Damien sat in an ornate armchair, absentmindedly watching the trees whizzing by from a nearby window. After packing the rest of things and saying final goodbyes, Damien and the tall Nephilim lord had been traveling in a limousine that had been parked at the orphanage gates waiting for them.
Though he'd had never been in a limousine before, but Damien could tell this one was probably a little above the usual squalor and splendor.
It oozed luxury and came packed with the most advanced magical technology light years ahead of the consumer standard. Damien had been given a suspiciously thorough briefing of the limousine's war systems from an incredibly roided out, gigantic dark skinned Nephilim that had flaming gold plates adorning the tops of his massive sky-blue wings.
The young prince had come to learn that the weapon happy Nephilim was none other than the Warmaster of the voyage and a 3rd star, Imperial General in the vast armies of the Empire of Gera.
The massive, divine Nephilim, casually radiating even more power than even Lord Henry seemed capable of, introduced himself as Holy Warmaster, Saint Benril Smith. The massive Nephilim lord carefully explained to his imperial prince that their vehicle came jam-packed with enough wards, weapons, support magics and defense systems to survive a siege from even a minor god for up to a week.
In fact calling it a limo was kind of insulting. Sure on the outside it was a massive, but reasonably mid-sized, tank in the vague, unassuming shape of a limousine. But on the inside it was a literal mansion.
Time-space magic on a level far beyond anything Damien had ever thought possible, allowed a grand villa to be shoved inside a car like some kind of affront to god. And the entire contraption was currently racing along a trans dimensional, magical road it was generating for itself to bypass the rudeness of reality.
At speeds of over mach 3.
The trees Damien had been looking at were wizzing by many meters below him. At some point Damien had stopped trying to actually see what was happening as everything had just become a mix of colors. Yet, as the roof of the car was both above and below him at the same time, Damien could also see the brilliant swirl of aether surrounding them as the vehicle barrled along to its destination undesturbed. The vast layers of stacking paradoxs casually mingling in the magic the prince was currently attempting to comprehend, hurt his brain badly. It was as if some omnipotent, troubled child had been given a truly eye watering sum of money, told to go absolutely hog-wild, and had taken those directions very seriously.
The limousine was even fully stacked with hundreds of elite Nephilim armed guards, servants, cooks and chefs, and to top it all off, it even had a perpetually self-sustaining food and water system. 27 divine level enchantments casually maintained a perpetual running water and waste management system.
When Damien heard the price the empire had bought the limousine for, his brain nearly leaked from his ear.
Generational wealth, liquidated all at once, wouldn't even be enough to afford the preorder for one of these cars.
So Damien wasn't shocked when his eyes almost glazed over hearing that this wasn't the only one of its kind the Empire of Gera had.
Rubbing his sore temples, Damien tried and failed to come to grips with the realization of how deep the pockets of the empire, his empire, actually ran.
The Holy Empire of Gera somehow boasted a magnificent lineup of 12 of these monstrous moving fortresses, second only to the 13 owned by the collective vampire kingdoms.
The limousines were normally reserved only for the Nephilim royalty, the high nobility, the imperial royalty, and the Empire's diplomatic guests. Though there were some few, chance events where a lucky citizen of the empire would somehow wind up experiencing lavishness beyond belief.
It was even said that the particular limo fortress Damien was currently sitting in was the personal vehicle of the ruling imperial monarch. It had seen a wide variety of guests, and once even housed President Barack Obama, as he held secret diplomatic meetings with the Empress of Gera.
The mounting stress of being in a vehicle that easily cost well over $30 Billion, had caused the boy to try his hardest not to move a single muscle from the safety of the couch-like, extremely plush chair he sat in. The aura of poverty Damien felt himself lug from the orphanage, filled him with great shame. He refused to even step on the carpeting in his shoes, having long since abandoned them. Lord Henry, always there to attend to the prince, had ordered an incredibly expensive set of Louis Vuitton, fuzzy house slippers, to be brought for the imperial crown prince immediately. Lest the feet of the Holy empire's scion be cold for even a second.
Damien blushed deeply as he recounted what a scene he had made.
'God I'm dumb,' the young prince lamented to himself, 'all that hoopla to get a new mindset to finally be worthy to see mom and Jess again, and I can't even step on some fucking carpeting.'
He sighed slightly as the voice of the tall Nephilim lord slowly tuned itself back in.
Along the drive, Damien had been getting a crash course of the history of the empire he was on his way to inherit. This led him to believe he had long since lost the ability to be surprised anymore at what incredibly obscene amounts of money and influence could achieve, even without magic.
He was wrong.
It both amazed and awed the young prince everything that the Nephilim had achieved. Billions of years of rich history, and a powerful empire were nothing to scoff at, but also scared Damien shitless. As the true weight of the responsibilities he was swaggering headfirst towards began to hit him like cinder blocks, he felt his shoddy beginnings of confidence start to crack.
Lord Henry had asked the prince not to use his title when addressed by his imperial highness, and had immediately helped give Damien some brief but well appreciate vacation from his royal fever dream. Henry had been seated stoically, with perfect posture the entire time while giving his lectures. Damien felt awful. He didn't mean to zone out, it was just... Henry was so damn boring. The lord's constant, attentive focus on Damien, made the prince feel incredibly awkward, not knowing if he were being judged scrupulously, or admired devoutly. But Damien forced himself to power onwards regardless. This was his new normal now after all.
At least Henry wasn't shy about answering the young prince's questions. And Damien had many questions.
"Henry," Damien blurted out, lost in thought, "I remember you called Ma LaCroix and mother Supreme Goddesses, right?"
"That is correct My Lord," Henry replied succinctly and attentively. If he was even slightly offended at being cut off, it never registered on Henry's face.
"You also said she was the strongest being in the Mortal Realms, so are there different kinds of gods in the Mortal Realms? How do we compare with the Divine Realms?" the prince asked eagerly.
Henry let out a lighthearted chuckle, the young boy's utter confusion mixed with complete seriousness greatly amused him.
"Well to give you an answer you would appreciate, Your Highness," the Nephilim lord started, "I need to go back a few steps."
Henry clapped his hands together and a flash of blue light shone, enveloping the entire room they both had been in. The ornate walls and ceiling became shrouded in intense darkness. All Damien could see was the carpet, Lord Henry, and the chairs they were in.
"As you may know Sire, the universe as we once knew it, roughly 14 billion years ago, was born of two beings of pure causation. The Almighty and an equally powerful, and equally ancient existence, The Rainbow Queen, met and merged their energies. The sound of the verst verses of the blessed Hymns of Creation harmonizing with The Rainbow Queen's Songs of color brought forth the event called, the Big Bang and brought forth a massive universe," Henry began as Damien nodded attentively, remembering the many lectures of magic he had been given from Ma LaCroix.
"However, as you know, our universe eventually split in two, but the very concept of two simultaneous universes enchained together is relatively a new phenomenon. In fact, up until the mid 1940s when magic integrated with common life on Earth, many throughout the Mortal Realms believed that the Mortal Realms were actually the entire observable universe" Henry continued, making air quotations with his fingers and chuckling to himself.
Instantly the area inside the cabin changed to become outer space. All around them were the great celestial bodies and the many, many countless realms.
Damien's lungs seezed up. Panic burst forth, his aura flailed, fear poured from his intent as he faded into the darkness. He was only slightly aware he was beginning to experience what was likely the largest panic attack of his life. Suddenly, Damien was torn back to reality. Henry stood before him, a glowing index finger that was slowly returning to normal was the first thing Damien saw.
