I felt my face burning with both embarrassment and humiliation I spun to face the room’s chest of drawers, intent on finding some underpants and trousers as soon as I possibly could. But in my hurry, I forgot a very important detail, I now had a new pair of limbs to worry about. My wings, which were still half extended.
The only reason that one of my wings didn’t hit the mirror I’d been standing in front of was that my other one hit the bed first. My momentum was completely arrested as some reflex that was completely new to me caused me to instinctively brace my wing. The sudden shift caught me off balance and I stumbled to the side, my bare feet failing to find proper traction on the dry floor. As I fell all I could do was close my eyes and instinctively bring my hands up to try and cushion my fall.
And then I waited.
And waited some more.
Finally, it occurred to me that regardless of adrenaline speeding up my perception it should not be taking me this long to hit the ground, so I cautiously opened my eyes and took a look. What I saw was . . . unexpected, to say the least.
My feet had gone out from under me as I fell, and my wings were half unfolded behind me, but none of that really mattered. What mattered was that I was hovering in mid-air, about three feet off the ground, and it was definitely not my new wings that were keeping me up!
Of course, as soon as I saw what was happening, I fell to the floor, whatever was keeping me up gone.
For a moment I just lay there, then I tried to get up, only for my wings to instinctively shift, sending me down to all fours as my centre of balance shifted again. It took me a couple of seconds to steady myself, then, with plenty of humiliation burning in my heart, I crawled over to the chest of draws and pulled out some underwear and a folded pair of jeans. Struggling into them was a chore, but in the end, I leaned my back and wings against the foot of the bed and was able to stabilize myself enough to wrestle them on. They’d been a bit baggy before, but now they felt almost uncomfortably tight.
Having restored at least some of my dignity, I got back to the task of trying to stand up without falling over. I knew I could do it. I already had once, but ironically, it was before I realize my wings were there. Now that I knew about them, now I was thinking about them, it was throwing me off.
It’s impossible to describe how it felt to suddenly have such large new limbs. We go through our entire lives getting used to our bodies. It takes something like two years to learn how to walk and run properly, then it's years more to get doing things like fine control and sports. Getting some body additions that are completely new though, that’s more than enough to throw off all those years of learning.
Had anyone been there to record my antics I’m sure that it would have become one of those instant viral hits on the internet. Seriously, an apparent angel unable to do something as simple as turning to face the door due to uncooperative wings would have been pure comedy gold, I’m sure.
In the end, I managed to work out how to fold them. However, that was only after I managed to leave a couple of gashes in the wooden floor, and took a sizeable chunk off the side of the chest of draws. These little accidents showed me that the feathers I’d noticed earlier were every bit as sharp as I’d thought they’d be. Granted, I hadn’t had a chance to really test them out, but the way they sliced up some fairly hefty oak wood furniture left me thinking that as far as a normal person would be concerned I pretty much had a bunch of swords attached to the ends of my new limbs.
Still, strange though they were, they were a part of me. Pulling them closed was easy enough after a few tries, but I got the impression that it wasn’t the natural state they were meant to be in. It was kind of like clenching your hands into fists, not hard to do, once you had the trick of it, but if you kept doing it then it started to feel uncomfortable. Oh, there are circumstances where your hands just naturally close, but for the most part, having one’s hands half open is the more comfortable, natural position.
Still, with them folded against my back I was able to go out onto the terrace outside my room. I figured it’d be more sensible to get out there and ask Joan to use her magic to help me get down to the ground than it would be to use the stairway. I didn’t want to essentially nail myself into place if I lost control of my wings part way down. The terrace was also pretty sizeable, large enough that I could at least spread my wings without hitting something.
Looking out I could see that the sun wasn’t too high in the sky, so I was guessing it was early morning. Seeing that prompted me to look down at my wrist, only to see that my watch was gone. By the looks of things either it hadn’t survived whatever change I had undergone, or Joan had taken it off me along with my other clothes. Well, wasn’t that a thought; Joan undressing me.
That particular thought lasted right up until I looked out at the view from my terrace, and then I was just confused. I had stood out here several times over the last few days, and I think that I would have noticed if all the grass had been white. So, the question that ran through my head was why?
