As Aurelina approached me I continued to study my surroundings. I was in the middle of what felt like a waiting area for gods and goddesses. I was standing in a strange, golden hallway that aside from myself and Aurelina was totally empty. In the distance, Aurelina was steadily closing in on me, though the hallway we were in was truly vast. 

Aurelina was a slender raven-haired woman. She wore a see-through robe and had a massive smile on her face as she steadily made her way to me. Her clothing defied the sort of expectations I had had for clothing in a "city of the gods" if I was being totally honest. It was far more skimpy and almost casual than I had believed that the clothing of a god in a city of gods should have been, but her bubbly attitude and body language made it work for her. 

She kept the cool, confident, and also surprisingly happy, expression on her face as she walked through the gigantic hallway we were in. It was only when she was a few dozen meters from me that her facial expression changed. I sensed that she could finally see me thanks to the gentle blush that began to color her cheeks and a sudden eagerness that hadn't been there before abruptly being added to her steps. She had sped up ever so slightly. A second after she sped up she began to speak. 

"Hello, Raul! It's so nice to meet you and to be the very first person to show you around the glorious Eternal City!" She said, cheerily. I smiled at her and began to step towards her. 

"Hello, Aurelina! I'm delighted to meet you and to be welcomed into the Eternal City." I replied as I walked towards her. I towered over her, even though she wasn't short, and so my steps towards her easily covered more distance than her steps towards me.

I didn't blame her for her reaction to me. When I had used my powers as an anael to spread happiness, prosperity, and hope across the world of Hasperburg the worship I acquired was enough to propel me into the next level of power and make me an effectively "conceptual" being who had enough power to become "Absolutely Beautiful". That meant that at least when I was in my true form, I was so attractive that mortals and other non-higher-beings who were attracted to men fell in lust, and sometimes even in love with me at a glance. 

I wasn't particularly fond of that. Something about it felt... wrong to me, so I preferred not to use it. I had turned it off in the aftermath of it turning on by itself when I first acquired this admittedly potentially extremely handy ability. During that time Hui Yui, Alpha, and my self-proclaimed pit-fiend bodyguards were exposed to it. I had seen its effects on Alpha and Hui Yui, and though Hui Yui and I were mates already I wasn't especially fond of seeing them be effectively ensorcelled by my mere presence. 

Another, stranger aspect of my power-up was that it strengthened my vision in a rather indirect way. I could see desire now, even more, stronger than I had previously been able to. At a glance, my eyes peered into the hearts of even demigods and other, lesser divinities, and in the back of my mind, I could feel whatever it was that they yearned for. This was a weirder manifestation of my powers over lust, and as I gazed at Aurelina I sensed her desire to be further recognized and to gain the respect of the inhabitants of the Eternal City.

Aurelina reached me and she offered her arm. I chuckled and outstretched mine and she quickly wrapped herself around it, leaping into the air and beginning to fly to be able to do so. She was a small thing, only a bit taller than the average human of my world. I was in the same form I had been when I fought against Gorgomuth since I had defeated him just minutes ago and as such towered over her. She motioned for us to begin to walk the way she had just come from and as she did she began to speak.

"Allow me to be the first person to formally welcome you to the Eternal City! This place is a glorious, paradisiacal home for gods of goodness and neutrality. Normally we are able to scry gods we invite here, but a few weeks ago that became particularly difficult to do for you due to your dual-ascension into a sanguinarch and an archdemon. That caused quite a conversation here among the powers that govern this city." Aurelina revealed, quite casually. When she looked at me she saw my reaction to her remarks which was a look of shock. She giggled and continued to speak after seeing my face drop.

"Oh, I know you're used to not being able to scry ascendants. It's difficult even for us, especially since you're a cosmic god, but not impossible. I am an employee of the powers that govern this city so I am privy to mildly sensitive information and I have permission to freely inform those welcome in the city of what we know about them. We have means that allow us to continue to be able to remotely observe even ascendants, so we were able to continue to study you. We weren't able to see you defeat Gorgomuth but we could sense his demise and we knew he was fighting you. When he fell we knew it was you who had brought him low. You have truly earned your place here." Aurelina remarked.

For a few moments, I was silent as we made our way towards wherever Aurelina had entered this place from. It took me a moment to begin to be able to speak again as I adjusted to the odd reality that Aurelina had just revealed to me. 

"So I can still be scried upon huh? I always figured it was next to impossible to scry upon myself given my nature as a grand adonis, in addition to everything else. It's impressive that you can scry upon me." I remarked, almost idly. Aurelina smiled at me, her facial expression bright and bubbly as I spoke. 

"Oh, it's incredibly difficult to do. Of all of the godly cities, this is probably the one that is the most effectively organized and capable of the most impressive feats, and it strains us to scry upon ascendants. In your case we didn't and couldn't do it directly, we had to scry upon places you affected and studied them carefully. We were able to see the impact you had on your surroundings and used that to figure out what you were up to. That, and our extensive knowledge of omniversal history allowed us to make predictions that have held up remarkably well." She told me, proudly explaining how the powers that governed the city were able to do something I had previously believed impossible to do.

I nodded at her, accepting her explanation since I didn't sense her lying to me, and we continued our walk. I was a much quicker walker than she was, and so she just accepted my pace and clung to my arm as we made our way to the end of the hallway that kept me from seeing the rest of the city. It took us only a minute or so of me walking for us to reach the end of the hallway that separated us from the rest of the city. When we reached it Aurelina beckoned for me to stop for a moment.

