Chapter 5: Chapter 3: Problems & Problem-Solving

Over the course of the next few minutes I subtly guide the crowd of women gathered around me to a series of chairs. During this time I am able to witness a few emotional outbursts by some of the more tense or nervous brides such as a woman named Axiress, who cries and hugs me for a bit when she first reaches me.

I am able to wordlessly comfort her, and she regains her composure rather quickly. This occurs a few more times as well, and each time I am able to momentarily become a pillar of support for someone who has been overcome with emotion by the sight of my momentary confusion.

I do not feel bad comforting those who are distraught at the sight of my confusion, as even I am frustrated by it. Unlike my wives, I do try to keep my frustration hidden from my family, however odd it’s origins happen to be. My inability to remember things from my past limits my ability to figure out what happened to me, since I cannot safely ask questions about what I am certain are the new abilities I’m manifesting.

My ability to hear prayers is something I am internally certain is brand new. As is my perpetually transforming appearance, and my constantly expanding sphere of sensory awareness. I want to figure out their origins, but I know that if I ask about them I risk frightening my wives. I don’t want to do that, especially not this early on in my recovery. I will need their help, and if I alienate myself from them that’d be bad for everyone.

By the time we’re all seated, even those of us who decline to sit in chairs, we’re located in front of a number of the apartments that line the edge of the odah. All fifty-three of my brides are arrayed around me, and as I look around I am able to appreciate my own aesthetic tastes and appreciation for diversity.

My brides are not just human beings. I can see a tiny number of elves and half-elves, and a very small number of non-elven and non-human “Demihumans”; human-like creatures who possess animalistic features and likely have natural abilities that are beyond the ken of humanity. I see a single kitsune; a kind of demihuman that has fox tails and a few magical abilities, a lamia; a demihuman with a snake’s lower body, and a half-dragon woman with bright greenish-blue hair.

“Now that we are seated and I am able to take in everyone’s beauty all at once… I am left almost speechless.” I say, a few moments after we finish taking our seats. This confession, which is an honest one, causes a few of my brides to giggle in delight as they look at me and study my new form.

As I admire the very real beauty of my wives, they admire my body’s dedication to reaching a conceptual level of peak physicality. I can see, hear, and otherwise sense the signs of their arousal. Everything from the quickened beating of their hearts to the smells of their pheromones reveals to me their conscious and unconscious awareness of my masculinity.

“Master… You look different.” One of my brides tells me, simply. She is named Aurgel, and she is dressed in simple rags and wears a chained leash around her neck. Her voice isn’t as monotone as her words suggest it would be, but I can sense that the layers of curious emotion she feels would be harder for other people to hear.

She is a blonde, green-eyed woman and carries herself with a quiet calmness. She… appears to be a slave!

She speaks with a simplistic manner and the truth of her words is noticed by her fellow brides. Several of them, especially those of the group who have non-human traits, have already noticed my changes, but many of the more mundane women suddenly notice the changes as well. I chuckle and grin at Aurgel as I ready myself to openly acknowledge the changes in my physique.

“Thank you, Aurgel. Yes, my appearance is different from how I was before. I am not sure how I looked before I lost my memories, but I have a vague awareness of the fact that my appearance is changing.” I exclaim, softly. This causes my brides to whisper faintly in surprise, as some of them are more shocked that I can sense the changes than they are that the changes are occurring at all. It is hard not to smile at the shocked looks of some of my wives.

“Your awareness of the changes is intriguing…” Whispers one of the women closest to me, at least in a physical sense. She herself is an extraordinary creature, a lamia, and she is also almost distractingly beautiful.

I can hear a note of awe in her serpentine voice, and I can sense her interest in me rising as she studies me. Her name is Serphira, and I do my best to not glance at her. I find her a positively fascinating creature, but also more than a bit distracting. I wouldn’t mind the distractions she’d provide, if I looked at her in private, but for now I need to focus. I take a beat to refocus before I begin to speak again.

