The dragon’s harem

Setting Yog aside, Merida had many more things to worry about now besides her. Those wizards and druids she talked about would try something at her ceremony, and it would be enough to cause Arad to wipe an entire nation. It had to be bad.

So? How does she stop them, or rather, how does she convince Arad not to burn an entire nation? The answer to that was both simple and complicated, beautiful and harrowing.

What she has at her disposal are fungus, rot, and decay. What she controls are demons, hordes of them, and far more than what mortals could comprehend. People always think of demon lords as mere bruits and violent, barbaric monsters that come from the abyss, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Demons were just as capable of tricking, deceiving, and forcing people to follow their will. Albeit their methods might be a bit rougher than what a devil would use. Devils always use the sweet traps, while demons carry the whip.

Merida didn’t need to talk, convince, or even care about what those wizards and druids think. All that she needed to know was their identity, and her fungus could do the rest.

Merida sighed and looked at the plan for her clothes. “More work…”

“We can deal with those wizards and druids later, but for now, let’s focus on finding you something nice to wear.” She pointed at the plan with a grin. “What do you say to a puffy skirt?”

“No, thank you.” Merida smiled, “I was thinking more of a suit of leather armor, something that would be worn by a general or a soldier, if I can’t just wear something casual.” She looked at her plan and then sighed again. “But… Eris already did that by wearing an armored dress.”

“Eris is different. She is a divine being.” Isabelle wasn’t going to listen to any of Merida’s complaints. “The easy way out for you is to just make a regular dress, decorate it a bit, and then wear it. The event would only take a day, so you won’t be wearing that for only that time.”

“Do my clothes really matter now? We got a disaster that could be so catastrophic that it’ll cause Arad to wipe an entire nation off the map. That cannot be anything good, and the fact that I’m the target makes it even weirder.”

As Merida and Isabelle discussed the matter, the seamstresses were listening, and after a while, one of them spoke. “Lady Merida, Lady Isabelle… what if they didn’t target you directly, but aimed at your power instead?”

Merida looked at her. “I’m a demon lord; there is no mortal in this world who can wrestle my power out of me.”

The seamstress shook her head and then lifted a piece of fabric. “No, I don’t mean they’ll steal or damage your power. I mean they’ll try to taint indirectly, like do something bad and quickly frame you as a demon.”

She then stared directly at Merida. “They might find a way to create fungal zombies like yours, and then frame you, only to ask Lord Arad to kill you.”

Hearing that, Isabelle scratched her chin as she started thinking. “If they managed to get the public on their side and frame you… Yeah, that should be a way to put pressure on Arad.”

Merida paled. “And Arad doesn’t take things like that lightly. If they turned a bunch of people into zombies and blamed me, then publicly demanded that Arad execute me…”

The seamstress nodded. “He’ll kill them instead. They might think they are making a smart move, but being smart alone won’t save them from his lordship’s wrath.”

Merida could indeed imagine those people trying to pull such a trick, only to find out that Arad doesn’t care about their words or the public’s opinion, and that he’d much rather wipe their entire nations out than deal with their trickery.

She stood. “I’ll go get the royal guards on the matter to investigate it. I’ll also send a few demons and inform Arad.”

Merida split into two, herself and Kino. While she decided to talk with the guards and then go find Arad, Kino’s job was to head back to the abyss and get a few powerful and sneaky demons on the job as well. The goal was simple: to track, find, and eliminate all of those troublemakers before they could cause any harm.

Kino landed back in the abyss beneath the massive fungal tree, and looked at the countless demons building the battleships. She only had one thought inside her head, “Could this be the work of that peace goddess?”

She didn’t know for sure, but demons rarely had wrong intuition, so she had to get the best of the best working on this case.

As a Demon Lord, Merida and Kino ruled over an entire layer of the abyss, but unlike most other demon lords, the population of the demons under them was clearly separated into two groups. The living and the dead.

They didn’t have a castle but had a massive burrow in the trunk of the titanic fungal tree, and when Kino approached, all of the demons there hit the floor with their faces, terrified and elated that their Demon Lord had arrived.

The reason for their terror was that Kino and Merida almost never visit this place if things are proceeding smoothly, and so when Kino showed up, their first thought was that they had messed something up, and she was here to complain and possibly punish them.

They were like soldiers suddenly seeing the grand general of the army enter their camp with a frown on his face. They could only assume the worst, especially since they were all demons.

“Bring me only the best. I’m looking for demons who can shapeshift into humans, who are good at deceit, masters of subterfuge, and those who can control their urges well.” As she spoke, all of the demons around ran away, and she found herself walking alone toward the throne room deep within the fungal tree. Soon, she was sitting on that throne, watching the demons running around like ants.

She needs them to infiltrate the enemy’s ranks and sabotage their planes from the inside. Such a job is usually better left for devils, but no one said demons cannot do it.

Merida herself stopped by the guards first, and her target was none other than Alcott. But to her surprise, he wasn’t in the castle or in the capital for that matter. The guards didn’t know anything about his whereabouts, so she had no other choice but to find someone else.

Someone who is smart, sneaky, and doesn’t mind getting their hand a bit dirty. She knew just the right person, and while he was almost impossible to contact directly, his wife was easy to catch.

As Merida walked out of the castle and headed down into the capital’s streets, she was already a bit worried. While contacting that man through his wife was easy, the wife herself was a massive, unpredictable, and unstoppable force that even Merida didn’t want to start a fight with. Luckily, Merida was in the right this time.

She was tall, three whole meters of womanly vigor. Her hair was short and golden, and her radiant eyes burned like the sun. Sitting on a chair, which looked comically tiny compared to her body, Lydia rested one foot on another, waiting for Merida to show up.

Like Merida, Lydia was someone who struck first and asked questions later, so the two of them got along a lot. But their relationship runs deeper than that, as Merida was Lydia’s secret supplier.

“Did I make you wait?” Merida sat facing Lydia, and the former paladin, now archon, smiled. “Not at all. Do you have it?”

Merida gave her a small bag with a tightly wrapped package inside. “I modified it as you asked; hope it fits.”

As a paladin and a divine archon, Lydia couldn’t just stroll into a clothes shop and pick some nice and sexy night fits for herself. So, she always asks Merida for them in secret, and now, she is even making custom orders every now and then.

What was in the special package was a modified Amaterasu church priestess outfit, and the modifications certainly weren’t church-approved or appropriate.