A Lesson in Discipline

Two races divide this world in half.

The Celestials, who wield divinity, and the demons, who wield demonic energy.

Among them, a child born with divinity came into the world one day. The Celestials were not many in number, but neither were they few — by all rights, this should have been an occasion for the entire community to celebrate. Yet those who looked upon the child could only sneer.

'Why does this child have no wings?'

'No wings? Even the lowliest demon has wings, for pity's sake.'

'A disgrace upon the Celestials! Such a thing cannot be!'

'A disgrace... don't tell me...?'

Unlike the demons, who would use even their own kin as experimental material, the Celestials cherished their own kind. If one of their people was attacked, the elders of the community would personally step forward. If a member of the family was attacked, the high ones of the house would seek out the attacker and erase them from existence.

But that held true only so long as the victim counted as 'kin.'

"......"

For a 'defective one' born without wings, none of it applied.

It might simply have been a mutation, a congenital flaw — but since when did a Celestial ever come into the world defective? Individuals might differ in strength and in the scope of their authority, but 'deficient' was impossible.

'Born with power that is perfectly flawless and pure white — vermin like that simply cannot exist among us.'

And if a defect had a cause, then there could only be one...

'Don't tell me — the same as that—'

'Bilans! Do not speak that name!'

'...My mistake.'

'He is no longer a Seat. The great throne befits no one who committed the unthinkable and abandoned the celestial realm.'

'True. And besides, we have a replacement, don't we?'

It was during the era when the war deepened that a vacancy had opened among the eight great thrones. Normally, those at the very pinnacle of the celestial realm would ascend to fill it — but of late, vacancies had been springing up in 'great' number. Far too many to plug one by one.

'...I don't care for that one. How does a half-grown whelp climb all the way to a Seat, anyway?'

'That is for the Great Ones to decide. We need only watch.'

The elders of the family carried on their conversation.

The child was not yet three days old. It could not speak a word, yet laid out upon the table, it listened to all of it. Some of the content was beyond its understanding, but the direction the conversation was flowing was unmistakable.

'They are deciding my disposition.'

Celestials are born with exceptional intellect. And the elders of the family knew that fact perfectly well.

'...So what do we do, then?'

'We finish it before the head of the house returns.'

'Who is the child's mother?'

'Lance.'

'Which one is that?'

'One of the fallen branch line. She was harmed in a demon raid, but managed to survive, and she's been under our protection here ever since.'

'Hm... disposing of her would pose no problem, then.'

'Since when did you ever care about that sort of thing?'

'Then it is decided.'

And so the child was disposed of.

"GWAHAAK!"

...It was almost disposed of. For reasons no one could say, the child survived.

The surviving child was sent down to the human realm, and when it opened its eyes, everything had been reduced to ash.

A great deal of time had passed. Celestials mature quickly, but even accounting for that, the child already bore the form of an adult. The power was faint, but present, and it carried the divinity unique to its kind.

Everything, save for one thing.

"...Nothing."

The wings were still absent.

This world begins in war, and ends in war.

The aftermath of the war between Celestials and demons blew a small continent to splinters. The demons went on with their experiments, scattering venom that curdled the blood at a single glance.

Nothing remained. It fled, simply to survive. It could not even call out to its own kind.

'A disgrace. An abandoned thing. An object for disposal.'

To call out to kin would be suicide itself.

Why had a great god fallen so low, to the level of a mere insect? No — had it ever truly been a great god to begin with?

It looked back over its own shoulder.

Wings.

"If only I had wings."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Then none of this fall would ever have happened. It had been born a great existence, destined to live greatly — it should have soared in the high places, not been left a wretched insect in the dirt!

"......"

Carrying on its self-negation all the while, it arrived at yet another field of ash. This place, too, had been struck down by raiders. A home of vermin, crushed beneath a great existence.

Instinct drove it inside. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠There might be something left. As an abandoned Celestial, there was only one thing left to do.

'Gather whatever powers there are to be found.'

It was something that had to be done to survive — power that had to be obtained to soar back up to those heights once more. The vermin's own power was hardly worth the trouble, but there might be fragments of a great existence among the rubble.

It dug through the ruins, deeper and deeper, until at last it found the fragment.

"...This is—"

A massive corpse, riddled with wounds. Not a Celestial. Certainly not a demon, either. And yet an inexplicable awe seized it. A power of an entirely different dimension from its own miserable state radiated from the corpse.

'Like those ones.'

Inferior in rank to the elders who had cast it out, perhaps — and yet, undeniably powerful.

Greed.

The child took the corpse into its hands, and—

—...I'm going insane.

It had claimed the great body.

