Chapter 6: Chapter 4: Knowledge & History

Now that I am armed with my forgotten memories and weighty new powers even the mere act of looking around is enough to add to my encyclopedic knowledge. As I look around what I see when I look at various objects and people is bolstered by my powers.

“Metamagnus” transforms me into a master of every style of magic. One style of the arcane is known as “Spirit Bonds” and by mastering it I gain the power to see the spirits that dwell in and embody everything from buildings to natural disasters. As I look at my surroundings that style immediately unveils its utility.

I can see a vast assortment of spirits in my surroundings. Spirits dwell in the statue-fountain hybrid water features, in the pools they create by spewing water, and even in the seats many members of my harem and I are seating in. I watch them, though not in a way as crass as by actually turning my head and staring at them. Instead of doing that I merely look at them by using my psychic powers to keep an eye on the spirits with extrasensory perception.

---

At the same time as I am doing this, I am quietly mentally assigning a few of my brides to the positions I intend to assign them. This is an exercise in creativity and I am nothing if not creative.

“Sire, do you have any recollection of the way that the government of Juttun is divvied up?” Asks Sellis, one of my wives. She is a beautiful burnette and a half-elf who wields weapons composed of enchanted silverware. Even her outfit fuses silverware and actual clothing to form a rather eclectic look. I turn to her and smile softly.

“Yes my dear, I actually do. My knowledge of things is unaffected by my amnesia. I know that the upper echelons of the government are myself, my empress, my queens, my princesses, and the two military positions; the supreme marshaless and the fleet admiralette. Beyond that how ‘high up’ someone in the harem is depends on context, and is much more subjective than the concrete tiers I just divided us up into.” I state, succinctly. This causes Sellis to smile at me, delighted by my ability to recall at least the basics.

Sellis is one of the people who is quite easy to give a position to. She is obviously going to be my “Imperial Secretary”, my haremette tasked with managing my schedule and, to a much lesser extent, the schedules of the brides of mine who will spend most of their time in the imperial palace.

“Yes sire. Beyond the roles you outlined there are several groupings of roles. There are ‘Priestesses’, who serve as official representatives from major religions or religious groups, there are ‘Mistresses’ who command various orders in your name, ‘Concubines’ who oversee various aspects of daily life like education, logistics, and magic, and four other common designations; ‘Consorts’, ‘Ladies’, ‘Huntresses’, and ‘Imperials’.” Sellis explains, before pausing to take a breath. At this point someone else cuts her off.

“‘Consorts’ could be considered akin to ‘Concubines’ in that they do important work that affects the day to day lives of the citizens, though these roles are also known for their relative stability. ‘Huntresses’ are various skilled professionals who do things like overseeing bounty or monster hunting. ‘Ladies’ are given great power and do important, if ‘Soft’ things. And ‘Imperials’ do basic, but oftentimes meaningful work such as overseeing the education of imperial children or using the arcane to witness events of great importance.” Says the soft voice, which I immediately identify as belonging to Pylia, a warrior-sage from a distant region of the empire.

“And of course there are also unique roles, such as the Executrix, tasked with executing the enemies of the empire. These unique roles, which include the Supreme Marsheless and the Fleet Admiralette as the leaders of the military are hard to fit into broader groups.” I add, expertly. My wives all beam at me as I reveal what I was known for prior to my collapse; my knowledge.

Before my deific ascension I had already selected several of my wives for key positions. Interestingly enough, two of these positions were the military positions I just listed. I glance at my picks for these critically important roles: Rear Admiral Marazine, a blonde woman who has experienced more than a handful of military campaigns herself, and Commodore Kaltherine, a powerful naval leader who descends directly from a bloodline known for its seemingly genetic skill at naval warfare.

I listen as Pylia speaks again, explaining the differences between “Princesses” and “Queens”, which I can tell she is not doing for me but for the less politically educated brides I have in my harem. Her explanation is fairly simple; queens are more politically powerful than princesses, in general, but a princess, who rules over a stable and important region, is more powerful in her domain. Queens rule over important but problematic parts of the empire.

“At the moment there are only two ‘Queens’ within the empire. There is a queen of the Zizing Sea, specifically the part of it beyond the island of Shirima, and a queen of the Mitilan Jungles, the newest major territory to be annexed into the empire.” Pylia, my beloved warrior-sage, explains brightly. I resist the urge to sneak a glance at Serphira, the lamia. She is my desired pick for the role of Queen of the Mitilan Jungles.

