“Sooooo,” Lord Jorie asked in a singsong voice as Damien appeared in a flash of rose golden light, “what’d ya learnnn?”
“I learnt,” the young imperial crown prince replied, a sour expression stuck on his face, “that you two are assholes.” He pointed at both Astallon brothers, who now had similar shocked expressions, before continuing his rant, “and that the Nephilim seriously suck as a whole. I mean seriously? Blood Purists? And don't even get me started on the complete and utter travesty of logic that had to have gone down to birth to a faction like the fucking Hierarchists, who are seeking to destroy the very system, THEY’RE FUKCING BENEFITING FROM!”
Rage oozed from Damien’s seething aura, like daggers of hot, shameful emotion seeking a target and instead finding too many to count.
“I thought the Illuminated Ecclesiarchy was bad, but excuse my french, they seem tres fucking normal compared to some of those guys!” he ranted on, “why the fuck didn’t either of you see fit to mention that in your, “make Damien afraid of even the drinking water in Gera,” lectures?!”
The two astallon brothers were left stunned by Damien’s sudden ire and foul-mouthed outburst, contrasting starkly with the boy’s usually reserved and kind disposition.
Then Lord Jorie burst out laughing wildly, gaining a less than amused look from Damien.
“No disrespect, my lord,” the viscount said between laughs, gasping for air, “it’s just so vindicating to see you that mad from just talking to your people for an hour,”
“Indeed, Your Highness,” Henry went on, taking Damien’s attention from the still manically laughing older Astallon brother, “as His Highness accurately deduced, we knew the likely outcome of sending you off on this mission, especially why we disguised it as something more benign.”
But then a smile spread out on Henry’s preened, usually reserved features. His smoothed back, red hair seemed to glisten along with the lord’s golden and blue eyes, he seemed to see his prince in a new light.
“But my lord,” he went on with a sigh and a chuckle, “we can’t tell you how to think, who to protect and who to damn. I mean we could, but that would amount to nothing more than a slow burning cataclysm waiting to boil over the second you ascended to the Imperial High Throne without any capacity to think for yourself.”
He shook his head slightly, but the look of pride in Damien only seemed to grow on Henry’s face.
“No, we had to let his highness come to his own conclusions,” he finished, giving Damien a disarming wink that seemed to shut down the remnants of the boy’s bucking aura, “and you have done us, and your mother proud.”
Damien didn’t know what to say, stunned couldn’t begin to describe the mess of emotions he was feeling.
At some point Lord Jorie had stopped laughing and pulled himself together when he heard what Henry had to say. The viscount got up and walked over to his younger brother, standing beside the other tall Nephilim lord in a rare act of kinship between the two sibling deities.
“Hate to admit it, but Ol’ Hennesy here is actually right, my lord,” Lord Jorie said, with his own proud, sly smirk deeply embedded on his own divine, too perfect features, “I swore to be your mother’s right hand when I became her Nightmare, even more so when she blessed me with the rank 1 position.”
His features hardened, “but make no mistake, if given the chance, I would gladly and happily murder the majority of your family and the rest of the imperial, royal, noble and Ecclesiastical scum polluting our empire if I were given the chance. No line of duty would ever have made me present you to the ones coming to train you if you were just going to end up like your cousins and fellow imperials.”
Damien’s mouth grew very dry. He tried to gulp in fear and found himself incapable.
He didn’t need to be able to feel the lord’s divine aura to sense the complete honesty coming through from his divine intent. Damien suddenly felt very small and tiny in front of the two powerful deities, feeling very foolish about how easily he’d challenged them in his earlier outburst by pulling rank upon them.
As if reading Damien’s thoughts, Lord Jorie’s features eased once more back into his usually uncaring and mirthful smirk.
“Good thing not only am I sure I won’t have to dust you,” he said with a laugh, “I’m pretty sure I’ll deeply enjoy seeing what kind of emperor you become, My Imperial Highness.”
Damien’s mouth hung agape as the two Astallon brothers knelt before him, saluting him with their twin scarlet red haired heads bowed low, showing him respect in the old way.
Not knowing what else to do or say, Damien just muttered a soft, “umm thank you, but please rise…. Please?”
“Now we address the elephant in the room,” Lord Jorie breathed with a self-content sigh.
“Indeed, brother,” Henry nodded, facing Damien. “It’s almost time for your maiden flight, my lord,” the younger Astallon said with a wink and a rare, shit eating grin.
‘Oh lord,’ Damien whined silently, ‘they’re so much scarier when they agree on anything.’
***
It was about 3 hours later, and the trio of Lords Henry and Jorie along with Prince Damien, were trudging along a mountain trail. They had left his group of courtiers at the bottom of the trail, much to the displeasure of the Grand Courtier and his fellows, but none would challenge Lord Jorie’s word after the display at Damein’s anointing ceremony.
