Michael

There is a singular God that is also known as three parts that are also individual entities. They are individually known by many names across many worlds in many languages, but together they are known as the Trinity. The Trinity gave birth to the seven progenitor gods Gaia, Aether, Chaos, Qamata, Ahm, Shall and Éndoxos.

The seven gods that with the help of the primordial universe created the seven worlds and their creatures. Elves, dwarves, humans, demi-humans, beastmen, sapient beasts, sapient plants, nymphs, nyxs, dryads, centaurs. All the things I've heard or read about in fictitious stories and more.

Things I've never even heard of and things I've only ever heard of in whispers, even amongst people that don't believe this stuff back on Earth. They tell me how these creatures were first mostly designed for war but later for a greater purpose. Imbued with souls by the Trinity they all become independent in their own way when the seven stopped using them as pawns in their games.

Rumeria talks of the long history of Gaia and how the planet is part of the physical manifestation of the god/goddess Gaia herself. Of how the world we are currently standing on is sentient and sapient in ways that are indisputable but difficult for humans to understand.

That the world we are standing on could currently fit 10 piles of Earths easily into itself but it's still continuously getting bigger still.

Resources like silver and gold that are mined from the planet are actually renewable. Veins of silver growing on the walls of caves and mountains and rocky hills in order to replace anything that was previously taken from the planet. Slowly but surely the entire world is getting wider, the oceans and atmosphere deeper, rivers wider and deeper.

A trip that was 100km a thousand years ago could be anything between 120 to 130 km today. Forests are ever expanding their territories at a rate almost comparable to the rate humanoids cut them down. But the true expansion of Gaia something that is only noticeable over the course of millennia.

As they speak I'm introduced to a lot of new terms and animals, creatures I could have never imagined myself and would have considered abstract had I seen in paintings. Things like 'pioneer', the different types of mermen, the different types of forests. From man-eating herbivorous forests that are sentient and hold great secrets.

To the idea of deities as spirits that leave the spiritual realm for whatever reason to come here and seek a new beginning or power or peace. They speak of generational curses and soul curses. Telling me how backwards we are on Earth about some of the most basic of things.

Some things we consider genetically predisposed diseases are in actuality generational curses. As Rumeria speaks he seems to have some pity and derision for earthly humanity. Talking about things like families with histories of mental illnesses, Alzheimer's, diabetes things we sometimes considered inevitable back home if you have the genetic markers.

I say so and he goes on about how we assumed we can't change our genetic material, a thought that stays with me through the entire story. The mental telepathy makes misunderstandings any of his meaning very difficult, but something I still manage to do due to the shortcomings of my imagination. Hes somehow communicating even concepts, and little nuisances that I thought beyond verbal communicative methods. Maybe they are...

We talk for hours, I somehow taking mental notes through the whole thing. My mind more malleable and retentive than it's ever been; drinking in and storing these stories like I'm eidetic and always have been but never realized how to fully activate it until now. Thinking deeply on a different subject even as I listen attentively to what Rumeria is saying with little snippets of help from the other Welcomers.

We talk until the temperature changes slightly and the angle of light in the cave changes. An indicated that we've talked deep into the night and to the next day, changing drinks the only acknowledgement of the passing of time. From tea to beer to a type of smokey wood tasting whiskey to chilled water and juice. Drink that indicates at least twenty hours of passing the time I predict, not a single person getting up to go pee the entire time.

My body my own and not needy. An asset for the first time in its existence, not betraying a single weakness or shortcoming. No hunger, no cold, no slight irritation of the skin, no need for fidgeting to promote circulation in veins.

No bladder putting undue pressure on a person to urinate because the kidneys are backed up trying to filter the blood as quickly as possible. I'm having a hard time even imagining what its like to have that pressing need to get up and leak every 12 hours.

They talk about the level of difference between things on Gaia and things on Earth. Trying to compare on a scale I would understand how inferior everything on Earth is in comparison to things on Gaia. From the resilience of the cuticles of grass on the ground to the viciousness of creatures in the wild. Something comparable here with a rabbit here capable of killing an earthly dog.

I spend my first full day on Gaia in this way, talking and changing drinks. We all get to know each other a little better as well with me telling a bit of my history as a soldier and an academic, a father and a spiritualist. We spend a lot of time talking about the different races of humanoids and the differences between them, a long time.

There are as many types of Naga as there snakes apparently. There are those with the bottom half that are snakes and the top half of a human, they use their tails to move around while keeping their torsos up from the ground. They can stand up to 5 meters above the ground depending on the type of tail and length. Then there those that can morph from snake to human as easily as I change my clothes. Becoming snakes incompletion with no similarities between them and humans at all.

Then the full snaked humans that have the bottom half's of snakes and the top half's are mostly snaky and can be used to slider like a snake but they sometimes have arms and a face. Creepy to look at, especially if they have breasts but also fascinating to look at, creatures with long thin fangs that can release and retract.

The many types of lycanthropy and many types of lycanthropy. Creatures that are a balanced combination of two creatures of different species from a bull with a human, a wolf with a human, a panther with an elf or any other creature with a humanoid creature. Lycanthropy being completely different to shapeshifting or another morphing into an animal type of abilities.

We speak about the many cults on Gaia that are popular and gaining a following. Cults that give their patron spirits enough power to bestow gift and be able to answer some of the prayers of their followers in ways that are in line with the character the faith has given them. Pantheons being established across the seven worlds and including some of the other worlds created by beings of power. We talk about that as well, paths to ascendancy and transcending human understanding.

