I woke up in my bed, and the first thing I thought was, "When the hell did I fall asleep? It was barely even noon."

  The hing I thought was, "ht, I have brain damage, I'm probably going to be sleeping a lot."

  And then I thought, "How long has Volex been cuddling with me?"

  "The whole time," Volex said, because she could, in fact, literally read my thoughts, and was dedicated to only ever using that ability to be mildly annoying. "You got a headache that was bad enough to overwhelm your autohypnosis and your usual pain threshold, so I put you to sleep, Emily cast a paiion spell on you, and I carried you up here to sleep it off. How do you feel?"

  I thought about it for a minute.

  While I thought, I passively took in the precise nature of the cuddles. Normally, this sort of thing was just a hug but sideways, involving only one's arms. Talia, ever adventurously affeate, teo also her legs around my hips when she did it. However, Volex had an unfair advantage in the cuddles department that simply couldn't be matched: she had wings, which were essentially a sed pair of arms with very long fingers and an ied b, a very nice, ed around me. She even mao work her tail into this, ing it around one of my legs.

  "...I feel like someone pounded a nail into the top of my skull," I said, finally. "It hurts, but... It's low enough I go back to ign it." Especially because I was ed in the embrace of a powerful Occultist who wanted me to know that she loves me, and was literally radiating warm affe from every inch of her body.

  "I'll be administering painkillers regardless," Volex said dryly. "Nothing is improved by you suffering needlessly, Joseph."

  "Alright, alright," I said, closing my eyes. "Ugh. This sucks. Thanks for being here for me, Volex. Holy, thanks for everything, just in general. You've bee, and I don't appreciate you enough."

  "It's been a month, and you've been busy," Volex said with a shrug. "But... Thank you. It means a lot to me."

  "I would offer you a hug, but you are already ed around me like a weighted b with tits and opinions, so I don't think a spicuous dispy of physical affe would be noticeable."

  "It's the thought that ts," Volex said. "Buuuut, if you think about it for a moment..."

  I shrugged, and gave her a kiss.

  "...I'm going to be ho," I said, after a brief pause. "I feel like I should be more weirded out about the fact you slept with my grandparents. The age thing is whatever- yes, you're older than my dad, and I'm 18, but whatever, I'm an elf, we're both immortal, I'm going to live forever provided I either stop getting into fistfights with gods or I tio win them. If you were any other turies-old Succubus, I wouldn't care, and this ta would stop there. But you're not any other turies-old Succubus, you're Volex Iro, the woman my dad calls 'Aunt'. It's... It feels like it should bother me, because you're my great-aunt, but..."

  "Well, the reason you're not actually bothered is because I'm not yreat-aunt," Volex said dryly. "We met a month ago, when you were already grown, aher of us reized the other as family until yht me home a the pieces together. Hell, you didn't even hear many stories about me growing up, because Napoleon and Frederick didn't have stories about me- I art of the family, I lived in their house, but I just didn't spend much time with the kids, and I most certainly didn't raise them."

  I grunted.

  "Holy, you've got an unfortunate amount of Hikaane floating around in your head," Volex tinued. "High Elves don't sider these sorts of familial retionships to be associative... or distributive, or whatever the math term is. To High Elven sensibilities, Helen isn't yrandmother- you've met her twice, in a capacity that ostensibly had little to do with you two being family, and both after you left childhood. She's Ariel's mother, sure, and Ariel is your mother, but ba my day, your mother's mother was not necessarily yrandmother."

  "Fair..."

  "I mean, you do seem to uand it a little, when you say or think things like 'Jason isn't actually my grandfather because this is the first time we've met,' but you seem to also think that a key po is whether you like them," Volex said. "And, quite simply, it doesn't work that way. Just because I'm Napoleon's aunt and you actually like me doesn't make the two of us family; we have to act like I'm family, and, well... We don't. We act like an Occultist and a Familiar."

  "Fair enough, I suppose," I admitted.

  "You also seem to have picked up some Hikaano nonsense about gender roles that o be unlearned. As a start, I will remind you that High Elves categorically did not have them, and female Mage-Knights were pletely unremarkable."

  I sighed, closing my eyes. "Look. I agree that I o hear this, but... at this precise moment, I am horizontal due to the lingering effects of brain damage, so. You might want to do this ter, when I am no longer brain damaged. Also... While I do appreciate your earlier remihat you're essentially a tutery spirit who happens to have known my dad and grandparents, I think that, right here and now... I should probably be w towards learning how to use divine magic, the only souragical healing I have, so that I , perhaps, heal my brain damage."

