Damien was in shock right from the moment the attack began, and that was how he continued on until it ended, which... If he was looking at it well, didn't take long.

He watched as Vanis's mother appeared right before them, slipping through the dome of protection that had been laid over them right at the moment when the attack had began.

"Gray," Damien sent mentally, which was a struggle because he really, really wanted to just scream right now. "What just happened?"

The gray being chuckled. [Congratulations, you just witnessed an Ascendant battle, which, if I'm being honest about this, was pretty tame by Ascendant standards. Nevertheless, you witnessed it, and even survived with all your physical and spiritual faculties intact.]

"What do you mean by 'tame'?" Damien said with widened eyes. "You call that tame?! Gray, a patch of space the size of two large continents is still fluctuating from the powers unleashed. How can that be tame?!"

Damien couldn't understand. Sure, the battle between Xirou and the Aveanii Divine King was more visibly destructive, wiping out a large part of the continent they had escaped from, but that fight couldn't be compared to this one, especially as thousands of fleeing people had been consumed by Shadow, probably never to be seen again.

[Yes, Damien. It was tame.] Gray said, and the his voice turned grim. [i hope you don't witness a true Ascendant battle until you're ready. Those are things even Divine kings scarely survive.]

"But the Aveanii Divine King did though," he pointed out. "They managed to stand up against Vanis's Mother, who's a freaking Ascendant, by the way!"

[First of all, that fight was between stealth specialists, which means it couldn't get as much boom boom as with the more forceful elements.] Gray said. [And second: Narkyra Verrille was holding back.]

Damien frowned. "Holding back? Why?"

[Because of her son, Dummy,] Gray said, and then because he was probably feeling abusive, added a mental knock, which made Damien hiss, rewarding Gray with a mental middle finger. [Had she gone full-on Ascendant mode, I doubt anything within a few light years of here would have survived, talk less of a few Spirit lords who were practically beside her. There's a reason she called of the Sun Spirit.]

At this, Damien's eyes slowly turned up towards the bright blue orb hovering in the distance. At first, he had expected to feel some part of its aura, its might, but he couldn't feel anything. Nada. It was like the Sun spirit only existed in his eyes, not in his senses.

"I didn't know she had the authority to command the Sun Spirit," Damien said grimly in his mind. "What kind of power does one need to command the Sun?"

[Oh, no, she didn't command it,] Gray snorted. [That wouldn't have gone well for her, or anybody else for that matter. Narkyra couldn't be seen publicly appealing to the sun spirit, it would have defeated her purpose of appearing mad and intimidating. No, while she was demanding outwardly, a private conversation with the sun spirit was also going on, and that was the one that yielded results.]

Damien took that in stride. He didn't know much about Sun Spirits, and that was something compared to the fact that he hadn't even known of their existence until but a few hours ago. But what he'd learned had led him to believe a Sun Spirit took orders from no one. To see the contrary would have changed how he viewed those Celestial behemoths.

"So, Shadow..." Damien said, his mind whirling. "I didn't know it was that powerful."

Seemingly already understanding what he was going to say, Gray continued without any pause.

[Shadow has less influence when there's light around. And look at the sky, Damien, it is mainly dark, the domain of the grand element of Darkness. Shadow is a subset of darkness, more a child of light and dark. And while it derives its existence from light, darkness grants it more power. A shadow wielder is more powerful at night than in the day.]

"Hold on..." Damien said. "Darkness? The darkness element is a Grand?"

Damien had met a lot of people with stealth affinities, and while he wasn't overly familiar with the dark element, he'd fought against a few of its wielders. And honestly, none of them had done anything to warrant any admiration for the element.

[Yes, it is,] Gray confirmed. [Darkness pervaded reality right before even Creation was born, and even before some of the other grand elements had come to be. But it, alongside its twin element, light, lacks the... Esotericness granted to the others, which has somewhat lessened it's weight in reality, making it a very nigh-common affinity to get, just like light.]

