Chapter 1: Prologue: The Way Home

I can hear the soft sounds of faint voices as I slide into the employee break room of the convenience store. I listen, intently, as my coworkers skillfully aid customers and I softly exhale as I realize that I really won’t be needed. This allows me to relax as I use one of my hands to open my locker and then slip out of my “uniform” a well-maintained apron with a name tag affixed to it.

I place the “uniform” into my locker, grab my neatly folded jacket from inside the locker, and close the thing before I begin to smile. With this, as soon as I clock-out, I am completely done with work for the night. There is a certain pep to my step that’s usually not there when I make my way towards the console that the store uses to clock in and out. My shift was uneventful and that’s worth celebrating… Maybe I’ll order a pizza when I get home? For me that counts as a bit of splurging.

I place my store ID against the wall-mounted machine and listen as it beeps, indicating that I have successfully clocked out. I quietly exit the room seconds after I hear the beep and I nod at my coworkers as I make my way towards the store’s exit. They nod back and make faces at me expressing their jealousy that I get to go home before they do. I slip into my jacket and smirk as I edge closer to the store’s only public entrance and exit.

It doesn’t slip my notice that the pointed ears of one of my coworkers twitch softly as he subtly turns his attention to a distant shoplifter attempting to pocket some cheap merchandise. My coworker will have fun with that, he’s always had a sadistic side that he can only safely express whenever someone tries to cause mischief or otherwise hurt the store while he’s on the clock. The shoplifter on the other hand… Well, he’ll learn his lesson, and Levion won’t murder him at least.

The store is situated at the edge of the city of Fayetteville. As I dart out of the building and into the chilly winter air, I find myself gazing up at the night’s sky. Thick clouds fill the sky and impede my attempt to peer at any sort of natural beauty. I sigh in disappointment as I begin to make my way home.

The sounds of city life fill my ears as I begin to slowly walk down the street towards my distant apartment. The nosiest sounds are far off in the distance, much closer to the vibrant heart of Fayetteville.

I pull my cellphone out of my pocket and glance at the older device. The screen flashes to life as I gently touch it, and I find myself quickly getting lost in the attention-devouring accessory. As I play with the handy gadget I plug in headphones, and I find myself beginning to listen to a playlist I downloaded a while ago.

After that a flashing notification on my phone catches my eye and prompts me to begin to explore social media. My thumb almost gains a mind of its own as I scroll through half a dozen, battery-killing apps.

I slip my phone back in my pocket before long, all while listening to an acoustic cover of a popular song. It is when I do that that I glance upward for the first time in several minutes. At this point I am closer to the beating heart of the city, and I can much more easily see the few dozen glimmering buildings in the distance.

I am walking on a mostly empty sidewalk, joined by a handful of other people undoubtedly traveling to and from work just like me. We all wear jackets, and some of us have delicious smelling coffee in our hands. I peek upward and I see a few car-like devices hovering not terribly far above where I and other pedestrians are walking.

The not-terribly-distant devices are all shiny things, sleek and eerily automated machines that mix magic and technology to successfully if limitedly defy physics. A smoke-like substance comes out of their exhaust ports, which in those machines are where wheels would be on mundane cars. The machines all hover in mid-air, empty and freakishly still other than the arcane smoke which slowly emanates out of them.

A distant valet keeps a watchful eye on the machine. She is a young-looking gnome with large black eyes and a disconcerting smile on her face who is seated in a balcony-like outing of a nearby building. She is on the fifth floor of the fifteen-story hotel, and she is dressed in an expertly tailored uniform she clearly pays a pretty penny to maintain. I turn my gaze back to the automated cars after looking at the gnome and smile.

The machines are pretty, even if there is something mildly disconcerting about how automated they are. I’ve seen devices like them, magically keyed to their owner’s soul in ways that require surprisingly little actual magical power and can be quite handy in a pinch.

As a kid I always wanted a machine like that, one that mixed magic and technology in imagination-stoking ways. But… such dreams are unrealistic. And a few years of living in a shoddy apartment, working a job that only pays above minimum wage after earning a raise has a way of wearing down unrealistic people with fantastical dreams.

