; his lightning began to lose, but with a roar from the King of Gods, his lightning increased. It erupted from his spear and burst through the rippling force that was coming down at him.
Pride
Zeus saw his lightning overcome the dragon's attack, and his pride reappeared.
“Oh, you stopped the first one? What about the second?” Ddraig’s voice was loud enough that all could hear it. “Fus Ro Dah!”
Another invisible rippling force came pushing down from the sky.
Zeus was forced to hastily defend once more.
Like a protective barrier, his lightning sprang up around him. His body became enveloped, and stray bolts of lightning began to crackle and dance across the earth in large arcs.
He felt the invisible force press down on him immediately.
His legs trembled.
The first of his lightning shuddered and dispersed.
Then, it all began to collapse.
The Divine Weapon dropped from his hand, and the invisible force pressed into him fully, slamming him into the earth and pushing him deeper into the ground.
Darkness surrounded him, and he could only look up to see a faint circle of light that was the entrance to the new cave that was created hundreds of feet below the surface.
Lightning danced around his fingertips.
His body ached as much as he could feel as a god. His divine ichor had been spilled in substantial amounts.
He had never been so humiliated before.
Zeus had reached the point of no return, the point where it no longer mattered if he held himself to certain rules.
His eyes shot open, and he changed.
Divine Form.
It was the peak of a god's power.
All gods lowered themselves to a ‘contained’ self. A mortal form, yet still a god. To look mortal, to interact with the world in a normal manner.
For a god to assume their divine form, it was a very rare occurrence.
With a thunderous boom, Zeus exploded out of the hole. All the rubble that held him down had vaporized in an instead, and with the blink of an eye, he had already climbed out from below the earth.
“I don’t care who you are. I will not be humiliated. I am Ze—"
“Yeah, heard you the first time.” Ddraig slammed into the ground next to him, and a red-clawed fist came at him.
Zeus, for the first time in his life, had realized he was being punched by a dragon.
The King of Gods went flying through the air, flailing. He hit the earth some distance away, but his momentum carried him and bounced back up into the air.
This happened several more times before he finally came to a stop.
He looked up and realized he was no longer in the Gardens.
He seemed to be somewhere a state or two away.
Zeus let out a roar and commanded the sky to answer him. Clouds were pulled from every corner of the earth, rolling across the horizons.
He forced down the Lightning; it wrapped around his Lightning Bolt, growing larger and larger until it was easily the size of an eighteen-wheeler truck.
The dragon was flying at him, so Zeus threw it with all his might.
“Tiid Klo UI." Ddraig spoke dragon words again, and Zeus’s divine eyes could catch it.
The world slowed down.
His lightning bolt tore through the sky with a righteous fury, but the dragon maneuvered around it with ease, like he was taking a casual stroll through the air, uncaring of the destruction that ‘narrowly’ missed him.
Time caught back up properly.
And his lightning bolt erupted on the horizon with enough force that made a nuclear blast look like a firecracker.
Zeus wasn't ignorant of what just happened.
His Father was the Titan of the Harvest and controlled an aspect of time.
Zeus wasn’t done though; he held his hand up and called back his lightning bolt, still charged with significantly more power.
Ddraig was slightly surprised as it came from behind him at high speeds. He tucked his wings in and rolled out of the way, barely dodging it as it nicked his wing.
Zeus leapt up into the air, catching it mid-flight, and stabbing it at the dragon.
Ddraig’s wings unfurled, and he met the King of Gods in mid-air, his breath attack being released once more as the two opposing forces collided with the cataclysmic impact of fire and lightning.
A moment later, Zeus’s silhouette could be seen shooting out of the culmination of errant energies that blanketed the sky.
He hit the ground again, barely catching his footing before Ddraig descended on him.
He threw his Lightning Bolt as he normally did, but Ddraig was expecting it this time.
“Fiik Lo Sah.” Several images of Ddraig appeared in Zeus’s vision, each one looking ethereal.
The Lightning bolt was called back, and the divine weapon tore through the ‘real’ image of Ddraig that never left Zeus’s sight.
His eyes dilated as he realized the trick.
The first image hit the ground, shattering the earth under its weight as it swung its tail at him.
He brought the spear up to block, but it still was strong enough to send him tumbling backwards across the ground.
Stabbing his spear into the ground with a crackle and sear of the intense heat, he jumped up to avoid another of the images from clawing at him.
He stabbed a third in the head, causing the image to disperse, but another behind him had rammed into him as he hit the ground again.
The images all lunged on top of him, hiding him from view as they clawed and bit at him.
With a roar of fury, lightning erupted from all directions, dispersing all the images of Ddraig until the motes of light were pulled back together and Ddraig reappeared in full.
Zeus fell to a knee, panting, breathing hard.
His hair was disheveled; divine blood poured down his face and from wounds that littered his body from various bites or claws.
“Alright, I’ll admit you got a few good shots in. Maybe if it were the old me, it would have been a harder fight.” Ddraig spoke. "Well, a little harder. I would have still beaten you.”
“You –”
A red clawed hand slammed down on a tired and bloodied Zeus.
Ddraig held him firmly in place.
“I heard you like to make your gods mortal as punishment? Well, let’s see how you like it.” Zeus didn’t know what he meant by that; he didn’t have a moment to give it consideration as the dragon opened its maw again. “Joor Zah Frul.”
The words scrapped against reality, like a rusty spoon scratching against a chalkboard.
Words forcing their will upon reality.
Joor – Mortal.
Zah – Finite
Frul – Temporary.
Combined together, they were known as Dragonrend.
A shout meant to force the concept of mortality onto immortals, to let them experience a fleeting, mortal life.
And Zeus screamed.
@***@
A/N
Uncle Ddraig learned one thing from Wilhelm, and that was how to style on your opponent.
This is end of series Ddraig, free, more powerful, knowing the Thu’um’ and whatever else or other wacky adventures he’s gone on with Wilhelm.