Apotheosis/Dione/Backstory/Next chapter of your childhood

It's been about a week since the last time you caused Paco trouble. It's yet another absurdly hot and bright summer morning. You've gotten pretty accustomed to your new life in this place, but your life is about to be changed once more. After good night's rest you wake up to a soft knock on the door. The door opens, and a young woman walks in, calling your name. "Dione, wake up", she says. "You need to go to the headmaster's office."

You wonder what this could be about. Why would he want to see you so early in the morning? Have you done something wrong again? You don't think you've done anything, but you can't help but to get a little bit worried.

You're slow to get up. Not even a sweet yawn coupled with a good morning's stretch is enough to get you to your feet. You take a look around. First thing you check out is Lisa, who seems to be back and sleeping comfortably. Your other roommates are already up and gone. Last, you look at the woman you can't remember the name of yet, and see her kind, smiling face, and her outrageously large bust.

"Now, now, let's not keep him waiting", she says, winking. "Trust me. It's good news."

…

Just a couple of minutes later, you're again in the office, sitting down on a sofa. This time around, it's not just you and Paco. There is are two additional people present - one man and one woman - and you can tell from the start that they are a completely different kind of breed from anyone you've ever met. Let's start with the pale, grey-eyed woman with a wavy, blonde hair with a light golden hue to it. She's not the first white person you've ever met, not by a long shot, but she must be the palest woman you've ever seen. Despite her tiny, borderline flat chest, she's an adult. Probably. It's hard to tell, because she's so small and petite. She's wearing nothing but a baggy, plain white dress and a pair of slippers, so overall, her appearance is very modest. And then, there's the man who's with her. He's something even more unusual, and modest is not an adjective that can be used to describe him. His relatively short, skinny and fit body suggests that he's young too. You can't see much of his skin, but his hands at very least are brown. He's wearing an ornate, black robe, decorated with red and blue satin and gold, proving him to be a man of immense wealth. The most surprising part about him is the mask he is wearing. It's a black mask depicting a head of jackal, and of course, it's decorated with gold as well. On the first glance he looks as if his clothes alone could buy this entire stinky orphanage, and you can't help but to stare in awe. Through this mask it is hard to determine what is he like, but his gaze appears to be on you.

The young woman is the first one to move. She's undeniably staring straight into your eyes. Normally, you get a little scared when you meet new people, but this woman with her bright smile and large eyes seems like a kind person, and you can't help but to smile at her. Your smile, however, is a little forced.

"Yes, that's her", woman says.

"So, what do you want from her?" Paco asks, seeming a little out of character. He's usually the boss around, so seeing him all fidgety and nervous is very unusual. "Has she caused you trouble?"

She lets out a loud burst of laughter. "Oh, you could certainly put it that way, yes!" Paco sighs, looking increasingly nervous. He takes an angry glance at you, making you worried as well. This time you've done absolutely nothing, and you're sure of it. "But now that we're here, we can put all worries to rest. My master is here to adopt her."

Surprised, you stand still, with your hear turning like a pendulum as you observe the three individuals sharing the room. Paco seems dumbfounded, showing yet another unusual expression on his face.

"Well?" the woman asks. "What are you waiting for? Take out the papers quick so we can sign them. We're not leaving without her."

"W-wait a minute now, this is all so sudden", Paco says. "Who are you people?"

"That is none of your concern", the woman says, as she pulls out a golden pen out from thin air, revealing herself to be a magister of some sort. You've seen some mages before, but never have you seen one that is capable of turning things invisible or pulling things out of thin air. "Don't make me repeat myself. Papers, now."

"I-I cannot simply just let her go like that", Paco respons in a very nervous manner. You can tell, that even though the woman is smiling, that smile does hide something more than just that. "Besides, I will not allow myself to be threatened."

Woman turns towards the masked man, almost as if being told something, but you're sure you didn't hear the man say a word. No, the man is not even moving. Despite this, the woman nods, and turns back towards Paco. "Let's negotiate then. My master has authorized me to inform you that we are willing to pay a generous sum for you to give her away."

"You will not be able to bribe me."