I continue my walk and after a few minutes I am far from the classy hotel where the floating machines were. At this point I am on a narrow sidewalk in a residential part of the city, and I am entirely alone. I can hear city life, like traffic and distant machinery, mixing with the much closer sounds of television, cooking appliances, and muffled conversation.  

I glance at my surroundings, and I see all sorts of people going about their business in their apartments. I can see an orc couple watching tv, their backs visible to me, and their laughter audible as I walk past their second-story window. I can see a solitary human male entering a nearby apartment building, wearing the police uniform he was required to wear on-duty.

I also see a few dragonoids, bipedal dragon-like humanoids, seated outside an apartment across the street, on plastic chairs. They leer at anyone who comes close and try to scare off anyone who doesn’t live in the building for reasons that boil down to a strange instinct they possess. And annoyingly, it appears to be one that their landlord is apparently fine with. I sometimes wonder if whoever owns their building is also a dragonoid…

I’ve spoken to the quartet in the past and found their attitudes thoroughly unpleasant, which is why I’m walking on this side of the street. They glare at me as I pass them by, but they do not say anything to me. Each time I walk home from work they are out there, so in a sense passing them by is part of a tradition. It is not a tradition that I like or anything, but there is comfort and familiarity in tradition that gives it staying power all its own.

After nearly half an hour of walking I find myself close enough to my apartment complex that I can see the collection of buildings in the distance. The building is not strikingly different from other buildings but as someone from there it stands out in my mind’s eye due to it being where I go each night to go to sleep.

I am now entirely alone and so when the ground under my feet begins to become illuminated by some strange light in the sky no one else is around to notice it. I stop and look at the glowing floor, before mustering the courage needed to look up and see something that freezes me in place. In the sky above me is a mobile beam of light that is streaking towards me.

The light is a strange violet thing racing towards me and crossing what must surely be an incredibly vast cosmic distance at staggering speeds. It is streaking towards me and as it gets closer and closer to me I can see, in the corner of my vision, that the floor beneath me is glowing even more intensely than it had been just moments ago and therefore the floor was now even more interesting, and terrifying, to look at than it had just been.

I spend a moment stunned by this strange event, and therefore rooted in place, and as it turns out that is too long for me to be frozen in place. Before I can move and dodge the light it has crossed a distance that I cannot imagine I could truthfully fathom, and it is close enough to dye the entire area around me in an otherworldly violet glow.

I can almost admire how pretty it is even as it streaks into me and hits me with more force than I imagined could possibly be generated by something. I am knocked to the floor by the powerful light even as I feel my consciousness slipping.

---

The cosmic light that slams into the young man and knocks him unconscious seeps into him even as he lays on the sidewalk. His unconscious mind is filled with the cosmic power of the otherworldly radiation. As he drifts about in a dreamless state of unconsciousness his mind and body are warped and altered by the cosmic energy now infusing his every cell.

The strange young man is turned into an impossible creature in a subtle but extremely real way as ascendant and cosmic energies infect him. He is destined to only spend a few moments unconscious, but these moments will alter the course of not only his entire life but also the course of history.

His body begins to adjust to the powerful cosmic energy merging with his every cell. This impossibly powerful energy beautifies him, filling his muscles with absurd, comical amounts of power as well as ironing out physical and aesthetic imperfections.

He goes from being an average looking young man with thin muscles and a mildly tan complexion to a much taller, Adonis-like figure possessing aesthetically desirable muscles and actual physical power that needs to be seen to be believed. Curiously enough, this represents the activation of the simplest of the perks he now possesses as an unbelievably mighty cosmic god: that of beauty, which is something he possesses due to his unparalleled mastery over the domain of lust.

While he lays unconscious, in the distant skies above even Fayetteville’s most impressive miniature skyscrapers, a city-sized starship begins to form. This sleek, impossible machine is a shiny silver thing constructed by otherworldly mathematical formulas that are so advanced that they can change reality whenever they are used by the very few ascendants intelligent enough to know them.

The spaceship is a classy vehicle, though one of a size that would bewilder any inhabitants of this world if they laid their eyes on it. Fortunately for everyone the vehicle came into existence [Shadowblanked] and [Spectral Formed]. These two status conditions are the result of [Major Sanguine Powers]: a type of ascendant power used by sanguinarchs; shadowy, god-like vampiric creatures who feast on blood, souls, pleasure, and other, stranger fonts of power.