"Breath, Your Highness," Henry said simply, he turned and teleported back into his own chair. "This isn't a real vacuum, you can still breath."
Damien blushed in shame, choosing to say nothing, returning his attention to the visuals. It helped that he knew he could breathe, it didn't help with the fact that they were still scaring the crap of him.
Zooming past billions upon billions of planets with intelligent life scattered across the universe, Damien saw so many things in mere fractions of moments that if he blinked, entire solar systems would be missed. Immeasurable dimensions of great power and beauty, but also countless great horrors flashed around them as they zoomed through realms. Damien stared transfixed, gripping the armrests of his chair so hard, his fingers embedded themselves into it, clenching for dear life.
And yet, all the while, the young prince stayed intently focused on everything Henry had been saying. While the Nephilim lord was sitting calm and collected in his chair, the imperial crown prince clung to the monotony of the lord's voice for dear life, attempting futility to avoid the full brunt of whatever panic attack his manic anxieties could manifest.
'Bastard,' was all Damien's terrified mind could squeak out.
"Going back all the way to the great war in Heaven," Henry began saying, he crossed one leg over the other, and sat back leisurely while gazing at the visuals around them. "About roughly 4 billion years ago, to cut an extremely long story short, it caused a lot of far reaching repercussions that have been ever since, written deep into Taboo by forces far beyond even your mother's comprehension, and thus the Mortal Realms and the Divine Realms were born."
Damien was pressed so deep into the big armchair he was sure he'd need to be surgically removed from it later at this point.
He was grateful beyond words, for the first time in his short life, that he was a very average sized kid and was therefore able to fit entirely huddled into the great chair, involuntarily doing his best Gollum impression.
The rational part of Damien's brain was telling him that this was probably an illusion and that he wasn't really going to fall into oblivion.
The rest of Damien promptly told it to shut the fuck up.
"You see, my lord," Henry mused on, nonchalantly, finally looking away from the visuals back down to see his prince huddling in fear, fingers burrowed into his chair. Giving a slight shrug, the Nephilim lord moved on, "the distinction is a bit of a faux-positif, if you will. The Mortal Realms and the Divine Realms both have gods and goddesses of many different species and races. Though all the original gods, primordial spirits, ancient beings, elder spirits, angels, demons, devils and so on were left in the Divine Realms. However, there are many, many diverse and powerful beings throughout the Mortal Realms that could challenge and even kill many of them. So turf wars between the great realms as wholes occur rarely, never at best."
The cabin now showed endless scores of countless powerful beings bearing all shapes and sizes.
Some of them Damien recognized from his vivid fascinations with various mythologies. Though now, the fact that he was now learning all those mythologies and gods were very real, while remembering the powers and temperaments of many of those deities, made his blood run cold. A little too many of them were deeply unhinged; causing a litany of stories that tended to end very badly for everyone involved.
Everyone except, of course, the deity that usually started the whole debacle.
Sensing the imperial prince's mounting fear, Henry gave a gentle smile and continued in a new, soothing voice, "but don't worry Your Highness, among the many laws written into Great Taboo due to that terrible event, it also includes the holy statutes that no being born in the Divine Realms may cross The Great Barrier of Totality, into the Mortal Realms unless first being given permission by The Almighty. Or, unless they are willingly summoned from someone originating from the Mortal Realms."
A line appeared in the great vast illusion of space around them, and it looked like the galaxies themselves were literally moving apart, leaving behind a gaping chasm of nothingness, a true black void between the shell that held the two still expanding halves of the universe.
"Similarly as beings born in the divine realm can't cross the barrier themselves," Henry went on, "beings born in the Mortal Realms, cannot cross the barrier either." The Nephilim lord gave a little wink that confused Damien until the man finished by saying, "that is at least, until that Mortal Realm creature attains godhood, then they attain the right to come and go between both of The Great Realms as they please."
As Damien was pondering why anyone would even want to willingly venture into the Divine Realms, a forest suddenly appeared in the great chasm surrounded by a dense sea of wicked sharp, thorny branches.
"There are, yet again exceptions to even this rule though," Henry said with a sigh, murmuring slightly, "thankfully there's only one annoyance that gets that exception, The Fae Forest." His eyes turned very grave and serious, and an intensity Damien had never yet seen before on the tall Nephilim lord's face took over as Henry stared into the young prince's own, frightened, golden blue eyes. He then said in a stone cold, clear, hallowed voice, "never, ever go there my Lord, especially not alone. You will not return."
The manic intensity in his eyes never wavered for a moment.
"Many have ventured to The Fae Forest. Many beings spanning the divine, primordial, and even mortal, yet slim, slim few ever made it out again," the lord reiterated gravely.
Damien starred in fear.
His previous fear of the illusions around the room had been abolished, replaced by a new, fresh desire, to never set foot within the forest.
Ever.
A slight nod was all he could manage as he slowly unclenched his fingers from the chair. Henry nodded, and the scene changed again as he exhaled slowly, resting back into his plush armchair, smoothing out his onyx battle jacket.
A new Nephilim sporting the most perfectly pressed butler's clothing Damien had ever seen, suddenly appeared next to the two seated Nephilim. He had equally ostentatious, pristine black hair that had been carefully combed and slicked back, and delicately preened gray wings with soft brown spots adorning them.
In his left hand, he held an immaculate platinum plate, studded with many rare jewels and rimmed with shimmering gold. Perfectly balanced upon it was a vast medley of sandwiches and ornate tumblers of various juices.
"Refreshments, Your Imperial Highness?" the man asked in a pleasant, husky voice, looking down with smiling, calming golden and blue eyes at the prince.
Damien nodded silently, never forgetting the surrealness of seeing so many people with eyes exactly like his own, especially after believing himself to be alone for so long.
Food and drink floated from the plate the butler Nephilim was holding and seated themselves on plates that adorned a huge ornate, wooden coffee table that had, in that moment, appeared in between Damien and Henry.
"Refreshments, Lord Henry?" the butler asked next, this time giving a slight bow in the direction of the other armchair. After serving the noble, the butler turned back to Damien.
"A pleasure to finally meet the light of our empire, Your Grace," the butler said with a proud smile, "after your mother, Her Holy Empress Hoaquin publicly announced your imminent arrival as her true heir, a vast, vast may clamored for the illustrious position of Head Butler to oversee welcoming our imperial crown prince home." He gave another deep bow and vanished.
As he left Damien realized with a cold sweat, even though he saw the butler use many instances of magic, he never felt a drop of aura from the being.
'We have butlers that could even be gods for crying out loud,' the young prince thought to himself as he attempted to eat. His mind was far too blown to even chew his food properly, so Henry found himself eating silently as the prince was reduced to a slow chewing being. He had a half open mouth, in a sort of daze, resembling a mentally challenged cow. Only one thought reverberated in the prince's head.
'What the actual fuck is Gera?'
***
After they had both eventually finished their mid journey meal, the Head Butler reappeared as if on cue to take their plates and de-apparated the coffee table.
During the meal, Damien had finally gotten the brief break from the forced history lesson that had been edging his brain imploding on itself.
He had been desperately needing a time out.
Getting a brief moment to change the subject, the Nephilim imperial crown prince had learned that they were apparently on their way through a thoroughly vetted and charted series of hidden roads, portals and secret, heavily guarded checkpoints, joined by the one that the limo was currently creating by itself.
These lead to the hidden realm that the Nephilim empire inhabited.