It was strange, but still quite a sight. For all of its new and unusual colour, the field that extended from the back of the farmhouse remained vibrant and alive. I could see birds sitting in some of the nearby trees, and insects moving in the grass, all of them seemingly unbothered by the change in the plant life around them. Seeing it all I found myself wondering how it had happened, had it been a result of the attack? Had something else happened?
It was at that point that I noticed how good my eyesight was. I’d never needed glasses in my life, but I tended to have a bit of trouble seeing things a distance away. That I was now able to see the far-off birds and the tiny insects could only mean my eyes had also been upgraded.
For a moment I just stood there, fascinated by the way that even long distant things came into focus with remarkable ease. It wasn’t as though I’d suddenly developed the eyes of a hawk, but I guessed that I had to be pushing the limits of the human eye. For a few moments, I just enjoyed the novelty of being able to see such distant things so clearly.
My eyes flicked from a grasshopper to a passing bird, then settled on a rabbit that came hopping through the white grass. The creature was probably a young one, only freshly having left its warren, because it was smaller than I would have expected, and had that adorable fluffy look.
Fascinated by how clearly I could see it, I leant forwards for a better look without thinking. Unfortunately, it turned out I had gained new reflexes because, in response to my movement, my wings half unfurled straight back.
This wouldn’t have been so bad, had not my right wing hit the edge of the small table that had been set up behind me. The table was small, but it was solid and set up against the wall next to the door to my room. My wing was strong, and I was off balance, and since the table couldn’t move, I was the one that got shifted.
Right over the terrace railing.
I just had time for a startled yelp before the world tipped over and I was plummeting down towards the small patio that had been set up behind the farmhouse. I had a moment of confusion, then threw up my arms to protect my face as I saw the flagstones of the patio rushing to meet my face. Then there was a sharp jolt that seemed to come from nowhere, and then there was nothing.
Cautiously lowering my arms I realized that I was once again hovering in mid-air, apparently defying gravity without any idea of how I was managing it, my face only about a foot and a half from the ground, my legs flailing in the air, and my wings spread like a pigeon that had flown into a window.
And I was in this . . . less than dignified position when I heard someone speaking to me.
“I see. Clearly, there is much that you need to learn.”
The voice wasn’t one that I was familiar with, and I tried to turn to face it, only to find I had no idea of how to get down from my ridiculous position. All I managed was to flail about some more, probably looking like someone that didn’t know how to swim who had been thrown in at the deep end of the pool, only in mid-air rather than the water.
“Adam! Adam, calm down!”
Now, that was a voice I recognized. Craning my head to the side I could make out her feet and the hem of her dress, but that was it. Still, her presence was enough to calm the anxiety I’d felt at hearing an unfamiliar voice. If she was here, then I was safe. Taking a deep breath, I tried to steady myself before speaking.
“Okay! Okay, I think I’m better. But I don’t know how to-”
Gravity suddenly regained control over me and let me complete the fall. Sure, it was now only less than two feet as opposed to more than ten, but it was still enough to knock the breath out of me. In truth it was more surprising than painful, the fall catching me unawares, but despite falling onto hard stone it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it should.
I tried to scramble to my feet, but once again found the new wings throwing my balance off, causing me to almost totter over as soon as I had regained a standing position. The frustration of it was really starting to get to me! Sure, I had received a very welcome upgrade, and these wings might be of use in the future, but for the moment they seemed more trouble than they were worth!
“Do not attempt to simply use your body to maintain your balance, use your power to root yourself in place until you choose to move.”
“And how do I do that?!”
I snapped the question with more irritation than I should have. I turned, doing my best to keep my balance this time, so I was able to see who had spoken.
And what a sight she was!
Up until now, Joan had been the most beautiful woman I’d ever met in person, but the figure before me was every bit her equal, although their looks were so different. Joan was lovely in a way that seemed to shine, a beauty that had a charisma to it that made you pay attention to her and what she said. This new person, this literal angel, made me think of fire. Her hair, her wings, the force of her personality, all of it made me think of something that was burning, radiating both heat and power.
She was also wearing what amounted to only a bikini and some jewellery.
Let me be clear on something, Joan was beautiful, but naturally quite modest. She wore either her armour or a plain dress. Neither of these choices showed her off all that much. Sure, the armour was close fitting enough to show her slim figure, but that was all secondary to practicality. Joan was attractive enough to make the armour look good, not the other way around. As for her preferred casual garb, it did her no favours. It was practical and, I imagined, comfortable, but it was of a very old-fashioned cut and was only a tad better than wearing a large potato sack.