I have three brides from this region; Serphira, Acataca, and Xipilli. Acataca and Xipilli are human representatives of the “Tutfils”, an alliance of human tribes native to the region who willingly allowed themselves to be annexed by the Juttun during my mother’s attempted integration of the region. They are opposed by an alliance of tribes who hate the thought of annexation, known as the Bofars.

Serphira is a famed sorceress from the region who serves as the unofficial head of the inhuman creatures who dwell in the primordial depths of the region and who have opted to join the empire as well. She is a truly ancient lamia, and she possesses a mature, alluring beauty that captivates the eyes and hearts of many.

“Princesses wield incredible power in their regions of influence, provided they are acting within the bounds of acceptable behavior as far as the will of the emperor goes. There are also many more princesses than queens. At the moment there are five.” Pylia continues, before I glance at her and subtly pull her gaze towards me with a simple, wordless usage of telepathy. When she glances at me I nod for her to take a break.

“The five princesses of Juttun lord over the following regions; Jurge, Nefer, Shirima, Mifelit, and Senden. Jurge is this region, the capital of Juttun known to some as ‘The Thronelands’, Nefer is one of the newer regions to join the empire and consists of a series of deserts and oases. Shirima is a long-time ally that was partially annexed by Juttun in the wake of a civil war that pit yokai led by oni versus humans and the rare but powerful friendly spirt.” I begin, smiling all the while.

“Shirima has been divided into what is, effectively, two separate nations. One nation is lorded over by the influential and heroic Suosoit family, that is the part of Shirima that is part of Juttun. The other nation, it’s southern half, is lorded over by human-hating yokai with the most famous examples being the dreaded oni-lords. My technical knowledge leads me to believe that defeating the oni lords and unifying Shirima ought to be an immediate priority” I explain, gently.

My words catch the numerous wives I have from this region off guard. Wives of mine like Yukimiko and the woman I have already marked as an exceptional candidate for the role of princess to the region, Miming, gaze at me respectfully and I can sense their agreement. Shirima is a critical part of the empire, and it is also the most likely to eventually fall if nothing changes in the next few years.

“Beyond Nefer, Jorge, and Shirima, lie two other important regions overseen by princesses. These are the regions of Senden and Mifelit. Senden is a mountainous region once home to three separate species; dwarves, mountain elves, and humans. Nowadays Aveer,” I say, before turning and smiling at a beautiful elf dressed in regal but dark attire. “Is the last monarch of the mountain elves, and the last known dwarven families interbred with the human nobility of Senden generations ago.”

“Senden is a region of great historical importance, powerful magic, and advanced dwarven tech. Anyone dubbed the princess of the region will be tasked with balancing the needs of the civilizations there, with the discovery of long-lost tech and magic. It is not a task for the faint of heart.” I explain, all while acting as if I do not yet know who the princess will be. Aveer, the haughty monarch I mentioned a moment ago smiles at me.

Prior to my collapse she and her people agreed to join the empire, so long as they remained the leaders of their territory. I myself was the one who negotiated this deal, and I intend to honor it. In time I believe Aveer will become the princess of Senden, which allows me to honor my word, while tasking a responsible monarch with the stewardship of this important and challenging region.

“Mifelit is a breadbasket, a region that provides cereals for much of the rest of the empire. While some cities dot the gigantic plains near the middle of the empire, the majority of the region consists of rural communities that, when pooling their harvests together, produce a massive amount of food for themselves and the rest of the empire. It is also, unquestionably, the most stable and peaceful part of the empire.” I say truthfully.

Several of my brides hail from this part of the empire and they smile proudly as I talk about their birthplace. This region does matter a great deal and so I need to be thoughtful as I consider who I ought to allow to rule it.

“There are also other regions that truthfully merit princesses of their own. There is the northern reaches of the empire, the land where I believe you are from.” I say even as I turn and glance at Marstrin. She is a pale woman with almost ice-white hair who wears light steel armor that covers her breasts and her legs, leaving her midriff exposed.

“A brutal tundra that produces people with fair hair and fairer skin.” I exclaim, gently. She chuckles at me and nods wordlessly.

“And of course, the region from which Pylia hails, Apothenia, who I believe deserve a ruler empowered by the empire and from the region itself. Many neighboring nations fear Apothenia and the warrior culture of its people.” I state, simply. Pylia, who has been like an assistant in this conversation smiles as she wonders if I will one day create a position within the harem for someone as the representative of the empire to the vassal-state.