“My loves… Allow me to truly and sincerely apologize for leaving you in a state of distress. I wish I could explain what happened to me, but truthfully almost everything I know at the moment, at least as far as my past goes, I know thanks to Stool and Sophila.” I explain, my own frustration audible in my voice. As I speak the looks I get are well and truly sympathetic, concerned, and caring.

“And with that said… There is still work to be done. While I, and no doubt several of you, wish that we could focus first and foremost on my full recovery, that is simply not a luxury that we can afford.” I state, simply and accurately. My somewhat cold assessment of my condition and of the fact that there is still work to be done is met with respectful nods of agreement.

“I believe we can take a few hours today to celebrate the fact that I am conscious again, but afterward it would be good for us to begin working once more.” I say lightly, which is met with more than a few of my wives looking a bit sad. But no one disagrees with me, and for a moment we all sit in contemplative silence.

It is as we sit in this silence that I begin to hear soft voices in the back of my mind. The voices are odd, muffled, and distant at first, but at the same time, I can sense one of the powers within me beginning to explosively emerge and make itself known.

As the power inside of me heats up the voices I can faintly hear become louder and more clear. It takes what feels like a few moments, but I am distinctly aware that nanoseconds at most have passed, not actual seconds before I can actually make out the words I am overhearing. And as soon as I can accurately make out what I am hearing, not one but two separate powers unveil themselves to me: “Worldmind” and “Planeswalk”.

Thanks to “Power Matrix” I can intuitively tell what my new powers do, and both are weighty abilities, though one is decidedly stronger than the other. “Planeswalk” is a grab-bag of extremely powerful travel-based powers such as the ability to understand all languages, instantaneous travel-abilities, and the ability to create portals that anyone or anything I allow can use.

The second power, “Worldmind” is the reason why my perception of reality seems to be slowing down. “Worldmind” is an immensely powerful ability, well beyond any of my currently identified powers. The world around me is slowing down as my mind adjusts to a truly vast amount of information flowing into it all at once, thanks to “Worldmind”.

Simply put, “Worldmind” is a gigantic superpower that gives me access to every single “psychic” and “psionic” superpower in existence, though each of them needs to be trained to reach truly mind-bending levels of individual potency. My subjective perception of reality being slowed for the moment is to give my body a second to adjust to the immense weight and scope of the new powers I wield. I can also feel my intellect growing alongside the number of powers I can purposefully, intently wield.

The sensation of information flowing directly into my mind, from nothing, is an odd one. I can feel my understanding of the material world around me growing with every passing attosecond, and as I look around I can still hear the thoughts of my wives. Other, odder changes to me are occurring at the same time as well.

I glance at the pool behind my wives seated across from me and I can sense what the water would feel like on my skin. This is an odd manifestation of a psionically empowered “Synesthesia” which links all of my senses together in strange but intriguing ways. I look at the long serpentine tail of Serphira and I can psychically sense what it’d feel like if I were to touch it.

“How incredible…” I mentally mutter, keeping my mouth shut as I take in the odd assortment of intersections of my senses.

By smelling the perfumes that linger in the air around me I can physically see scent lines that show where scents originated or even follow the lines to where they are strongest, allowing me to track people by scent alone. Perhaps most frighteningly, because of the way that my powers evolve I am well aware that my power is becoming greater with every passing second.

I wait patiently for time to begin to speed up, and as I do I notice that the speed at which my senses are increasing in range is slowly picking up. At the moment I can easily listen to physical conversations happening in distant parts of the palace, and thanks to “Planeswalk” I can understand them regardless of the languages they are occurring in.

I passively listen to my servants, even while I subtly use “Retrocognition”, the power to know what occurred in the past, to give myself contextual knowledge needed to make sense of the bits of gossip and intrigue I am learning. The act of using one of my psychic abilities takes nothing more than intent, and in the case of a “Cognition” power once I intend to use it I immediately gain the sought after knowledge.

The “Cognition” powers intrigue me. They are immensely powerful abilities that even in their current, limited state of requiring me to focus my powers either on myself or who are within the radius of a small town relative to me, are immensely powerful. And with my powers I can do a great deal. One such thing I can do is going ahead and solving my primary problem; my amnesia.