Damien had been asking a stream of questions to the two lords, mostly to calm his nerves about what he knew was inevitably approaching.
“Hey there’s something that’s been bugging me for a while now,” he suddenly mentioned, “Lord Jorie, what does it mean to be a Nightmare rank 1 anyway? Why’s everyone so afraid of you now?”
Lord Jorie looked at his youngest brother, amazed.
“He doesn’t know?” he asked Henry with a truly shocked expression, “I thought you said he grew up with and under the tutelage of Lady 5th?”
“Indeed he did brother,” Henry affirmed with a nod, tilting his head to think for a moment, before shrugging, “apologies, I guess I assumed he already knew.”
Damien’s expression of confusion only grew.
Who was Lady 5th?
Context clues and a faint memory of Henry calling Ma LaCriox the 5th Great Disaster, nudged at Damien, giving him some explanation, but what did she have to do with the Nightmares?
“My lord,” Lord Jorie finally answered, shaking his head in amazement, “the Nightmares are the right and left hands of each of the 12 Great Disasters respectively. Every one of the 12 has 2, and thus there are 24 Nightmare raked mages in total. Not all of them in the exact order of strength work for the Disasters in their same order of strength, but your mother, being the strongest of the Disasters, by a wide margin I should add, obviously has both the rank 1 and rank 2 Nightmares at her disposal. We serve our Great Disasters as their strongest servants at their disposal, but in the extremely unlikely event of their demise, to avoid a horrifying universal event of a power vacuum as massive as any of the 12 would leave behind in their wake, their Nightmares are also amongst the first to be considered to replace them.”
He stopped walking and turned to give Damien a slight bow and a smirk.
“And your’s truly is Nightmare rank 1.”
Damien felt his brow grow very damp with fear, he was glad his now platinum hair hid his sweat because he was sure it was soaked through. As were the boy’s underwear.
He had known that Lord Jorie was powerful, but to be the runner up for his mother’s position as a Great Disaster, to be 1 of her 2 closest warriors, was a next level of pedigree and power Damien hadn’t even considered was a possibility.
‘No wonder he speaks so casually not only with me but with even Blessed Saints, and High Ecclesiarchs,’ Damien realized, mind blown. But there was still another pressing question on his mind.
“Wait, wait, so back to Ma LaCroix, or Lady 5th, or the Grand Witch of Pestilence or whatever her most current title is,” Damien began, realizing the old windbag wasn’t lying in the slightest when she’d told him she held just as many titles herself as his mother did, “why did you think I should know who or what the Nightmares are just because she was technically my first teacher?”
“Oh,” Henry began nonchalantly, as he turned to resume walking up the path with Lord Jorie who’d gone off to look at an exotic butterfly that had flown past the group, “that’s because Lords Clyde and Jurovi are her Nightmares. They’re ranks 4 and 6 respectively.”
For the umpteenth time that day, Damien’s mind threatened to shatter from what he was hearing. He knew the pedigrees of the two deity orphanage co-owners had to be high to be such close friends with Ma LaCroix, but just as he had never expected her to be as powerful as 5th Great Disaster, he had never realized the two old men were gods of such strength and might as Nightmares rank 4 and 6.
Nor that apparently Father Clyde was stronger than Former Lance Commander Lord Jurovi.
“Damn,” he whispered before running off to join the two lords ascending the mountain.
Eventually they made their way to a mountain grotto that seemed at least a thousand feet from where they had entered. The fact that the grounds of Manor D’Amorn were big enough to hold their own private mountain range wasn’t something that bothered Damian much anymore. No, currently what was gripping his heart with a whole new, fresh, unceasing kind of dread, was a sinking feeling that Damien knew what was coming as the group slowly walked towards a ledge at one of the ends of the grotto.
“Hey, guys,” he began shakily, coughing slightly to hide the palpable shakiness and fear lacquered throughout his tone, “umm, the rest of the mountain pass is over there.”
“I like your chutzpah kid,” Lord Jorie laughed, “but I’m fine over here thank you.”
“Indeed,” Henry chimed in, as he gracefully crouched to smell a bush of roses and weird, white and orange flowers, “why don’t you come join us and enjoy the break from the walking, my lord?”
Damien knew what they were doing, he had long since realized that for as different as the Astallon brothers were, they’re family held the same affinity for never saying exactly what they meant. One always had to read between the lines when talking to an Astallon.