I had entered the second timeline and was watching all of this unfold. The timing itself had come earlier than I expected.

'At the latest, six or seven years from now.'

The demons' villa built atop Desertum had long since been destroyed, and Pharaoh's legacy rested within Serek's secret space. The body of Pharaoh, gravely damaged at the demons' hands — and the teleportation spell still remained intact, so I moved straight there and waited a while, and then someone came looking for this place.

Blue hair and blue eyes — the very symbols of the Celestial race.

My hand nearly moved on instinct, but I held it back for the moment.

'Low tier. Authority never opened, and judging by the look of it — abandoned.'

The wings, the single most important thing to a Celestial, were absent. Celestials cherish their kin, but they do not cherish mutants. Divinity erases everything except itself, so mutants are almost never born — but there is exactly one case where corruption does occur.

'Demonic energy.'

The only force in all creation that stands against divinity, which purifies everything it touches. Demonic energy destroys and corrupts a Celestial's body and soul, and that corruption can even carry down into lives born afterward. Of course, most who fall to demonic energy are simply purified on the spot, so their numbers were never great.

For the record, the "purification" in question is closer to annihilation than to healing.

'I'll watch, for now.'

Had this been the past, I might well have torn it apart where it stood. Crushed it under a hammer, or ground its very soul to nothing with a spear. But I need Pharaoh's body intact. And above all else...

'...Right. It hasn't committed any crime yet.'

It was, for now, nothing more than an abandoned thing that had done no wrong. One reprieve was something I could afford to grant.

"Everything's going just as planned."

The Celestial — the Forgotten Emperor — had fully claimed the body. And of course, Caums was lodged inside it as well. The original Caums cannot inhabit a body that carries a soul, but that is a limitation of Caums alone.

Celestials and demons alike possess ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠exceptional ability and understanding where the soul is concerned. Unless the occupant is of the same race, then no matter how mutated the intruder might be, lodging itself into a half-dead body is hardly a challenge. The two races never bothered migrating between bodies for one simple reason: their own bodies were already superb.

Nobody wants to move into an ant, after all.

'Setting aside the exceptions, anyway.'

"Hahahaha... great knowledge flows into me!"

The Forgotten Emperor was utterly, genuinely enraptured by Pharaoh's body. His signature eyes of the sun blazed as though to lend the flesh even more divinity, and behind the emperor's back, golden wings unfurled.

"Ahh... wings! Wings!"

Wings he had never once possessed in all his life. Wings — the very reason he had been fated for disposal as a mutant. The thing he had dreamed of above all else was finally in his grasp.

"......"

He was adapting far too quickly. Wielding Pharaoh's authority and divinity in tandem went without saying — he had even conjured wings of light he had never once possessed in his entire life, in a single breath. If he carried an authority that allowed him to wield and harmonize two powers at once...

'The Scales.'

Steratera of the Scales — perfect equilibrium. One of the Eight Seats, presumed to be the one who created the strongest and the worst beings of both races, and beneath her stretched countless branch families. He was no direct descendant, nor even remotely close — but every so often, someone with only the faintest thread of bloodline still carried an innate gift. That Celestial was almost certainly one of them.

'I only need to keep the body perfectly preserved.'

It looked fairly badly wounded, but compared to what I had seen in the ruins, the damage was nothing. Pharaoh's body as I'd witnessed it in the ruins had undergone a considerable 'nerf' by Deoen's standards. Evidently the Celestials had suffered some great crisis around ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this era, and lost an enormous amount of power and flesh in the process. And that crisis, naturally enough, had been the Scorpio depicted in the murals.

"I'd best set a hand on Scorpio as well, then."

Scorpio had claimed the Desert Sovereign's authority by devouring the Great Sun itself. Pharaoh's authority, and Pharaoh's body. I had no idea how exactly Pharaoh had arranged to leave his legacy behind, but the two had been split apart — one passing to the Celestial, the other to the scorpion. Where the authority had gone, I didn't know, and I didn't particularly need it. But if things were left as they were, the events in the murals would come to pass without fail.

"Hm...? Who might you be?"

"You look like you're having a good time."

I released my interference and revealed myself. The Celestial — the Forgotten Emperor — fluttered his wings in delight for a heartbeat, then snapped both eyes wide open and dropped into a guarded stance. Brimming from head to toe with hostility, the Forgotten Emperor glared at me as though spitting venom.

"...A Celestial?! Don't tell me you came all this way just to kill me!"

"...How exactly should I put this."

What, how, and why — I had meant to simply steer things along and set up a few safeguards, but somewhere along the way, my mind had changed.

"I suppose it's time for a lesson in discipline."

There would be no reprieve.