“My people are notoriously independent, but I believe that if anyone can convince them to have a princess it’d be you, My Emperor.” Pylia tells me, meekly.

For the next four hours conversation between myself and my wives occurs. And I begin to not-so-passively utilize my powers.

---

I pay attention to my brides and I allow them to control the majority of the conversations that occur for the next four hours. During this time I turn inward again, and I begin to aggressively seek knowledge by utilizing my potent powers.

One aspect of “Worldmind” is that it is remarkable as far as information-gathering goes. I can be fully active in conversation and intelligently respond to the queries of my wives even as I utilize powerful extrasensory powers to obtain valuable knowledge.

I utilize assorted “Extrasensory Perception” powers that fall under the massive umbrella of “Worldmind” to ask valuable questions and determine important pieces of information. The first thing I ask is if “The Creator”, “The Devil”, and “Perandor” are real deities utilizing a power known as “Claircognizance” to answer some of my own questions.

This power allows me to ask questions that can be answered in one word and get accurate answers. By using this power I quickly get answers that I can sense are truthful and accurate. Thanks to claircognizance I am delighted to learn that the three deities who I appear to be linked to are, in fact, real. But from there, things get more than a little bit weird.

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I ask if the deities still hear the words of their mortal worshipers and the answer I get is “No”. I am a master of my own facial features and so I am able to hide my shock regarding this incredibly unsettling fact, especially since various cultures even outside of Juttun worship the Creator and the Devil. All of this is occurring as my wives talk about the histories of their regions and peoples, while I continue to use claircognizance.

I proceed by asking my power if the deities are even still around, even if by “still around” I extend my meaning to include dwelling in their divine realms. A deity’s divine realm is the seat of its power, and a place where a god can dwell for eternity if they wish, undisturbed by anything aside from a hypothetical overgod breaking into their lairs.

The answer I get is another singular “No.”. I am deeply concerned when I hear this, though I also begin to hypothesize more about why it is that I can hear the prayers of the followers of those three gods in particular.

I ask my potentially omniscient deeper self, the part of me from which I learn the answers to my questions, another question regarding imminently important things. I ask is if the three deities picked a successor to bequeath their powers, domains, and “estates”, as it were, to.

I fear this question, because I can sense what the answer is even as I ask it. And when I get an answer my worst fears, in this area anyway, are confirmed.

“Yes.” Is the one-word response I get from my power in response to my question about the three gods. And as soon as I hear that I don’t need any amount of superhuman intelligence to know who replaced the three deities.

It makes perfect sense that I replaced Perandor, after all I am in the eyes of many “The Perandor of this world”. It doesn’t help that it has long been claimed that the imperial family of Juttun is descended from the divinity himself, sired by him and the princess of the peoples who became the builders of Jurge and thus some of the very first citizens of Juttun.

Me being the successor of both the Creator and the Devil makes less sense than me being the unannounced successor of Perandor. At this point, I opt to ask if all three deities are separate beings, and I immediately learn that they are, which only increases the number of questions I have. Still, I know intuitively that if claircognizance gives me an answer it is accurate. I am thorough, and so I ask one more question.

“Am I the successor chosen by the three deities, the one to whom they bequeathed their mantles?” I ask myself, or rather my quasi-omniscient power. Not a second later I get my answer in the form of a word that is both exciting and terrifying. A singular affirmative answer that upends my understanding of the world as I fill with the knowledge that for reasons unknown even to me I was chosen to inherit three truly incredible deific mantles.

“Do the realms of these gods still persist, even though the gods themselves are gone?” I ask myself, reaching into the portion of my soul that is tethered to existence on a deeper level than I can fathom. I smile, even externally, when I realize that the answer to this question is what I had hoped it would be; “Yes”.

In the mind of a god, knowledge itself is a deeply powerful thing. I know now, having learned from experience, that a god who has lost their memories is a much weaker one than one who has all of their memories. And armed with both my memories and knowledge that I the beneficiary of something akin to a trio of divine wills, I am swelling with power.

I know enough about theology to know that the gods of this world are real, existent beings. They are capable of descending to the material plane and interacting with the denizens of this corporeal world. And I also know that they each dwell in realms of their own design, places where they can approximate a sort of localized pseudo-omnipotence and pseudo-omnipresence.