The alarm bells ringing in his head from the two now as he picked up on their psychotic unsaid intentions, turned his legs to lead. Though, in a desperate attempt to not be seen as a supreme level bitch in front of not only his two trusted advisors; but also his courtiers, who were no doubt watching the skies for any sign of their prince, with their enhanced Nephilim vision; …But most prominent of all, were the memories of Jessica, that would no doubt relentlessly mock him of being afraid of something he had literally been given blessed appendages for.
And then there was his mother.
Damien forced himself to trudge forward, regardless.
“Attaboy!” Lord Jorie cheered him on, forcibly rubbing Damien’s platinum afro.
“You’re gonna rub a bald spot into my head one of these days old man,” Damien muttered darkly, leering up at the divine lord as he went to look at a tree growing purple plums that sparkled in the sunlight, “and then I’m gonna have you chained deep in some forgotten crevice, and flogged, repeatedly. Nightmare or not, I’ll give you some nightmares.”
Henry’s mouth hung agape, a horrified look seared onto him. Lord Jorie just blinked, completely stunned. Then a wide, goofy smile broke out on his face while he howled with laughter, clapping and cheering on Damien’s growing skills in shit talking.
Despite himself, and remaining facing the tree so Lord Jorie couldn’t get the satisfaction, Damien had a slight smirk on his face as he sighed and shook his head.
To their credit though, they left Damien alone for about another hour to admire the grotto and calm his nerves before the two approached him again. Since it was early January, the sun was starting to set, thrusting the grotto under a beautiful blanket of orange, yellow, reds and violet colors, while the seemingly endless stars of the Mortal Realms began to show themselves, accenting the lack of light pollution on the mountain grotto.
“It’s time, Your Highness,” Henry said gently, placing a hand softly on Damien’s shoulder, breaking the prince from his brooding.
Damien just sighed and walked with the tall lord towards the mountain ledge where Lord Jorie was already standing, staring up at the stars, his hands folded behind his back.
The wind whipped around his long, flowing red hair that wasn’t tied back like Henry’s was, giving him the impression of a heavenly wild demon.
As Damien approached, he saw the great distance to the bottom and a stone sank deep into his stomach. His nerve broke and he began attempting to reason, no barter for his life as Henry marched him forward.
“Wait guys!” the boy began pleading hysterically, “I can’t fly now, it’s too dark. What if I can’t see where I’m going?”
“You’re a Nephilim,” Henry said blankly, giving him an encouraging smile while continuing to march Damien forward, “flow some energy into your eyes and you can see in the dark just as well as any were-being, fae or vampire.”
Damien gulped, he knew it was a weak start, but he didn’t expect how nonchalantly he’d been shot down.
“O-ok but!” he began again frantically, “I can barely fly though, I’ve only been able to just barely get off the ground.”
“You can hover, can’t you?” Lord Jorie asked, unimpressed.
“Um… yes?” Damien replied.
Lord Jorie currently held a look on his face that Damien had come to learn to interpret as, lying to him right now would be a very bad idea for his health.
“Perfect!” the viscount cheered, his face immediately morphing from judging and stern to cheerful, “you’ll do great! If you get flustered, just return to the basics and just try to hover.”
Before Damien could even utter his next excuse, Lord Jorie’s hand flashed a deep purple. A massive, ethereal, purple hand closed around Damien’s torso and promptly threw him off the ledge, following the swinging motion of the viscount’s fast pitch.
“THIS IS CHILD ABUSE!” Damien screamed as he shot forward, carried by the extreme kinetic force, and tumbling wildly through the sky, “I’M TELLING MY MOOOOOM!”
“Heh,” Lord Jorie chuckled to himself, then called out over the ledge at the still falling, still screaming boy, “DO IT THEN SHRIMP! BUT YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO NOT DIE FIRST IF YOU REALLY WANT TO TATTLE! SO YOU’D BETTER FLYYYY!”
“BASTARDDD!!!” was all they heard in reply as Damien continued to fall, picking up speed, obscured by the large clouds quickly swallowing him.
***
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Harsh winds tore all around Damien.Water droplets shot into every square inch of his body like bullets as he tumbled down through the massive cloud at tremendous speeds. For the first time in his short life Damien was glad his hair was afro shaped, so at least he could see himself fall to his death, courtesy of Nephilim vision’s Ultra HD, without having to worry about getting the hair from his eyes.
Hyperventilating, Damien’s aura exploded out around him. In moments, he instinctively leaned on the almost full year of magical training and aura cultivation he’d painstakingly survived. Damien began pouring half of his heavenly energy and as much mana, as he could manage, into his intent. The effort manifested a simple yet effective magical equation, materializing through the young mage’s aura as a powerful, yet extremely crude and simple wind spell, forcing twin, large jets of air downward from his hands to slow himself down.
His chaotic tumble to terminal velocity slowed by a bit, but not much.
