First Demonic Dragon

Eventually, Lisa had to let everyone else in the room.

Once they came rushing in, Apophis was immediately surrounded by his extremely overbearing parents.

But to their credit, they didn't try to coddle him. No matter how badly he could see that they wanted to.

Lailah was able to reign in her emotions before she took on the task of giving her son his check up.

She delicately placed her fingers along certain key points along his forehead and injected just the faintest amount of magic into his mind.

Apophis' eyes rolled into the back of his head while his body became as stiff as a board.

Lailah showed some small signs of discomfort as she tried to sift through her son's very essence to determine the root cause of his discomfort and fainting spell.

While she worked, the rest of Apophis' parents stood back by a safe distance and watched Lailah determine what was wrong.

It didn't seem to take her very long to find something in her son's body that might have explained his current state of being.

"Chaos energy...?"

The girls made confused faces and looked amongst each other, then at Abaddon. Their worry was now considerably less than it was before.

"Did you...?"

"No. I only gave him Order."

Everyone then looked at Tatiana, who in turn just shrugged.

The reason why no one seemed overly bothered by Apophis' sudden development of chaos energy was because of them.

The wedding crests that the wives carry on their bodies ensure that there is some of them in every child that is born; regardless of if they were actually the one to carry them or not.

Hence why the children have several different genetic backgrounds; not just dragon.

But while the children are born with abilities that come from their immediate parentage, that doesn't mean that they are stuck with only those abilities.

Powers from the other ten women have a tendency to manifest spontaneously over time.

But because their bodies may not necessarily be used to these abilities, sometimes it takes a day or so for their bodies to adjust; causing mild discomfort, or maybe even sickness like symptoms.

They learned about this when Gabbrielle had a coughing fit one night and she ended up expelling a flock of birds from her throat.

By the morning she was fine, but her room had almost become a glorified petting zoo.

The reason why no one was worried anymore was because they believed that Apophis might've developed chaos from Tatiana.

And since that was a rather heavy handed power for your body to get adjusted to, that could have explained the fainting, the headache, and the bleeding nose.

Thea had similar violent symptoms when Abaddon gave her the power of chaos. But hers were mitigated a bit due to the living armor she wore.

It wasn't much of surprise that Apophis was having a rougher start.

So it was natural for the adults to think that this was the whole reason for his current struggles.

As they woke Apophis to tell him all of these things, his expression contained a slight hope.

"So I'm good, right? I can go back on the mission if it's just something I'll get over in a night." Apophis asked hopefully.

"Slow your roll, young man. None of us said that." Audrina shook her head.

"If this is what we think it is, you're still prone to fainting, and you might experience even more undesirable symptoms in the meantime." Abaddon warned. "May I remind you that your mother is also a goddess of madness as well?"

Everyone turned to Tatiana, who smiled innocently and held up two fingers in a peace sign.

Abaddon clasped his son on the shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. "You've done well. You can rest now."

"But dad, I-"

"I know you want to go back, son... I'll tell you what, if you give me twenty four hours of rest, I'll send you back. But you have to truly rest or else you're staying right here."

Just like Abaddon knew his son, Apophis knew his dad.

This twenty-four hour hold was going to be the closest thing he could get to a concession, so he had no choice but to take it.

"...Alright. I'll stay."

"I thought you might."

Abaddon ruffled his son's hair and sent him to his room shortly after.

But the moment that Apophis could no longer see his face, his expression became much more grim.

"Honey..?"

Erica gently touched Abaddon on the arm with the same worried expression on his face that he had.

"Why did you say 'If this what we think it is' like that..? Do you think it might be something else?"

-

Father-in-law / Kinda-Dad: Look out for Apophis for the next twenty four hours or so. Let me know if he starts behaving strangely.

Me: Strange how? Should we be worried???

Father-in-law / Kinda-Dad: No, don't worry at all, Claire Bear. Just keep a bit of an eye on him for me. Just entertain the worries of a young man for me.

Me: *Old*

Father-in-law / Kinda-Dad: I said what I said.

Claire shook her head at her phone before slipping it back into her pocket.

"So, he's not giving you any details, huh?"

"No... it doesn't seem like it."

Tiamat sat next to Claire on the couch while she sipped elegantly from a glass of wine.

Her waist-length black hair was wrapped in a towel above her head since she'd recently gotten out of the shower.

"He hasn't taken a nap today, that's already pretty out of the ordinary." she mused. "I'm also a bit sad about that..."

Claire rolled her eyes. "You're only sad because you like to feel us up in our sleep."

"If you don't want me to, then you all shouldn't sleep naked."

"Sometimes we don't, but you undress us anyway."

"You have no proof that it is me. Maybe you all are just rough sleepers."

"I put a nanny-cam on that photo-frame over there. I've got you on video." True to her word, Claire pulled up a video on her phone that had the charming older dragon dead to rights.

She watched it curiously with no real signs of surprise on her face.

"Wow... Is my butt really that small? There's nothing to hold!"

"Tia!"

"I'm just saying it's concerning!"

Claire just rolled her eyes and put away her phone. "Nevermind that for now... Those two were supposed to just run to the kitchen and come right back. What exactly is taking them so long?"

Tiamat checked the time and saw that it was roughly around midnight. This was usually when her husband started getting those unique culinary ideas of his. If you can even call them that.

She and Claire seemed to have the same thought at once.

The two pulled on their bathrobes and exited their room one after the other.

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Together, the two made their way down the hallway and into the kitchen where they found a completely unsurprising sight.

"What are you two eating?"

Apophis and Courtney paused in unison mid-chew.

""...Nothing.""

The girls looked to Rita, who was busy cleaning the kitchen.

"They're eating cheeseburgers."

Claire breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, that's not as bad as-"

"They're using fried pork chops as the buns."

"Of course they are."

Apophis and Courtney looked at each other with sweat running down their brows.

"The jig is up, we've been found out!"

"I'll never let them take me alive!"

Both of them grabbed their plates and ran off while Tiamat went chasing after them with bushels of broccoli in hand.

Claire was no longer worried about her husband in the slightest.

To her moderate dismay, he was still the exact same man as before.

But that was also a bit of a comfort to her as well.

-

It was around 2:30 in the morning, and Tiamat was the only one still awake.

Unlike everyone else in her life, she was an avid night owl.

...And an early riser too.

She just never really got tired or felt the need to go to sleep. Unless she spent the day overexerting herself that is.

As such, she usually spent the nights watching videos on her phone until everyone woke up. Or she would occasionally play a game or two with the sound off. Or, she would just frisk her husband and his other wives.

She found various ways to amuse herself as the nights went on.

Tonight, she was reading through the family group chat. Watching as Abaddon, Thrudd, Darius, and Jasmine sent messages back and forth about the current state of college football in America.

Every five seconds, her phone was getting a new notification. It was never ending.

But as she chuckled to herself, she noticed that the side of her face was starting to feel wet.

They hadn't had sex tonight, so suddenly being sticky was more than a little jarring.

Sitting up, she realized that the reason she was wet was because of her husband. He was sweating pretty heavily.

Not only that, but he was muttering in his sleep as well. It was heavily unlike him.

She gently tried to wake him without letting her own concern get out of hand.

But Apophis wasn't getting up. And she was only getting more and more worried.

As a last resort, she lifted up her hand to give him a strong zap that definitely would have gotten him to wake up.

But before she could even make the attempt, she heard his whispers clearly for the first time that night.

"Nex sacramentum..."

In that moment, the entirety of the domain outside of space and time, froze in place.