Their current prime directive was to deliver the imperial crown prince first to one of the imperial family's hidden estates before they would complete the rest of their journey to the empire proper.
Their current goal was to get to the safehouse before Damien's birthday the next day, hence the need to fly at 150 mph.
Though Damien wasn't yet allowed to know where the safehouse was, he was only allowed to know its name.
The Garden of Illyah, the 8th ruling Empress of Gera had built it as a safe place for the imperial nobility.
This was a consolation that Henry and Lord Benril had taken great length to explain to their imperial crown prince the importance of.
If he didn't know, the information couldn't be tortured out of him.
In the case of some unforeseen, unfortunate event, at least that's how Henry had explained it, accompanied by one of his signature almost chuckles.
Damien desperately prayed internally that the Nephilim lord was just insane, but part of him remembered the stone cold look in the eyes of the vision of himself he had seen back at the orphanage. That guy had definitely seen some shit.
The prince knew, with sad resignation, that when he accepted that vision of himself and all of its immense hurt, power, glory, and pain, that torture was something he would probably unfortunately experience at some point in his life.
As the prince desperately tried to channel his new mindset in hopes of calming his increasingly shot nerves, Henry resumed his history lesson. Letting forth a single mighty clap, all of Damien's inner thoughts were blown away. Leaving the prince dazed and shell shocked, as the room one again descended into inky darkness with two mirrored universes reappearing. Calmly orbiting each other with the thorny ball holding the Fae Forest resting calmly above, yet between them.
A shimmering, gigantic golden bridge then appeared between the two universes. Its massive arches shimmered and glimmered in the starlight, it boasted 7 massive, thick golden doors wrapped in heavy chains and locks that appeared one after the other along the bridge. The doors had a single thorny rose embossed in the center, standing cold and majestic, but both the first and seventh doors were truly titanic compared to the other gigantic doors. Billions of spiky, golden chains exploded out suddenly, cascading forth from the great bridge, entangling the two vast expansions of space and time together.
"The Great Bridge of Totality," the prince blurted aloud in wonder, unable to stop himself upon seeing the great golden bridge.
Henry clapped his hands in delight.
"Excellent deduction, Your Highness!" the lord clapped cheerfully, "you're catching on quickly, this sets a good precedent for the rest of your training!"
Damien simply nodded, his stressed out brain not falling for the compliment as he waited for Henry to continue his answer.
"In the Mortal Realms, beings that are still mortal both alive and not that haven't attained godhood have their own rankings," Henry began. "The gods of the Mortal Realms, however, are ranked weakest to strongest as: Lesser Deity, Middle Deity, Early Deity, Outer Deity, Elite Deity, Inner Deity, Late Deity, Grand Deity, Exalted Deity and finally Supreme Deity," Henry listed, finally getting to the point of the question. " The valleys of power between the ranks of the Mortal Realm gods are extremely vast. Many of the extreme few that ever ascend, barely rank up more than one or two ranks from whichever one they were reborn into"
Henry laughed at Damien's arched eyebrow.
"Yes Your Highness," the Nephilim lord said through his laughter, "there is no law stating that one must start as a lesser Deity when they ascend."
Damien leaned forward in his chair. He could feel some kind of explanation about divinity was about to be given. And considering how many of the closest people to him were currently deities or on their way to becoming deities, he wasn't going to miss a single word from Henry's mouth.
Not for anything.
"The process of getting a mage to the point where they're on the brink of ascension is vastly different for every race within the Mortal Realms," Henry started saying as images of countless golden trees representing the various cultivation methods of the Mortal Realms appeared around the two of them replacing the scene that had been there before.
"However, the entry requirements are still the same," the lord said.
A bright, shining silver light appeared. Next to it, an equally bright, golden light appeared.
"The candidate for godhood must present before The Great Taboo, an immortal soul," the lord said as the silver ball of light shone brightly, momentarily, "and an immortal body." The golden ball of light also shone brightly, momentarily.
"There is also a secret third part that is necessary for The Great Taboo to allow the being to ascend," Henry continued after a brief pause, "but a rule written into The Great Taboo itself, is that this clause is never to be talked about. The prospective godling must figure it out themselves."
Damien said nothing, but nodded solemnly.
He didn't know much about The Great Taboo, but from what he remembered, its rules were absolute once written upon itself. If Taboo noticed a rule had been broken, anywhere in creation, be it the Mortal Realms, the Divine Realms, or even in the Void locked eternally underneath the Great Bridge of Totality.
The Great Taboo held the power to effortlessly destroy even the Great Primordial Deities of the Divine Realms.
Damien sat still for a moment as he absorbed the new lesson.
"What about the Divine Realms?" Damien asked after a brief pause.
"Well," Henry began, rubbing his beard, "the gods of the Divine Realms are ranked a little differently. They start on a slightly lower tier than the Mortal Realm deities due to the fact that mortals have to first attain sagehood before they can even begin to dream about Godhood."
14 pillars this time appeared in the vast illusionary room between the two Nephilim. As they lit up on their own as Henry got to each of them.
"The first few ranks of Divine Realms beings are the same as the mortal realm's, being lesser, middle, and early," the Nephilim lord said, "but after that it is completely different."
The rest of the 11 columns began to shine one after another as Henry continued to speak.
"They go as such, Greater Deity, Herald Deity, Lesser Dominion Deity, Fatebringer Deity, Mystic Deity, Greater Dominion Deity, Titled Deity, Ancient Deity, Celestial Deity, Cosmic Deity, and finally, the peaks of the Divine Realms, the Glorious Aspect rank Deities," Henry finished, recounting the final few ranks. Though something caught Damien's eye.
There had been a 15th pillar, still shrouded in shadow.
"What about that one?" the young prince asked in confusion, pointing at the column with a ruler he had found.
"That one sire is the rank of Primordial," Henry said with a slight chuckle. "Unlike the other ranks, it isn't possible to become a primordial out of sheer strength or cultivation alone," Henry continued, "no one actually knows how to become a primordial spirit, though there have been records before of beings from both the Mortal Realms and the Divine Realms at some point in history joined the ranks of the Great Primordial Spirits."
The prince gaped his mouth silently in wonder, as Henry continued, "but we do know that their existence allows both halves of our universe to exist, their power holds creation together. They existed long before the beings that worshiped them, even asleep, deactivated their sheer power and existences allow the universe to exist without collapsing in upon itself under its own power."
Damien pondered what he had heard.
So his mother was strong, undoubtedly so, being the peak of every being in the vast entirety of the Mortal Realms. But even then, the strongest she could probably be compared to the Divine Realms, was somewhere in the Glorious Aspect tier. Unbelievably powerful, but still not at the true top.
'If she were a primordial,' Damien thought to himself as he finished his juice, 'they definitely would've been yapping about it every chance they got. They seem so fanatic of the imperial families.'
"What rank are you then?" Damien asked, silencing his thoughts, "in terms of both realms?"
Henry chuckled slightly, "in the Mortal Realms, my rank is at Outer Deity. In the Divine Realms," he continued, "I'd be ranked somewhere between an elite Lesser Dominion Deity and a low Fatebringer Deity."
Damien's eyebrow shot up in confusion.
This time Henry fully laughed out loud before he caught himself and got up from his armchair and bowed deeply in embarrassment.