One of the powers, [Shadowblank] allows the vehicle to be undetectable to anyone short of a cosmopotence. The other incredibly handy power that will surely save lives and prevents objects from colliding with the massive piece of technology is [Spectral Form], which grants the starship intangibility without affecting its ability to affect the physical world. By combining those powers the ship can loom imposingly over the city without affecting things like planes or flying cars and is also able to avoid being seen by anyone but those whom the ship allows to see it.

The ship slowly stirs to life in the air above Fayetteville, even as the body of the young man on the floor begins to slowly regain consciousness. As he does his brain is ultra-charged, and a small corner of it becomes intrinsically linked to the stranger ascendant power sources that exist, which are sins and domains. He begins to gain an intimate awareness of instances of the domains that he now possesses power over, as well as all eight of the deadly sins, which he also has power over.

Elsewhere in the cosmos new space is generated spontaneously but not randomly. In the depths of the 6^th circle of the quasi-mythic Over-Hell which connects every hellish dimension in the particular multiverse where this journey begins, a small corner of the impossibly vast city which makes up the circle, Dis, is claimed by the immensely powerful new ascendant.

This fragment of the city is originally only the size of a few city blocks, but the process by which the archdemon who has unknowingly claimed it has done so is a transformative one which stretches the city blocks now claimed by him and makes them the size of a small galactic cluster. Reality, even the sort of reality which makes up the Over-Hell in the first place, is not immune to the vast power of an ascendant being, especially an impossible five-fold ascendant creature.

Five city blocks become well over fifty trillion city blocks, all of which are eerily abandoned and awaiting their one true lord and master. They are filled with infernal power, but even this fiendish lair is unable to do much if no one lives in it.

This is also far from the only space in the multiverse to become the property of the newly ascended being. On the other side of the multiversal cosmos from the mythic Over-Hell which runs underneath every hell-dimension from the Nether to the Nine Hells, is a vast aetheric sea on which float the divine homes of cosmic gods; beings that are to gods what gods are to the weakest humans.

In this impossibly large sea, a brand-new vast demesne is formed and tethered to the soul of the newest ascendant in the multiverse. This land is beautiful and is easily as big as a continent on the outside. On the inside of this region, it is as vast as a universe, and it teems with beautiful architecture and angels, formed from the excessive energies released in the wake of their god’s ascension. These angels are only partially formed lifeforms, coming into existence, and then immediately freezing in place, lacking the final few elements of life needed for them to come to true and complete life.

These stunningly lovely and incredibly powerful beings will only come to life when their lord comes and visits their birthplace. The day that he does they will eagerly vow to serve him, recognizing him as their creator and master.

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One final space is created from the powerful energies that slough off the newly ascended young man. This space is the oddest of the three newly created or claimed areas and it is an afterlife created to house an untold number of souls once they die, even from distant universes.

The newly formed underworld starts off as an unbelievably massive cavern, one that easily dwarfs the size of entire galaxies. This vast, empty cavern is a strange afterlife intrinsically connected to the young man who is slowly regaining consciousness.

The unimaginably vast cavern quickly begins to draw souls to it, people from across the local universe and its three closest neighbors. It attracts those who have perished but possess no other place to go.

They find themselves drawn to portals that appear in front of their ghostly spirits. These people appear within the empty cavern, invariably so far from each other that all the first people drawn into this afterlife either appear next to people they knew who died at the same time as them or they appear next to no one, alone but aware that they are in a mysterious afterlife, and they should make the most of that.

All manner of creatures, from dragons to elves to androids appear in the afterlife, and all of them quickly find themselves grateful if a bit confused about the fact that they are not simply nonexistent. In many ways they are more aware of the powers and nature of the lord of this afterlife than the lord of the afterlife himself is, as the souls sucked into the afterlife are granted immediate awareness that someone is the ruler of this place and possesses complete control over it, which is something that the actual ruler of the place himself is oblivious of.

The very second that the souls appear in the plain afterlife their minds are filled with visions of the impossible beauty of the divine realm of the lord of the underworld’s creator. At the same time, a minor echo of this mesmerizingly beautiful divine realm is created in the middle of the immense underworld, a gleaming metropolis capable of supporting more people than live on the world of Ricardo’s birth.