"Why?"

"B-because… She's not some piece of merchandise."

"Oh, please", the woman says, laughing out loud. "That's so rich coming from you! I think it's you who thinks of her as a piece of merchandise more than we do."

Wrinkles appear on Paco's forehead. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, nothing…" she says, silently, with a sly smile on her face. "Could it be that you don't want to sell her away, because you feel she could be profitable to you in a long run?"

"T-this isn't a discussion we should have in front of her." You can tell that Paco takes a short glance at you.

"This is exactly the kind of discussion we should have in front of her", the woman says, walking even closer to the table and leans against it. "I'll give you one final ultimatum. You take out the papers and accept the money or we'll make sure you lose a lot of money."

Paco suddenly seems even more nervous. "If you hurt my business, you will hurt all these kids here."

"We are prepared to take responsibility and relocate them."

"Very well then." Paco finally gives up and lets out a heavy sigh. "Voice your offer."

The woman takes one glance at the robed man, seeing him nod. "We offer you ten pounds in solid gold."

Paco himself slams his palms against the table, standing up, surprised. "T-that is an outrageous sum for a child like her!" he states loudly. You yourself don't understand how much that is, but considering that you've only ever seen a couple of gold coins, you imagine it being a lot. It certainly is substantially more than what Paco anticipated. Quickly, he seems to calm down a little. "Is there a catch…?"

"We sign the paper and take the girl with us, and you get the money. That's all you have to do."

"Is that truly all there is to this…?"

"No hooks and nothing fishy here!"

"What will happen to her once she's gone from here?"

"She will live a long and happy life! My master guarantees it!"

"How will you arrange the payment then?"

The woman pulls out a little purse from thin air, emptying its contents to the table. There are a grand total of ten large gold coins. Paco is quick to inspect their quality, and he soon identifies them to be indeed solid gold. "We pay in cash", she replies.

"Very well then", Paco replies, and looks to be heading out of the room. "I will fetch the papers, so we can transfer her ownership to…" He ends his sentence in the middle, and takes a look at the man, who is now pointing the nose of his mask towards him. "Whoever you master may be."

"Yes, yes, be quick about your business", the woman says.

Well, you were kind of left out from the conversation there, and honestly, you don't even know what's going on. You've heard stories about some children being taken away and adopted, and everyone kind of hopes it happens to them so they can get a proper home. Having been a nomad for so long, you don't really have a sense of home. This orphanage was the first place you ever settled in, and you've only been here for under a month. Now, you're going to be adopted, and given a real home? Is this masked man going to be your father, and who is this woman supposed to be? She's still as hyper as ever, and she's coming towards you now. You remember her recognizing you, somehow, but you don't ever remember seeing her before.

"I'm Helga", she says. "And he is Anubis", she continues, glancing towards the masked man. "What's your name?"

"Dione."

"How old are you?"

"Six", you reply. You're not completely sure, since you don't know when your birthday is.

"Are you nervous?"

You don't react to her question, but your inability to reply does reveal your nervousness.

"Yikes… We are kind people, I promise…"

You muster up your courage to present her with a question. "Why were you fighting with Paco…?"

She giggles softly and tries to appear as kind as possible. "We were simply having an argument, because we were in a disagreement." You have a feeling she's not disclosing all the details. Hell, you feel that even Paco is hiding something important from you. "Tell me, do you like him?"

"I don't know…"

"Well, the truth is, he's not a kind of adult little girls like you should be around."

"Why not?"

"You'll understand what I mean when you get older. Are you scared anymore?"

You shake your head, only to realize that you are a little scared after all. This woman named Helga may seem very kind towards you, but that's just her; there's another person in the room, and this man with a menacing looking mask has not uttered a word. "He is a little scary…"

"Really?" Helga asks, giggling. "You hear that, master? She's afraid of you."

The man Helga called Anubis remains stoic and doesn't flinch.

"That's not good, though. There is no need to be afraid of him. He may be a little clunky and grumpy at times, but he is just as nice as I am."

If that's true, you have no reason to worry, so you just nod.

"But are you okay with being adopted by him?" Helga asks, sitting down beside you.

