Session 43 – Sympathetic shoulders in high places
Alexis
"The fuck you mean, 'I'm too heavy to fit?' " The gods of Death and I were about to throw hands. Which, now that I say that out loud, yeah, it doesn't sound like the best idea.
They held up their sleeves in a gesture meant to placate the bull before it charged. "We mean that your soul has too much Divinity in it for the mortal afterlife. Not that you eat too many pastries."
Huh. Too much Divinity? "How could that have happened?"
They tilted their hood as they considered me. A sleeve reached for my head and my pulse shot through the roof as I recoiled. "Apologies. We weren't thinking about what happened to you. If you'll consent to let us look at your soul, we promise to be very gentle."
I nervously shifted from foot to foot and then slowly nodded. "Okay. P-please be gentle." I hesitantly leaned in.
Their hood glowed with Divine light. "Hmm. Yes, it seems that you now have two Precepts."
My mouth fell open. "What? What's the other one? How did I get it?"
"Divine Willpower. We do not know how you came to possess a Well, but we suspect that you earned the Precept when you died." Their sleeve fell away from my face.
Wrong one swept aside with a wave of my hand. "No, I knew about that one. What's the other?"
Hood with gently glowing ruby eyes tilted sideways as if trying to figure out the mystery in front of them. "Oh, Infinite Potential."
I drummed my fingers against my arm in thought. "Huh, I don't remember that one. Must be unique."
"Nearly unique. You're a very strange almost-mortal." The incredulity growing in their voice with every word. "That you know what Precepts are at all, would be remarkable. To have collected two, it makes you dangerous."
My full attention snapped to them and my face paled. Shit. Fuck. Motherfucker. "P-please, please don't tell the others. I.. I'm not a threat! I'd just as soon they all forget I exist."
Glowing ruby eyes bore into me for several long heartbeats before the hood bobbed forward and back. "Lothe is not a creature whose council we would keep under any circumstance. As for the others.." Their hood turned up as their gaze swept the sky. "Celestial matters are very turbulent at this junction. We will keep this to ourselves.." The gods of Death Below loomed over me, larger than life and a firm reminder to me that I am such an insignificant fish in this deep dark ocean. "So long as you don't gain another."
I nodded vigorously. "Yes, of course. I will do my best." A weak chuckle escaped my lips before I could stop it. "Although, I wasn't trying to get these two either. Oh! You said Infinite Potential is almost unique. Who has the others?"
Their gaze jerked away from my face and lost itself in the infinite distance granted by the Precept of Awareness. "We are out of time. I can hold you here no longer without disrupting the balance. Good luck, brave devil." Their sleeve patted my shoulder and they were gone as suddenly as they had arrived.
Wet vicious snarling filled the room, surrounding me from every side. I froze and looked around, but couldn't see anything different. Six beds, a dead soldier, assorted wardrobes. All accounted for. In the corner of my eye, I just managed to catch a shadow moving as a shadow should not.
I squinted and focused on that shadow, willing it to take shape and reveal itself to me. And then immediately regretted it as the shadow slowly took the form of a three-headed beast.
Six glowing silver, pupilless eyes looked out past dog-like snouts, searching the room for its prey. Four large clawed paws left imprints in the magical weave of the world. Covered from heads to the three tails in coarse black fur. And then there was those tails. Each bore a differently colored rattle, as if three snakes had coiled together.
The Cerberus. A monstrosity borne of Hells and Shadows. An exceedingly rare creature, it hunted lost and wandering spirits or souls. My stomach dropped out and sweat beaded on my forehead. It was here to hunt me. Hi, I'm the lost soul.
Instinct wanted me to freeze and hold my breath, but the DM part of my brain knew they hunt by sensing a certain kind of energy given off by wayward souls. I tried to suck in my energy, but then rolled my eyes at myself because that's stupid.
It prowled closer, one massive paw shifting in front of the other. I considered my options:
1. Let it consume me, Annihilating my soul forever.
2. Run away so that it can work up an appetite before it consumes me.
3. YOLO
Option three sounds like the winner! I took a running leap and launched myself up onto the thing's hind quarters aka, I landed on its ass. As one, three heads turned to look over their shoulder, ears cocked, and gave me the most 'what the fuck is this bitch doing' expression that you've ever seen on the faces of a multi-headed dog-like monstrosity.
I grabbed the red tail and gave it a shake. With a thundering crack, reality shifted and the two of us suddenly found ourselves somewhere in the Hells. We collided with the ground rather forcefully, leaving the monster stunned as I went flying face first into the red dirt. And you know, I'm gonna take some credit here. I think that wasn't too bad for my first time dimension hopping by Cerberus tail.
A vast domed ceiling stretched up miles above me. Hanging from that ceiling on glowing golden chains, the centerpiece of this massive room was impossible to miss. Each shining link in the chain was bigger than me as they wrapped around a suspended figure. It was clearly an angel of some description, that much was obvious from the two sets of delicate white wings drooping down the back and hanging well below the feet. Fully spread, the wingspan had to be at least forty feet across, which fit the body quite well at over twelve feet tall. And I would say that it was very much a woman, judging by the breasts barely contained in gleaming golden armor. I wished I could see her face, but it was obscured by sheets of curly red hair falling down around the head.
I tore my eyes away from the beautiful angelic woman and my mouth fell open as I took in the legions upon legions of armored angels standing at attention everywhere I looked. The nearest one one tilted his head and shifted his gaze around him as his eyes glowed with Divine Purpose. They drifted down to settle on me and widened.
"Hello, little soul. Are you lost? How did you get down here?" His voice, soft and sweet like honey warmed on a crackling campfire, poured over me, soothing my nerves.
My head bobbed up and down as I took in his impressive stature, standing in front of me adorned in gleaming silver armor with a massive great sword on his back. "Hi! I uh, I got a ride." My thumb hooked over my shoulder, gesturing vaguely at the Cerberus that was starting to regain its senses.
He grinned, seemingly amused by me. "You seem to be in a spot of bother."
"Pfff!" I dusted myself off and stretched my sore muscles as I stood up. "Nah, I've got him exactly where I want him."
The angel's sharp bark of laughter rattled my bones, although not in an unpleasant way. It was rather like the full belly laugh of a jovial uncle. Or at least, how I imagined a loving uncle would sound if I had one. He looked beyond me, where the Cerberus shook off its daze and lunged at me. "Heel!" Like a crack of thunder, his booming command filled every cell of my body and I was halfway towards obeying when I realized he meant the monstrosity. The beast yelped and jerked mid-leap, coming up short and rolling in the dirt beside me. It whimpered and put both paws over its face as it hid like a scolded mutt.
"Oh wow, uh, thanks!" I shifted nervously and took a moment to look more closely at all the other armored figures in the room. There were hundreds and hundreds of angels standing in perfect rows and columns. Beyond them, I could almost make out silhouettes that might be demons in one direction, and something else as I gazed in another. My eyes slowly drifted upward again to the suspended figure as I sucked in a breath. The full scale of everything around me started to sink into my thick head. "Who is she?" My voice softened to barely a whisper, as if frightened of disturbing the legions of soldiers or the thing they guarded.
"Our ward." His eyes followed mine up to the chained angelic woman. "Until the gods release us, or we fall in our duty."
"I should probably leave you to it then. It was nice to meet you." He inclined his head in farewell as I turned and walked over to the Cerberus. "Hey boy, ready to get out of here?" The heads bobbed. I climbed up onto its back and we both took a last look up at the bound angelic woman. She was so pretty. I reached back and shook the black rattle.
Reality cracked and we shifted into the infinite twilight of the Shadow Falls.