Out of curiosity, I attempt to peer into my own past using “Retrocognition”. I am unsurprised but still delighted when I feel it working, and I let out an audible but impossibly swift, at least as far as the senses of my brides go, chuckle as I feel my memories coming back to me.

However, in my pride I did not anticipate the potency of one critically important memory; the memory of the moments before I collapsed. This memory fills my mind’s eye and sucks up all of my attention, effectively forcing even me to relieve it as I finally remember what occurred to me to make me the odd being I am now.

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I find myself sitting on the cold, tiled floor of the very room I know I will awaken in, days after this moment. I am powerfully aware that I am experiencing a memory, but that knowledge doesn’t stop me from experiencing the moment in what feels like real-time.

I am inside a spell-circle surrounded by eldritch glyphs. Candles made of the solidified soul-stuff of ancient spirits form a perfect and unbroken circle around me and await lighting. I hear the faint but eerie howling of the spirits whose soul-stuff was harvested to craft the candles.

I am wearing faint blue magical robes that allow even someone untalented with magic like myself to cast basic incantations. And for the sake of my mission today, basic incantations are all I need. After all, if something can be done without the expenditure of grandiose resources like vast amounts of mystic energy, why not do it efficiently?

I study my surroundings, and as I do I begin to mutter otherworldly incantations. Eldritch words pour forth from my lips and the floor at my feet begins to subtly quake.

The candles that surround me are suddenly lit by mystical green fire that is created by transmuting my meager stores of arcana into controllable sparks of creation itself and then willing the sparks to become magical flames. The unnatural fire produces blue smoke which fills the room supernaturally rapidly.

At the same time that the green fires begin to conjure their unnatural smoke, the fires flare up and surround me completely. All around me in every direction is a thick curtain of grass-colored fire that doesn’t feed on oxygen like fires ought to, that dances to the music of my chants. My words are a faint, metaphorical, musical recounting of the commencement of existence, and it is those memories that enchant the flames to dance to the beating of my heart and the trembling of my voice.

I courageously peer into the walls of flames and study them as I feel my own, already naturally scant, reserves of arcane energy beginning to recover from the grueling draining they endured when I created the ritual flames.

All the while my lips have not stopped moving, and I have continued to cast a complex ritual. I am spurred forward by a quiet but knowledgable voice in the back of my mind that is of my own creation.

The voice belongs to a portion of my soul that I have alchemically tethered to an observable manifestation of my magical wavelengths. While I do not possess much arcane strength, what I do have in spades is an awareness of mystical theory that rivals the most learned scholars in the land.

I gained this knowledge by taking advantage of my status as a royal to enter sacred libraries and to cavort with trained scholars. And now this knowledge is what shall fuel my ascension! This knowledge is what allowed me to tether my soul and my witchy wavelengths together in the first place!

The voice inside of me whispers the words I am to utter into a corner of my mind, itself filled with a creative mastery and awareness of verses and hymns of ancient magic older than this very plane of existence.

The ritual lasts for a rather grueling period of ten minutes. I am constantly chanting during this period, and surrounded by the mind-bending green flames that swirl around me. As the ritual nears its climax I feel my own stores of power beginning to crescendo and swell to new heights. And for the next minute my stores of arcane energy continue to swell, not only not slowing but in fact growing at ever-greater increments faster and faster with each passing second.

My power continues to wax and I feel my mind itself filling with alien, reality-warping knowledge. Spell formulas fill my mind, as does an acute awareness that my body is changing to allow me to use forms of magic that shouldn’t and until just now didn’t exist in this world.

My mind races as I gain an intimate awareness of things like “Dovahzul”, and the mighty “Arcane”, types of magic and bodies of magical energy that warp reality with terrifying ease. And a split second after I gain awareness of them, I gain mastery over them, my mind filling with every conceivable application of every kind of magic situated throughout the totality of existence.

A single word flares into view in my mind’s eye. A single word of power, of creativity, and of opportunity. A word that even in the present I am thrilled to remember; “Metamagus”. And not two seconds after this word reveals itself to me, the fires that surrounded me during this eerie process spontaneously die down. Then I proceed to black out, losing consciousness completely.

