Observing the End, Volume 3: Protagonism

Chapter 9: Dragons

Heaven and Hell aren’t just physical places. They’re states of mind. One person’s Heaven, is another’s Hell and vice-versa.

I thought it was nuclear radiation, but I was wrong. No, maybe there was some nuclear material involved? That doesn’t matter though. Those clouds were black and the lightning was purple, while the rain… The rain tasted like blood.

No, not just normal blood. It was the blood of a dragon. A demonic crimson serpentine dragon, which was escaping from a flock of several thousand giant green wyverns. All that wind and rain was caused by their battle. It wasn’t a natural phenomenon at all. Or maybe it was the most natural thing in the world?

Well, they might not even be from this world for all I know. This planet was probably ruined by those bastards decades or centuries ago. Beings capable of creating earthquakes and hurricanes just by flying and fighting with each other… I’ve got no clue why they bother to come down here at all. Do they even give a s**t how many countless lives they destroy by just struggling to survive?

Honestly, I wouldn’t care. I might feel bad if I accidentally kill a few mice, but if it was to survive or save my family, I would exterminate billions without much remorse. Not just mice, even humans. Hopefully I’ll never be put in that kinda position though. It might not weigh on my mind or soul too much, but it could hurt my friends and family.

Cassie was like that. Even just watching me kill a few people had caused her a lot of guilt. Surviving when her family was gone… These kinds of things can break some people, but me? I know that I’ll live, no matter what. Somehow, I’ll find a way to survive. I’d rather die than let Talia suffer, but it isn’t really up to me in the end. I can only do so much to protect her… Salvation is in her own hands.

Whether Talia is able to make it through this storm, will depend on her own will to survive and desire to live on. The nanites in her body react to her will. So does the mana, probably? No matter how sick we get, we’ll keep going on. I won’t let her starve to death or dehydrate. The others though… Well, we’re already alone.

Not everyone died right away. I told them all to start digging into the trees, using them as shelters from the storm. I was able to help all of the Greens and Greys make it in time, but the Obsidians were slower. Some of them didn’t even bother and just waited for death. I saw how the rains ate away at their bodies and minds, transforming them into hulking monstrosities or frail skeletal zombies. Others twisted together into nasty tentacle-monsters, while most swelled up like balloons and exploded into a red mist.

Those of us who used the trees as protection, managed to survive the initial storm. It only lasted a few hours after all. But then it came back. I stayed with Talia in the tree through at least five days, until it was struck by lightning and caught on fire. Then we had to try and escape.

I used as much leather and fur as possible, in order to cover her entire body. Then I started running. There were some small caverns, but most of them were flooded or occupied by dragons. I didn’t care though. The wyvern hissed and growled at us constantly, but it was too busy focusing on protecting its own eggs.

Ironically, Talia was able to somewhat communicate with it. She told me that it was screaming at us to leave. But after I told her to threaten it a bit, “I’ll smash all your eggs and chop your body into tiny pieces if you don’t be quiet!” And literally used my metal gauntlets to break its tail and some toes, it finally relented and ‘allowed’ us to stay in its home.

Talia is strong though. She’ll be fine… I just hate that she had to watch her ‘mothers’ die like that. It was a situation where a normal parent probably would have lied or hid the truth from their kid, but I… I can’t lie to Talia. My parents were like that too. When I asked a question, they’d always answer, whether it was comfortable or not. They even told me about death when I was practically a toddler.

Now that I think about it though. Talia is only a few months old in Earth years. Maybe even less than two months. But she’s already so big and learning so fast. It probably has to do with the nanites. I wonder if they have some way to make her ‘know’ things faster? Actually, all my kids are like that.

Hmmm, I didn’t really think about it much before now, but I’ve also always had this ‘connection’ to them. Like, I can ‘feel’ them. Their exact position. Whether they’re in danger or not. Maybe the nanites in my brain are communicating with the nanites in their brains? It could be a type of telepathy… I wonder if it works on electromagnetic waves, like a cell phone, or if it’s related to quantum entanglement? Could be a bit of both.

Ugh, that probably means that my kids will grow up to be just as perverted as I was when I was a child. As far back as I can remember, the one thing that occupied most of my time and effort was m**********n. Specifically, trying to find porn to jerk off to… Because this was before the internet was readily available to me. The amount of stupid and weird s**t I did back then… It would’ve been better if I just had actual porn.

