I woke up in the middle of Garland's room, lying in his bed. Well, my bed. I was the one who had paid for it, and I was the one who had conjured it with the Mark of the Champion's magic. I shouldn't have been feuding with a dead man over who owned a tower in a keep.

Mind you, my attention as to where I was didn't last long. I became acutely aware of the fact I was both naked under the bedsheets and there was a warm body pressed against me. A distinctly female warm body.

Assuming it was Ania, I turned my head to my side and saw Ania standing over the bed in full armor. She was looking down on me. "You're awake. Thank the gods."

I looked down and saw the body pressed against me was Agata.

"Gah!" I said, pulling away and falling out of the bed at Ania's feet.

Agata raised herself up and looked down. "See, I told you it works."

"You tried enough times," Ania said, moving her fingers in front of my face. "Do you know who you are? Do you know where you are? What is the name of the current king."

"I didn't do anything!" I said, raising my hands. That was when I noticed my body had responded to Agata's presence against it. I grabbed a pillow to cover it up. "You can't hold that against me!"

"Why would I hold it against you?" Agata asked, confused.

"Yeah," Ania said, blinking. "Really, wouldn't it be more of an insult if you weren't aroused? I know I’d take it personally.”

Ledzianians. They were from a whole other planet. "I'm Aaron. I'm in Dragon Keep. There is no king because there's a civil war. What the hell happened?"

That was when I noticed I had some hair falling down my shoulders that was a bright shade of gold. I looked like I'd become a hair metal band frontman. It was especially disconcerting since I'd had brown hair since I was six.

"It's been a week since you went into a coma in your bedroom," Ania said, gesturing around. "Though coma isn't the right word since you were lucid for periods. Well, lucid-ish. You claimed you were Perun and drank a wine casque as well tried to sleep with the Poppy sisters."

I stared. "I did what now?"

"You were all about the dragussy. They seemed receptive to the idea until Ania dragged you aware. Not that jealous. No, sir," Jon said, sitting on his nearby perch. He was a raven again. A crow, except much larger than any I'd ever seen. He was almost the size of an eagle and had lightning patterns all over his feathers. Presently, he wasn't looking at me but at Agata's uncovered chest. Which was, yes, noticeable. I was trying not to look.

I turned to Jon to give me something else to look at. "What the hell happened to you?"

"What the heaven is more like it," Ania said, helping me up as I kept the pillow strategically located. "Jon is now a celestial storm crow. One of the holy messenger birds of Perun."

"Which and a silver piece will buy me an ale," Jon said. annoyed. "Seriously, still a bird. I can size change and spit lightning. Whoop de doo."

"A silver piece? Really? You are way overpaying at the Black Cat," Ania said.

"That's because ladies drink free," Jon said. "It's all part of the scam. I think some of the women who go there are illusions too. All of them give the same response when I ask them to let me watch."

“What happened here?” I asked, desperate. “Did we…did I?”

Ania rolled her eyes. “No, Aaron.”

“I think it’s a reasonable question,” I said, slyly.

“I performed the right of divine essence sharing,” Agata said, looking at me sideways. “Which from your perspective is a warm cuddle.”

“Ah, yes, spooning, the greatest of divine blessings,” Jon said, sarcastically. “Truly it brought you out of your coma.”

It might have if it had been Ania. “Gee, thanks.”

“Besides, you were in no state to give consent,” Agata said, embarrassed. “Free choice of lovers is not just a commandment of the goddess but an essential tenant of the faith.”

“I also would have broken her arm,” Ania said. “I share lovers but not with my sister.”

I was getting a migraine. “Let us never mention this again. Can we move on?”

Agata slid off the bed and started dressing. "Ania beat Perun into unconsciousness when you tried to leave and said that Aaron was gone. She threatened to kill Piotr when he said it was probably better to have Perun instead of you. He seems to have figured out you're not Garland anyway. She also refuses to let anyone leave for the Great Forest mission either. We've been trying to revive you ever since."

I sat down on the bed, trying to take account of just what the hell had happened in the meantime. My memories were scattered about what had happened during all of this. I had some memories of my body, but they were scattered around the ones I'd experienced from absorbing the Skyfather's essence. "Uh huh."