‘Shit,’ Damien thought, gritting his teeth, ‘it’ll have to do.’
His golden and blue Nephilim eyes began to glow, and instantly sparks of Damien’s rose golden heavenly fire began exploding within the torrents of air. With an extreme effort, Damien twirled the fires around his torrents of air in a spiraling motion Lady Michelle had taught him months ago.
Faster and faster the explosions of holy fire began to spin within the shooting air, until they exploded fiercely as one, into twin massive, roaring jets of heavenly fire.
Damien began to grin like a madman.
‘Badass!’ he thought to himself, thankful beyond imagination for all the lessons in advanced physics and thermodynamics Father Clyde offered as courses at the orphanage for the kids interested in bolstering the effects of their magic by understanding how all energies in the universes interacted with each other.
Both the Physical Energies, theMortal Energies, and even the Fundamental Energies, that some mages might be racially prevalent to or by awakening to Sage and Deity levels, could all be compounded against and with each other to create unimaginable effects. Magical energies were just as much a natural part of the universe as nuclear fusion or electro-magnitism, and thus needed to be treated as not separate from each other.
“Science was magic too at one point,” Damien mimed comically at a memory of Father Clyde as he laughed maniacally at the twin massive, roaring jets of rose-golden flaming cyclones exploding with tremendous force from both his hands.
Next, memories of his almost unceasing sadistic lessons with his courtiers, basic teachers, and the two Astallon lords, came flooding back into his mind. The ability to wield various weapons they demanded he be trained in as a warrior of heaven, were drilled in Damien to a point beyond muscle memory. The hundreds of fighting forms of both magical and physical martial arts they forced Damien to spar in morning, noon and night, gave the prince the peace of mind to focus on controlling his wings now that he was falling at a more manageable pace, even though his mind was still struggling with fear and information overload.
Most importantly, of late, since he’d recently finally cracked hovering in place for at least 30 seconds, he’d been starting to incorporate his wings into his form of combat.
“As a proper Nephilim should,” Henry had lectured.
Damien’s wide, white wings began to fan out. His large secondaries began filling with the intense upward rush of hot air the updraft he’d been attempting to create, with his makeshift heavenly turbo jet engines that his mix of spells had created, slowing the rate of his fall to almost nothing. Remembering his hovering practices, his primaries next began to also spread out to their fullest range of the young prince’s wingspan. Immediately, the large feather groups filled with the intensely rushing, superheated updraft of air, mixed with the incredibly frigid air of the high altitude where Damien hovered, still relatively above some clouds. With great force, Damien forced his feathers to beat over and over, increasing in frequency, force and speed of flapping.
Not only was he not falling anymore, he was beginning to rise.
‘Now,’ Damien thought, taking a huge gulp as he made the dumb mistake of taking a brief look down at the great distance he had to fall to his death if he messed up. ‘Time for the easy part,’ he sarcastically joked to himself.
The mental strain of maintaining two spells while also attempting acute control over his wings began to weigh on Damien’s mind. But he would not give up. He had to succeed.
‘If for nothing else,’ Damien reasoned to himself, shutting his eyes as he began to hyperventilate while pouring sweat, ‘if I can fly, I could always try to find Jessica, somehow… eventually…’
Eventually Damien began to realize he had more presently pressing problems.
He couldn’t keep this up forever.
Not only was the young mage quickly bottoming out his energy pools while at the same time rapidly incurring more and more extreme aura fatigue, but the clashing battle of severe cold and severe warm air whipping around him was starting to get to his head.
Damien, for the billionth time since coming to Manor D’Amorn, thanked the pure white battle coat he’d always sported everywhere he went, since the morning it had been laid out for him. Millions of years of Nephilim magical and scientific technology had gone into creating these absolute feats of mortal creation. The battle coats weren’t as powerful as the armour the angels themselves wore, but the Nephilim would be damned if it couldn’t be said that they didn’t try their best to recreate the effects and protections of true heavenly armour.
Aside from being able to take massive amounts of all forms of physical energy without even a scratch, the battle coats also had an activatable inbuilt, quick time spell to perfectly absorb any incoming kinetic energy. This gave the Nephilim’s universe fabled battle coats the ability to cancel out large amounts of force from an enemy’s attack, both magical and physical. But what Damien was currently most thankful for, was that they also included perfect temperature control for the wearer. It could be tuned and maintained by the wearer using a minuscule amount of their aura to manipulate their battle coat.