You don't know, you really don't. You don't feel any attachment towards these strangers, but that's not to say you feel any attachment towards this orphanage either. Sure, there are a lot of kind people here, some of which you like really, really much, but you're not sure if you've got any real friends here. You're here only because of a necessity, not because you want to. The only place you really want to be in is by your mother's side, but ever since that one faithful day, you haven't been able to see her.

"Does it make you sad to leave this place?"

You shake your head. "I'm okay with leaving."

"That's great! It makes things so much easier!" Helga starts to observe you and your body. "We'll give you lots of delicious food, pretty new clothes and a bath as well." Then, she pinches her own nose. "You especially need a bath."

Her funny expressions and laughter are infectious, and it catches on you as well. Besides, the idea of getting a belly full of food and some pretty clothes seems very appealing to you.

"Anubis also bought you a little gift on the way here", Helga says, conjuring up a piece of marmalade, an exquisite treat from across the sea to the north. You've seen these pretty, sparkly sweets only on display on stores, but because of the price tags you've never had the opportunity to taste one. You accept the gift, smiling.

"What kind of magic is that?" you wonder out loud.

"It's my divine ability", Helga explains. "Do you want me to show you how it works?"

You nod with your sparkly eyes wide open. "Are you a divine?"

"Yes, I am!", she says, and takes a look towards a small pillow on a sofa. She instructs you to pick it up, and then, she taps it softly with her entire palm. "That's the first part", she says, and stands up, with both of her hands held in air, almost as if she is grabbing into something. Then, suddenly, the pillow disappears from your hands, and it appears between her hands. "And that's the second part."

"How did you do that!?"

"I can make anything I have touched appear in my hands. It may not seem like a strong ability, but it's very convenient."

"Can you, like, use that for stealing?"

She giggles and gives you a playful pinch on both your cheeks, pulling them apart. "That's not good, Dione. Stealing is wrong."

"O-okay…" you reply, stroking your cheeks.

Paco is now back, and he has a couple of documents in his hands. He sits down, talking to himself, while reading through the documents, making sure everything is alright. This is also when you see Anubis stand up for the first time. He walks up to the table, and Helga is quick to follow with the pen on her hand already. Anubis dips the tip of the pen on the ink, waiting impatiently to get papers in front of him. He takes one of the papers from Paco, and signs his name under it. "Are you sure you don't want to go through this all?" Paco asks, a little confused.

"We've been over these kinds of documents before", Helga explains. "We know exactly what's in them."

"Is that so? That makes this very easy then."

"Now, let's leave already", Helga says, giving you her hand. "We have a long way ahead of us."

"How about her belongings?" Paco asks, once again confused.

Helga turns towards you, asking: "Are there any precious items you want to take with you?" You shake your head. You truly own nothing. "That's great! These clothes are more than enough. The payment should cover the expenses."

"W-where is rest of the payment though?"

"It's already on the table", Helga says, pointing towards nine additional bags full of gold. With Anubis already appearing to be in a hurry to leave, you're not offered anymore time to collect your thoughts. Helga takes you outside, following in Anubis's footsteps. It is a major understatement to say you're leaving without fanfare, since there are not even goodbyes offered to Paco, or any resident of this wretched orphanage for that matter. It was a brief stay in that place, so it's not like you're emotionally attached to it or anything, but thinking about not being able to return to that place, you're feeling a little melancholic regardless.

---

That was your last interaction with the said orphanage, but not the last you ever heard of them. On one day just before your sixteenth birthday you heard about the place going under from a close friend who knew of your history. At first, you thought it was a little bit of a shame for them to be forced to close up, considering how nice it was of them it was to keep an orphanage open in such a poor neighborhood, but on the contrary, you also kind of knew about some of the things that were going on inside. Hell, you even lived some of the things that were going on. You couldn't suspect them of anything when you were just a little child, caught in the middle of it, but as a teenager, and later as an adult, you saw it for the place it was, and Paco for the man he was. He was grooming children for sex and pimping them out, using the orphanage as a cover for his business to make some extra buck. What he did was legal in Memphis, so it's not like he was doing anything wrong, in the legal sense at very least. His business wasn't an unusual one either, as many people in Egypt do have a sexual carving for children. He closed the place down because it was no longer profitable, and instead started doing business somewhere else, where he didn't even pretend to have a cover of a charity to keep the public from scrutinizing him.

