Moments before the bombing...
Hirrax: "See those ships?"
"It's the first time I've seen metal ships. They're a thousand times bigger than any we've ever seen. They look like a floating city..."
Me: "That's right. They're floating military bases.... "
Hirrax: "You can't see anyone, no sails and they're going super fast!
"Don't be fooled by appearances, the big ship in the middle can single-handedly destroy all the armies you've fought against in the past?"
Hirrax: "Do they have shields?"
"Worse, powerful countermeasures. They've probably picked us up already. By our heat signatures, our grunts and certainly the differential radar...
We must attack immediately!
TAURUS, from the infernal star of Aldebaran, aim all your power at the anti-aircraft ship to the right of the big destroyer!"
The zodiacal dragon, provided with a double pair of horns, sits leaning on its front legs .
He closed his eyes for a few moments and concentrated a ball of lightning, his golden horns crackling like the spheres of a power plant.
Ares of the infernal star ARIES, concentrate on the support group on the left.
Demodragon: "You're wasting precious time, I can feel it!"
I soared off the cliff, about 50 meters tall, not too big, not too small.
I concentrated on the destroyer.
I focused my breath, all my power concentrated in one spot.
The five blows combined into a prismatic beam.
Lightning struck the first ship, causing a chain reaction of explosions from the anti-aircraft munitions.
The antimatter sphere launched by Aries who screamed his war cry "By the death of a star!"
The sphere met a force shield that bent under gravity and like silicone, the ship twisted and bent in half, the front joined the back and disappeared from this world, crushed upon itself.
BAM BAM BAM BAM.
A large caliber gun salute was fired from the destroyer and the Aegis system fired at me, blasting fragmentation projectiles into my belly.
My scales resisted and my invulnerability to physical attack protected me.
The last support ship bombarded the coast with flame-throwers, but the munitions were fast, cluster-firing rockets that opened and each deployed hundreds of phosphorus and shrapnel grenades. The deadliest weapon for the infantry. A sort of air blender and sausage grill.
Hirrax and the other dragons had to flee, the shrapnel penetrating some, not very deeply but enough to make them retreat.
A powerful ground-to-air missile hit me in the leg and the pain was staggering.
A second salvo was fired by the destroyer.
My breath pierced the shield and ignited the hull.
The cooling system paid off and the ship took a lot of damage, cannons, melted, rockets exploding in their silo... Some areas glowed red and I began to blow on it again to finish it off.
But at the last moment, submarines fired at me with a ballistic missile and sent me crashing against the cliff.
My rage grew and I fired a delayed fireball in a salvo on the ship to blow it up.
Hirrax came into position with me and fired high-powered magic missiles.
But just as the missiles, high-speed rockets, were about to hit the ship,
A sphere of light blinded us. Probably came from the sky.
Admiral Nobutake Kondō had turned a ring with a smile on his face.
The unicorns had given him a powerful artifact, blessed by the gods...
"Admiral, please receive this artifact. Our oracles have warned us that you will play a decisive role in the near future. You will know when and where to use it."
He received this ring with a glowing gem with a golden dragon set around it, he remembers.
And then the next thing you know...
The ship vanished, the projectiles making an insane explosion, lifting the water and overturning the two submarines that were in distress.
Hirrax, wounded, returned with me to the cliff to meet Demodragon's grave gaze.
I knew the minor and major healing spells, and I worked to heal the three dragons that accompanied me. Then I turned to Demodragon.
"Why didn't you do something?"
I was answered with a blow from his tail in the face. He broke my jaw with his red head.
"You arrogant little shit. Don't you realize what a crushing defeat we've just suffered?"
Me:"????? "holding my jaw, trying to heal it, blood dripping from my nostrils.
"You shame me. You don't yet have the whole picture like your mother... You should know when people talk about you, or and know the causes and consequences of your actions all the time, Each of your heads should be in different dimensions all the time..."
"But we chased them away and destroyed 2/3 of them..."
Demodragon: "Pathetic and insufficient...
Six large-caliber shells were fired ... He achieved his objectives. ...In the bull's-eye...