Without pornography though, I wouldn’t be surprised if my brats ended up having s*x before they’re even ten. Ah, now that I think of it though, how old are the orcs I had s*x with? They were definitely adults and Scarface even looked like she was a lot older than me. But how long are orcish lifespans? They might not even live ten years normally. With the weird magical super-growth powers that the Matriarchs use, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them were only a few years old.

I’m not gonna think about it. Phew~, its probably better not to know these things at all. If they’re adults, they’re adults. You can’t judge magical creatures and alien races by human standards. Hell, you can’t even judge humans from other worlds, by Earth’s standards!

Honestly, my great grandmother was like twelve when she was married to my twenty-six year old great grandfather. Then they had their first kid when she was thirteen. So even human standards tend to change dramatically over the decades and centuries. Things that were politically correct and socially acceptable when I was a kid, were illegal or considered depraved when I became an adult. In other countries, it was totally fine for middle-aged men to marry prepubescent girls, but you could get stoned to death for being gay.

Speaking of being gay… When I was in Middle School and High School, people would call me gay as a form of bullying. My brother, who was actually gay, never had that problem… In fact, before the apocalypse, it was practically a ‘sin’ to be a straight white guy in America. The politicians would use s*x and race as weapons to politically murder each other on a daily basis. While us ‘commoners’ would be forced to live in the shitty world that they created for us.

Fortunately it’ll probably be awhile before Talia learns to read. I’ve always felt weird about family members reading my work. I’ll feel especially awkward if my daughter reads about my actual thoughts and actions since I came to this world.

***

Oh my God! We almost died! That hundred mile long crimson serpentine dragon just tail whipped a dozen of those green wyverns into a nearby mountain. The whole damn thing exploded like a volcano… Rocks and molten lava were falling from the sky for at least ten minutes.

Then hundreds of boulder-sized red and green scales started raining down onto our mountain, like a f*****g meteor storm or artillery bombardment. One of them hit right in front of our cave’s entrance and blocked it off.

That wasn’t the worst part though… There was a chunk of meat attached to the scale. Glowing purple meat. At first it was just an ominous light source, but eventually, dozens of tendrils shot out of it and stabbed into our roommate. They pulled it over towards the entrance and eventually the scale clamped down onto it like a giant goddamn clam!

It was probably just our dumb luck that we weren’t big enough to be a snack for the demonic mollusk. Either that, or it sensed the nanites in our bodies. We could’ve just been too far away for the tentacles to reach too.

Anyway, after it was finished eating the dragon, it used those tentacles to dislodge itself from the cave’s entrance and scamper off into the forest. I’m not entirely sure what level of power those things are at, but it’s at least at the point where even their f*****g scales will turn into sentient creatures once they’re scraped off their bodies.

Whatever, the good news is that they’re finally gone. And by gone, I mean that the demonic serpentine dragon crashed down into the prairie… I’m not even sure how far away it is, but from the cliff near the cave entrance, I can barely see it on the horizon. The storm settled down after that, because I’m pretty sure that it was some kinda ‘Wind’ magic that the creature was using to fly around. Those green wyverns are still over there tearing the carcass apart and I have no idea how long that’ll take.

That snake-like creature was so big that the tip of its tail is at the base of the mountain I’m on, yet I can’t even see the bastard’s head. Even from such a high elevation, it’s still out of my sight.

Another bit of good news is that Talia finally got over that ‘bug’ or whatever it was. I’m feeling a lot better too. I think we should leave though. Assuming that the dragon fell in the south, then I want to go north.

As for any thoughts of going over there and trying to eat the magical beast to gain immense power? Are you f*****g insane? Some chunk of meat on one of its scales could eat ‘me’, so how the hell would that work?

I feel a little awkward leaving Adam, Jane and the others behind but… It’s probably better this way. I promised to keep their mothers safe and failed. If they think I’m dead, then maybe they’ll be able to move on with their lives. Yeah, I know it’s selfish, I don’t need your goddamn judgement.

We’re almost out of non-tainted water and food. We can’t stay on this mountain, or even in this region anymore.