Mary and Eleanor both took deep, quiet breaths as they felt the inexhaustible power of magic, a primordial, reality reshaping power, touch, and alter their every cell. The siblings felt the cataclysmic, unending power of their reincarnated creator and delighted in it, as he reshaped them and molded them to his liking.
Magic itself seemed to submit to Raul's every wish and whim. His power over it caused it to be meek and controllable, something that neither of the two powerful siblings had ever seen before. In their hundreds of thousands of years of experience, magic was a fierce, temperamental thing that at best could be directed towards desired goals and nudged to behave in somewhat predictable, ways, and yet their master was directing magic as if he were a conductor and magic was a well-trained orchestra.
Raul himself watched the siblings as his unbelievable power infused them. He gazed at the pair warmly and was delighted with the knowledge that he possessed that their bodies were being remade, refashioned, to be made of sterner stuff than flesh and bone. They were becoming lesser versions of him in the sense that they were now creatures that could enact great change on scales as large as entire galaxies at a time.
And meanwhile, he was also becoming busy elsewhere, taking advantage of his grand consciousness to truly take the universe by storm.
In the cosmic void that my true form inhabited, I gazed at the portion of the universe where the Etherscape Empire was located. I studied it, noting the locations of every member of the alliance that I could see at the moment. I could see dozens of the murderous and incredibly powerful beings frozen in time as they suffered the effects of my unleashed power.
"Perhaps it is time that I take a more... proactive approach to handle the Ascendant Alliance." I muttered, shortly before beginning to create avatars near them that would soon approach them and drain them of their power. My avatars appeared an "instant" later and approached the powerful creatures and each of them smiled as one, ready to take out a significant number of the ascendants and in doing so begin to earnestly rebuild the Etherscape Empire.
And that was far from the only thing I was doing at the moment. I could see the entirety of the universe of my birth, frozen before me. It was akin to some sort of static hologram, and as I studied it I knew that so long as I wanted it I had nearly unlimited control over at least one universe.
It was more accurate to say that I had nearly unlimited control over no less than six universes, but there were multiple million universes in the multiverse of my birth, and the one I was focused on at the moment was that of my birth. My work was far from done and just because I had, for all intents and purposes, control over a small number of universes didn't mean that I had actually achieved anything truly significant in the grand scheme of things.
I reached out with my mind and touched the universe of my birth in multiple places, attempting to "lock onto" them in my mind's eye. Doing so was incredibly easy and took nothing more than a split second of concentration. Once I had, sort of, locked onto a number of different places throughout the universe I began to swiftly remake reality with a deft, artistic hand.
The places in the cosmos I had targeted were universally either voids or supervoids, largely, though not entirely empty spaces between filaments. I selected those spaces and began the process of using greater megapowers, transcended-deity abilities, and a few of my own original abilities to fill them with both life and with resources. Even while the universe was almost otherwise completely frozen I was able to instantaneously create countless complex civilizations, entire galaxies, and vast technological resources for my worshipers.
I created all manner of entities, ranging from eldritch creatures who were empowered by my limitless life-force to vast armies of dragons who knew of me and worshiped me as both their creator god and also a limitless deity of power and purpose. They came into being in worlds that I handcrafted, all of which already possessed highly technologically advanced cities and resources that made them a perfect fit for joining the ranks of my military and for expanding my empire.
Beyond just creating them, placing them on technologically advanced planets, and filling them with knowledge of myself, I also modified them in yet another way. I turned many of them into vampires, novas, or both. What I really wanted was to transform as much as possible of the universe into my dominion, which would well and truly cement my control over it, but to do that I needed a truly gigantic host of vampires who'd go and gather essence from every corner of existence. And by giving them the potent powers of a nova I was able to make them even more durable and unlikely to fall at the hands of my enemies.
Throughout the territory that was once recognized as the potent and feared "Etherscape Empire" various ascendants of differing levels of strength had built lairs to hide away and jealously safeguard their potent secrets. And yet only ascendants who had the good fortune or good sense to leave the pillaging of Etherscape to their servants were able to hide from the prying eyes of the enraged successor of the deceased emperor.