"My sincerest apologies to Your Imperial Highness," the Nephilim said with the utmost reverence, getting up from his chair suddenly, giving a desperate bow. "I noticed your confusion, the tiers of power in the Divine Realms are much less than that of the Mortal Realms, but because of it, their thresholds are far, far more vast to move up through tiers. This is to account for the vast discrepancy of powers found even within the same pantheon."
Damien was shocked, "please sit Lord Henry, I'm not offended I swear," the young prince said, waving his hands frantically.
It was far too early for him to begin to be known as the monarch everyone lived in fear of. Damien couldn't bear to be alone, not again, not after finally having a chance at life with those he thought lost dangled in front of him.
Henry bowed again in thanks as he retook his seat. Damien, from the corner of his eye, noticed that two of the guards closest to them, standing stiller than death, shared a slight flick of their golden blue eyes with each other, then returned back to looking forward.
'Weird,' Damien thought to himself, 'but nothing I can do about that.'
Damien sighed.
Earlier that day he had been walking through the field of the orphanage, lamenting his life, lost in a daze, and now he was imperial crown prince to a mighty empire of various races of Nephilim that he barely knew anything about.
Life had an odd way of rug-pulling Damien over and over until he wasn't sure if he should ever want for anything or run screaming from making any decisions for himself.
Even though it hurt though, Damien also knew he could never let the loneliness manifest again. Or run away to live as a hermit. But, that being said, he wasn't sure how much more he could take.
And the first day wasn't even over yet.
Henry, sensing the tormented emotions rushing through the prince's aura, said nothing as he waited for the prince to come to terms with everything, or not.
After a while, Damien's breathing had returned to normal. Giving another soft sigh, he nibbled his ruler and tried to think positively.
He had to figure out as much as he could.
"About Gera," Damien eventually murmured, "tell me about Gera, what even are the Nephilim?" The imperial crown prince raised his head sheepishly, laden with sorrow and worry, "please talk normally with me Henry? We're friends right?"
Henry nodded with sincerity.
"Thank you, Prince Damien," the Nephilim lord said gratefully. Bringing his hands together he formed a sort of hand seal, a wave of soft white light began pouring from them. Instantly, the room and the scene around the room they were in, changed again.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Now they were thousands of feet in the air.
Immediately Damien felt his magic roar to life trying to prevent him from falling to his death. Immediately, he connected his dominant ego to his SuperComputer's. His nerves immediately calmed as he felt the familiar but still frightening detachment from his emotions that the state always brought. Damien immediately floored the breaks on the waves of rose gold energy and fire that came pouring forth from his body as he entered the state.
As he reconnected to his main ego, not allowing it to give away full control, he regained awareness of the room around him. The prince found that the large, domed, sun room was filled to the brink with every kind of Nephilim soldier that was currently on board.
Thousands of black battle jackets with white fur rimmed hoods stood patiently at attention.
Soldier Nephilim of all ranks including those that had stepped into godhood, stood ready to defend their Imperial Prince at a moment's notice, with all their might. They all bore various kinds of weapons.
Some had knives, others had blades of various shapes and sizes. Some were partially decked in armor, and some looked like walking suits of armor. Some even held scythes like the one Lord Henry himself had manifested earlier at the orphanage.
Damien noted all this for later, it was the only way he could avoid panicking at waking up to a sea of soldiers staring intently at him.
The prince sat shell shocked, mouth agape. But, Lord Henry remembering the weight of his position as an emissary of the imperial throne, rushed to save his imperial crown prince from his ensuing panic. The Nephilim lord immediately corrected himself and stood to address the crowd of soldiers forming a tight perimeter around the two armchairs.
"E'loise!" the Nephilim called out, letting his intent of peace and reassurance radiate out through his aura. Immediately the crowd as one dropped to one knee, right fist to the floor, heads bent with their left fist tucked behind their backs, as they bowed in reverence towards their imperial crown prince.
As one they shouted, "Ja Gariea! Il'Saeja! Il'Saeri! La'shieka!" Then immediately, they all simultaneously vanished.
Damien had never heard that language before, but he had understood every word they had said perfectly.
Despite the vast many different dialects of the language he had heard.
They had chanted, "For Gera! Her Empress! Her Imperial Prince! Forever everlasting!"
Damien didn't know how he felt about that, he sat stunned, dreading the full comprehension of how many lives were now at his beck and call. But before he had a chance to unfortunately deal with those emotions, Henry thankfully spared him the forced introspection by continuing their lesson.
"Please do not feel disturbed by this your Highness," the noble, divine Nephilim lord respectfully pleaded as he retook his seat in the ornate armchair. "let us continue from where we left off, but we will address what just happened with your magic tomorrow on your birthday," Henry said.
Below the pair, a massive supercontinent formed, hundreds of random sized islands that were both at sea level and floating thousands of miles in the air began to form, giving an unnecessary extra layer of ultra extravagance and wonder to the already impossibly complex empire he was seeing on the supercontinent. Then suddenly they were both pulled at lightspeed from the scene, as they started going back in time hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of years.
Now they were seeing the regular planet of Earth beneath them. The full, true to scale sized image of the Earth, had currently manifested beneath them.
Damien struggled to control his suddenly erratic breathing. He reminded himself he was perfectly safe as long as he was with Henry, when the divine Nephilim began to speak, helping Damien to calm down more.
"After the Great War in Heaven," Henry began, lifting a hand as a vast, vast ocean of stars gently, but tragically fell from the stars above. They turned a deep, angry shade of red, sadly contrasting their previous pure brilliance. "Many angels tragically defected from the Great Heavenly Host."
Damien felt a weird but deep pang in the very core of his being as he watched the scene unfolding before him. The prince knew he could never even begin to understand the true depth of what that feeling was. It was something that went far, far past him, to a time countless eons ago. A pain brought on by a deep generational empathy for his angelic kin and the horrific loss of billions of their fellows, spanning all the heavenly ranks, to the deep chasm of Hell itself, reverberated throughout the prince's body.
"Even after this, some Angels still defected for various reasons," Henry continued, in an accepting but sad tone, chuckling slightly, "in fact, some would argue that since the Great War in Heaven had forced every last member of the Heavenly Host to be painfully aware of their own free will for the first time ever, some were so deeply broken and disillusioned of all creation after the horrors of the war, they they gave way to temptation."
Now the scene before them showed few of the vast ocean of brilliant lights in the stars above coming down towards the earth and taking on horrifying, monstrous, eldritch forms.
Angels.
Angels in their true forms.
Damien had always read about the true forms of the various ranks of angels and pondered again, for the millionth time, how the purest forces of tremendous holy power could have demons beat every time in the annual, "Scare the dogshit out of random mortals," competition.
The angels, obviously, were shown terrifying the utter shit out of any and all kinds of creatures in the new Mortal Realms they came across. Eventually, they learned to tailor their forms to be less outwardly menacing, becoming instead of horrifying so unnaturally beautiful. They all bore shimmering platinum hair, shimmering platinum and diamond blue eyes, and all had different but similarly perfectly expressionless, perfectly sculpted faces. They now instead of terrifying the mortals they came across, arrested their attentions.
And led some to temptation.
Damien didn't know how to feel about what he was seeing, but he knew he didn't feel good about it.
The appropriately sized, gargantuan elephant in the room, was that these angels were ageless beings, far, far older than any of the beings in the mortal realm they were attempting to copulate with. The angels knew the laws written upon taboo by heart, for of them were there when many were first etched.
The angels themselves aided the Almighty as they sang the sacred hymns of creation at the beginning of all things. The holy power of even the weakest of Angels was so vastly tremendous, they were easily comparable to even the mightiest of Grand Rank Deities and Cosmic Rank Deities.