Normally such beings cannot enter the divine realm of one of their peers without the explicit and express permission of said realm’s creator and lord. This rule only applies under normal circumstances, however, and the circumstances of the four realms I intend to visit are not at all conventional.

In this moment the prodigious knowledge I possess of the abilities of the divine comes in handy. Even as my worldly corporeal form chats with my wives I focus on one of the basic powers a god possesses; the power to create and pilot “Avatars”, spare bodies which allow a god to be in more than one location at a time.

In a space between dimensions no less than four bodies appear in the void-like empty space. My senses immediately tether the four bodies to my mind and I gain the power to perceive the black voids they are in. These four bodies are all exact replicas of my own physical form, and they retain the exact same oddity my own natural body possesses as far as having an eternally ascending form that is perpetually crawling towards true, perfect attractiveness.

For only a split second they remain in the liminal folds of chaos-space between dimensions, where the delineations between what is real and what isn’t matter incredibly little. And then they disappear, having appeared just as quickly as they vanish from view, shunted into four wholly separate dimensions.

The four bodies smile as they find themselves inside four distinctive core-rooms of distant, wholly different dimensions. And I will them to begin to study the almost dream-like divine dimensions I have sent them into.

---

The core-room of a divine dimension is a unique area where the power that fuels one of these supernatural spaces flows out from. It is something akin to the beating heart of a deity, as it is a deity’s own eternal essence that supplies the eternal clean energy needed to keep a divine dimension up and running.

When one of these spaces is untethered from the deity who birthed it, something which is possible but also irreversible, at least for the deity who previously owned the dimension, the room continues to function for a few millennia. In this unpleasant state of affairs the dimension is fueled by the dwindling fires of divinity from which it was first forged or last powered.

If another deity happens to enter an abandoned divine dimension, they can claim it for themselves and seize control over the dimension which affords them status equal to that the dimension’s original creator. This also has other, meaningful consequences such as giving them power over the souls that call the dimension home and lordship authority over any members of a god’s legions of divinely powered followers that remained in the dimension.

No less than four core rooms are suddenly entered by the self-made Living God’s avatars. Each of these core rooms has a different and distinctive aesthetic.

One core-room, the core-room of the mysterious and benevolent deity who created the world from which Emperor Grey hails has a simple and paradisiacal aesthetic. This room receives the same amount of sunlight as a beach during a clear day in the middle of the summer.

The floor is covered in a mixture of sand and grass. In the middle of this room floats an orb which the avatar spots as soon as he appears in the place. He begins to walk towards the thing, keenly aware of what it is.

Another core-room, the heart of the divine dimension known as “The Pit”, has a dark and gothic aesthetic. This is the core of the divine dimension that belongs to the demonic deity known as “The Devil”. This room is akin to the darkened interior of an imposing castle.

In the middle of this room, a single monster that has the visage of a scaled, winged, bipedal creature floats beside an orb the color of a moonless, starless sky. His almost draconic wings beat at a slow pace, but one that is enough to keep his intimidating form airborne. When the avatar of the living god appears at the edge of the room the powerful pit fiend tasked with guarding the core gazes at him curiously.

The third core-room that the avatars of the emperor invade is one with a grim aesthetic; that of a mausoleum. This core-room is the core-room of the divine realm once ruled over by the souls of past emperors and empresses of Juttun.

The avatar tasked with invading this realm and seizing control of it was expecting the place to be filled with the souls of his ancestors, and yet instead he is greeted by a cold and empty room where a core the color of disturbed dirt floats ominously overhead. Undeterred by the oddity of this, the avatar proceeds towards the core, ready to do what he was created to do.

The fourth core-room is that of Perandor’s divine realm. This core is inside a vast acropolis overlooking a glimmering city, and the avatar who is tasked with claiming this divine realm is only the second one to actually lay his eyes on a member of a deity’s divine host.

By studying his surroundings the avatar glimpses the divine servants of Perandor, beings who look human but with grandiose wings. They silently float outside of the acropolis and watch the avatar.

None of them move to stop the being when he takes off towards the core of the dimension. Instead, the odd creatures begin to faintly gossip among themselves, curious as to the identity of the being chosen by their master and creator to succeed him as their lord.

All four of the avatars reach the glowing orbs at the center of the divine realms at the same time, untouched and unchallenged by any creatures. They silently touch the cores of the realms in unnatural unison, and their facial expressions change uniformly, twisting into royal smiles even as they begin to hear four divergent messages relaying automated messages recorded a long time ago.

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