And you know what. You should get out there and see the damage... Find out for yourself the result of your incompetence.
If you weren't Tiamat's son, I would have had you banished from the army, tortured you after you saw and understood your failure, and finally executed and devoured you personally.
GLOUPS (*5)
Hirrax didn't understand but was curious.
Hirrax: Let's head for the firing salvo.
The five of us headed for the U.S. portal.
We arrived faster than fighter planes, driven by fear and anxiety.
In the distance we could see columns of smoke. The destruction must have been terrible.
The cliff where the gate was enchased was turned over. The portal destroyed.
The troops scattered... the ambulances whistled and the men searched the rubble.
The power generators had melted and the mana reactors were smoking out.
The damage was immense.
When we landed, the sirens began to sound...
We were strangers and probably hostile forces.
The few bronze dragons that were on the scene fled, as did the magical creatures serving in the army, or at least those who felt our overwhelming presence.
I landed at the portal site and did sniff.
With my heightened senses, I felt a scent that I recognized from all of them.
And I froze with fright.
It was the smell of a dragon, the smell of Argentrix. I frantically started to follow the rubble and I smelled and recognized its smell in a cave torn by the explosion.
I turned to Demodragon and made a horrible grimace.
"You knew and you said nothing."
Demodragon: "I warned you you were wasting time!"
Hirrax squeezed my paw. "It's not your fault, Ivan... I know that light... It was the Gods who intervened again, there was nothing you could have done... They're testing you!!!! But they can't get involved against you directly... you have a non-demonious physical body, well, a little bit because you're..."
Demodragon frowned as a sign of Hirrax to shut up... Ivan must not have known...
She groaned for fear of Demodragon, who was fit and she was exhausted.
Demodragon "Do you understand the gravity of the situation???"
I wasn't paying attention to his sarcasm anymore.
I was sniffing. But no dead body... that made me feel a little better.
Men were screaming under the rubble and I lifted the rocks and did the healing on the men.
It revolted Demodragon, who wanted to grab them and swallow them.
But Hirrax came between him and me.
Soldier: "ARGHHHH! "
He thought he'd be saved, but then he saw a horrible monster staring at him.
More screams, more men, more healing.
I wept as I pulled the unhappy ones out.
Most of them fled in the direction of the base which had not been attacked.
Tanks and helicopters made a wall between me and the base. The men were evacuating the threat.
I "Alone, I want to be alone..." and I lay down looking at them.
I was the worst dragon they had ever seen. Absolute horror. But none of them dared to fire.
After a moment, I raised my right paw, as a sign of appeasement.
A jeep with an officer in it and a white flag on it dared to approach with a loudspeaker.
But at the same time, the light went out and they found themselves in the middle of the night as the sun was beating down. They could see the sun but the sky was black instead of blue.
I couldn't see it, but they could. It added to their terror.
"Dragons, you are reported as enemies by our draconian comrades in the United States Army.
If you are sent by the Japanese Empire, we are meeting with the remaining senior officers and dragons for surrender under conditions of the Geneva Conventions
Me: "Brave officer! I am not your enemy. I am Ivan, still the leader of the armies and senator of the United States of America. My appearance has changed like my flesh and blood, but I am still me. "
Colonel Clement: "I'm the ranking officer here and I've seen that you've saved fellow countrymen."
The officer saw me crying, uninterested in the prechipricha...
"If you are really..."
I cut it off.
"Where is she? "
Clement froze. He understood that the portal had caused a catastrophe.
"I... I... (clears throat) Argentrix?? Your wife???, the golden dragon???, the golden dragon???"
He understood when he saw my five heads crying...
Clement stepped forward, taking all his courage to overcome his fear.
He approached one of my claws and put his hand on it and raised his head, 50 meters long and 15 meters high:
"There's... There was a terrible explosion...
Argentrix was aboard the Hood, the scientific exploration ship... They landed with the soldiers and put in a phasing zone. They must have escaped when the alert was given thanks to your message and the satellite images...We don't know anything and nobody saw them but when the bombing started, the Hood started with the gate activated and went in.