So in the eyes of many, the Angels that fell to temptation definitely had no excuse to not have even the slightest inclination of the great flow of Karma following their actions. They all had to be aware. The fallen angels knew the ramifications of what they were attempting to do. Yet, Damien could only watch helplessly, as the images of the angels continued to mate with the creatures of the Mortal Realms that they set themselves upon. He noted with, slight, unamused interest, that the vast majority of the mates the fallen angels chose, were humans.
The prince then bore witness to the first of the ancient Nephilim races being born, the Giants.
Soon after, they were followed by hundreds of other half angelic races that came and went throughout time. Damien could do nothing, except stare as countless years of Nephilim history flew by, viewed in mere moments by the two Nephilim. Soon after, came a seemingly endless span of centuries of incredibly bloody wars. The Nephilim races of Earth waged savage wars amongst each other, with the single purpose of exterminating each other, by any means necessary.
The final head count of Nephilim races that eventually survived the many, many mass extinction events, in the time that came to be before the establishment of the Empire of Gera, made the prince feel woozy and depressed. It had gone from hundreds, to less than 10 races.
Damien felt sick to his knees at what he was seeing. The so-called "Angels of the Earth", the "Earthly Host", were slaughtering their own kind wholesale, just as their angelic ancestors had done prior in the Holy Land during the War in Heaven. The Nephilim had proven to have learned a collective total, of absolutely nothing. Eventually the remaining races dwindled down to just six remaining, isolated kingdoms. They were the Nephilim races that Henry explained were listed as: The Ravens, The Guardians, The Hunters, The Elerie, The Illia, and The Vreka. The chosen few races that had survived the brutal holy culling of the half-angels of the Mortal Realms, tempered in the fires of their own hubris.
Damien immediately sat up in his chair. He had been locked with his troubled thoughts not knowing how he felt at the actions of his angelic ancestors, but something more important was now occupying his brain.
It was time to find out what exact kind of Nephilim he was, so then he could finally get the catharsis he had been patiently waiting for, for so very long.
He could finally now know at least half of what he was, and finally be able to access a cultivation method that matched at least a substantial amount of the magic his heritage bestowed upon him.
He could finally start becoming strong, properly. Guided by an experienced teacher, instead of going off the hopes and good vibes that had consistently failed him.
"So," the young, imperial crown prince hesitantly began as he raised his question, "of these six, which of these races does the imperial family hail from?"
Henry gave a slight chuckle.
"Well this question is going to need some backstory to it, as well as a quick clarification of Nephilim customs," the lord replied. He formed another hand seal and instantly there were six pedestals manifested in the completely dark room.
Gone were the massive continents and lush visuals, the two Nephilim royals were now just sitting in a dimly lit cavern, the six majestic pedestals stood regally before them.
Damien rolled his eyes, he knew Henry had been lying about something. Talking to the tall Nephilim lord had proven to the imperial prince that the taller Nephilim liked to respond with half truths, annoying ass riddles, and straight up lies. Choosing instead to wait for Damien to suss out what didn't add up in what the Nephilim lord was saying.
'But,' the boy admitted to himself with a slightly pained chuckle, 'it does help make this whole mess a little more interesting than frightening.'
Henry bowed his head, "I can see My Imperial Highness has already accurately deduced that there are more than 6 races of Nephilim currently alive," he twirled a finger and a seventh pillar suddenly manifested out of the darkness, finally revealing itself.
But, unlike the rest of the 6 pure opal pillars, radiating a crystal, rainbow brilliance, the new seventh pillar was instead, jet black from head to toe, standing alone but domineering over the others. While Damien was trying to wrap his head around what the black pillar could represent, a great light began to glow in the heavens above. Illuminous could not begin to explain what Damien was seeing.
It transcended every light in the heavens, all except one other.
There was only one other light in the vast heavens brighter than itself, and Damien could tell immediately, with iron certainty, that it was The Almighty.
But, how was there another creature almost as powerful as heaven's chieftain deity? Was that even possible? Was that even fair?
As Damien stared up at the smaller, glorious light, completely transfixed, he began to feel a sort of primal connection to the light. His eyes slowly began to grow in shock as the prince began to realize, it was the same type of attraction he felt towards Sister Hua!
'Or mom, I should say,' he thought passively, glumly mentally correcting himself.
Henry bowed his head in reverence before he began the next portion of his answer.
"No one knows exactly why this happened or what was behind the reasoning," the Nephilim began, "but on one faithful day, the universe itself bore witness to an event that changed the course of all timelines, forever."
The magnificent light slowly took shape, becoming a tall, glorious, godly, shining angelic figure. It was swaddled in flowing robes of pitch blackness that juxtaposed its massive set of six pure gold, burning wings.
In its fingers it held a massive, yet simple black rod that ended in a gentle, silver arched blade.
It was a scythe.
Just like Henry's had, the weapon held Damien's gaze with an iron grip. There was something about that blade. It was so deceptively simple looking, yet it promised a horrifying, unimaginable power along its wickedly sharp edge. The weapon held its power as a hushed whisper, gleamed only in scarce few glimpses from the gentle moonlight that fell upon its blade. Softly yet endlessly radiating death.
Damien had to break his focus from the blade to notice that, also like Henry's angelized form, the great, heavenly being also didn't seem to have any fingers... Well, it did, but that still didn't explain why they were bones. In fact, most of the being's body was just ...skeleton. But... that wasn't correct either, because as it pulled back its deep hood, Damien could see its intensely muscular, humanish body, connected to a skeletal neck.
Then Damien actually saw its face for the first time, making his blood truly begin to run cold.
For a millisecond he could swear he saw the most beautiful male face he had ever seen.
Shimmering platinum, diamond blue eyes that were more intense than any he had ever seen among the Nephilim or angels he'd seen thus far, locked his vision in place. But then, in an instant, the great, heavenly being's face, its entire head, became just a skull.
Deep black, soulless holes stared back unfeelingly at Damien.
Secrets untold hid behind the infinite voids of darkness occupying the place where its once brilliant eyes had been. Truths long lost to time danced surly within them. Each secret trapped there, held within themselves irreparable consequences for all of creation if any, were to ever known by any creature besides itself and The Almighty.
To call the overbearingly titanic oceans of force gently yet domineeringly leaking from every fiber of that being simply heavenly power, was almost an insult to what Damien was witnessing.
Unimaginably pure heavenly energy that granted it the title of The Second Authority, came cascading forth from the great being. And yet, for as terrifying as the great heavenly being was, it carried itself with unmistakable grace and saintly dignity, for it was still an angel of The Almighty.
Not a single blade of grass bent under the weight of the great angel's presence. Not a single stray wind blew to tussle its waves of long, shimmering platinum locks.
It was almost as if the great creature wasn't even existing in the space it itself was occupying.
"Behold!" Henry loudly exclaimed. His voice came resounding through the deep night that had enveloped the room they were in, breaking Damien suddenly out of his stupor, "The Angel of the Lord stands before you! The Angel of Death! The Second Authority! The Defender of the Throne and The Grand Enforcer of the loving will of the Most High!" Henry went on, listing off a great litany of outrageous titles the great being apparently held. "Before you stands the father of Holy Jerriza himself! The first Emperor of Gera! Ancestor of D'Amorn, the 12th Emperor of Gera, whose name you bear My Imperial Prince, as the name of your family's long standing dynasty!"
