First Demonic Dragon

"What's good, bro?"

Abaddon blinked his eyes several times in a second.

Somehow, someway, he was no longer inside of hell.

Instead, he was standing in a downtown apartment building that looked like it was situated in a large city.

Sunlight was streaming through three big open windows into a decent-sized white bedroom.

A young man sat at a desk across the room.

At first glance, Abaddon mistook him for his old self.

He was a young black man in his early twenties with a short haircut and glasses.

The key differences were, this man had a short beard, his face had no acne, and his left arm was covered in tattoos; a komainu on his upper arm, and a beautiful woman with a split hannya mask on his forearm.

Abaddon waited and waited, but the young man just kept typing away on his computer after his initial greeting. Never bothering to say anything else.

"…What is this?"

"You died."

"What?!"

"Just fucking with you man, sit down."

Abaddon was understandably annoyed, and the young man seemed to know it.

"Jesus, brother. You're looking madder than a redneck with mixed grandkids."

"Yes, well my patience is extremely thin at the moment and I don't have time to sit around and listen to-"

"Huh. 'Don't have enough time' he says..." The young man chuckled.

"Something funny?"

"It's amazing that someone who lives inside of a realm where he molds time to his fingers everyday to match the school schedule of his adopted daughter, can't notice when time isn't actually passing around him."

Now that Abaddon stopped to pay attention, he finally noticed that the young man was right.

He usually only felt this level of stillness and nothingness when he isolated a space from time, or…

"I'm asleep?"

"Kinda." The young man shrugged. "It's more like I pulled your consciousness here and isolated it."

The young man suddenly looked up from his computer and looked Abaddon up and down.

"Boy, you are just like a supernatural Derrick Henry, ain't you? Just big as shit for no reason."

Abaddon felt a vein bulge against his forehead.

"…Why am I here? Who are you?"

"Which one should I answer first?"

"You can't multitask?"

"…Fair enough."

The young man leaned forward and Abaddon watched his eyes turn completely black.

"The human equivalent of twelve billion years spent together, and you can't even remember me. I'm insulted…. It's because I've gained weight, isn't it?"

The young man covered his stomach in annoyance.

"It's your fault I look like this. Your mind said that this was the easiest form, scenario, and personality for you to comprehend. I guess it's better than being animated. Or a dog."

The gears in Abaddon's mind got to turning, and it took him a few months back.

To when he first destroyed his body and soul, and spent an eternity fighting an entity who he never even saw, for a power he felt he desperately needed.

In the end, he absorbed it. And became the sole embodiment of…

"Oblivion." He realized.

"The oldest and the coldest." Oblivion grinned. "Not to mention the only-est..? … That's not a word, is it? Don't matter, you know what I mean."

Abaddon began to feel like he was getting a migraine.

Enemies coming back from the dead was something that he absolutely did not need right now.

"…You are supposed to be dead."

"Wow, you are shit at reunions. Here I thought we'd bonded!

There I was, resting at the end of all things and minding my own unfathomably black business when your scaly ass pops up and starts demanding my power.

Who does that?! You didn't even bring a houseplant! Shit was unjust!"

Abaddon was steadily on his way to growing the fattest ulcer of his life.

"But do you know what? I admired your relentless persistence. I found it really interesting.

I kept fighting with you because I wanted to see how much of that persistence a simple existence like you had in store."

Oblivion suddenly grimaced.

"But god, then you just wouldn't leave me alone after eleven billion years, and even though time has no meaning to me, that doesn't mean I don't get bored.

Besides, it wasn't like I was learning any more about you through continued fighting. So I decided to throw in the towel."

Abaddon was showing a smile that was not a smile.

"I'm sorry… Are you trying to tell me that you let me win out of pity?"

"No, my brother, of course not!"

"Then wh-"

"It was more like boredom."

There were very few words that could have described how Abaddon felt in that moment.

He finally did decide to take a seat and rubbed his temples in pure exhaustion.

Oblivion chuckled as he held out his arms and gloated.

"Don't look so down, brother man. I am a bonafide Xeno-Dimensional Entity.

You thought you could kill me? I don't 'die'.

I'm beholden to nothing but totality itself, and even powers greater than you can't change that."

Abaddon felt as if he were a kid being patronized after losing a little league game.