A lot of soldiers and personnel were outside the Hood because some didn't have time to take cover.
All we know is that the portal exploded and violet lightning caught all the phasing men coming through the portal.
We don't know if they were beamed in, disintegrated or sucked into the portal.
Then the portal imploded and there's nothing left. We have no way of communicating with Earth and the Japanese Empire is numerically superior and has powerful allies.
We have barely 20 legions scattered and are preparing for a conditional surrender, but I fear the worst."
I wasn't listening to what he was saying anymore.
I'd lost Argentrix, maybe permanently. She could be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Maybe she was dead because of me and my two kids with her.
I collapsed from grief so intense that I was back to my 19-year-old human form.
I threw myself into Clement's arms: "Argentrix... Find her again..."
I was inconsolable and Demodragon, farther away sneered and raged at the same time.
Seeing me as a desperate human delighted him and made him want to swallow me. But seeing me as a human, revolted him and made him want to tear me to pieces like a spider...
Hirrax shrunk her size and rubbed her head against me and licked me to comfort me.
Curled up in a ball at her feet, she asked, "Clement, could you take him to the infirmary and give him some sedatives. He's just learned he's lost his wife and two babies."
The colonel had a humanitarian reaction and called for nurses to take care of me.
They were going to give me military medicine for soldiers in shock: Make them sleep.
Then he turned to Hirrax...
"Mrs Hirrax, can you explain your situation and that of Ivan, who is considered dead?"
He invited the dragon to follow him to an isolated area of the base.
Let me introduce myself. I'm the sister of Argentrix, daughter of Aurona and Ambrosius, not Fomalhaut.
The Colonel was astonished, surprised.
"Ivan has indeed passed away but, being a DemonLord, he is therefore fallen. He was dragged before his judge who, by fate or chance, was his mother who saved him by giving him some of her flesh so that he could live again. This angered the gods, but it was legal. He is a piece of the infernal Goddess Tiamat and causes terror and dread in dragons and magical creatures. That's all you need to know for his changed appearance.
As for me, I'm the general-in-chief of the Sixtieth Infernal Legion. I am also a demon, don't misunderstand me.
The man rose abruptly from his chair and leaned against the glass wall with a through mirror.
He crawled to the exit when Hirrax told him.
"We destroyed two-thirds of the first Japanese fleet to stop the bombing, but it was too late. We underestimated the danger.
We're not your enemy yet. Usually, we allied ourselves with other archidemons, but Ivan insisted on making an unnatural alliance with the United States.
He proposes to integrate your men into our legion under Ivan's command, at last, when he is able to do so again."
Clement, panting and sweating in terror, let go of the doorknob. And he dared to turn around.
Hirrax hadn't moved from the front of the table, lying down to be on the same level of his head as the human in front of her.
"Colonel, the bargain is simple. Free in the 60th legion or slaves in the salt mines and Japanese galleys. "
Clement sat down and barely looked at the dragon who was making an incredible effort not to terrorize the man in front of her.
"General, what are your intentions?"
Hirrax: "It's a very, very old story between us and the gods of light.
We are darkness and also evil. "We are the infernal army of Tiamat. Some are her children and her creations. We are fanatics and we live for her. For me, she is my mother and also my goddess...
Our goal is to save her so that she can one day return to a normal life, free of her shackles, free of her curses. But, like in a chess game, every time we move a pawn, the Gods hinder our actions until we fail. It is an endless, eternal cycle of action and reaction.
But you, when you act, the Gods don't act and that's where Ivan comes in.
We take care of the Japanese and you work for us, under the nose and beard of the Unicorn Gods ...
Your people will be spared the fury of Tiamat. She will know the difference between her allies and her enemies in time.
Glory for our allies and bloodshed for others.
Ivan also wants to reform our army, modernize it, and bring it back from the infernal plan on the physical plane."
I was sleeping, tormented, in a military bed, and I started dreaming about Argentrix, and our motorcycle rides and water battles... I didn't want to wake up anymore... It was all my fault....
It was cruel... but so...