Looking back at that point of your childhood, you kind of wonder what your life could've been like had you stayed there. Had Anubis not adopted you, it's very probable that you would've gone down a very sorry rabbit hole that would've caused you to live your life as a child prostitute. All the signs were there for it to happen. The only things that saved you from that fate were the facts that Paco didn't want to pimp out girls as young as you were, and the fact that you were adopted. It's also a good thing Anubis offered so much money, because had he not offered any, Paco might've kept you to use your body to make profit instead. Helga's negotiation skills, strong-arming and threats also helped a ton.

When people hear your story, they usually show compassion and even offer to embrace you. There are even some who have cried simply because what could've been, but not you. You can't help but to smile and be grateful. It always seems strange to those who do grieve for you, as they wonder how you can smile and laugh at your own past; you find the opposite to be even stranger. You dodged two arrows in one brief moment, and had you not dodged even one of them, your life would've been very different. It has almost been like through your childhood you've been led by a guardian angel, as the hands of fate have guided you to a rosy path. How can you not be happy, grateful and laughing? But, enough of that. Let us return to the day you were adopted, and go through what happened to you next. We wouldn't want to skip through ten years of your life just like that, now wouldn't we?

You left the slums and entered the richer parts of the city by the river. What waited you was a little yacht that was going to sail you to your destination down the river all the way to Alexandria, the city that was going to be your home going forward. On the way there, you would learn a lot of things about these people and why they wanted to adopt you.

So, he calls himself Anubis. Just like Helga, he's a divine. No, he's not just any divine. He's so much more, a deity. He holds the power of Apotheosis - also known as deification or divination - and he serves the state and the pharaohs, if you can even call it serving. It's more like a trade relationship between two equal parties. He himself is a subject of worship and glorification in the eyes of many, kings and queens included. Yes, he is kind of a big deal. He has lived for almost two centuries, and he still looks to be in his early twenties. A lot of rumors float around about why this is the case. Is he truly some kind of higher being? Well, you learned the truth really quick. While he was born a divine, he was originally a mortal, just like every divine is when they are born. Through the process of him becoming more powerful, he became immortal. It's a little-known fact about deities, who are as rare amongst divines as divines are amongst the normals, but they can actually become biologically immortal.

So, why oh why did he have interest in the puny little Dione, the bastard child of a nomadic prostitute and god-knows-who? Because you, just like him, have inherited the very same power of Apotheosis from the stars.

While you are probably unique as far as your version of this ability goes, you and Anubis are not unique as far as the power of deification goes. That's not to say it's not a rare gift, because of course it is. It's a tremendously rare ability. Over the short history of the new age of divinity, only four people have been blessed with this ability across the whole wide world. The fact that there were two people born in the same country with the same power within their respective lifetimes is just absurdly improbable. Talk about lightning striking the same place twice.

Anubis has an unique quirk to his power that lets him see and feel where and when people become deities themselves, by what means do they achieve these powers, and what this new power is. Apparently, this is how he found you. Your power is something that has been always active in your heart without you or anyone else even noticing it. You were either born a divine, or something triggered a change in you to become divine when you were just an infant. He cannot determine the identity of the recipient though, or any characteristics for that matter. That's why it took him so long to find you. It leaves us with just one more question; his motive. Why did he want to find you? He wanted to teach you and make you his student in order to teach you to use your power effectively and responsibly.

All this information was just what you learned on that trip, and having learned that information, even as a six-year-old, you knew your life would change forever. This day signaled your figurative rebirth and started a long and hard journey of study and cultivation of your powers. You would never be the same again. There is still a long and windy road ahead of you to get where you are now - enjoying alcohol in the stern of a merchant ship traveling to Atlantis - and there are a lot of tales to be told, especially as far as your school years are considered.

• Three years later…