This angel . . . well, seeing her caused my mental train of thought to swerve off its tracks, careen over the edge of a cliff and go crashing down into a bottomless abyss of confused and steamy, thoughts.
Where Joan was modest in her looks this red-winged woman practically hit you over the head with them. It was like coming face to face with a superstar swimsuit model, one in her ‘work’ clothes, right after coming out of your home’s front door. The shock of it just took you off your feet, metaphorically speaking, of course. Slim limbs, toned abs, cleavage that could only be described as magnificent, all of it was right there in front of me and on techicolour display. It was hardly a surprise that any thoughts of annoyance or irritation were pretty much knocked out of my head.
“You do not know how to use your power?”
It took me a moment to register the words she was saying, mainly due to most of my brain being occupied with trying to sear the image before me into my memory to ensure it would never fade away. I tried to answer, but coherent words wouldn’t come out.
“Uh . . . Wha . . . ? I . . . what?”
Yeah, not the best first impression I could have made. In return the red-winged angel before me, and what else could she be other than an angel given that she had a halo, looked at me with an expression I thought I had escaped when I finished school. It was the look that mixed disappointment, pity, and a dash of irritation, and it left me feeling like I was eleven years old again and had given the wrong answer in front of the whole class.
“You should intuitively know how to use the divine powers that have awakened within you. Can you not do this?”
I . . . was perhaps not in the best frame of mind to analyse the importance of what she had just said. I mean, I registered that there was something should pay attention to, but I was not having an easy time getting my brain to fire on all cylinders. I had just run an emotional gauntlet ranging from excitement, dread, bewilderment, embarrassment, apprehension, humiliation, getting more than a bit turned on, and then heading right back to humiliation. After all that I think I was entitled to being a bit slow off the mark.
I managed to pull myself together enough to turn to Joan and ask the first question that came to mind.
“Joan . . . who’s this?!”
The blonde warrior’s eyes widened as her cheeks reddened before turning to indicate the angel. As she did so her expression became one of reverence, similar, almost like when she spoke of God.
“Of course, you have not been introduced. Adam, allow me to introduce you to honoured Hadriel, a soldier of Heaven and an Angel of the Lord. In the wake of the attack that was launched against us during your Awakening ritual, she was sent by the High Heavens to aid in your recovery, training, and mission.”
Oh. Well, that explained at least some of it. Wait! A thought rose in my mind.
“Recovery? Did something go wrong?”
“Yes, a great deal went wrong with your Awakening, and we are only now seeing the results,” Hadriel spoke up as she drifted forwards.
It was only at that point that I realized her feet weren’t touching the ground, instead, she was levitating a couple of inches above it. These were only peripheral details though; I was more interested in what she was saying.
“What do you mean ‘a great deal went wrong’?”
At least this time I wasn’t stuttering. The implication of what she had just said had been as sobering as a bucket of iced water being poured over me. It was difficult for any sort of lust to last in the face of something like that.
“Due to the attack by the demon hosts that you faced, the ritual meant to aid in your Awakening was heavily disrupted. As you took in many different types of energies and used them as a catalyst to Awaken your own power, you were heavily injured, forcing your body to take measures to preserve your life. This led to you entering a state of slow transition, a transition further slowed by the vastly unbalanced energies competing for dominance within you. Once in this state your eventual transformation was never in doubt, nor was your life in danger, but the process could have taken weeks or even months to complete, so I was tasked with aiding you.”
She gestured to herself, then indicated Joan who seemed to almost be standing to attention.
“Jeanne d’Arc is a fine warrior and has risen high amongst the mortal souls that dwell in the High Heavens, but she was not equipped to deal with the complications to your Awakening. Additionally, the level of scrutiny that you have been subjected to, even before your Awakening, by enemy powers is greater than was anticipated. I have been selected to aid you both in completing your Awakening, training you afterwards, and aiding you in the battles to come.”
She stared down at me, her gaze evaluating. For my part, I did my best not to get fascinated by the brilliance of those aquamarine eyes and instead focused on what she had just said.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“So, you fixed what was wrong with my Awakening? That’s why I’m awake again, right?”
I felt my stomach sink as she shook her head, her eyes narrowing just a touch.
