Those Who Must Watch

They appeared in a dimly lit room that smelled of paper due to the overwhelming amount of books that lined the walls. It made the library in the warehouse look like a bathroom in comparison. The walls were so high that not even Regius could see the top and every wall was covered in a shelf, and for a moment the sight of so much new knowledge was enough to pull Regius from the thoughts that plagued him but only for a moment as he stared at the Older man in front of him. Merlin snapped and the grey suit changed into a grey tracksuit. Regius raised an eyebrow because he could have sworn that he felt creation mana move when the change happened.

Merlin pointed to an open place on the floor and Regius felt creation mana move again as two couches appeared with a table in between with refreshments on it. Merlin indicated he wished for Regius to sit and he did as such while Merlin sat across from him but now Regius was too wrapped in what he had seen the man do twice now. Merlin seemed to see the question burning through his mind and he chuckled lightly.

"In due time Regius. I will explain things to you and then tell you about your mother and if you accept my proposition I will explain how I did that." He then shook his head and seemed to smile to himself "No by the end of my explanation I will tell you either if you accept or not. I apologize for that, some habits are hard to change for me."

Regius simply nodded, willing to listen to what the man had to say. He had too many questions now to not take this chance to gain answers. Merlin waved his hand and in the air, between them, 9 planets appeared that all looked different from the earth he knew except one.

"What you see here is the Nine Prime Worlds; they are the first nine worlds to exist in creation; these planets have given birth to the original nine races. The Celestials, Demons, Elves, Dwarves, Beasts, Monsters, Giants, Spirits, and finally Humans." Merlin shifted his hand and the familiar globe that Regius knew floated to the middle while the other eight rotated around it while countless dots of light began to fill the void between them. The dots of light seemed to move in a way that made it look like there was an infinitely expanding space between itself and the other eight.

"What you see before you is a not-so-detailed map of the Myriad Realms. Countless worlds are born every second and they join themselves to the Myriad Realms, increasing the distance between us and the other 8 prime worlds making Earth increasingly hard to find for anyone that should try. Earth is the youngest among the Prime Worlds and Humans are the youngest race alongside it. Where we have proverbially just learned to walk again after Mana has come back the other nine Prime Worlds have incorporated mana in every aspect of their lives, while we have barely relearned the truths of our forgotten age, but that was not always the case. The first humans could wield mana as aptly as any of the races but we made a fatal mistake and that leads you to my story.

The Merlin family was tasked by the world itself to make champions and so my family throughout the ages was tasked to train candidates to be our world's champion and we did but we were no better than the rest of humanity. In our effort to conquer each other we did damage to our world over and over. A champion candidate is given a piece of the ability of the world itself. I believe humans of this age call them concepts but the rest of the Myriad Realms refers to them as Laws or worldly aspects but let's stick to concepts I like the term. We damaged the source of our planet over and over again in wars and finally, my father before me trained a family known as the Pendragons' in which the family scared of the mana this world bestowed upon us and the hopeful Ideal that wiping out creatures of Mana would lead to a more prosperous world for humans we broke our world with one final war. This caused the world to lock all of its remaining Mana inside of itself and go to sleep for a very long time but not before punishing the family that had failed to steer our fledgling race in the proper direction and so it laid down a curse on the Merlin bloodline.

Since my father was so okay with watching things devolve to this point then he and all of his progeny would only be able to watch from that moment on. To interfere with our world would cause the planet itself to strike at us causing varying degrees of pain and to some death."

Regius stood there stunned at most of the information that he just learned and he looked up at Merlin "You just interfered and nothing happened though so is the curse broken?"

Merlin shook his head "No the world made its move the moment I saved you but the attack was light almost like our world wanted to see you saved as well, but If I had not reached the current height in my mana practice it would have killed me surely."

Mana flowed through the room like a light breeze and Merlin slid a mug of a warm drink in front of Regius as he waved his hands and the diagram disappeared.

"Now as the final world born our planet is special, it has access to more mana than any other world as the center of the Myriad realms but due to that It also acts as a bridge occasionally opening gates or portals as they are called now to different parts of the Myriad Realms as well as countless lesser worlds that our world slowly takes even more mana from.

The other intelligent races will want to come here so that they can take our world because due to those factors our world is capable of things that others aren't. The materials and everything else our world is capable of producing is seen on a much smaller scale on a lot of the other worlds and to anyone that can find us, we are simply a fat piece of meat waiting to be devoured. Now you know of the demon wars and so forth since mana has returned so allow me to skip over that part as we get to the main topic at hand your mother."

Merlin seemed to age a couple of years as Regius sipped from the drink and realized that it was hot chocolate warm enough for him to feel it travel through his entire body.

"Just like there are humans that don't like conflict, why can there not be a demon who is the same? The demons separate themselves into ranking based on the power of their family and the only daughter of the strongest demon to ever live wanted nothing to do with the bloody battles that her kind loved to wage across the stars. Now most of us only know demons as these monstrosities but that is not the case, the first world in existence created celestials and while the second world was still being born they waged a great war on each other causing a mighty rift which caused the losing side to flee to the newly born planet and the Celestial Planet in its outrage cursed them giving most of them other than their most powerful the appearance that most of us have come to know.

The demons the newly minted race in their outrage are struck with this inborn anger due to the curse that forced most of them to mutate while their world instills in them a vengeance to take back what is theirs while also striking back at the Celestial world for striking what would have been its inhabitants at such an early age. The demons the world gave birth to after the fact all had the same appearance so that they would be able to have some harmony with the fallen celestials." Merlin shook his head

"Sorry, we are off track ,back to your mother. Your mother was born to the king of demons and the most powerful of them all Lucifer If'cruel but she was not like the others of her kind she had no desire to conquer or take back she simply wanted to explore the Myriad Realms and throughout the ages that's what she did. Here and there she would stop on a prime world and impart the ways of magic onto the races there giving them a fighting chance in face of the race of conquerors that is their mother's family.

She eventually found the center of the Myriad Realms and imparted the ways of magic among the first humans which we now know of as the Atlanteans. It would be many years of peace for her as she imparted the ways to them and even stayed with them as their city sunk due to the mana receding into the World. It would not be until your father chanced upon their no longer sunken city that they would meet and fall in love while she would give birth to you but alas it was not meant to last.

In some awful coincidence an old acquaintance of your mother, another member of Demon Royalty that has been tracking her for eons, finally found her and in doing so also found the final prime world. Your father and the other eleven I trained were able to beat back the minor demon families that Swigen would send shortly after while I worked in conjunction with our world to apply a great masking spell to hide us from the demons to give us time to grow once again. While the world would expel Swigen forcing her to attempt to find us once again and this time making it harder than ever.

It was on a fateful night that the spell was to complete itself that you lost everything and your family was betrayed and even though I am cursed to only watch I was incapable of coming to the aid of your family due to the time and effort it was taking me to place the spell. I was too weak and the plan enacted itself moments too late Swigen was able to place a marker not on our world but near it which she now uses to navigate back here even as we speak so that she can lead her family to take credit for finding this new world and conquering it. It would be the tipping point in their ongoing war with the Celestials.

The families betrayed your father and gave to Swigen your mother under the promise that we would get one hundred years of peace before she returned." Regius finished his mug of hot chocolate and placed it on the table as he tried to keep his calm. "So my mother, she's alive?" Merlin seemed to grimace at the question but he looked Regius in the eyes and answered it all the same "Yes your mother is, but Swigen returned her home. Your mom is held captive by one of the strongest existence throughout the Myriad Realms Lucifer If'cruel himself."