  "Don't wanna wait for Emily to do it?" Volex asked, smirking a little.

  "Well... Actually, hang on," I said, frowning. "Why isn't she healing my brain damage? She's a Healer, a reized Priestess of Asklepios. She hasn't done jack shit today, magically-speaking, so it's not that she's risking divine burnout."

  "Ah, so you fot," Volex said, nodding. "Right, well, you already asked her about it, and the answer was simple: healing someone else's brain damage is risky, because the magic is being guided by a mind and soul that isn't the oive to that brain. It's still doable, and for serious brain damage, it's still done, but Emily has judged that the damage is going to heal on its own, fairly quickly, and therefore there's hardly anything to gain from such a risky procedure. But, well, if you heal your own brain damage, that's fine. Your mind and soul are native to your brain, so there's already a natural alig."

  "I see, I see... Right, well. Wish me luck."

  This would be the first time I've ever drawn oher's light- I hadn't had the time or energy to experiment with it before now, between the running fight with the Cult of Paimon, or rec from heart surgery. It'd been a long fug day, okay?

  Now... The thing about using Divine magic was... I had no idea what I was doing. Divine spellcasting was a skill that could be learned, and even taught, but the fual issue with the pedagogy was that gaining access to Divine magic required an initiation that could only be given by a deity, aies only gave that when they felt like it. As such, while I'd been taught by han Ariel Silver in the fuals of Are magid had indepely taught myself the fuals of Occult magic, I had never learhe fuals of Divine magic, because I simply couldn't.

  So I id there, in silence, eyes closed, trying various mental tricks that were like how I drew upon Are and Occult magic, but which simply weren't w. Thankfully, my torment only sted so long- I had, apparently, garnered my god's attention, and he pulled me into a vision to talk to me.

  "Hello, Joseph," The Father said, once again wearing the fay father. "How are you today?"

  "Tired, sore, brain-damaged," I said, before shrugging. "I gotta say, fighting a Demon King is real fu' unpleasant. Please don't make me do that again."

  "I 't make that promise," The Father said, sighing. "What I promise you is that, ime, you'll be prepared. Now. Let's begin with your first lesson in Divine spellcasting."

  Vital essence was a strange energy. It was the raw energy of life ah, sure, but it was the raw energy of life ah- the energies of life ah that naturally existed within most living things were different, and had certain subtle qualities that arose naturally from where they resided.

  Divine magic was the eling of vital esseraight from the source. Making the e, from myself to my god, to tap that wellspring of vital essence, was hard at first, but with practice, it would get easier. And it turned out, The Father didn't just uand that too much vital essence cause injuries, he even knew why it did so.

  "Essentially," he had said, "your body is adjusted for the subtle, aspected vital energies it naturally gees. Exposure to raw vital essence causes injury because excess energy escapes into the body, and overloads the metaphysical processes that sustain your life, which are, ordinarily, in a delicate, self-correg bance. However, your body is capable of healing, and if allowed to heal naturally, it will heal such that it is stronger and more resilient than it reviously."

  "Hey," I began, "since magicka es from excess mana, or life energy, does that mean training my magicka reserves also trains my resilieo raw vital essence, or vise-versa?"

  "No. Magicka cares about the quantity and produ of life energy, which is broadly uo the resiliency of the systems that use your life energy. There is some small overp, and over the long eons of your eternal life, you may even notice a slight be. But likely not."

  Admittedly, it wasn't great news. I was pletely o Divine magid it turned out pretty quickly that I did in fact have a very average tolerance for vital essehe Father cut me off as soon as I was at the optimal recovery point, thankfully. It would've been o learn that my years of training with Are magic had led to me having a better starting point with Divine magic, the way it had worked out for Occult magic. As it stood, though, I could only el enough vital esseo cast a single weak healing spell, and then that was it for my spellcasting practice for today.

  "So, how was your practice session?" Volex asked, as I opened my eyes and started moving.

  "I hate being a begi something," I pined.

  Volex ughed.

  "You'll want to find a way around that feeling," Volex said. "You strike me as the sort of person who's going to keep tryihings for the rest of your life."

  "Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Just... Let me kvetch, alright?"

  "Of course, sweetie."

  AnnouAs always, if you like Iro and wao keep making it, the best way to do that is to leave a ent, here or on my discord server.

  Also, I'm taking suggestions for publius chapters iween books. The ideas I've currently ge from "The remaining Kings of Hell react to the political upheaval caused by Paimon's death" to "Joseph Iro visits a neighbor and pys dominoes." Anything goes.