Henry then appeared before Damien, scaring the imperial prince into falling flat out of his armchair as the lord slowly dropped to both knees before the young prince. The divine Nephilim lord prostrated himself before the young prince in a way that Damien had noticed was only ever done to him. However, Damien slowly noticed Henry wasn't looking at him.
Damien had yet to see any other Nephilim bow to Henry the way Henry was currently bowing, and Damien had long since learnt that Henry and Henry's family commanded almost as much power as any of the Nephilim royalty themselves.
This time, Henry was bowing in the direction of the great, angelic being.
"Before you stands the Great One," Henry said in a loud clear voice, his deep bowing having apparently no effect on his ability to reverberate his voice, "The Oldest of the Angels, the Grim Reaper, the Archangel Metatron, father of the Reaper race, the Nephilim race, your Highness, you yourself hail from. The same Nephilim race, I myself hail from."
Henry finally rose then, and looked down at the awestruck prince who had been flung back into having his mind so thoroughly and repeatedly blown by the information he had just been given.
Damien wasn't sure he was even remembering to breathe involuntarily. All the boy could do was move his eyes in a daze, giving any sign to the taller Nephilim that he was still conscious at all, but still Henry persisted, finishing his answer to the prince's long forgotten question.
"Though every reaper is similarly, as yourself, descended from an archangel, they are not all parts of the imperial, royal, or even noble families," Henry continued in a toneless voice, almost a hushed whisper, "so too similarly, not every member of the imperial, royal, or noble families are of a similar, single, ruling Nephilim race. Thus all Nephilim races are treated as equally important under the holy law of Gera, no matter the status of their angelic forebears."
Damien nodded absentmindedly, that had made sense to the prince so far, but his brain was still far too damaged from processing everything he had seen to respond with anything more.
"The true designation for where a Nephilim fell among those rankings," Henry continued, "was the ratio of their angelic being to their mortal being." The lord gave a wink at Damien's momentarily confused expression. With a playful smile he said, "I never said all of the Nephilim were half human, you know Sire."
As Damien pondered the extent of what that could mean, Henry rounded out the rest of his answer, finally coming to a finish.
"Originally, the ability to enter the exalted state of Angelization, where a Nephilim can ignite with their own innate, heavenly fire, the divine, golden angelic ichor that runs through our veins instead of red blood, wan't accessible to just any Nephilim the way it is today" Henry continued.
Damien could swear he had always bled red, and therefore cast some slight doubt towards the Nephilim lord's words. Then the young prince remembered how right the older Nephilim had seemed to be about everything Damien was, culminating in the same golden, diamond-blue eyes they both shared. His fears began to still. If Henry said every Nephilim bled golden ichor instead of red blood, then he had no shadow of a doubt that sometime after tomorrow, he would no longer have red blood.
"At first," Henry said, pointing a finger into the sky, manifesting a set of scales between them, "only the Nephilim that were at least 60% angelic and 40% mortal could even activate Angelization, albeit it was a very crappy, old version of the transformation. These were the ones who would later become the imperials and royals of their respective races."
The scales arranged themselves in all manners of ratios between their two sides. But only the scales that had at least 60% on their angelic sides, glowed with a soft, purple hue.
"But," the lord said with a joyous clap, "the birth of our sacred empire changed so much of that. Now that the Earthly Host of the remaining Nephilim had sworn loyalty to a single, imperial throne, they were all citizens of the same holy land for the first time. No longer would they massacre each other, now they would progress together!"
Slowly the ratios in the scales without purple hues began to change.
"Now that there were no more individual race kingdoms, but now regent kingdoms, bearing many interconnected states and cities, to maintain the empire alongside the ruling Imperial Monarch, Nephilim of all races and social orders began intermingling and intermating under the new banner of one glorious Nephilim nation!" Henry yelled, great nationalistic pride in the monstrous empire was firmly seared on the lord's fervent face. "And after hundreds of years, this intermingling created a new, evolved 7 Nephilim races. All of whom were now vastly stronger than they were before the existence of the empire. All of whom were now capable of Angelization, not just the royals or imperials anymore. The population of the Earthly Host soon super exploded following the unprecedented era of peace. In order to curb the growing issue of maintaining our secrecy, the empire left its birthplace on Earth and moved to its own private realm."
It was then that Damien finally learned that the "realms" were the "proper" name for galaxies... The Empire of Gera had an entire galaxy... to itself.
Damien groaned in pain. Suddenly, it became very clear how the empire had afforded 12 of these moving, lavish war fortresses.
Damien put his hands up in a sign of defeat, cowering slightly into himself.
"Please, please no more new history, have mercy" the crown prince begged from his retracted, fetal position on the plush armchair, "I can't handle this anymore." His intent flooded from him as a turbulent mass of contradicting emotions, driven by a prevalent mass of fear.
Henry broke out of his almost trance-like state, staring down in raw horror at the state of his suffering prince.
Instantly the Nephilim lord retreated away from his cowering prince, retaking his seat hurriedly, yet maintaining his poise.
The scene faded away, and they were back to the large, glass domed room they were originally in.
Instantly a massive dining table appeared between the two seated Nephilim and the armchairs the two were seated in seamlessly morphed into comfortable, luxury dining chairs seated at the opposing heads of the massive table. Damien noted in amazement that he had no trouble seeing or hearing Henry despite the vast, majestic dining table that had just appeared separating them.
Henry clapped his hand and the faint reverberating sound of a gong could be heard ringing throughout the entire car-house.
Five times it rang, giving low, gentle, vibrating booms.
On the fifth stroke of the gong, 12 dining attendants appeared in the large sunroom. 6 were on either side of the dining table. Each had, levitating over their left hands, perfectly balanced, large plates. Upon each plate, a portion of the meal sat atop expensive jade platters, all hidden under big dazzling silver domes. The attendants' right hands were tucked neatly behind them, at the front of them was a tall, regally decked Nephilim lady in what looked like a cross between chef's clothing and royal garb.
Damien could do nothing but gawk blindly, but at this point, the prince had long since had enough of this. Rolling his eyes he let out a long, hard sigh.
Damien pressed his head into his knees. He just held himself there for a while, not moving, just breathing. Then, hands still shaking, Damien took shallow breaths while he slowly unwrapped himself from his solitary bundle. Undoing the clasp of his shoddy satchel, he began to take out each of the 10 tungsten training balls from within.
None of the attendants holding the plates moved an inch, remaining in upright posture, frozen looking forward. The palpable tension kept them all arrested in place.
None in the room dared to find out what would happen if they upset the imperial crown prince any further.
The meal proctor nervously tugged at her collar as she looked around worryingly. She had prepared a full speech and a fantastic dinner plan that she carefully curated for months when she had been told that she would be working a top secret mission for the empress herself.
At first she thought she was insane, but then many royal Nephilim, accompanied by several Grim-Class Knights showed up at her door in the dead of night to transport her to the capital city, from where the empress, seated upon the imperial throne, guided the entire empire, Eden.
The actual garden of Eden.
It had been gifted to the budding Empire of the Earthly Host to become its capital city by their forebears the Archangels of the Heavenly Host. A congratulations for finally realizing to stop killing each other and instead, work in tandem to serve and praise The Almighty.
Eden was one of the few places in the Mortal Realms that was an actual piece of a place in the Divine Realms that Great Taboo had been instructed to allow to let exist. Eden itself was, like the stories had said, an actual piece of Heaven.