Ania took my hand and squeezed it. "Sorry about, uh, pulverizing your body. I wasn't about to let anyone walk away with it, though."

"It wasn't me," I said. "It wasn't Perun either. Just a fragment of him. On the plus side, I know how easy it was to get laid after the Battle of Britain."

"Does that mean you remember banging your great grandmother?" Jon asked. "Because your grandfather was conceived after the Battle of...AHHH!"

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

That noise came from shooting an Arcane Fire blast over his head that looked like a thunderbolt. There was now a scorch mark on the ceiling's stone masonry.

"Huh," I said, looking at my fingertips. "Looks like I've got an upgrade."

"After Joan's exorcisms didn't work, Agata tried to draw you back with her snuggles of power," Ania said, clearly not believing a warm hug was a cure all to life’s ills. “We also tried other methods.”

"I'm back now," I said, shaking my head. I had a suspicion about what those methods were. "What happened to your bracelets?"

Agata took a deep breath, now once more in her robe that was only slightly less revealing than full nudity. Sorry, I was still in a bit of a state after emerging from cosmic awareness of the universe ala 2001: A Space Odyssey to being used as a teddy bear by my girlfriend’s sister. Was she my girlfriend? Something more? That was still uncertain.

"Ania insisted that we apply our marks to you and have you absorbed their power,” Agata said. “She even forced Ivan to give up his. Given there's no more champions after this, it seemed a prudent course. This will be an all or nothing quest to save the world."

That explained a few things. It was also extremely touching even if it had probably made the situation manifestly worse. I wasn't about to tell them that, though. "Thank you. Your sacrifice is appreciated."

Ania sat down across from me, looked into my eyes. "Aaron, I want you to know something."

"Yes?" I asked.

Ania took a deep breath. Then another. "I was really worried. l-love you."

I blinked. "You do?"

"Don't make me repeat it," Ania said, her usual sharpness of tone returning.

I smirked and decided to take the plunge. We might have only known each other a month but it had been a helluva month. "I love you too, Ania."

A deep pause ensued.

One that got awkward as no one said anything.

Then it kept going.

"We're going to have to set some ground rules," Ania said. "Like if I bring home an elf girl, you can—"

Agata cleared her throat. "Ahem."

“No!” Jon said. “I wanted to hear this part!”

"Yes?" I asked.

"What in the name of Mokosh happened?" Agata said. "The sky was dark for a day, all of the fire magic in the kingdom doubled in power, and the Mad Queen was forced to retreat from Kalizov."

"She was?" I asked, confused. That changed a lot of the strategic situation.

"The Fire Giant Mountains were covered in lava," Ania said. "The entirety of Veles' Eastern undead armies are gone and an entire legion of Imperial troops moving to reinforce the Mad Queen were buried in ash."

"That's good," I asked, taking in the consequences of my actions.

"Not so good for the villages built at the mountain's base," Agata said, somberly. "The Imperials had built many trading posts there. A lot of captured slaves died with their masters."

"Ah," I said, suddenly feeling like shit and losing any of my earlier horniness. Tolkien hadn't exactly dwelled upon the fact Mordor's enslaved population had probably all died during Mount Doom's eruption. It was much the same with the fact that orc babies were a thing, no matter how much Peter Jackson pretended otherwise.

Great, now I was a mass murderer. Not just a killer.

"One of the other surviving champions must have killed the Fire Demon," Ania said, not looking particularly concerned. "It certainly makes our job easier, at least."

"Err, yeah," I said, pausing. "About that. I didn't get to explain everything that went on during my dream--"

"Your sex dream?" Agata asked. "With Zorya Dawnbringer?"

"Mine are usually with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan," Jon said, pausing. "Sometimes Anthony Stewart Head. Oh Giles."

I ignored him, trying to draft an explanation for what was unexplainable. How could you make someone understand a situation you, yourself, didn't understand? "No, uh, that was me. Weis brought me to train with Zorya and she gave me a lesson. But she was possessed. The second time she summoned me, the Fire Demon took control, and I had to kill her. Someone I was intimate with. I barely survived and the Swords of Chernabog tried to possess me. They're gone now, too, I think."

