“What exactly am I supposed to be looking at, Pluton?”

“….”

“Answer me, you oversized lizard.”

At Alexis’ words, the dragons behind Pluton and in front of her immediately started throwing a fit. Whatever it was that Pluton had done to them, it had obviously restored their original nature and with that, their boundless pride. Pluton, unlike these little shits behind him, fully understood the hierarchy of things here. He could feel it in his bones, in his very core itself; he was beyond powerful now but compared to Alexis he was still nothing more than a sentient punching bag at best.

“You lot, be quiet!” he bellowed, but the smaller yet older dragons behind him wouldn’t shut their dumb mouths. He needed to get them to both shut up and apologize profusely if they were ever to survive Alexis’ wrath. Or at least he thought that he would need to make them do so, but Alexis stepped in and made them all see just how low on the food chain they actually were.

Though only for a moment, every dragon there, Pluton included, felt the gaze of a true alpha predator – one that reduced even the most arrogant of the dragons to a mewling, terrified welp with just a glance. As if their cowering forms were not enough proof that they now knew their place, the smell of ammonia quickly added yet more evidence that they had not just been disciplined, but utterly humiliated.

“And you thought Pluton was the biggest threat?” Alexis remarked as she walked away, seemingly satisfied with the results of her actions. “My husband eclipses me when I am not fully unleashed. Pray that such a darkness never takes hold of me, or only the sacrifice of my beloved will be enough to stop the End of All. Although, that may not be the case for much longer. My power keeps stagnating, while his keeps growing. And to be honest, I kind of like it that way.”

Before walking through the doors to the building that she had reached, Alexis looked back over her shoulder and gave one last command.

“Pluton, I don’t know what you are trying to do, asking for what you wanted, and I really don’t have the patience to deal with that right now. Do what you want, but make sure that your new subjects know both their place and yours. As long as they don’t bite our hand, they can do what they want, to whomever they want to do it to. And if the numbers in Arcfira don’t reach what you need, the Giant Trash Can Man in the Dungeon can be convinced to give you what you need; by force, if needed.”

…

“Huh…”

“Weird.”

“I know, right? What the fuck is going on in this jungle?”

“You don’t think that The Obliterator has been able to shell somewhere this deep, right? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah, that thing has been redeployed to the Dungeon - supposedly to a special area made just for it, where it can fire through Dungeon Entrances without ever being completely exposed. Unless it started shelling the jungle again, this is likely the work of something else.”

The mortal soldiers stood at the edge of the jungle, facing a vast desolate stretch of land where more jungle once stood. Just a few days ago they had been ordered to make their way through this green hell towards an ancient ruin of a long-dead nation which, according to intel provided by the newly allied splinter faction of Elves, held some damn powerful monsters and relics.

They had arrived too late, it seemed, as the ruins were shattered, the land ripped up, and the scars of battle made this place eerily familiar to anyone who’d gone to a certain border.

“Hey, you don’t think that this might be the work of the Dread Dragon, right?”

The rest of his comrades in arms laughed, though possibly out of a hope that humor could alleviate their concern.

“What? Do you honestly think that Pluton exists? Even those who served with it claim that they can’t be sure whether it was even a real thing or not. Memory haze caused by exposure to the traces of Lord Kain’s massive ‘fuck you’ to that extra-universal invasion force and the fact that nobody has seen it in, like, forever has all but proven that it doesn’t exist.”

“Yeah, historians say that their hazy memories of a massive rotting dragon were likely fake, more along the lines of their previously indoctrinated minds trying to grasp Lord Kain’s power.”

“I don’t know…. There are reasons why nobody tries to go into the former lands of Ititlis, after all…”

The commanding officer on site scoffed. “That’s because Lord Kain fucked the land up so bad that nothing can live there, not even the undead! There is no Pluton, there is no Santa Claus, there is no Tooth Fairy, and there is no-.”

“KAIN FUCKING DAMNIT!”

A powerful roar from high above was followed by a massive black… thing… landing in the center of the desolate, destroyed ruins. Everyone there went on high alert, immediately preparing for a fight until they realized exactly what it was that was now towering above them.

“Grrrah!” growled the dragon, growled Pluton, as he dug his talons into the ground, grabbed hold of a massive slab of rock, and then proceeded to not just rip it out of the ground, but also toss it like a poorly designed frisbee off into the distance. “I fucking knew that I left something behind!”

With the same claw that had so effortlessly tossed a multi-ton piece of masonry like it was a golf ball, Pluton picked something out of the ground and, before anyone could see what it was, yeeted it into a pocket dimension before realizing that he had an audience.

“You….” The colossal, black-scaled behemoth spat before he realized that these people were Darksolian soldiers and not the various disparate groups dedicated to keeping him from his targets. “Hm! Good. Bring Kain’s wrath to the scum of this place. Take what you will from this ruin, as I’ve taken all that I needed. And, when you no longer need it, reduce it to an even worse state, or simply take the ruins back to Darksol to be displayed in a mockery of the civilization that thought itself greater than Darksol. Now, there are more chains to be broken, and more chains to be forged.”

Without giving any more words, Pluton shot back up into the sky, where he was soon surrounded by hundreds, no, thousands of smaller dragons.

“Well…… fuck.” Said the highest-ranking officer nearby, which led to the original soldier who had brought up the possibility that Pluton was the one to cause this destruction pumping his fist.

“Well, at least Santa and the Tooth Fairy aren’t real.” Mumbled another soldier.

“They…. They aren’t…. right?”