The latent, thick mass of holy energy pouring forth from every molecule of every existing object both animate and inanimate within the holy city, made visiting the capital beyond a privilege for any Nephilim. In fact, numerous religious groups within the Empire of Gera made it a point to have a yearly pilgrimage to visit the capital city of Eden, no matter the cost. Just bathing in the energy of a piece of heaven always had unimaginably positive effects on the cultivation and purity of the Nephilim's aura.
Taking a quiet, slow breath, the meal proctor slowly shifted her golden-blue eyes over to stare at Lord Henry's own, giving a silent but desperate plea for any idea of how to go forward. Henry only raised an eyebrow and slightly cocked his head in return. The lord said nothing but the definite look of, "woman what the hell do you think I can do about this situation that won't make this worse, or get us killed?" was plastered clearly on his face. All the while Henry didn't say a word, not daring to interrupt whatever it was the prince was doing with such practiced precision.
No shred of conscious thought could be seen behind the prince's eyes guiding his movements, he was operating on actions practiced masterfully to the point of becoming instinct.
'Yeah..,' Henry thought to himself, 'not even going to attempt that one.'
The meal proctor just silently gulped and maintained her position, having come to the same conclusion as Henry himself had.
She tried not to let her nervousness and fear show in her ruffled feathers, she always hated how easily her beautiful, large, silver wings would constantly expose how she was feeling against her will. She hated how being an Illia made finding feather products so much harder because everybody knew Illia had unusually delicate wings and whatever! But, what mortified her, was if the prince noticed and took it as a slight against him that her feathers were ruffled instead of being perfectly slicked back at all times! After all it was dress code protocol for all imperial family workers!
The meal proctor clutched her eyes shut tight, she felt she would literally combust on the spot at any moment.
Damien had finished taking out all of the metal orbs, laying them in the shape of an omega before him on the dining table. He splayed out both his hands. Closing them after turning his palms downwards, a soft glow of energy radiated from the prince's hands.
Instantly the balls on the table grew larger and denser, growing from the size of marbles stored in Damien's bag, to the size of apples.
Dropping his hands the balls began to rise simultaneously. They rose to just above Damien's head before stopping, levitating for a moment.
Then the dance began.
There was no other word to use to describe what the many Nephilim in the room were witnessing.
Their prince's eyes were completely closed, and yet, through just reading his aura alone, they could tell he was not only able to sense the position of every ball relative to himself, but also relative to each other as well. It ensured that no matter what complex dip, loop, accelerate, decelerate or fancy movement that any of the balls took, they wouldn't hit the prince or each other.
The balls came to rest in a sort of semicircle behind the prince's head, looking like a halo. Inside the prince's mind he finally breathed a sigh of relief. The training balls offered the much needed ground to familiar territory he desperately yearned for before he could re-attempt to allow anything else about this new life to approach him.
Owning a personal galaxy or however large Gera was, had been far too much for the crown prince to bear.
Damien was broken out of his deep inner trance by a deep, thunderous applause. All of the attendants, soldiers guarding the room, butlers attending to the prince, the meal proctor, and Henry, began clapping in genuine surprise and amazement at what they had seen.
Damien, despite himself, blushed sheepishly in the face of the compliments, but didn't deny them.
"Sire," the meal proctor said, seizing the opportunity she saw to finally introduce herself properly to the future 25th Emperor of Gera, "my name is Lady Michelle Brown, I am an Early Stage Goddess, an executive chef of some of the best restaurants in Gera catering to the most esteemed of Nephilim, and a former Diamond Ranked Captain First Class in the holy armies of Gera." She gave a slight bow to Damien who gave her a goofy wave.
Smiling, Lady Michelle continued. "I've even hosted your own mother many a time my prince," she said with a smile, "but never before have I seen such a performance of such skill for such a young age!" She gushed with admiration. Damien caught Henry silently nodding to himself in agreement with the meal proctor's assessment of the prince's skill in magic control. Henry himself had finally had his own turn to be thoroughly surprised that the prince could even pull off something like that, even if he was trained.
Which was not something he'd been told to expect.
"My prince I must ask," the meal proctor continued with an amused but genuinely curious, inquiring look, "what spell did you use to increase the volume and mass of those tungsten orbs? I was reading your aura signature and you wasted almost no energy in that spell, it was almost 87% efficient." Lady Michelle started getting excited, "I'm sorry Sire, I'm a bit of a magic nerd you see, but I really am stumped, what enchantment are you using to make the orbs dance? Your magic output is far too clean for something you did without using heaven seals or even words of power!"
Instantly she froze, horror at what she was doing was painted clearly across her face. Lady Michelle immediately dropped to a knee, one fist pressed to the ground, the other tucked behind her back.
'Oh no not this again,' Damien wailed silently.
Before she could speak, the prince spoke out first.
"Please Lady Michelle, please get up," he begged softly.
Michelle felt trapped, her anxiety pounding, until she gazed up and saw the fearful young face that was trying desperately despite himself to put up a friendly, inviting front to not further displace the loyal worker before him.
Michelle blushed and rose to her feet bowing her head simply with her hands crossed in front of her.
"His Imperial Highness is too kind," she muttered in thanks, having been spared the awkwardness and fear of retribution.
Damien just chuckled, "no problem, I'm a magic nerd too," the 12 year old boy said proudly, sticking a thumb to his chest. "But I wasn't using a spell to make the orbs grow," he said with a slight frown, "that was alchemy, and I wasn't using enchantments on the balls either, I'm manually controlling the movements of every one of them, including their elevations, with telepathy."
He scratched his head for a second, lost in thought for a bit.
"Although I suppose," the prince ventured, locked onto his current train of thought, "I am using a simple enchantment to make them constantly move forward, then its all telepathy from there."
He grinned a toothy, wide childish grin, giving a firm nod.
"The real fun starts when you have to figure out how to get them to all fly around each other without bumping into each other and sending multiple metal projectiles at your own head," the young prince said, doubling over himself in laughter.
Damien giggled to himself remembering how many times he'd woken out of accidentally knocking himself out while training. Many times, he'd awoke laying in Jessica's lap, head thumping painfully, while she would be silently, intently, reading the magic textbooks and physics books Damien had been able to get from Ma LaCroix to help train him.
Jessica would always claim to not have any interest in the books whenever Damien would ask her about them, but whenever she thought no one was watching, she would be doing her own self training.
Silently.
Damien had accidentally glimpsed her training by herself one time.
Seeing the monster of potential his girlfriend actually was hiding behind the large, exaggerated swagger of a sassy Latina werewolf child, made him so hopeful for her future.
She at least had a chance.
Wiping a slight tear from his eyes, the prince registered that no one in the room had said anything for a while.
Henry's eyes had almost bugged out of his head and it looked like Lady Michelle looked as if she was channeling every last drop of her power to remember her job and not immediately geek out heavily in front of everyone gathered, at the news they had just bore witness to.
The other attendants were still standing in their positions, still unbroken, yet Damien could swear he heard a cough of exclaim from someone in the lineup.
"Your Imperial Highness," Henry approached slowly, "I mean no disrespect at all to your skills, I can accept your exceptional use of telepathy to move the training orbs in perfect control, but when you say you used alchemy to change the size of the orbs, it gives me a little cause for pause." The Nephilim lord smiled to himself at his joke. "Could His Highness give us another demonstration of his alchemy? Maybe a more complex demonstration?"
Damien pursed his lips at the slight, but complied anyway.
At least this was something he knew how to do well.
He had practiced his alchemy long into the night with Ma LaCroix and Sister Hua for many, many months.
