Wish upon the Stars chapter 1025

 Once I took my seat on my throne, I called for my cabinet. I had to admit, it was a cool feeling sitting up above the throne room, looking at at the rows of bench seating filled with my subjects. I had Archie fly out to get them, and once he was gone, I couldn’t help but turn to Zeke. “So…how the hell does this work? I’ve been in Bethy’s Domain before, and seen her use it, but like, how much space is this taking up in the real world?”

He waggled a hand. “Complicated. It’s not…it’s not like a portal, really, more like a whole bunch of space shoved into a very small area. Domain’s are like shallowings, they extrude partway into the Void. Not far enough to run into issues on that side though. Domains don’t fully enter the Void until you reach divinity. At which point you join with them and create a world. The process is more complicated than that, but that’s the broad strokes.”

“So this Domain, despite being HUGE, is only taking up the same amount of space as like…my room?” I asked slowly.

He nodded. “Around that. So once they walk inside, they’ll be entering the Domain, at least when you have it projected like this. Of course, it’s in your soul in either case, but now that it’s been firmly established, you can let people inside directly, without having to take the back way like Callie does.”

I nodded along, but wasn’t really paying attention. My thoughts were on my next steps. Namely, on what information Wulf was bringing and what I could do with it. Then I blinked. Because I didn’t need to do anything. I glanced up. “Dantalion,” I called out into the crowd. “Come up here.”

The man who emerged from the crowd wasn’t what I expected. He looked old for one. Like very old. He was wearing a heavy brown robe, his back hunched with age. “Your grace,” he said, his voice creaking as he bowed deeply. “How may I serve?”

I debated telling him to relax, but I knew that it wouldn’t make a difference. The Domain was part of me, but the demons weren’t ME. They were unique entities, and they would act as their life experience and personality dictated. “I have a subject coming here with news. I need you to analyze the data for me.”

Gehenna had fundamentally changed several things about me and the way my abilities worked. The longer I stayed there, the deeper my understanding got. Firstly, there was the concept of incarnation. Though it sounded similar to REINCARNATION it was very different,.

All of my Skill and techniques were still Skills and techniques, but they were ALSO demons. Demons, because of the abilities of the staff, that had entire lifetimes simulated for them, in which their sole purpose was to improve and refine the Skill or technique they were a manifestation of.

I could still use those Skills easily, tapping into them directly as I always had, but I also had a new and more deadly application of my powers. Incarnation. By allowing a demon to possess me, I gained access to their memories and skillsets as they applied to their powers.

Essentially, incarnating allowed me to become a perfect master of my Skills up to the point they had progressed, and I could even do incarnate multiple demons at once. However, the tradeoff was that I had to bear the weight of their experiences in my mind as I did so. More incarnations meant more burden, and while I could use things like Piece of Mind to offset it somewhat, it still placed limitations on my ability to use my various demons.

Because of the Domain’s existence though, there was another option. I could also just ASK the demons to do things for me. My demonic subjects were real beings, and while they weren’t very well suited for the environment outside of my Domain (they could leave, but staying out long term without me acting as a host would cause them to become listless) they were masters of their own unique applications.

So asking Dantalion to personally search for the answers would be easier and more effective than doing it myself, barring a strenuous incarnation session that I really didn’t need to bother with.

Dantalion’s face lit up, and he nodded excitedly. “Of course, your grace. I am ever at your service.”

“Good to know,” I said cheerfully. “And now’s your chance.” I nodded to the door. “It seems our guests have arrived.” Without any verbal reminder, Azazel stepped out of the crowd of demons, approaching the entryway. He flung the massive double doors open, admitting my cabinet and several of my other friends, all of whom looked awestruck. Or most of them did. One in particular looked a bit more…unhappy.

Bethy was pouting like there was no tomorrow. “Your Domain is so much bigger than mine,” she complained. “And it comes with all these new friends!”

“Your Domain is full of cute animals though?” I pointed out calmly. “Isn’t that better?”

“I brought them in myself though!,” she grumped. “These guys were already here when you got the place.”

I rolled my eyes, turning to my cabinet members. “Wulf,” I called. “You got any information for me? Because I need SOMETHING.” I needed to know what was going on, what Apostate was, who the hell the witnesses were going to be, how strong they were, and what they could do so I could devise countermeasures. I was operating at a huge dearth of information, and if I didn’t FIX that before I was summoned to The Quiet Room, Callie and I were going to be in a lot of danger.

Wulf, who had been looking around the throne room in awe, shook off his stupefaction. “Huh? Right, information. I have quite a bit. You said find EVERYTHING, so I did.” Holding out his hands, he retrieved a huge box from his ring, the whole thing stacked high with folders and paperwork.

I nodded to Dantalion, who hurried forward to take the box, then walking over to sit on one of the benches. He placed his hands on the box, closed his eyes, and the air began to crackle. As we watched, the letters on the pages flickered like sparks of purple lightning, and then they began to climb across the pages toward his hands.