Oh yeah, the battle coats also had a host of 7 magical artificial intelligences controlled by a master system, designed as an intense diagram of circles, angelic runes and embedded magical technologies built into the family or organization crests on the back of the jackets. The crests not only allowed every battle coat to not only be able to repair itself and grow alongside its wielder, but it could also manage, expect and attend to the needs of the wearer, and change shapes and features based on the will of the wielder. So every soldier above a particular rank was allowed to change their battle coats shape’s and features as they saw fit. Damien had heard of many a Nephilim that, upon reaching sagehood or godhood, just turned their battle coats into battle tunics, that still provided all of their normal protections. Though the colors of the coats, which denoted rank or status, were forbidden to be changed unless first sanctioned by a Nephilim Grand Tribunal.
While Damien could’t spare any hands to pull up the hood of his battle coat to protect his head from the rapidly changing temperatures, the coat perfectly protected the rest of him from being burnt and or frozen to death. Sadly, his many forms of growing fatigue, coupled with the fact that he was starting to black out from being constantly thrown between intense sweating and intense freezing, affirmed to him that he had to do something and fast.
No matter what happened he needed to kill the jets soon or they would literally kill him.
His Marginal Coverts, Primary Coverts, and Secondary Coverts all suddenly flared up catching mass amounts of air. Simultaneously, his aura swelled to the peak of all it had left in a bubble between his wings. Within his inner realm, Damien’s 110 Yellow stars of his star path roared to life along with his 20 more powerful Blue Stars, sending massive amounts of aura and energy to the increasingly tense ball behind his wings..
“It’s… now or never!” the boy grunted, straining against all the energy he was under.
Time slowed to a crawl.
Sweat dripped down his head falling thousands of feet. Damien shut his eyes.
His twin roaring jets pouring out seemingly ceaselessly from his outstretched hands, suddenly burst apart, sputtering to a halt.
For a second, all was still as Damien’s potential and kinetic energies were still canceled out.
But inevitably, the icy, unforgiving grip of gravity began to drag the boy downwards, hoping to dash him into a puddle against the unfeeling earth.
It was at that moment that Damien, eyes still shut, psychically burst the massive, straining bubble of aura and power, erupting with a single great flap of his tensed, outstretching wings, as an epic, thundering sonic boom, launching the boy up into the air with the speed of a bullet.
Damien could swear he heard a sound akin to a person, or group of people whooping madly to the air he raced upwards into the stratosphere. But Damien couldn’t be too sure, in fact he wasn’t really sure about much anymore. Being at the epicenter of several cascading sonic booms really had that kind of effect on people. The intense winds ripping at his eyelids keeping them forced shut, weren’t much of a help either. Damien didn’t know what was happening anymore, or even where he was going, but he knew one thing, he would not stop flapping his wings.
The boy didn’t even know if he was still even flying until his enhanced, Nephilim sense of hearing picked up a ruffling sound appearing a few meters away on either side of him.
“YOU'RE DOING IT SHRIMP! YOU’RE REALLY DOING IT!!!!” Lord Jorie yelled to him, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, “BUT IF YOU WANT TO TRY SEEING YOUR FIRST FLIGHT, OR TALKING, I REALLY SUGGEST YOU PULL UP THE HOOD OF YOUR BATTLE COAT SIRE!!!”
“LORD VISCOUNT IS CORRECT, SIRE!” Henry yelled towards Damien after his eldest brother had finished, “YOU REALLY SHOULD SEE THE VIEW, YOU TRULY ARE BLESSED WITH A WONDERFUL EVENING FOR YOUR FIRST FLIGHT!”
Damien’s flapping noodle arms strained against the pressure of the winds. He couldn’t see or turn his neck, but the prince was determined to at least reach his hood.
Slowly, frustratingly, his hands made their way forward, snapping to the edges of his hood and dragging it over his head in one harsh yank.
Immediately, the rushing air ceased. Actually, everything ceased.
Damien could tell he was still rocketing forward through the air on account of the rushing air still filling and rushing through his wings, their erratic beats, and the simple fact that there was still no semblance of a floor anywhere near beneath him.
Slowly, Damien began to realize though his neck was still tensed and arms were still in an X before him in a futile attempt to block some air from his eyes, it was a largely irrelevant task now. There was no more air pressure trying to break his neck or blind him, or send a mouthful of bugs into him. Fearfully, Damien began to untense. Amazed, he realized his arms weren’t even constrained by the air pressure anymore either. It was as if equipping his hood had activated some even more advanced, hidden level two protection system of the battle coat. Allowing Damien to move freely even while moving or flying at high speeds. Damien shook his head, chucking shakily, even if his people largely sucked major balls, they could at least design some damn swanky tech.
With an animalistic, loud grunt, Damien forced his head forward and snapped his golden and blue eyes open.
And his breath was immediately stolen.
An immediate aerial view, one like he’d never before experienced in his life, stole his breath. Everything was irrelevant to the holy magnus opus painted by the beautiful horizon meeting the vast violets and navy blues of the ocean that boarded the beaches of Manor D’Amorn’s private island.