“Yes, but you do not know how to command the new powers that dwell within you, do you?”
That sinking in my stomach . . . that had just become a yawning pit! She was right, I had no idea how to do . . . anything. I knew that for most demigods it was instinctive to know what they could do, how it just came to them as soon as they completed the change, but clearly, that wasn’t the case where I was concerned. I hadn’t been awake as a demigod for long, but nothing was clicking into place, there were no new instincts or intuitive knowledge.
And that scared me!
I could feel panic starting to well up once more, but I refused to let it gain a foothold. Instead, I focused on the one positive thing she’d said.
“So, I do have power, right? I just don’t have the built-in understanding?”
As I asked my questions my eyes flick back and forth between Joan and this Hadriel. The angel was maintaining her slight frown, but there was something else to it now. As for Joan, she was giving me an encouraging look, as though wordlessly telling me not to give up.
“Yes,” the heavenly soldier replied. “Though there were complications there is absolutely no denying the power that now dwells within you. I doubt there was a single deity on the mortal plane that didn’t feel your power last night.”
I had questions, but that particular statement was enough to throw me off track as I just stared at her.
“Uh . . . what?”
“Adam, I do not believe you understand just how great the power released by your Awakening was. Look about you, all that has been turned white, that was caused simply by being in the presence of your Awakening. The aura itself . . . it was so vast that I believe most of the planet was able to see it, and those that could not see it felt it.”
Joan spoke with care, making sure I understood her. Hadriel nodded and continued.
“I am uncertain as to just how much power you yourself possess, but the strength of that aura generated at your Awakening was enormous, on a par with what only a full-blooded god would normally be able to achieve.”
My thoughts sort of froze for a moment. She’d just said ‘on a par with a god’? Me? Really?
“Wait! Hold on, does that mean that everyone knows where I am?”
That had been one of the principal reasons for coming out here into the backwoods of France, the anonymity! Had this aura thing sent up a signal flare telling every god in the world just where I was hiding?
“For the time being that is not a concern,” Hadriel informed me. “A Hallowed Sanctuary has been placed upon this dwelling and the nearby lands, a spell that will ensure your safety and privacy for almost a full turning of the moon. In that time, we can focus upon doing what we can to mitigate this . . . complication.”
The way she spoke was like Joan, in that there were no contractions or half words. Every word was technically perfect, and her pronunciation was absolutely correct. She had a very slight accent that I could not place, but which nonetheless lent her voice a touch of exotic glamour.
Regardless of her compelling tone I was starting to feel talked down to, and I wasn’t enjoying it. I didn’t think of myself as a proud or arrogant person, but condescension irritated me. That wasn’t what I was getting from her, but it was getting dangerously close.
“How do you fly?!”
The question came out almost as a challenge, and it drew a slow look from the heavenly soldier.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look, obviously I can fly somehow, and it doesn’t need me to be flapping my wings,” Damn, that felt strange to say. “So, it’s got to have something to do with power, right? So, how do you fly? Do your wings even come into it, or are they just there for decoration?”
There was a pause for a moment as she continued to look at me, her expression still difficult to pin down.
“I do not believe I could properly explain it,” She admitted. “I am an angel, you are a mortal. There are differences in our communication and knowledge base.”
Okay, so I was being looked down on! Fine, I could work with that. Carefully turning I faced away from Hadriel and looked straight at Joan.
“So how do you fly?”
“What?” The French saint looked surprised that I was asking her. Her eyes kept on flicking over to the angel as though she was afraid of offending her somehow, but I had no such hesitation.
“When you’re an angel you can fly, how do you do it? Can you describe it to me?”
She paused before answering, and I could see some of the more familiar Joan flowing back into her. Since she had introduced the newcomer my protector had been acting in a subordinate role to the angel. I could see why she would, after all the Maiden of Orleans had always shown only the highest respect and reverence for God and all His angels. All the same, it was something of a shock to see the normally confident and commanding young woman so willingly surrender to another authority. Seeing her slipping once more into the role of the instructor put me at ease.
“Flight without the effort of your wings is achieved by both will and power, but it cannot simply be forced,” She explained, her words sounding as though they were a repeated lesson. “You need to gather your power, and then distribute it throughout your form, then, when it fully permeates you, you must anchor it to a single point fixed at your centre of balance. Once this is complete you shall be able to move your entire being while protecting yourself from the majority of the drawbacks from such forces as gravity and friction.”