My eyes widened. I hadn’t know I could do that. I mean, yes, I realized there were more powerful applications for my forms, and Dantalion in particular, given the interaction it had with the computer back on the heirworld. But this was something totally different. This wasn’t just processing information, it was CONSUMING it. I wondered exactly what difference the method of integration made in the process. I trusted it did something, but what exact effect it might have was anyone’s guess.

“Well, that’s…unsettling,” Wulf said from where he was standing. “There’s something weirdly intimidating about someone EATING information in front of me. I just hope it’s not some kind of omen.”

“It’s not,” Azazel chimed in from nearby. “Your impending horrible death has nothing at all to do with your career.”

Wulf froze, staring at him in horror, and I rolled my eyes. “Don’t listen to him. His powers don’t work like that.“ I paused. “Probably. I think.” I glanced over at where Dantalion was hunched over a box of papers doing things I hadn’t considered possible until a moment ago. “You…were joking, right?”

My Minister snorted. “I was, yes. I have a dark sense of humor. Shall I see to your guests while we wait for the results? Not that I’ll need to do much, they seem to be well taken care of.”

I turned to find my cabinet members being approached by various demons. Marco was talking to Inventing, who was thrilled to pick the brain of a much more powerful inventor. Peter and Holly were talking to Eye of Revelation, Dante to Abaddon, and the various others were quickly being waylaid by various others. I raised an eyebrow at him. “And I’m supposed to believe that was an accident?”

“Doom Sovereign and Sammael WERE hoping for a word,” he admitted. “The three of us represent the trinity of your power. Despite our interconnection, we are all independent aspects of your power, with myself representing the more abstruse mechanics of your abilities, Sammael the physical, and Doom Sovereign the breadth of your Skills. When you aren’t active here, we’ll be the ones keeping the peace and acting as commanders. It would behoove you to actually meet them before you move on with your business, vital though it might be.”

“You’re right,” I sighed. “Where are they? I don’t see them around here.”

He pointed across the throne room, to where a small stone door glowed with green runes. “You’ve yet to explore the entire space, my lord. Perhaps you might take the time to do so once matters have come to a close regarding the trial.”

When we reached the door, we stepped inside quietly, leaving the others to talk to the demons. Inside, I found a pair of figures. Doom Sovereign looked…regal. He was a tall, pale man with long blonde hair and a black iron crown. He actually looked a lot like the final boss of the DS campaign, though I hadn’t played it in years. I nodded to him solemnly, before turning to look at Sammael. 

The demon embodiment of my racial trait looked…kind of like me. Not like Azazel did, mind. Azazel was just me with horns and a goatee (for whatever reason), Sammael looked like what I would have been if I’d been born an angel. Callie’s features had changed a LITTLE with her conversion, but not too much. I could see now that she must have wanted that to happen.

Despite being mainly human shaped, angels were NOT human. Everything about Sammael, from his cheekbones, to the shape of his eyebrows to his ears was just slightly wrong. Not that he looked bad. It was the opposite. His features were too perfect, too symmetrical. They were inhuman. He seemed to notice me noticing, because he grinned at me. “It’s like looking in a mirror, huh?”

“Don’t be a smartass,” I told him dryly. “I’m still in charge of you.” I turned to Doom Sovereign. “How about you, no mocking quips?”

He snorted. “Such behavior is beneath me. A true ruler is magnanimous.”

“Yeah, he’s not much fun,” noted Sammael. “But he IS smarter than he looks. And he’s uniquely suited to deploy our forces. I’m not really built for that. Doom Sovereign is your tricksy deck of trump cards side. I’m more the hit it til it breaks type. After all, when you designed me, it was with the intent of creating an angelic form that could stand up to enemies directly.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know what I intended. I was the one who intended it. What’s your point?”

“My point is that he’s got experience and tactical acumen we don’t,” he said with a sigh. “And he has ideas for how we can handle The Quiet Room. We don’t know who or what is coming, but there’s ways we can mitigate that weakness. Create contingency plans based on potential outcomes.” 

I raised an eyebrow. “You can’t create contingency plans based on ‘anything can happen’. That’s not a plan. It’s a wild shot in the dark.”

“It WOULD be a wild shot in the dark,” he acknowledged. “IF we were shooting in the dark. But you seem to be forgetting. We happen to have a flashlight.” He jerked his chin at the third member of our little quadret, and I froze, looking at Azazel with an intensity that I imagined was quite offputting.

He sighed. “I can’t ensure any results will be certain,” he hedged. “But I could probably narrow things down a bit.” Walking over to the table at the center of the room, he sat down. “I can make a few predictions, and we can use the data from Dantalion’s analysis to narrow them down. So I suppose we should hurry up. He’ll be done soon. Come sit down then, let’s gaze into the future.”