There was a long pause.

Ania broke it, pulling her hand away from mine. "You idiot? How could you put yourself in danger like that!"

"You are a man of many miracles, Aaron Bartkowski," Agata said. "Only one other has managed to defeat two of the Old Gods before and Valentin is no more."

I wasn't so sure about her numbers since there had been a lot of champions before me. However, reality didn't "reset" between all of them, only memories. There were a lot of dead people from the previous attempts to fight Veles' forces and I'm pretty sure people would have noticed the aftermath of a volcano going off. Still, we'd managed to take down two of the Old Ones and that left only two more. Well, two more, and then figuring out how to take down Veles himself.

"I didn't have a choice, Ania," I muttered. "There's other things that went down too."

"You seduced a goddess and killed her," Agata said, shaking her head. "I didn't know you had it in you. That's more Ania's style."

"I've only killed a couple of lovers," Ania replied.

I blinked. "Do I want to know?"

"No," Ania said, sighing. "You can't take on the Old Gods by yourself, Aaron."

"Believe me," I said, haunted by my memory of Zorya's death. "I don't want to."

I wanted to bring up that we had to be on the lookout for my possible offspring but wasn't sure how to bring that up. 'Hey, Ania, did an angel visit you and tell you that you were going to be birthing the daughter of the war goddess?' Yeah, somehow, I didn't think that would go down well.

I didn't want to deceive her, but I also didn't have enough information to proceed either. So, I decided to keep silent on that for now. Next time Weis communicated with me, after I punched him, I would ask him if he could locate her. Otherwise, I wasn't sure how to even begin to look. I just hoped Veles didn't get a whiff of her existence. Afterward? Well, afterward would be a big deal. I wasn't sure I was ready to be a father or even if I would need to be. For all I knew, she would be living with a Ser Ector or Aunt May, and I'd just be a disruption. Ugh, I was going to have to discuss this with my parents, wasn't I?

Damn.

"Aaron?" Ania asked, looking at me.

"Sorry, just thinking," I said, reaching for her hand. "I'm glad you brought me back."

Ania nodded. "Lord Emberly wants to speak with you in the tower. We'll have to go in the morning. I wish we could stay and let you recover."

"I bet. Dude gets more play on his deathbed than most band members," Jon muttered. "Steel Rose! Steel Rose! Steel Rose!'

"We'll see you soon," Ania said, kissing me.

Agata and Ania left, leaving me alone with Jon.

"So, what really happened?" Jon asked after a few moments of silence.

"Zorya begged me to kill her, so she didn't go evil," I replied. "She also implied that she used our time together to make a child to carry her divine essence."

"What, like a Rachel Summers to her Jean Grey?" Jon asked.

Okay, that was weird. "Yeah."

"Congratulations," Jon said. "It's a girl."

I sighed and checked my stats. There was a lot of information that had accumulated in the past week.

YOU HAVE GAINED DIVINITY SCORE: 7

+ 4 to Attack Rolls

+ 4 to Saving Throws

+ 4 to Attribute

+ Attribute Maximum raised to 30

+ Your maximum level has increased to 60

+ All damage and status effects are removed

+ You have reached maximum divine rank as a Demigod

+ You have gained DIVINE SENSES [Mark of the Champion no longer is necessary]

+ You have gained the ability to grant 1st level spells to followers

+ You have gained the ability to grant 2nd level spells to followers

+ You have gained the ability to answer the spell PRAYER.

+ You have gained the ability to use PERUN'S LIGHTNING STRIKE once per day

+ You have gained the ability to summon SWORD OF PERUN at will (bonus to hit/dam highest attribute)

+ You have gained PORTFOLIO BONUS: GOD OF PUSH

YOU DO NOT MEET THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THESE ABILITIES, ATTEMPTS TO USE THEM WILL RESULT IN PENALTIES AND INCREASED CHANCE OF DIVINE MISHAP [33%, 66%, 99%]