“Wow…” he whispered, lost in wonder and disbelief, until his attention was broken by the sounds of Henry and Lord Jorie mimicking his earlier grunt to each other and laughing out loud.
The grumpy face he turned towards the viscount with, immediately broke. Instead it turned to one of intense confusion as Damien realized that he could see Lord Jorie’s entire head perfectly even though he claimed to have his hood on. Quickly, Damien’s head snapped to the left, only to confirm, to his growing confusion, that Henry also didn’t seem to be wearing his hood either. Damien’s face then turned back into the grumpy look. Lord Jorie and Henry noticed the boy’s confusion, connected the dots, and began mocking him unabashedly while laughing even harder that their imperial crown prince didn’t even understand how the hoods worked.
“My lord!” Henry wheezed while Lord Jorie continued to kick his legs wildly, flailing with screaming laughter as the god continued to coast through the air, “our hoods perfectly obscure our faces from all forms of physical and mortal divining and scrying energies, and some divine energies, though to varying extents. Only while they are equipped. Though to any Nephilim also with their hoods up, we can obscure or reveal our faces to each other at will!”
Damien’s mind was blown. But continued to get more so as Henry went on.
“The hood of your battle coat also connects with your aura in various other ways!” Henry continued to call out, “it improves your Sense of vision, smell and hearing while equipped. The effects can be increased by pouring energy into your coat through your aura. Similar for the temperature and defense controls embedded into your Family Crest on your back!”
‘And,’ Lord Jorie spoke telepathically into the heads of both Henry and Damien, ‘we can create and maintain heavily protected voice channels we can use to privately communicate with each other even over great distances.’ The viscount was coasting through the air lazily, on his back, his barn owl-like wings stretched out wide.
‘Wow!’ Damien yelled over the voice com, ‘that’s so fucking cool!’
‘Language, Sire,’ Henry admonished with a tsking sound.
‘Sorry,’ Damien grumbled.
‘Anyway shrimp,’ Lord Jorie went on, ‘you’ve been flying for well over 30 minutes now, how do ya feel?’
‘Well,’ Damien began, taking a moment to take in everything again, the beautiful scenery, along with the great distance to the ground, before answering. ‘I forgot for a moment that I was still flying really. Even the wing flaps became largely involuntary motion after a while…’ Damien realized slowly.
‘Good Sire!’ Henry cheered, ‘Now you should’ve realized that flying for a Nephilim is both a mechanical and magical process. We use our wings to channel a bubble of aura around us. By flapping they compel our auras to keep us in the air. By flaring out, they force our auras to send out counter energy to break our movement. By pushing forward, your aura expels energy pushing your body forwards. And finally, by flapping your wings in place, your aura forces your body to hover, even thousands of feet in the sky. This is a crude explanation and you’ll get far better at controlling your flight with both your wings and aura as you progress, but it is good enough for you as you are now to know how to fly from point A to point B anywhere you should want to traverse without killing yourself.’
‘Uhhhh… um…’ Damien sputtered, ‘thanks..?’
‘You’re welcome, Sire,’ the two brothers responded simultaneously.
‘Suck up the freedom while you still can runt,’ Lord Jorie laughed into the coms before he immediately banked a left, breaking away from the group as he began to descend to the vast fields below. ‘Finally, you’re somewhat a presentable Nephilim Prince. Just in time too, your real teachers show up in a week’s time. And though I don’t particularly respect them, I respect their power and what they do for the empire with it. There’s no way I’d present you to 4 of the Blessed Saints without even being able to fly.’
Damien said nothing as he watched the lord grow smaller and smaller until he eventually disappeared from view.
‘No offense, of course, Your Highness,’ Henry said to him, in brief, yet unyielding apology, ‘but my brother spoke no lies. Everyone's rate of growth is different, but there has never been a Nephilim that took longer than their 13th year to crack flight, and you are almost 14 now if a few more months. But still! Chin up Sire, you’ve completed it now. And your real training starts soon!’
Henry smiled at him with two thumbs up before banking a right, falling away from Damien as he too began his descent.
“Soon!” the lord called out to him as he eventually became a small speck, “you’ll be all trained up and ready to be presented to your mother!”
***
Damien remained flying even 2 hours later.
His wings were beginning to ache from stress and even his large, dense feathers were beginning to feel cold. The beautiful sunset had turned to the darkness of night.
Damien stared up at the sky as he continued flying in one massive circle around the mountain he’d been thrown off of hours earlier. He stared at each and every star until he committed to memory their every place in the heavens.
His vision fell.
