FIRST DEMONIC DRAGON

– Heliopolis

Metal clashed and a body crashed into the sand, groaning.

Some mild laughter rang out from a group as the Egyptian god Set let his divine blood flow freely from a brand new headwound.

“You all are worse listeners than we thought… I said keep your shield up and keep moving your feet. What part of what I’m saying is difficult to follow?”

Hatred flared within the eyes of the god of disorder as he glared up at the figure above him.

He was a large, muscular man clad in the frightening dark armor belonging to Tehom’s infamously annoying military.

The man above him was of an aggravating sort. He had dark black hair done in a neat cornrow pattern. His jaw was strong and chiseled like a marble sculpture, and his golden eyes were as sharp as the blade in his hand.

Set spit directly at his feet.

“You expect me to keep my shield up even with my arm broken from your last six consecutive strikes?”

“I do actually.”

The soldier grabbed the animal-headed god roughly by the ear and forced him to get back on his feet.

“The Antichrist won’t just sit and twiddle his thumbs while waiting for you to heal. He’ll wait for the moment you are vulnerable and sap you for whatever meager amount of power that you have.”

Set snarled and snapped his fangs angrily.

“Careful, dog! You have no right to speak to a god this wa-“

*Crack!*

Set cried out as he went down again- this time holding his muzzle.

He drew his hand back and several of his teeth fell down into his waiting palm.

“Can it.” The soldier replied gruffly. “As of yesterday, you are not a god. You are not royalty. You are not significant. You are prey. It is my job to turn you into something that can evade or at the very least inconvenience your natural predator.”

Set’s anger was only rising more and more.

But despite how mad he was, his voice was still eerily calm.

“It must be easy for you all. A species bred for war and pleasure for millions upon millions of years. Perhaps I would be greater than this too if I were a part of the world’s oldest science project..!”

The laughter coming from the dragon troupe immediately died down.

The officer standing over Set did not seem agitated or insulted in any way. Rather, it was more sufficient to say that he was amused.

“Funny. Very funny. With none of those divine powers to back you up, you resort to biting back and slinging insults like a little girl. An embarrassing sight indeed.”

The black bracelets around Set’s wrists and ankles made it so that there would be no use of divine power. He had to get used to fighting without it if he wanted to potentially stand up against Percival.

Set cursed when the officer grabbed him by the top of the head again. This time, he realized that his hand was so big it was like a fleshy baseball mitt.

The dragon could have crushed his head in one fell movement if he felt like it.

“I’m sure it makes you feel better. To think of our physical superiority as the reason why you cannot succeed against us. But do you want to know a little secret?”

He gestured behind him, to the five or so other dragons in black and scarlet armor.

“I am the youngest of the men you see here. And yet, this is my troupe. These are my men. Do you understand why I am better than them?”

He applied the faintest bit more force to Set’s head, and the beast groaned when he felt his skull cracking and his vision accumulated dark splotches.

“Because I will myself to be.”

The officer tossed Set back into the sand before he crushed his head like a dry coconut.

“That is what all of you gods are lacking. You have no grit, no desire to be better, no ambition to be able to protect yourselves. You’re much more content to let us stick around you forever like guard dogs and defend you until the sun fizzles out.”

“Raaah!!”

Abandoning his training weapons, Set hopped up and lunged at the arrogant officer.

But as soon as he got to his feet, a knee hit him swiftly in the jaw and sent him falling over backward like a cut tree.

The officer raised his leg high above his head and then brought it through the air in a swift ark.

He buried the back of his armored heel in the Egyptian god’s sternum. Breaking it with such little resistance that even he didn’t feel himself doing it.

Set’s eyes bulged.

He tried to cough, but couldn’t. Everything below the neck hurt, and his vision was flashing white.

“100 and 13,455.” The officer said as he kneeled over him as he gasped for air.

“When I was only 100 years old, I participated in the Scarlet Legion’s basic training to join the army. You’re an outsider so you don’t know our culture, but that’s insanely young. Many called me stupid.

My drill sergeant broke every bone in my body 13,455 times over the course of two weeks. Because I asked him to.

I wasn’t as strong as an elder dragon. So if I couldn’t match them in physical strength, I at least had to ensure that my bones didn’t break so easily.” b

He held his hand out over Set’s chest and healed his sternum and muzzle in under twenty seconds. The god finally exhaled in relief.

“I understood as a child what you still don’t seem to be getting as an adult. I wasn’t content to rely on the inborn gifts given to me by the Emperor and Empress before I was even born.

I wanted to be more. To stand out. To show myself that I was worthy of their gifts and charity. That was the only way I could wake up in the morning and feel worthwhile.”

The officer stood up and stared at the deep bronze-colored sun that was beginning to set over the horizon.

“That is the only difference between us and you that matters. Resilience. You gods crumble at the first confrontation of something you can’t subjugate or rape. But don’t worry…”

The officer kicked Set’s training sword and shield over towards him in the sand. Set reached for them, but he had forgotten until now that his instructor had only healed his jaw and sternum. His broken arm still needed time.

“We are going to break you of these habits and teach you personally what it means to stand up for yourself and have some grit because that is our great mother’s divine wish. Now on your feet or I will reduce every bone in your body to atoms just as mine were.”

–

Lailah sipped a large, sugary coffee as she surveyed the sands of the Egyptian domain from the comfort of a temple balcony.

True, she had warned the deities ahead of time about her soldiers and their excitement over finally having a way to curb their boredom. But it seemed as though they still hadn’t quite listened to her.

To put it simply, none of the gods were really excelling in their training so far.

Sekhmet and Bast were doing the best out of all of them, but even they hadn’t managed to knock their sparring partners down even once.

The problem more than anything was the fact that gods weren’t used to fighting without their divine powers to strengthen their blows or their magic.

Without their very birthright at their backs for the first time in their entire lives, they were in for a bit of a learning curve.

No divine energy meant they couldn’t empower their blows to have the force to take down a mountain.

They couldn’t summon sandstorms or swirls of locusts, so they had no choice but to fling little bits of sand in the air like children in the hopes of creating a momentary opening.

None of it really worked.

Several deities had already tried to quit, calling this barbaric. And not just in the Egyptian faction.

Out of all the reports she received, she had been told Dionysus was the first one. He was then reprimanded for trying to seduce his instructor and subsequently beaten.

‘Oh, well. Not as if I didn’t see that coming anyway.’ Lailah dipped a dry cookie into her coffee and ate it gleefully.

If she were honest, she didn’t get why the gods were complaining. This training had been baby-proofed several times over to make sure that the gods didn’t die halfway through.

Children in Tehom did a more strenuous version of these exercises in physical education classes.

But she figured that if she were to tell them that, they might kill themselves from the shame.

‘Although, that doesn’t sound too bad…’ Lailah’s eyes took on a fond twinkle as she chewed on her sweets.

Nubia, who sat next to her mother, didn’t know why she was occasionally smiling to herself, but she wagered it had something to do with the excess sugar in her blood.

She placed her own cup of green tea down on the table as she took a deep breath. There was something she had wanted to talk to her about. And now seemed as good a time as any.

“H-Hey, ma..?”

“Hm?” Lailah looked back innocently.

“I wanted to ask…” Nubia paused. “Don’t you think that sometimes you’re too hard on-“

“Empress!” A new voice called from outside. “I have a visitor here for you. May I permit them entry?”

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