Nevertheless, Ricardo can immediately begin growing stronger since his vast afterlife is drawing souls into itself. Every soul lured into the afterlife is freed from the shackles of whatever afterlife, or even oblivion, they were meant to go to but in exchange they transmit incredibly tiny portions of their energy and power to the lord of this blank afterlife. This unusual font of power blends aspects of three more ordinary power sources; worship, souls, and domains.

Each power source that an ascendant can use is something that empowers them permanently but in tiny amounts. Ascendants who gain power through the possession of souls gain a small amount of power based on how many souls they possess and the individual power of each of the souls in their possession.

A wellspring of power like an underworld collects the souls of the dead, protects them, directs them to worship and admire the lord of the underworld, and harvests tiny amounts of their power to transmit to the lord of that specific dimension. Underworlds also act as an instance of the death domain and thus transmit domain power to that god as well. This happens even when the lord of an underworld is unaware that they are the master of such a mighty thing.

Ricardo does not even realize that he controls an afterlife as he opens his eyes and begins to curiously study his surroundings. The power of a cosmic god is vast indeed.

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I quickly stir, somehow aware that only moments have passed since I was hit by the light. I am laying on the sidewalk but I am also completely unharmed, and I am not in pain which is something I’m personally happy about.

As I begin to get up off the floor, I can feel my head dully throb. As I wince, I begin to feel my knowledge of my surroundings growing in strange ways… On a purely physical level I feel that my senses have grown sharper than ever before, and are indeed actively expanding with every passing second, but my knowledge of my surroundings hasn’t grown in just physical, understandable ways.

I can hear a dull, monotonous voice in the back of my mind. This voice is an automated thing, and it reads off a vast list, saying things like “Queen Grimhilde is envious of the beauty known as Snow White. Sin: Envy.”, and “Marcus White is in love with Christopher Rodger. Domain: Love.”, over and over.

The voice is saying trillions of things at once, and each thing it says fills me with a smidgeon of energy and power, as though each time it speaks it is injecting me with incredibly small amounts of remarkably fast-acting caffeine. As I listen to it I can feel my awareness of what it is saying increase with every passing instant.

I can hear the voice describing eight distinctive types of sins, and many more domains. The eight sins are the seven usual deadly sins: lust, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, gluttony, and pride, as well as one more odd one: despair.

There are many more domains being listed in the back of my mind, though curiously enough lust manages to be both a sin and a domain… Some of the domains include stuff like knowledge, life, love, and war. Other domains feel more esoteric, like magic, the four classical elements, and fertility.

The more the voices speak the more energy I begin to derive from their odd words. At first I only get trickles of energy from each of the voices, but after a few moments pass I realize that I getting more energy than I’ve ever felt each time a new voice is added to the impossible chorus.

Eventually my awareness of the voice increases. I begin to hear soft whispers that differ from the almost mechanical announcements that relate to my domains and sins, whispers which suggest incredible things. One of the voices, a voice that I quickly identify as belonging to the domain of death, tells me that souls are being moved from distant universes to a location it only identifies as “Ricardo’s Afterlife”.

This voice also whispers that I can transform such souls into my “Angels”, “Demons” and even “Vampires”, all of which is stuff that I am aware is straight out of mythology books. But, at the same time I am keenly aware that a long time ago the people of Earth thought elves and fairies only existed in fairytales and mythology…

Hearing these voices mentally staggers me for a second, but this time I manage to recover from being shocked and I even chuckle. I’m unsure whether this voice is telling me real, trustworthy information, though an alien instinct tells me to trust it… I glance at the sky once more and feel my eyes widen as I see another new, massive object in the night’s sky: a gigantic starship.

I look at the truly massive silver object and I feel my mind begin to stretch and split as I inexplicably begin to connect to and interface with the celestial object floating over my hometown. This process only takes a split second but to me it feels like it takes several minutes.

Before I can fully piece together what is going on I find my mind’s eye view split into two: one mental theater of mine is focused on my physical body and the other can perceive what must be the interior of the spaceship floating over the city. The part of my mind’s eye focused on the interior of the spaceship can see what I instinctively know is a command deck, and as I mentally explore it I can feel my familiarity with the vehicle growing in leaps and bounds.

