Chapter Two: Angel Fall

Noble:

Groaning I attempted to stand up in the crater my impact with the ground had created, the air around me thick with the glowing feathers; the signature characteristic of the ‘Angel Fall’ phenomena.

The air smelled of ozone and lightning crackled around me, I look up as the sky clears above me. The words of the godly collective still fresh in my mind…

“Ah” their spokesperson starts, “so good of you to turn up”

I look around wildly trying to get my bearings. One moment I had been getting mauled by a demon I ‘well daemon but same difference, Demons have been extinct since the start of the Golden Age’.

Ignoring my evident confusion the speaker continues “we were originally going to just drop you planeside with no warning but then we remembered that you’d be packing technology from the golden age and that,” he pauses as if for dramatic tension “is a big no-no”.

As he finished his surprisingly casual opener I realised where in Oblivion is was. And boy do I mean Oblivion the Warp, the Nether or the Immaterium are all terms to describe the same place.

The place souls go when their mortal bodies die and the place where the energy that fuels magic resides when it’s not using ones soul as a conduit to manifest itself into the Material realm or physical plane the place where humans and xenos and all things real.

And where in the vast expanse of non-existence was I? I was in the council room and it looked no different from when I was here last. The ancient stone walls expanded higher than even my eyes could see above to where a ceiling would have been in the real world but here one could see a vast expanse of darkness broke up with small specs of light. Each small flare of light insignificant in its own right but together the trillions upon trillions lit up the council room.

Tearing my gaze from the star map of the universe I turned my attention to those in the room with me. Seated in a semi-circle around me where rows upon rows of chairs most empty. But hundreds still where filled with shadowy figures each one radiating a power unique to each individual. The kind of power that many could only dream of.

Each and every one of those figures was at least a god most while only minor-deities where still gods and more than powerful enough to make armies tremble before their might.

I tried to expand my senses outwards no longer focused on what my ‘physical’ senses could pick up but my other set, a set that had gone unused since I was last in this room.

Two! There were two power signatures I recognised and I quickly homed in on them.

Two figures were sitting up towards the back each one watching me with a scary level of intense interest.

One figure was slimmer than the other his light brown eyes looking over me ‘Hermes’ I thought, ‘same as ever still trying to figure out the best way to pickpocket everyone he meets… or sees’ while his power or aura or whatever you wanted to call it was powerful it was unique in that it seemed to erase itself from your attention. If you didn’t know what to look for you would never notice it was there.

The other figure while slim had a different edge to it wasn’t the boyish slimness of Hermes, no this was womanly. As I made eye contact with her it clicked who it was “Athena” I muttered under my breath her dark very changing eyes bore into mine as if trying to see my non-existent soul. Her aura was intense to say the least it felt like a bridled horse rearing to go. It was the calm before the storm and it terrified me.

I removed my helmet to show respect to my betters and nodded politely to the Olympians in the back. The speaker continued to speak for some time he spouted some nonsense about my habit of not-dying was while funny for the first few thousand years was starting to get stale so they were going to ship me off to someplace called the Old World.

He explained that it was something of a testing grounds used by the gods since the galaxy let alone the universe was so huge even for gods they utilised the Old World as a small scale model all the same major races present out in the wider universe where represented there.

I was being dropped there for two reasons I was to be my races representation on the planet and the only one since my kind are spread so thinly across the Materium and because the expected reaction of those planetside to someone like me was going to be hilarious.

Then as if it were an afterthought he reminded me that my modern equipment wasn’t allowed that the world had to progress at its own rate so everything I had was going to be taken for quote “safe keeping”. Much to my relief that particular responsibility was to be given to either Hermes or Athena.

Then before I could utter a word of my own I was stripped of my belongings and a portal appeared beneath my feet. I felt myself break into billions and billions of pieces and an instant later there was a thundering boom and I was put back together the Angel Fall to my new home was over before I’d even known it had started.