Abaddon was becoming slightly annoyed.
As he pulled a majestic red robe over his broad shoulders, he felt a familiar pair of beady little eyes staring daggers into him.
"...You should know that just because I don’t feel well, that does not an I am going to spontaneously fall over dead."
"Mama said you might." Mira replied in a sing-song voice.
"Your mother is famously very paranoid when it cos to ."
"That’s cause you’re always doing stuff to make people want to stab you."
"Well, that’s why I have you and your unongendi, isn’t it?" Abaddon smiled. "So that anyone who wants to stab never gets the chance."
Mira seed to take pride in his jest. Even though he was only trying to appease her, he had placed her before her aunt in sothing.
It filled her competitive spirit with warmth.
"Let’s just get this over with quickly." Abaddon yawned. "You two ready?"
Thea and Gabbrielle had been sitting on the sofa, talking about sothing amongst themselves that neither their father nor their sister cared to eavesdrop on.
"H-Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, Dad." Thea stood up.
Gabbrielle did not move in a normal manner, and instead, shrinks into her diminutive form and appears on top of her sister’s shoulders.
"...You two seem to have beco particularly close lately." Abaddon noted.
The sisters stare at him, their eyes suspicious and unusually cute.
"What are you talking about?"
"We are always like this."
They smush their faces together adorably in a bid to sell their whole act. Abaddon was far too sickly to interrogate them and just appreciates the sight instead.
"Yes... You’re both very precious, aren’t you?"
He feels Mira crawl onto his back to copy Gabbrielle. She make it around halfway up before rembering her father’s condition. "Sorry, should I-"
"No, no, stay where you are. It’s actually making feel much better."
Mira could usually tell whenever anyone was lying to her. So, the fact that none of the alarm bells were going off in her head was a good thing to put a smile on her face.
Abaddon’s vision spanned a full 360 degrees. He could see Mira smiling, even if his head wasn’t turned toward her.
He took a mont to morize the smile, as if he had only just considered just how long it had been since he stopped to stare at it.
His words were no re falsehood. His daughter was actually making him feel better.
"Well... no ti like the present. Let’s get started, girls."
-
The tilines as always, are outside the space-ti continuum. Hovering above Tehom like string lights.
They run across the darkness, sprawling across a boundless space in an infinite cycle of growth, death, and recursion.
Abaddon and his children exited their tiline.
It was a truly enormous thing. Like standing in front of a river that stretched from Nigeria to India.
’Miles’ away, there were other tilines filling the space, unblemished by Abaddon’s accidental ddling. What appeared to be broken shards of mirror floated around them, reflecting images from the tilines they were closest to. These were gateways.
Lastly, far, far below the dragons sat the ho they all loved and adored.
At this altitude, Tehom as a whole was no bigger than a speck to them. And yet, they could see it clearly.
The bustling, clean streets. The happy, smiling people, fat with love, brotherhood, and an intense passion.
Living on Earth had only made him miss ho more. This was his ideal. This was everything.
There was nothing like Tehom. And only now was Abaddon realizing just how long he had spent away.
"You alright, dad? Feeling sick?" Mira placed her hand over her father’s forehead to feel his temperature. His brow is clammy from constantly sweating over the last few days.
"Just a little hosick." Abaddon put her hand down. "But if you keep it up, I’ll probably get daughter-sick instead. There’s certainly enough of you for it."
"No one told you and moms to keep popping out girls." Thea shrugged.
"Well, you were so wonderful, we just decided to keep going with what we knew." Abaddon responded sarcastically.
"...You know what? That’s understandable."
Abaddon rolled his eyes.
He turned back to the fraying tiline before them. It had only gotten worse since they looked away.
"...You really did a number on this place, huh, Dad?"
"...It was worth it."
"The uncountable number of sentient entities who are about to cease to exist might disagree with you." Gabbrielle pointed out.
"I don’t care." Abaddon said, uncharacteristically firmly. "I would trade all of their lives in an instant if it ant that..."
He stopped before he finished his hard words. He almost said sothing Valerie wouldn’t want him to say. He almost alluded to sothing Lisa didn’t want their children to know about her.
Instead, he brought a hand to his head and sighed.
"...Ignore that." He sighed. "Let’s just begin."
The girls seed to notice their father was amiss. However, they did not spend very much ti dwelling on it. They still had a taste to perform.
They moved into positon around the tiline, preparing to get to work with their repair.
Before they could start, Abaddon gave the girls an unplanned warning.
"Right, if you see soone... strange, I want you to stop what you are doing and co to my side."
"Why, father?" Gabbrielle asks sweetly.
"...Worldjoiner’s forces. They are here and they are remarkably perceptive. If you gaze upon them from out here, I have no doubts that you will attract their notice."
The girls looked understandably horrified.
"Those guys are here already, but you haven’t said anything?? We should be-"
"The Bright Legions stand ready to hear the call. The Euphrates await your aunt’s signal to begin the hunt. But I am not yet back at my best condition, my daughter. Against an enemy whom I know nothing about, I’d like to be as prepared as possible."
"But what’s the big deal? You win all your fights cause you’re the strongest." Mira flexed a rather diminutive set of muscles.
Abaddon smiles to himself as he begins his work infusing aether into the wounded tiline.
"I’ve been lucky. But it’s not sothing I really like to take for granted... Unless, of course, I wake up feeling a little cocky that day."
"Hell yeah, Dad."
Mira and Abaddon bumped their knuckles together like old drinking buddies. It wasn’t until after their knuckles connected that Abaddon realized he may have been setting a bad example.
*Ahem* "But of course, you girls should always try to be careful. Like your mother."
Abaddon thought fondly of Seras. Even after all of these ideas, she was still his ideal vision of a warrior. In so ways, he was still chasing after her.
"Aww, you really love-"
"Girls, I don’t an to be rude since I technically started the conversation, but would you mind giving your old man a hand for a bit...?" Abaddon’s sweat had returned with a vengeance.
"""Sorry!"""
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