“This power, how does it feel to you?” I asked, hoping that with an example I might be able to find my own.
“For me . . .” Joan hesitated for a moment, then continued. “For me, it is as though I can feel a minuscule portion of His power within me, one that answers my wishes and makes me more than I am. It lets me heal, it lets me be stronger than a mortal, it, no, He lets me take on the guise and power of an angel, even if only for a short time!”
That also made sense, since Joan had been a mortal then it only stood to reason that she would be able to sense the differences. The problem was that since I’d never been in God’s presence, I was hardly going to be able to recognize it. On the other hand, how hard could it be?
Taking a deep breath, I did my best to sit down on the tiles beneath me. It required a little trial and error with my wings, but eventually, I had them in a sort of half-spread position, parallel with the ground so that the sharp feathers would not catch on the ground, a position that let me sit cross-legged. As I sat, I very carefully did not look at Hadriel, instead, I focused on Joan’s encouraging face. Seeing that, seeing the faith in her eyes, faith for both God and for me, I could easily understand how she had been able to rally a flagging country to win a war most thought all but lost.
With a nod to her and another deep breath, I closed my eyes and resolved not to let her down.
Meditation was something I knew the basics of thanks to my yoga enthusiast of a mum. Amanda had seen how my first exams had been stressing me out, so she’d taught me some basic exercises in focus and relaxation. I admit, I’d been sceptical when we first started, but to my surprise, it had helped.
It wasn’t anything particularly complex, but it was something that had occasionally helped me centre myself when I felt overwhelmed. I figured that maybe I could use it as a starting point.
The first thing I focused on was my breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth, ‘form a cycle until it became comfortable’, a measured repetition that didn’t demand effort. Then ‘let your awareness of the breath expand through the body, notice how you feel’. I could feel my own warmth, the heat of life that was there for every second of my conscious existence.
Now, could I feel anything else?
As I kept up my rhythmic breathing and relaxed further into the moment, I noticed that there was something there, something new. It was difficult to describe, and I could reluctantly admit how Hadriel might have had trouble putting it into words, especially if it was something that she had always possessed. It was not so much a sensation or feeling as it was . . . the shadow of one. It was like seeing something, but only being able to tell where it was by the shadow it cast rather than by seeing the object itself. There was something there, and I could only tell it was there because the things around it felt slightly off. Well, that was the closest description I could manage.
Whatever it was, I could now perceive it, however imperfectly, so the next step was to see if I could move it.
That was harder, much harder. At least with my new wings, I had the familiarity of knowing how to make muscles work. This was completely different, almost alien. I could sense it, but it was as though I couldn’t reach it no matter how I tried. Just forcing my will at it was like trying to make a pebble move by sheer force of will, regardless of my efforts the shadowed flow refused to budge. I tried tensing the muscles around it to see if that did anything, but again there was no reaction. In the end, I just focused in on the power I knew was there but could not directly perceive and just . . . kept mentally glaring at it.
I was determined to make this work. And, if I am to be truthful that determination was motivated in equal part by fear and pride. Pride that I would not give in to whatever accident had robbed me of the normal control that other demigods enjoyed. I refused to be lesser, to be inferior, not after coming as far as I had. Fear, on the other hand, was far simpler. I could remember those things that had attacked the ritual Joan had set up, I could remember their strength, their savagery, and I also remembered how the only thing that kept them from ripping me to shreds was that they had wanted me alive. The thought of facing things like that again, without any power of my own, was terrifying in a way I’d never experienced before.
So, I stayed there, my eyes closed, breathing in and out, and remaining focused upon that elusive energy with all the laser-like intensity I could muster.
I’d never meditated quite like this before, I’d sunk far deeper into my concentration than ever before. Time . . . well, it didn’t seem to matter anymore, awareness of it just drifted to the edge of my mind. The stone I sat on faded away, the air about me was unimportant, and even the awareness of Joan and Hadriel faded from my consciousness. All that mattered was the stubborn refusal of that unseen energy to-
When I was about ten years old my Dad had bought me a picture book as a Christmas present. The pictures in it were some of those artistic ones where if you look at it one way you can see one picture, but if you look at it in a different way you could see another one. The pictures in this book began with simple pictures, such as the silhouette of two people facing each other forming a candlestick between them, and then grew progressively more complicated and harder to spot. There had been eighty-seven pictures in that book, and I loved finding the hidden pictures in them.