He’d circled that one spot so many times, the prince had engraved every detail of the heavy twin scorch marks he’d left stretching hundreds of meters down the side of the mountain. He even memorized the different colors of his courtier’s holy fires, manifesting in the small tufts of flame for light each of them manifested by their heads while they patiently waited for their liege to finish his private flight. At some point, they all equipped their hoods to be able to keep visual track of their prince.
Bringing his sight level again, Damien began to beat his wings heavily, sending massive bursts of energy pulling him further up and up into the most massive summersault he’d attempted yet. At the peak, as he began to crest, flowing backwards with divine grace, Damien’s aura and inner realm crashed into one another, roaring to life with an epic explosion of rose golden light. The imperial crown prince emerged from the burst in his angelized form. Though his pure black bone mask perfectly masked his face, making the angelized Nephilim seem more demonic, his now sparkling platinum, majestic bladed wings bathed him in the unceasing, chanting light of The Almighty. Exposing him, wherever he went, as a warrior of heaven. In an epic light show, he completed his massive summersault tracing light behind him in a stunning, sparkling arch.
As Henry mentioned, his normally genetically enhanced super hearing was now increased even further, over 6 times, by his hood. This gave him the faint ability to make out the sound of clapping coming from the group of courtiers.
Still, Damien said nothing. His blank expression refused to change safely hidden behind his mask. Instead he just waved emptilly to the group below, reassuring them from trying to come up after him.
Looking up again, for the 45th time that flight, and the 12 trillionth time since coming to the manor, Damien pondered just making a break for it and running away. Especially now that he could fly even while angelized and had a crude, but effective instruction manual to do so, he actually stood some chance at making a decent run before anyone knew any better.
Only one thought restrained him from doing so. Only the image of one person in his brain kept him from mentally shattering then and there from everything he’d been forced to come to terms with just that day alone. Not to mention how endlessly painful the existence of being an imperial Nephilim kept persisting as.
The person’s face wasn’t of his mother, or Ma LaCroix. It wasn’t Lord Clyde, Jurovi, Henry, or Jorie.
It wasn’t even any of his courtiers.
The gigantic face of Jessica staring down him from the heavens disapprovingly, that his brain had superimposed on the sky, was the only one had kept him from making a break for it every time his thoughts almost led him to a massive panic attack.
Of which there had been, way, too many.
Damien’s heart hurt badly seeing the visage of his extremely long distance girlfriend. Even in her angry features, he now felt intense longing. If only, just to hold her again. If only just for a moment. Just to stroke her cute, chubby cheeks one last time and twirl his fingers in her curly brown hair.
Damien gave a sad sigh.
“As much as I hate it here sometimes,” he muttered to himself, “it’s the only way I’m really ever going to see her again.”
“She,” he said, his voice now filled with a mix of awe and disgust, anger and love, hatred and admiration, “mom… is the only way I’m going to meet Jessica again. Ruby King Amos’ grandfather is a Great Disaster, Lord Iron Wolf. I should be fully able to date her now as a royal of the same level as her… Since I’m the son of the Rank 1 Great Disaster… Lady Blood Red Hoaquin…”
The boy sighed again, hanging his arms as he flew, beginning to curve downwards to where his courtiers stood.
“If I have to be the perfect son, the perfect soldier, for her to allow me to date Jessica,” he reasoned emptily, as he descended, “then so be it. I will be the perfect son. I will be the perfect soldier.”
***
The four Nephilim kneeling before Damien were massive.
Their beautiful, sky blue battle coats had large, golden frills adorned with powerful holy runes embedded into their shoulder guards. Their coats were decorated with scores of ribbons, tassels, medals and badges signalling their vast scores of achievements required for consideration to this most esteemed few. They radiated extreme power, even though Damien could not feel a single drop of aura from any of them. The boy could swear, even their golden and blue eyes seemed just a little bit more golden and blue than the average Nephilim.
No one needed to tell Damien that these 4 beings had clearly long since crossed the threshold of creation, stepping deep into divinity. For fuck’s sake they sparkled in the damn sunlight, in a way that somehow still looked otherworldly and badass as all hell.
“Heavenly Imperial Crown Prince!” they all chanted in unison, taking to the ground on one knee, a fist to the floor, causing a massive boom. They stared at their prince, gazes unbroken, “Prince Damien D’Amorn of Asqualla! We greet you!”
Damien looked with a confused eyebrow raise at Henry.
“Sire, among the titles your mother, Her Heavenly Imperial Majesty, holds within the empire, there is also Duchess of the great city of Asqualla. Some presume you were even born there, though in secret,” the lord explained.
“I am Blessed Saintess rank 34th, my lord,” the lady on the far left, bearing 4 violet wings, spoke up first. “Illia, Elite rank Goddess mage of the Empire, I am Saint Urola Sinclair.”