"If it's a grand element, then why are it's wielders as weak as the common element wielders?"

[Having a grand element is a boost, not a key to greatness. You can see that see that in your fight with the Shadow Hall Space wielder who attempted to capture you. A true Space wielder wouldn't have needed six more Spirit lords just to hold you. Space is a Grand element, just like Destruction. And while it lacks the sheer destructiveness of your element, Damien, it still has its specialties.]

Damien nodded, taking the hidden warning to heart. In his mind, he made a note not to underestimate any grand element.

He was just about to ask another when something crossed his mind and his eyes widened with fear as he turned towards the Ascendant.

But when he looked, there wasn't anything untoward that made it seem like the woman had taken notice of his lapse in concentration, or the discussion that had taken place.

[Don't worry, I tweaked time a bit around us. The Verrille Ascendant noticed nothing.] Gray assured.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Damien raised a mental eyebrow at Gray, questioning the validity of his claim. He knew he shouldn't be doing that, but he just couldn't help it.

[Pfft, while the woman is a good stealth specialist, she's nothing before me,] the little gray figuring finished with so much smugness Damien had to be petty back. He gave back a mental knock.

[Ouch!] The little grey man yelped, even though he probably didn't feel the pain. [Rude.]

"Yeah, yeah," Damien wagged a mental tongue at him, and then he stopped, his brows creasing. "Say, Gray, what happened at the end? I didn't see the fight because, well, they were moving so fast there weren't even blurs, but I doubt even a lord realm wielder would have failed to catch that word at the end."

Damien hadn't just heard that word, he'd felt it. A sort of rejection, like reality itself wanted you gone and actively worked to do it. He hadn't felt such an intrusion before in his life.

[As you know, the true forms of Spirit Kings are made from essence. A mind made body, so to speak,] Gray began after a brief bout of silence. [Above all else, essence responds to will. The greater the will, the faster and greater the response. What the Aveanii should have instantly recognized was that fighting an Ascendant, one who wields the same element as you and also has an obviously greater will, was a stupidly bad idea.]

Gray quieted then, the silence dragging for some seconds. And when Damien opened his mouth to persuade more answers, he continued.

[What Narkyra did was command the essence that constructed the bodies of the Spirit Kings to unravel, which then bared their souls to the world. A death sentence.]

"Why's that?"

[The soul is a sacred thing, a container for the true existence of a person's being. There is a reason why it is the deepest layer of existence, protected by both the body and Spirit. Once a soul is unveiled to the world, deprived of its natural protections, a sort of contamination happens where all the ambient essence saturating reality mixes in with it. Only an extremely few people have been lucky enough to survive this, and the rest?] He shrugged. [Well, you can see what happened to the Aveanii Kings.]

Following behind as Narkyra led them down the docks, he finally understood why Gray had explained how powerful the soul element was.

He hadn't been the recipient of the Ascendant's command, yet he'd felt the effects nonetheless, at least a backwash of it. To understand that he could one day be in the shoes of those Spirit Kings, put a great deal of fear in his mind. Afterall, his astral image had been constructed with the essence of destruction.

Grimly though, he knew that dwelling on that was a sure way to lose his path and live in a constant, perpetual fear. No, Damien didn't want that. He'd already been defeated once, and to be accepting, that was a waking call.

He wasn't all-powerful, nor was he invincible. He was liable to suffer defeat through betrayal as much as a simple beat down, and given the battle he'd just gotten out of and how everything had played out, it was getting more and more likely that the latter was more certain.

Damien had once vowed never to let anyone treat him like some pawn ever again, and despite all he'd sworn and threatened, he hadn't done anything to enforce that rule.

Solaris had used him to further his conquest, using Damien's hostility as fuel to further rile up the Great War.

The great families, Aelar, Yuseria, and even Halar, who was stated to be the simple one, had all thrown him under the cart if it meant they didn't have to battle Solaris. And even though it stung him a great deal, he still understood. If they were brutal enough to betray the Fyre's, who'd been among their numbers right from the start, who was he to complain? The power Solaris wielded was something that didn't just make them wary, it terrified them. Damien might have been a future threat, sure, but Solaris was a present one, and Damien knew which would be easier to take down.