During this time my body is not idle, even as I sleep. Deep within me a spark has been lit, and a flickering, transient flame is remaking me. The ritual I have performed is a song, a performance that appealed to the cosmos and reminded it of older, more powerful times. At the end of the performance I offered the cosmos a chance to see those times again, by infusing me with ancient power. It seems that the cosmos accepted my offer.

Within the very depths of my being I sense the amusement of the cosmos. I feel a pain unlike anything I have ever felt rocket through my body and scour even my unconsciousness as the flickering but mighty fire within me becomes the vast and powerful first flames of Amaranth. It is this fire that has so utterly transformed me and pushed me onto a long and painful road to omnipotence.

This memory has given me an awareness of who and what I am. And as I begin to place it into its proper context, with the rest of my memories, I gain the power to articulate what I am. A Living God.

More than that already astounding fact, I became a Living God by leveraging my royal status to gain knowledge of the history of the underpinnings of reality, and by executing a scheme of my own design! In a very real sense I created myself, after gaining the knowledge I needed to undergo my own apotheosis.

I chose myself to undergo this apotheosis and I survived. And now, armed with that knowledge, I shall use my powers to rule my kingdom, and expand it as I see fit.

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An entire lifetime of memories flows into me. I remember the face of my father, and the tears of joy my mother shed when I was born. I learn the names of every major region in the empire, and I recall my first time visiting each of them.

From the deserts of Nefer, to the vast depths of the Zizing Sea, intimate knowledge and lengthy memories of each of the regions loyal to the empire fills my mind. I recall my first interactions with Yukimiko and Puteril, and I even recall the conversations I had with each of my brides when I asked them to marry me and become part of the idiosyncratic government of Juttun.

One very important thing I remember is what occurred to me right before I collapsed; I performed an arcane ritual of my own design. A ritual designed to increase my arcane power. And startingly, not only did the ritual obviously work, hence my current supernatural state, but there was one power that I inadvertently attained and awoke before I lost my memories; “Metamagus”.

This arcane ritual granted me a “Spark” that evolved during the time I spent asleep, the first flames of Amaranth. The “Spark” is what I possess in lieu of a heart, and it is a fire that is growing warmer and more intense with every passing second. It is my “Spark” that makes me what I am; a Living God.

During the last few moments I was conscious before I fell into my slumber in the wake of the ritual I performed, I attained vast power and deific-levels of control over magic itself. I became, and am, a god of magic by performing this odd ritual. Now that I have remembered the power I feel it flaring to life within my core, exploding and illuminating the odd soul-space where my powers dwell.

Knowledge I previously possessed but lost when the first flames of Amaranth burned through my mortal body and reforged me is coming back to me. Along with that restored knowledge comes my true, limitless stores of arcane energy, as well as authority over the arcane itself.

Armed with this knowledge I glance at my wives and I can physically see their arcane power seeping into their auras and coloring even the quasi-physical manifestations of their souls. I am able to see the auras of the women in my life thanks to the incredible power of “Worldmind”, and as I read their auras I see how their magical signatures bolster and protect even the weakest of the women I have married.

Even without my full memories I’d be able to tell some of my wives, such as a commoner named Cifris or the kitsune named Terumi, were uniquely powerful beings. Their auras intensely glow and they radiant excess arcane energy into the world around them, very slowly boosting the ambient amount of magical energy in their surroundings. And, to my delight, their eyes widen as they sense me exploding with boundless, literally infinite, magical energy!

“How delightful! Brides who can sense a fraction of my limitless power.” I mentally muse even as I swiftly decide to use my powers to solve my problems while feigning that my amnesia continues to be a problem I must work to overcome.

After all, allowing my wives to feel safe coming to me and establishing new connections without fear of prior baggage may well result in all of us coming closer together. Plus I still need to figure out who to place in which positions as far as the government goes. But if I combine my powers and my wives skills, our combined potential is very literally limitless!

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