"…Smug, fat, sack of shit."

"I was only speaking the truth, and I told you I only look like this because of you!"

Abaddon groaned as he rapped his knuckles against his skull.

"So we're fused together now? I don't want any more additional personalities in my mind at this point of my life."

"Eh… I wouldn't exactly put it like that."

"Then how would you put it exactly?"

Abaddon watched Oblivion smile and stand up for his desk.

He reappeared at another point in the room with a paint cavas and wearing a smock.

An easel was created in front of him, and after placing the canvas on it, he summoned a single, tiny paintbrush.

"Here, come look at this."

Abaddon walked over to the young man.

He watched him point to the canvas, then himself.

"You see this blank slate? This is me… but less southern and rotund."

Oblivion then held up the brush with a single drop of paint.

"And this thing? It's you." He said.

He poked the canvas a single time before putting away the paintbrush and holding up the canvas.

"Pay attention."

Abaddon watched and watched, but he didn't notice anything.

But he knew Oblivion wasn't telling him this for no reason.

So he continued to watch. His mind entered a sort of meditative state and he spent so long watching the dot of paint. Hours? Days? Years? He couldn't tell anymore.

All that he knew was that when he finally saw the dot move, his body felt stiff.

"…It expanded." Abaddon said.

"Sure did." Oblivion nodded. "And in the process, a bit more of the canvas has been dyed in it's color. Just like you and I."

Abaddon didn't understand. Oblivion found that amusing.

"I had no real personality before I miraculously came into contact with with you.

Everything that I learn, everything that I emulate, it is all because im being influenced by you.

It might take a few billion years, but eventually you will have overwritten me. I will be gone."

"…You don't seem to have many issues with that." Abaddon noted.

Oblivion shrugged while wearing a small smirk.

"You really… you don't understand just how little you come to care about things when you are the endpoint of all.

I'm just simple cog in her ever turning grand design, big man.

Maybe I was always fated to be the empty place holder until you were ready to assume the role permanently.

Either way, I'm curious about what's next for me.

Will I fully become you, or will my consciousness pass on to a new realm even I can't begin to perceive?

I'm eager to find out, but for now I'm here watching you ride down the street on a bike.

Just waiting for the day you ask me to take the training wheels off."

"…You're the reason I can't access all of my abilities." Abaddon realized. "Why I can only scratch the surface of oblivion."

"You can thank me for that too.

If I wasn't keeping our best cards in the deck, then you would tear apart this Aeon that you are so inexplicably fond of.

You're not comprehending how unfair of an existence I am."

The word aeon scratched something in Abaddon's mind, but he couldn't quite put a finger on it.

He shook his head hard to discard the thought since it wasn't nearly as important right now.

"I need you to send me back. I'm in the middle of something that I can't afford to distract myself from."

"Why the hell do you think you're here? You think I grabbed you in the middle of that super dramatic moment for shits and giggles?"

Abaddon was almost inclined to say yes.

"You're digging a little too far into my restrictions, dickhead. I put them up for a good fucking reason."

Abaddon briefly recalled everything that had happened before he was pulled here.

Lillian gave up everything for their child.

He watched her crumble and disappear before his eyes and he felt his grip on her slipping.

And it destroyed him in a way that nothing he'd ever known could.

His desperation made him reach deep. He fed Lillian's life force every bit of energy that he had, and even more than he meant to.

All with one singular thought in mind.

The woman I love can't die.

"…I don't regret anything that I did. You can't possibly understand how this day has tested me. I will do whatever I can to-"

"I understand exactly how you felt." Oblivion said seriously for the first time today. "I don't watch everything that you do, but I did feel that desperation. That… what do you call it? …Fear."

"If you understand it, then why are you still holding me here?"

"Because I need to make sure you get this, brother-man.

You were about to use a power that would have torn your current self, and everything around you, apart.

And it was our antithesis too, can you believe that shit? Had me hotter than fish grease." Oblivion huffed.

"I don't understand. What power??"

Oblivion sighed in exhaustion.

He snapped his fingers and a white board with a dry erase marker appeared in his had.

Abaddon took another look down and he was sitting in a desk just like he was back in school.

"Open up your ears and listen, brother-man. I'm going to explain to you the fundamental principles behind Absolute Law, and True Abolishment."