I spent ages carefully going through each picture and learning their hidden secrets. But the last ten pages gave me real trouble. Some of them had taken days to figure out, though that was mainly because I stubbornly refused to ask anyone for help. Still, I worked my way through them all, up until the last one. That final picture simply refused to yield its secrets to me, regardless of the ages I spent glaring at it. Hours turned to days, and I eventually gave it up as a lost cause, but even so, I didn’t look at the answer page.
A few weeks later I stumbled across the book again and took another look at the last picture. Maybe it was because I’d taken a break and was looking at it with fresh eyes, but as soon as I saw the page I could see where I’d gone wrong, and the hidden picture all but leapt out at me. It had been a wonderful feeling, working out the puzzle, and all I’d had to do was look at it in a slightly different way.
What happened next felt just like that, only I didn’t need a month-long break to make it happen. The weird perception I’d sunk into let me shift my perspective in some slight but fundamental way. And just like that it all came into focus!
I was aware of it all, the stream of energy running through me snapped into crystal clarity where before I’d only been able to make out the edges. There was a thick mass of it in my chest, to the right of my heart and beneath the centre of my ribcage. It was like a ball roughly the size of my fist and seemed to pulse in time to the beat of my heart. Each time it pulsed I could feel energy rushing out of it, flowing through my body and then passing through me and out into the world about me. It was more concentrated in places like the ball or knot I’d noticed, but it also passed through every other part of my body as it spread out from me. It wasn’t moving uniformly though, instead, it seemed to have currents and eddies to it, in some places it flowed faster or smoother, while in others it seemed to pool into small pockets from which small trickles entered and exited. The whole water analogy wasn’t quite right though, it didn’t explain the way that the energy moved in certain places. In those places it was more like lightning, flashing along parts of my body so fast that it was only the constant passage of it that let me know what was happening.
It was strange, it was beautiful, and it was baffling.
As I took in the entire ‘sight’ before me I thought I understood what I was seeing. This was mana, the supernatural force that all things generated. With the return of the divinities knowledge of the supernatural had unsurprisingly grown to be of vital importance, and what concrete information was learned was almost always publicly released, so I knew what this was.
Mana was something of a catch-all term for the myriad different forms of supernatural energy that permeated the world. It wasn’t simply the magic that humans could use, it was also the magic that sustained the fey, the celestial and infernal powers used by the ranks of heaven and hell, and even the divine potency of the different pantheons. Rather than being magic itself, mana should be regarded as the source of all supernatural power.
Ironically despite being where all power came from, mana had no single source of its own. According to what was now known, mana is created by everything in existence, to one degree or another, simply by existing. People create it, plants create it, rocks create it, the planet creates it, stars create it, and even the void between celestial bodies creates it, the only difference was in how much was produced by any given thing.
All I knew about mana ran through my mind as I finally became able to perceive the energy flowing through me. Was that big knot in my chest where it was generated? Well, none of that was important right at that moment, instead, I was more focused on trying to carry out the suggestions Joan had given me.
She’d said to gather my power, then distribute it to my whole body before anchoring it in place to my centre of balance. Alright, the first thing that I tried to do was to move the mana around so that the distribution of it in my body was more even.
I reached for the energy, after all, if I could now properly sense the mana, then surely I could now get it to work for me, right?
Wrong.
Just like before the newly found energy refused to react to me, no matter what I did! I tried to make it move, to flow faster, to do anything, but I might as well have been telling the sun to set in the east. I could ‘feel’ my will, my mind, reaching out to it, but it was like trying to catch smoke or sunlight with my hands, there was nothing I could get a grip on. Still, I kept at it, certain there was something I was missing.
And I got nowhere.
It was only when I realized I was starting to develop a pretty nasty headache that I finally decided to call it quits, at least for the time being. I was going about it the wrong way, but my poor brain was too overworked to figure out why. I needed to take a break recharge, and maybe question either Joan or Hadriel for some hints as to what I could do better.