I think becoming a living planet is the most interesting path to transcendence, something I can apparently now strive towards if I so choose and live long enough to reach that power. Some planets are able to house dragons in the thousands while others would be destroyed in a battle between two elder drakes. There are levels to everything, even things that are apparently the same.

We talk about the most powerful of the mortal deities, which is apparently what the spirits that come to the mortal realms and try to found themselves a cult to be worshipped are called. The top 20 mortal deities already have pantheons in which other lesser deities and powerful mortals belong. Able to choose paladins and bestow their blessing upon, champions to bestow a piece of their power and their very nature to aspects they choose or make.

Some so powerful that there are rumours of it six worlds away. Rumours of a cult that has been established by 13 kings in the daemon planet Lucifer. Each of the 13 kings different Aspects of the cult that worships Lucifer, the living planet of daemon kind. Daemons are fascinating creatures themselves when I learn about them. Born from the bosom of their world as no better than animals led by instincts and cunning.

Developing true sentience as they age after a life of living their first several decades or years without reason. Then they grow and develop spiritual powers and traits that are still unique to demon kind after all these years of interbreeding. Then after a few centuries, the memories of its previous life start returning slowly but without the emotion behind them.

Almost like watching a movie of someone else's wife apparently. The reason why most long-lived beings fear daemons so much, they can't be killed easily. Destroying their body only banishing them for a while until a new body is birthed on their homeworld and they grow to remember their former enemies to take revenge later.

I can imagine how frustrating it must be having an enemy you couldn't permanently kill, and how terrifying. We talk well into the morning of the dawn hours. Still so high up that only the raptors and other big strange birds fly in this altitude.

We discuss geography and I'm surprised to learn that not all of Gaia has been mapped in all the time it has existed. Jonah snorts at my own derision and tells me that I would die before leaving Hangari, the continent we are currently on. An averaged sized continent about the size of Australia to the rest of the continents on earth I notice on a map km showed from one of Mirabilis' storage rings. Then Jonah tells me that Hangari is actually about 30 million square km, that's about the size of Africa.

I readjust my mental comparison and then I'm told that Hangari isn't even average sized, but is considered one of the smaller continents of all the 52 known continents of the world. The place is huge on a scale that is very difficult to fully fathom. Earth is a tiny ball in comparison yet it still has many mysteries that hundreds of years of exploration by a population of 6 billion people last I was home.

They tell me about Awakening and magic on Gaia and the rest of the worlds. Awakening is what happens when the accumulated and condensed ether within a person has saturated that person's body to the point of being able to evolve that person to the next level of human evolution.

They speak of the dangers and wonders of being an Awakened person. How a regular human is so much more inferior to Awakened people in many aspects of life. How Awakening gives most people access to a mana pool that they use to cast magic and other things.

Or how a person can choose to Awake as a psion or a warrior, tampering their body to be a tool without equal or their minds. And other paths of Awakening that they o my hint at, seemingly all with their own pros and cons.

For instance, warriors have bodies tempered so well that they can take a lot of magical damage directly from Awakened Mages of any lower power ranking and some direct attacks from mages of comparable or slightly higher power. Attacks that could kill a mundane outright and disable or distract any mage that has only focused on Awakening magic.

There is just so much information to take in, too much in fact even with the strange phenomenon of having knowledge of things directly inserted into my mind somehow. An independent download of some sort that allows me to make sense of things better, a phenomenon that is apparently not unique to just me but to every thinking creature on the planet.

The knowledge comes almost like it does in a dream. Dreams where I travels to different places, even some I've never seen in real life before but I'm still able to identify. Dreams where I know everyone I meet by name and have knowledge of how they are connected to me even though I haven't personally met them before. That's what being this new world feels like.

There are just things that are making sense to me and I know to be true as I think about them or interact with them. I know the hours in a day, I knew them even before Rumeria mentioned them, I just didn't really believe what I thought was my wild imagination. I know that I have gained a sort of power from fusing with the storm, and there are abilities that are not mine per se but are at the tip of my fingertips none the less, I know so many other things. Things that don't make any sense and that I hesitate to mention to my guides just yet if I ever mention them.

"Anyways, I think it's about time we started teaching you how to speak linguae, it's one of the most commonly spoken languages in this region of the world," Mirabilis says with a smile, most of the tension having had subsided during the course of the day.

"I heard you guys speaking, I think it would take many years for mW to learn to make such beautiful sounds."

Jonah snorts at that, "If you think linguae sounds beautiful I wonder what you'll think when you hear an elf speak their native tongue, or spirits forbid a fae.

"Anyways you can cheat when learning the language."

"And how do I do that?" I ask looking at the old handsome man.

"We can speak linguae to you telepathically while you have your crown chakra open. Shouldn't take you more than a month to get the basics down mentally. It will just be your pronunciation that will need work after that." Mirabilis says, I try not to stare at her, I try not to stare at any of them but they all have faces that are aesthetically pleasing like some sort of supermodels.

Even the crus old man with the hairy chest would give Hugh Jackman a run for his man. It's a bit uncanny, not that I'm not used to good looking people especially in an age of cosmetics and living in a city. But all four of these people have a different energy about them that implies their bodies are completely wholesome.

I need to get myself in front of a mirror soon, maybe I look good as well.

"What language have you guys been telepathically talking to me in any way?"

"Universal of course," Estergon says as I've just asked the dumbest question in the world.

"Oh, Universal, of course," I respond then lean back. What the fuck is Universal now?