"Raul... You are just a few moments away from seeing what those of us who work for the powers that govern this city like to think of as the true home of all good and neutral deities in this universe. And beyond that, you are just a few moments away from your first real introduction to the rest of the omniverse. I want you to be ready. When you step outside, a notification announcing your first arrival here will be broadcast to the rest of the city and to those welcome in the city that are not currently here. I will give you a chance to prepare." She informed me, even as she placed her hand on the door that would lead us out of this little welcome area. 

I paused and considered what to say to that. I was doing my best to be emotionally ready for what was to come, but I knew that as much as my life had changed over the course of the last few weeks it was about to change even more dramatically. I was mere footsteps away from entering a world I couldn't even have begun to imagine just a few weeks ago. When I was ready to speak I began by gazing into Aurelina's eyes, studying the hazel-colored windows into her soul. I sensed her knowledge, her drive, her curiosity, and more as I gazed into her eyes.

"So... I actually do have something I wanted to ask you about before we went out. I heard about the Eternal City from one of my... in-laws. She said that I'd have a temple here that grew in size as I gained more and more worshipers. Is that true?" I asked, curiously. She began to beam at me and excitedly replied to me with an intensity I hadn't been expecting. 

"Yes it is! The moment you ascended your temple appeared in a quiet, residential part of the city. Your particular temple has drawn a fair amount of attention due to the fact that knowledgeable scholars in the specialized academic discipline that focuses on life-affiliated divinities could see that it was a temple to a grand adonis. There are no known grand adonises in this universe so that caused quite a stir when we revealed the sort of divinity we knew the temple was dedicated to." She excitedly revealed. 

"In the weeks since the temple emerged it has become somewhat of a tourist destination, in the admittedly limited capacity that we have 'tourists'. People often visit it to see what a structure dedicated to a god of life, fertility, lust, pleasure, and joy is like from an architectural standpoint. But it's not like just anyone can get inside until the day that you appear and open the temple up. In fact the only people currently inside of it are people who have already sworn themselves to you." Aurelina informed me, causing me to look at her with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. She grinned wickedly at me when she saw my reaction.

"As a grand adonis, you're innately popular to hedonists of all genders and species. Among civilizations that have made it to the stars and joined the greater intergalactic and interdimensional communities myths concerning any grand adonis are usually somewhat well-known. And we have the single grandest free library in this universe, which includes information on your kind. You have followers here, Raul. Some of them are quite devoted too. They have rather stoically been waiting for you to emerge before truly devoting themselves to you but they will be beyond overjoyed to meet you." She informed me, smirking as she mentally pictured a few of the followers I had. I paused and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself before I took my first step out of the hallway.

Aurelina watched me and smiled, more gently this time. She opened the door in front of the two of us and stepped through it, right as golden sunlight began to become visible and began to brilliantly illuminate her skin. While she waited for me to take my first steps out of the door she looked me up and down and spoke just once more.

"You know you can undress. I understand that you only just defeated Gorgomuth and all, but as a city of divinity, we're much more... free in our fashions. In fact, most of the people you're gonna see outside of your temple are gonna be in various states of undress, including fully unclothed in many cases. This is especially true for the actual gods who roam this city. I came here wearing this much, which is more than I have worn in weeks because I know your homeworld is more traditional than that, but over here we very fully embrace and adore our bodies in their most natural and divine forms." She explained. I considered her words for a few moments and then chuckled, opting to stay fully dressed for now. 

I steeled myself for what was to come and then took two steps forward. That was enough for me to step fully out of the hallway and onto a golden field that stretched for a few kilometers before giving way to an incredibly beautiful city skyline consisting of various buildings of distinctive architectural styles. I could see what I knew through scrying were various sorts of temples, all grand and elaborate, "modern" apartment buildings like those on the strange homeworld of Hui Yui and Lilith; Earth, various sorts of science-filled skyscrapers, and more. 

The city was truly gigantic, stretching on as far as I could see which was the length of at least a medium-sized galaxy. And as I gazed at the city I felt the powerful notification alerting the city of my arrival filling my mind's eye.

[Major Alert! The heroic grand adonis who slew the archdemon of wrath known as 'The Dark Prince' has set foot in the Eternal City for the very first time. Raul Medrano has come home. Please give our noble newcomer a warm welcome befitting a heroic grand adonis who boldly embodies the noblest virtues of our glorious city before he even set foot inside of it for the first time.] 

Actually seeing and reading the notification felt quite strange. And yet it also felt right to be here, standing on the outskirts of the vast, deific city. Aurelina audibly cheered as she mentally read her copy of the notification, and she extended her hand to me.

"Come on! There's so much to see and I bet that there are many people who wish to meet you. Let's hurry up and reach the main portion of the city!" She told me, her hazel-colored eyes filled with amazing warmth, and genuine joy. I sighed, happily, and took her hand ready to head into that glorious city off in the distance. As I took her hand we both began to fly, our bodies slowly lifting off of the ground. We continued to smile at each other as we oriented ourselves and then took off towards the city.

Lucianowrites

If you're enjoying the story so far and haven't left a rating, consider doing so. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and insights! My intention is to show a powerful character who is genuinely good and kind-hearted and mix and balance genuine adventure with erotica in a fun and intriguing way. I want readers to come here and enjoy both the plot and the "plot".