The dragon's harem

An hour had passed, and the group had decided to stop moving for a while and hide inside a large crack in the ground that seemed shallow and empty. While everyone was fine for the time being, the archdevil and Haru seemed to have suffered from the darkness.

The archdevil's tether with Merlin got forcefully severed by the darkness with knocked her out, putting her into a coma for now. Haru, on the other hand, had seen the horror of the darkness. It was but a glimpse through Solace's eyes.

The goat fiend had a high tolerance for darkness, and he had even gone as far as gouging his eyes out and washing the memory with pain, but Haru had suffered much more since what Solace saw had been sent straight into her brain.

At first, she was screaming each word, but now that Sara healed her with divine magic, the only effect remaining is an irrational fear of the darkness. Her mind refuses to face whatever harmed her in there. She is a powerful and resilient devil, so, albeit hard, she still could swallow her fears and force herself to move through it.

The others couldn't understand much of what had happened, except that massive shadows were slowly crawling around them in the tenebrous dark lands. They came here to save Mira's father, but ended up stuck instead.

The first to suggest taking a drastic measure was Gamond. The powerful drakaina wanted to transform into her draconic form and drown the area in her frozen expansion, instantly freezing several tens of kilometers around them in ice and snow. She could then carry them and leave.

That suggestion was quickly refused. If she did that, then she might end up killing Mira's father. She argued that since he is already chained by hell, he'll resurrect anyway.

Of course, the devils knew a lot more than what Gamond did and quickly informed her that hell itself decides when a sinner resurrects. It could be immediately, or several years later. The location also differs as long as the sinner isn't chained by the devil. Hell will resurrect the sinners in different forms and locations each time so they can taste several different types of agony instead of just one.

So they waited for a bit for their seer to regain her composure before venturing again into the darkness, carefully avoiding the huge shadows around them. It didn't take Gamond and Lunara to understand the true danger of the darkness. Even if they can kill one or ten horrors, hundreds and hundreds of them would swarm right after and overwhelm them.

The creatures of darkness, as everyone started calling them, weren't just powerful, but also numerous, nefarious, ancient, and cunning. Evading them slowly became harder and harder, and Haru the seer had started getting exhausted.

Avoiding fights was necessary as any clash would eventually end up in a flood of creatures, drowning them beneath a river of flesh and blood. Nonetheless, they kept searching.

Hours accumulated into days, and days into weeks, now, they've been lost in the darkness for over a month. Food wasn't an issue, but exhaustion started seeping into them, and it was then that the first problem arose.

Out of nowhere, they heard a thud behind them. When they looked, Solace's lifeless head was rolling on the ground, fresh blood slowly painting the ground. The fiend's body was nowhere to be found.

What scared everyone the most is that whatever killed him, it had gotten past Haru's senses and even snuck through Gamond and Lunara's sharp instincts. It takes a lot of power and skill to snatch a soul from between a past-twilight Drakaina and a Demon Lord like this.

With the only person capable of seeing through the darkness dead, the group was faced with a difficult decision. It was clear that something stronger than them was stalking them from the shadows. Should they risk it and keep searching, or ride Gamond and flee? Can Gamond even flee from whatever the horror that is stalking them? It had managed to sneak a soul past her after all.

They couldn't make that decision on the move, so they camped beneath a large boulder and rested with Sara sitting in the middle, illuminating the darkness with divine magic.

"Solace should've resurrected back in the Rakshasas city. There is no way he wasn't anchored there, all hunters do it." Gorigore sighed, looking at the darkness surrounding them from all directions with a worried and exhausted face. His large body slumped on the boulder, and his eyes wandered around as if he were dizzy.

"I hate dying." Flabrony sighed and shifted his gaze toward Sara, "You're a devil, so you'll be fine. But what about them? I doubt those fangs would protect them if they died; they are supposed to prevent hell from eating them alive."

"Even so." Sara shook her head, "We devils are used to death and resurrection. Lunara here shouldn't have a problem either, but I fear Matilda and Gamond never died before."

It was then that Gamond laughed, "Me? I died in my twilight and came back with my sheer will. The last test for dragon's might is to transcend death." She sighed, "What worries me is that we don't know where we'll pop back up. And that we'll be chained to hell afterward."

Sara nodded, "Matilda might go insane if she died as well." She looked at the girl sitting beside them. Matilda puffed her chest, "As painful as it was, I'll endure it." She then looked at the darkness, "But what worries me is that we've been here for a while, and no one has come to look for us. Do you think we're that lost?"

Gamond started thinking as she leaned on Lunara, "Knowing Arad, he'll probably dash here the moment he gets done with Nina. It would take at least a day, at the longest a week."

Silence fell, and soon Haru's voice broke it. "What if he can't come here? What if he came and is lost, same as us."

They all looked at her, and finally Lunara spoke, "You don't know who we're talking about. He'll burn the whole layer if he wants to. I dropped a whole moon on his head and he survived."

Haru shook her head. "Then why isn't he here?" Her words faded into the shadows, "This dark land was supposed to be just an area plagued with darkness and powerful monsters and sinners. It shouldn't have been able to trap us here."

Haru hugged her legs, "This… we might've been unlucky, stumbling upon the torment of a sinner god."