Leaving my meditation was faster than sinking into it. Coming to terms with what I saw when I opened my eyes, on the other hand, was a different story
It had been sort of midmorning when I fell off the balcony. Now, the night was falling, and I could see the first stars beginning to show themselves. Slowly standing, still having trouble finding my balance, I was surprised that there was no popping or cracking of stiff limbs. Instead, everything just felt fine, as though I’d only sat down a couple of minutes ago.
“Adam, you are awake I see.”
Turning, and nearly falling over again, I saw Joan sitting in a wicker chair nearby, her sheathed sword ready beside her and a book on her lap. She was once again wearing her armour, which contrasted rather jarringly with the garden furniture.
“Uh, yeah. How long was I . . . ?”
“You have been sat there for nearly ten hours. I confess I was beginning to become somewhat concerned.”
Well, that was enough to leave me reeling. Ten hours? Why wasn’t I hungrier? Why didn’t I feel like I need to go to the toilet? Why weren’t my limbs crying out in protest at being immobile for so long? The questions ran through my mind, then vanished as I remembered that I wasn’t the same average guy I’d been last week. By the looks of things divine flesh wasn’t quite as susceptible to the rigors of living as mortal bodies were. Well, I couldn’t say I had a problem with that, not when it seemed to be working to my benefit.
“Were you successful in your endeavour?”
“I found it!” I exclaimed. “It’s there! But . . . I can’t get it to work for me, not like it should.”
Joan nodded, a smile spreading across her face.
“Excellent! A fine achievement Adam.”
“But it’s not working!” I protested.
“As I understand it, Mana is the source of magic, of power, but by itself it is an inert force. In order for it to quicken into a power it must be contained and catalysed. Once this is done it shall be far more potent and responsive. You have taken the first step, an important step. All you need do is continue.”
I nodded slowly, thinking back to the power that I’d seen within me.
“So, how do I catalyse it?”
“Adam,” Her voice was gentle now, almost soothing. “You have done well, but you have not yet possessed your powers for even a full day. I cannot give you a quick and easy answer this very minute, nor can honoured Hadriel. Tomorrow we can begin work on taking the next step, but for now I think you have done enough.”
Letting out a sigh of frustration I ran a hand through my hair and stared out at the white grass and trees before me. It was strange to see and I wondered how long it would last. Plants were normally green, it had something to do with how they got energy from sunlight. Changing them to this ivory white should doom them to die. On the other hand, this was the result of magic, so who knew how things would turn out.
Realising that my thoughts had wandered off on a tangent made me realise she was right, my body might feel fine, but mentally I was exhausted. Strangely I didn’t feel hungry or thirsty, but I wasn’t going to question good fortune.
“I’ll just go straight to bed,” I more or less mumbled. “You’re right, this’ll all make more sense after I get some sleep.”
As I carefully turned around Joan passed me and opened the back door to the farmhouse. It was a bit of a narrow doorway for me with my new appendages, but if nothing else I seemed to have at least learnt the basics of how to fold them close to me.
To my surprise, I found that with the wings closed tight it was easier for me to keep my balance. It was kind of like wearing a very heavy backpack that was slung low. A bit uncomfortable, but far easier to deal with than my earlier situation. At least it was enough for me to get through the door and up the stairs without knocking anything over, losing my balance, or accidentally impaling one of the walls.
As I stumbled into my room, I absently noted that it was strange that so much fatigue was hitting me all at once when just a few minutes ago I hadn’t felt anywhere near as tired, but as before that was simply a background thought. As I collapsed onto my bed my last thought was to note that I’d lain face down completely on instinct so as not to disturb my new wings.
Next thing, I was gently drifting off into sweet slumber.
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The malignant mass of hellish energies had grown, not so much in size, the conditions it existed in now allowing such, but it had grown denser, more concentrated, more complex. It had also grown stronger in the short time since its host had gained his power, the refined power of his divinely augmented magic feeding it, even as it tried to burn the aggregate of foul magic from its hiding place.
It had hidden itself well, coating itself in a layer of the very power that burnt it to conceal the malignant essence beneath. It had been an instinctive reaction, as devoid of thought as a worm burrowing into dirt, but it had been enough. The demigod had not sensed it. The heavenly agents had not sensed it. None had sensed it.
As matters stood it was still small, almost insignificant. But a venomous spider was tiny compared to a man, and its poison could still strike him down. Voraciously the mass of hellish power continued to feed and strengthen itself, always inching closer to its final goal.
The demigod would die, it would allow no other outcome!