He wanted that.

Not just the power to take down his enemies, he wanted the power to make them think twice before even thinking of attacking him.

Moving to the Lese Worlds, Damien had been told countless times how he should behave lest he incur the wrath of someone more powerful and be made a slave. And while he understood that, he knew one ultimate thing: power absolved everything. If he had the power to enforce it, no one dared contradict.

"Okay Gray, you can take down,"he waved his hands as he turned his focus on the rest of their group. "Whatever it is you put up."

Gray gave no verbal confirmation but Damien sensed it as whatever was put up came down, like reality righting itself. Even Narkyra sensed it, judging by the brief frown she had on her face and the way she calmly looked around, but she must not have known where the abnormality came from, because soon enough, she turned back to their group.

"Come," she said. "I have no doubt most of you are distraught from your recent ordeal, and I don't blame you. Fighting a Spirit King while still a Spirit lord is one unfortunate thing, but having to do that whilst in the middle of a clash between Divine Kings is a whole other kind of nightmare." She pressed a fist to her chest. "On behalf of High House Verille as a whole, I apologize. The troubles of my family should never be endured by another, and I assure you, compensations will be made to your various houses."

Damien looked around, taking in the others of their unfortunate group. Now that he wasn't fighting for his life against a Spirit King or escaping the ambush of another, he finally took in who still remained with them.

A man stepped forward, looking Middle aged while radiating the aura of a Spirit lord. He bowed to the Ascendant. "Ghorah of House Derker thanks the Primarch for her commiseration, but without the aid of Young lord Vanis and our saviors," he gestured at Damien and Keilan who stood behind the entire group. "We surely wouldn't have made it out alive."

On his part, Damien fought not to cringe as the Ascendant's crimson tinted eyes turned towards them, seemingly taking in their existence for the first time.

The woman cocked her head to the side, like she was listening to something the rest couldn't hear. "Damien and Keilan, is it? Your unusual arrival has earned you a great deal of thanks from my family and I'm sure, the others represented here."

Damien breath hitched as the woman blinked before him, teleporting before he'd even registered her disappearance.

"Say, how did you land in an Aveanii outpost?" Crimson eyes locked down on grey and blue.

"Mother, don't intimidate our helpers," Vanis's voice came right from behind her, out of sight. "They don't know how they landed there, and neither do we. But we think the Aveanii must have been up to something in that outpost that was powerful enough to interrupt a gateway passage."

"Hmm," the woman grunted noncommittally.

"Thank you," she said. "Wherever your path leads you, know that you can always call on High House Verrille should you need assistance."

Thankful that the intense scrutinization was gone, Damien opened his mouth to thank the woman when Vanis interrupted again, stepping around his mother.

"If you don't mind, mother," the young man said. "I would like to invite them to stay with us, at least until they are able to find their own way."

Narkyra said nothing, simply looking at her son, which made the man sigh. "Fineee," he said. "I simply don't want them to fall into any unfortunate... Situation, especially as they're new. You know how Lese is."

"I do not object," his mother said, and then gestured at both Damien and Keilan who stood there looking at the two with confusion. "Of course, you'll have to ask them." She said to Vanis, who then turned a questioning look to both brothers.

Damien look at Keilan, getting a grunt of affirmation from him.

"Gray?" He said mentally, while making sure to keep an outwardly straight espression.

[I do not see an issue with this,] Gray assured. [You have sown good karma by rescuing them, and I think Vanis is trying to pay back that debt. You should take it.]

Damien mentally grunted, and then turned his full focus back on the Verrille nobles.

"We'd be honored to accept your invitation."

Vanis smiled, giving Damien a nod, to which he reciprocated.

"Great!" Narkyra said. "Gather around, let me save you all some stress by portalling you to your various houses," She said just a multiple portals began forming