The next, an asian looking man bearing simple, black circular eyeglasses with white and grey spotted wings, chimed in with a surprisingly deep voice. Contrasting sharply with how meek and reserved the Nephilim looked.
“I am Blessed Saint rank 22nd, my lord,” he said simply, his deep voice sending grand reverberations through the floor, “Reaper, Elite rank God mage of the Empire, I am Saint Xǐng Huì.”
“I,” the massive man that was their apparent leader, next spoke up, “am Blessed Saint rank 5th, my lord.”
The massive Nephilim’s voice shook with far more force than the reaper’s had, though it wasn’t nearly as deep. Every syllable the saint uttered shook with hints of vast, terrifying, divine angelic power.
“Guardian. Inner rank God mage of the Empire, I am Saint Duncan Dorne.”
For a moment, Damien was unsure if he was supposed to bow to the massive deity, while he was currently scared for his life simply standing before a being with that much power.
‘Show off,’ Lord Jorie whispered into Damien’s head with an unconcerned laugh, ‘he’s just trying to make a good impression.’
‘Ah,’ Damien reasoned to himself, ‘of course, Lord Jorie should be far stronger than him, and yet it almost never feels this uneasy simply standing before him.’
Steeling himself, Damien looked the Saint directly in his eye, choosing to simply deftly nod to the powerful deity before turning to his last partner.
“And I, am Blessed Saintess rank 10, my lord,” the final woman spoke up. She had light brown hair tied in a bun, a young freckled face, and wings burning with pink heavenly fire. “Vreka. Inner rank Goddess mage of the Empire. I am Saint Susanne Yorr.”
“Well met, Blessed Saints,” Damien said, as formally and regal as the boy could muster, “I am honored you all heeded the call of my mother, Her Heavenly Imperial Majesty, to train me. I am in your care.”
Damien bowed at the waist to them, head bowed with his hands folded before him.
“The I’ntwiri.” Saint Susanne said with a laugh, “what a respectful prince! His Imperial Highness greets us with adequate respect for a student to their master, in the old way.”
“Asisni xscul’er qu’la seii kep,” Saint Duncan boomed, along with his fellow saints, as each saint rose to their feet alongside him, “well met student, be at ease,”
Lord Jorie spoke up.
“Imperial Blessed Saints!”
“Aye Warmaster, Lord High General!” the group chanted snapping to attention, immediately turning as one to face him.
“I trust you have been adequately briefed for your mission?”
“Aye Warmaster, Lord High General!” Saint Duncan Dorne boomed, answering for his group, “we have extensively prepared for every possible facet of this most precious role. Training our imperial crown prince to the fullest of his potential, for the next year, is our utmost priority.”
Lord Jorie nodded before he looked over to his right at his youngest brother, and to his left to Damien’s Grand Courtier.
“Saint Dorne, you and your Blessed Saints are to report to these two as per my authority as Nightmare rank 1 to speak for Her Imperial Majesty,” Lord Jorie said out loud, “have I made myself clear?”
“Aye Lord Nightmare!” the group chanted again in unison. Though Damien could tell for a single moment, a deep sense of dread seemed to pass between the 4 saints at the news of the lord’s new hyper exclusive rank.
Damien stared up at all of the Blessed Saints, but his vision always seemed to rest on Saint Dorne.
Saint Duncan Dorne got a confused look on his face that turned into a slow, easy smirk as he bowed at the waist to the crown prince, having realized he’d been being watched.
“Is there something I may be able to do for His Imperial Highness?”
Damien said nothing for a moment. He just looked, head slightly tilted, into the Saint’s golden and blue eyes, a mirror of Damien’s own. The teen then just stewed over a thought that had been bugging him after it suddenly appeared in his mind as soon as he’d heard the saint was just posturing in front of him.
Damien pointed a finger to the saint’s right cheek. His beautiful crystalline scythe immediately manifested, pointed directly at the spot on Saint Duncan’s cheek.
“I’m gonna leave a cut on that cheek, in one year, with my scythe.”
The entire room stood stunned. Henry and the Grand Courtier’s mouths hung agape. Shock was evident on every face of the Blessed Saints. Lord Jorie was the only person with a look of utter joy and pride beaming on his face at Damien’s sudden, senseless provocation to the leader of the group of saints.
Saint Duncan blinked, for a minute, before he began to slowly chuckle, soon turning into an easy belly laugh.
“Noli me tallere sine causa,” the Blessed Saint boomed as the rest of the deities within the room took up in unison, “Noli me ponere sine honore.”
“My Imperial Highness,” Saint Dorne said, wiping a tear from his eye, “if you can actually manage to strike and leave a wound upon my cheek, in just one year? I’d be the happiest Nephilim alive.”