Damien smiled to himself, now that he knew that the two women that had trained him were the 1st and 5th most powerful deities in the entire Mortal Realms, the prince felt like showing off.
He knew the exact display he wanted to put on if he really wanted to show his skills off, and the young prince was determined to do just that.
Raising his two palms up and squaring his shoulders, the prince closed his eyes and began to suck in air.
All eyes were on him, none could fathom even blinking before the presentation was done.
After all, the prince looked dead serious.
Damien's hands began to glow rose gold, and from the tip of his right index finger, a small jet of endlessly chanting rose gold fire appeared. It burned with a regal brilliance, chanting in the language Damien now knew to be the language of the Angels.
Henry was floored beyond his wildest imaginations, mouth hanging silently agape, but Michelle could no longer even try to keep her composure.
"Holy Shit!" She yelled in amazement, "how the fuck are you using holy fire! You're not even 13 yet! You haven't even been trained yet!"
Henry was far too lost in his own thoughts to chastise her language, but he brought himself together long enough to give her a stern glare. The meal proctor, esteemed as she was in her own right, bowed immediately, cowed before the anger of the great Nephilim lord sitting before her.
Henry turned back to Damien, softening his gaze as he asked, almost reverently, "how long have you been aware of your angelic power Prince Damien?"
"Hm," Damien thought for a second, thinking back to the last time he'd been able to think in peace without having a whole other person in his head, constantly yapping loudly at his every action. "Since I was about 10 really."
Not acknowledging the gaping fish look Henry was now giving, Damien turned his burning finger towards the table in front of him. Meticulously, the prince burned an intricate diagram of 4 interlocking circles with runes and images adorning them. The prince worked slowly, but masterfully. Not missing a single detail.
After inspecting his work, nodding to himself in satisfaction, Damien clapped his hands together and began letting his aura expand to fill his entire body and emanate from him. Attuning it to the energy of aether flowing around them, Damien began to form an earth seal with his hands. It was a seal that looked like one hand laid flat with the other pointed down the middle of it, pressed into the flat hand's palm.
The mana that Damien's body used as its source of magical energy was finite. This was one of the very first things he had learnt while training the rare few forms of magic Ma LaCroix deemed safe enough to teach him.
Spellwork, in a simple sense, was basically akin to giving a quantum computer an arbitrarily complex instruction set, built in a fundamentally simple way, that could spit out any arbitrary energy cost determined by and known only to the mage themselves and Taboo.
'At least that's how Ma made it seem sometimes,' the prince thought with a slight grimace.
He remembered how even with his SuperComputer ego, his brains had turned to jelly trying to comprehend the complicated, deep lecture in magical theory that had morphed out of his seemingly simple question. But at least he knew how energy cost for spells was determined since there were so many different types of magical energy, both mortal and divine.
He had learnt that every living creature with a soul could perform magic if trained properly or in periods of high stress that usually happen when a fight or flight reflex is prompted.
This was because every creature with a soul possessed an aura, it was another law of the universe.
Despite the fact that there were more kinds of incredibly and completely different magical, and physical energies in Mortal Realms than one could count, both divine and mortal, few things stayed the same across them all. One of these things was that aura was imperative to not only wield these energies, but to also regenerate one's own inner supply of those energies. The size, purity and control of one's aura also determined not only how much energy output a mage could wield, but also how powerful and controlled it would be, and what kind of energy the mage could learn to attune to.
Damien's aura pool was nothing special, but his control of it was what had constantly floored both Ma LaCroix and Sister Hua.
He didn't know why, but the prince knew that his aura control puzzled the two disasters almost as much as Jessica's impossibly huge aura did.
Damien felt inside himself to get a good read on how much mana he currently had saved up through the day. He hadn't really done much training that morning, and since the day had cascaded into the wild coke dream that was currently transpiring, he hadn't used much of his mana and anything that was used had long ago been passively recovered.
Immediately the burnt symbol on the table began to glow a soft rose gold hue. Immediately the tungsten orbs began vibrating, slowly turning from metal into a shimmering crystalline material.
Now all Nephilim within the room were openly gawking, because not only had they just watched the supposedly untrained young boy turn 10 metal orbs into diamonds, he then proceeded to split each of them in half. Changing their chemical compositions in real time, now into levitating balls of water that then all began spinning wildly before coalescing into a slowly spinning ring of water. After holding the water in the air for a minute, it began to snake onto the boy's arm, where it then turned to wood, resting softly curled upon the boy's arm, as if the ludicrous display of magic had just been but a daydream.
Damien was breathing hard as he finally broke the hand seal.
The circle that was once bursting with rose golden energy had died down into a weak glow that finally sputtered to death as the young prince broke the seal. He had bottomed out all of his mana. Damien's brow was heavy with sweat and his body ached and screamed. His muscles were fried and twitching from conducting the flow of so much energy.
None of this even remotely stopped Lady Michelle from practically mobbing the young boy with questions and wild franticness as the presiding meal attendants and soldiers again clapped loudly for their prince's display of what no one could now question was indeed alchemy.
Henry had regained his composure as he watched his prince rest and recuperate from his incredibly taxing display of magic.
The meal proctor had ordered a drink of the purest ambrosia imbued with the freshest mertal to be brought immediately, under threat of extreme violence, to the imperial crown prince to help him replenish his spent mana and recover his overtaxed aura and body.
However, none of this mattered to the Nephilim lord.
He was deeply lost in thought, his mind racing millions of miles per second. The endless implications of what he had just seen was all he could fixate on. Damien, between trying to retreat from the meal proctor's frenzy, regretting his choice to show off, noticed a weird sort of smile forming on the Nephilim lord's face as he locked blue gold eyes with Henry.
Before the prince could ask about the look on his chaperone's face, instantly it was gone, and Henry was back to being all business.
Giving the imperial crown prince a friendly smile he heavily congratulated Damien on his spell work, while apologizing profusely for antagonizing his liege lord.
"Its nothing Henry, serious," Damien said waving his hands in regret, giving a sheepish smile he couldn't help but asking, "do you think this is a good start?"
Henry gave one of his signature belly laughs that Damien had come to understand usually preceded something equal parts fascinating and terrifying.
"My Imperial Prince Damien," he said, wiping a tear from his eye, "we're certainly going to make quite the powerful Nephilim princeling out of you yet, before we present you to your mother."
He gave a warm smile and uttered words that the young boy didn't yet know he desperately needed to hear, "your mother, Empress Hoaquin, wanted you to know how immensely proud of you she is, now we will make her more proud, won't we?"
Damien wiped the tears that had been dripping down his cheeks, giving a firm nod, while his bottom lip quivered.
"Lady meal proctor," Henry said in a calm but demanding tone that silenced the conversation she had started having with Damien about his alchemy, "please proceed with ushering forth the meal." The Nephilim lord gave her a stern glare, staring deep into her eyes, "unless you've forgotten your incredibly high profile, top secret position serving and overseeing the personal meals of the Imperial Crown Prince of Gera himself."
Damien winced as Lady Michelle suddenly drained of all color, silently gaping like a dying fish for only a fraction of a second before she immediately reset back to the imposing, rigid, powerful Nephilim noble that Damien had first seen appear. She proceeded setting the first course of the meal, thanked the prince and Lord Henry for their patronage and understanding, then vanished with her troop of meal attendants.
'Hm,' Damien thought silently, as he distracted himself from having to look at Henry by beginning his meal, 'mildly nice with limits, got it.'