I have no idea how this possible, but my enhanced mind is telling me that the spaceship and I are one and the same. I attempt to nudge the spaceship forward, doing so with the same amount of effort it takes me to take a step when I am in the middle of a walk.

I smile when I see the spaceship move, albeit incredibly slightly. Without the enhancements to my vision that I am still attempting to mentally process I would never have been able to see how slightly the ship moved, but I know for a fact that it moved. I can sense it, in the same way that a dancer can sense when they’ve shifted their weight from one foot to another.

“What the fuck…?” I ask, softly. The words are blunt, but my actual tone is one of amazement and joy. I experiment with the ship some more, and as I do I gain greater and greater awareness of it, even as I begin to move my physical body towards my apartment. I slowly realize how easy the ship is to move, and as I move it around I begin to be able to experiment with its abilities.

The ship is a fully equipped, immensely powerful vessel. Powerful forcefields occasionally glow and reveal the nature of just one of the defenses that keep the vessel safe. They are concentrated around massive cannons, devices known to me as “Unmakers”, and other important parts of the machine hovering in the sky. I can feel the cannons as keenly and sensitively as I feel my own fingers, and if I wanted to, I could fire them as easily as I could make a fist.

I can sense something else as well… Not only is the ship able to make use of powerful abilities, so can I. I can instinctively tell that I can do anything the ship can, on either a smaller scale or a much bigger one. The feeling is so weird, but it’s also undeniable. I know, in the same way that I knew to breathe as a kid, that I can do what the ship can do…

As I continue to walk towards my apartment, I take stock of the changes that have happened to my body. I find my body impossibly light and far easier to move with than it was before. I feel faster now, and more dexterous, and with each step I take I gain increased awareness of how different I am in the wake of getting hit by that light. I only wish I could see myself, my entire body… Thankfully, it only takes me a few moments to figure out how to get that wish!

Everything about me is supercharged. By making use of “My” ship, I can study my surroundings in great detail and even look at myself through the sensors onboard the otherworldly spaceship. When I look at myself, I can see the strange… Adonis, I have become. I see every centimeter of my tanned, cooper-like skin and the muscles I have only just acquired that radiate power.

As I study my body I almost don’t consciously notice the sounds of some of the people in my apartment building beginning to leave the apartments they were in, as well as the sounds of soft, muffled music. When they begin to walk in my general direction I quietly and internally cuss, even as I reach the door leading into the building and tap the code that’ll unlock the door.

I listen as the door unlocks and I step into the small hall leading to a nearby elevator, located just past several mailboxes built into the wall. The warm hallway in front of me is connected to both the few apartments on the first floor and the elevator and is not fully visible to me from the entrance into the building. A man and woman my age giggle, drunkenly, as they emerge from the part of the hallway I couldn’t see, tipsily kissing each other.

The man is in a simple suit, like he works at a bank, and couldn’t change before coming to what must be a party the college kids living in my building are throwing. The girl is dressed in some restaurant uniform. She and the man are passionately kissing, but when the man’s eyes open and he glances at me I see his eyes narrow and I hear one of the voices in my head whisper to me.

“Nathaniel Lee is envious of Ricardo Rafael. Sin: Envy.” The voice tells me, and I must stifle a chuckle. I subtly glance at the man, just to see what would happen if I do, and when I do I feel my mind fill with knowledge about him. I can recall a thousand and one facts about Nathaniel, from his favorite color to his deepest and darkest fears, as well as knowledge about the man’s career. The sensation is odd, but I also hear the voice related to the domain of knowledge tell me that I just learned about him and that even that act seems to be enough to give me a rush of energy.

I expertly avoid being caught looking at the man and I walk to the elevator before I silently press it. When I do I hum to myself, which causes the girl to stop kissing Nathaniel and turn to see me. I don’t manage to suppress my smile when I hear a voice belonging to the sin of lust explain to me that “Rachel White” feels lust towards me. I continue smiling even when the elevator reaches me and I step into it.

As the elevator shuts behind me, I begin to wonder about the limits of my abilities. And as I begin to wonder about them, the voices in my mind reveal how eager they are to help me learn.

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