The strange and powerful successor of the deceased emperor was not one of his children or even one of his children's children. Instead of being a child of the fallen emperor, the newest "Emperor of Etherscape" was an altogether stranger being who was the husband of the fallen emperor's descendant! And he was enraged by the desecration of the remains of the empire, and, terrifyingly, able to act upon that fury.
Avatars of the Emperor of Etherscape appeared throughout Etherscape, standing tall over the frozen forms of countless ascendants who had been helpless in the face of the unbelievable might of the sin of sloth. The avatars, all of which were fully as powerful as Raul himself stalked over to their enemies and began to utilize the esoteric powers of gluttony to greedily suck the power out of dozens of incredibly, galaxy-rendingly powerful entities.
The assorted avatars of Raul that towered over the members of the alliance were all staggeringly powerful beings and as they gazed down at their foes their eyes were filled with almost cruel hatred. Raul was a being of joy, but he was also a creature who embodied justice and had a sense of wrath that was a greater part of himself than he liked to admit. He was angrier at the ascendant alliance that shattered Etherscape than he had ever been at anything else in existence.
As his avatars gazed into the eyes of the ascendants they were defeating, numerous men, women, creatures in-between the gender binary, and entirely outside of it, they began to glow with power. As one he and his avatars radiated resplendent power and accelerated their consumption of the powers of the ascendant alliance who had stayed to pillage and drain the place of its remaining resources. Raul felt their power seeping into him, and as he did it made him feel dangerously hungry.
Raul speedily devoured their potent powers, strength, memories, and hefty amounts of the power residing with their souls, eager to add their might to his own. As he did he also began to transform them into his own incredibly potent vampires, thereby ensuring their loyalty. He did this to them independent of their actual type of ascendant entity, even transforming sanguinarchs into his subservient vampires. This granted him all of their power, their loyalty, and extremely importantly to the young emperor, their vast resources.
When those he drained of their might were archdemons, this meant that he gained their legions of demonic followers, the power of their mortal cults, and perhaps most importantly; their fiendish lairs. He was able to use his powers as a sanguinarch to immediately turn the fiendish lairs into parts of his dominion, thereby granting him truly incredible amounts of territory throughout the Nine Circles.
When he drained dragon lords of their power and turned them into his minions he was able to absorb and assimilate their forces into his, as well as their small, usually mortal empires into his own, expanding the size of his vast holdings throughout the cosmos and further into other universes. He also greedily transformed many of their draconic servants into vampires, novas, or both.
When he defeated cosmic deities he absorbed nearly all of the power they possessed. This granted him lordship over the domains of death and war, two domains he had long sought to acquire influence and thus marked one of the high points of this particular moment in time. He also converted them into his brand of vampires and joyfully added their resources to his own. That said, the single greatest achievement he earned as a result of him hunting down the members of the alliance was his defeat of his fellow sanguinarchs.
The vicious vampire-on-vampire cannibalism he performed rewarded him immensely. His primary reward for the violence he enacted was that he was able to greedily add the dominions of his defeated foes to his own, thereby expanding his dominion across Etherscape, and numerous other universes as well. He also gained the power to control the vampires spawned by other sanguinarchs, gaining a litany of new vampiric followers, as well as even the dark brides of the sanguinarchs he had defeated.
As a result of this, the unbelievably powerful entity's empire now sprawled across multiple universes, and he gained greatly enhanced holdings across the mysterious dimension known as the Nine Circles. It inflated his ego but was not enough to distract the figure or fill his heart with darkness.
All that was truly left for him to do before he felt comfortable unfreezing the universe of his birth and its neighbors were a few miscellaneous tasks. The first of those tasks was to complete a number of rescue missions across the cosmos. One newly formed avatar appeared in the depths of the primary Hell of the universe of Raul's birth, ready to rescue Melonie, while others appeared throughout the shattered remnants of Etherscape, all fully aware of what they needed to do, within moments of Raul's targeted "assassinations" of the various invaders of the empire.
Reality was being reimagined by Raul, and he was beginning to enjoy it. In time he'd come to develop a truly staggering appreciation for the events of today, particularly his enormous victories over many but a healthy number of the members of the ascendant alliance.
