Larry was a bit nervous about that, but now was not the time for fear. Now was the time for false bravado, something he considered himself quite good at; in concept, if not by name.
"Uh yeah sure, go for it. So which sphere is which again? Moon is first, Saturn is seven, Mercury is two, what else?"
"Venus is the third, the Sun is the fourth, Mars is the fifth, Jupiter's number six, and after Saturn we skip right to the Fixed Stars, since Uranus, Neptune and the dwarf planets are pretty shitty real estate, all things considered, and after that it's mighty number nine, what they call the Primum Mobile, where the source of all of us angels hangs back at. Each layer's fun in its own way, though the Moon kind of sucks despite the great view you can get from there. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves - holiness first!"The angel points his finger at you, not minding the absence of road in front of the van, and you feel interesting for a moment. Special. Like something is looking right at your soul, and not finding it particularly objectionable somehow! It's a pretty amazing feeling, you have to say.
But that in itself is just a prelude - what follows next is more interesting. You feel a tendril of your own flesh, less than nanometers in thickness, completely invisible to the naked eye and, you suspect, possibly not actually your flesh at all, given its thinness and how it seems to go right through the angel, then through the door of the van, and then suddenly take on the speed of light, tearing forward into the void, your mind only vaguely cognizant of the fact that a piece of you seems to be traveling further and faster than anything manmade ever has, and possibly ever will. And despite the laws of physics technically forbidding such a thing (though much of what you've seen so far contradicts a whole lot of those anyway), it just keeps speeding up more and more, stretching out beyond the stars, beyond all you have ever even vaguely known in your life, and finally touching what you cannot entirely confirm, but believe to be the edge of the universe. The sheer distance your being seems to have traveled feels like quite a dangerous concept for the mind to even begin to properly process, and so you, in a fit of uncommon wisdom, simply don't.
And then, all of a sudden, what feels like divine lightning strikes your nigh-infinite tendril of flesh, and it begins to burn at faster-than-light speeds like a wick, trivializing the true distance it travels by simply being so damn fast. And then, with a jolt, the flame runs back into your being, filling a hole you didn't know you even had with a holy light, one that all but dwarfs the little pinprick of being that has already been aligned to magic, and more than compensating for the fragment of essence you just burnt.
Larry has internalized some holiness! He has one point to spend on his stats, and gets the ability to choose "Angel" as a keyword when researching spells! In addition, Divine or Angel spells in his repertoire gain a +1 casting bonus!"Pretty cool, huh? You're now part angel! And the better you do, the more angel you'll become - soon you'll be able to navigate the heavens, even!""Because I don't know who either of those people are and that guy pretty heavily implied he was going to kill me if I don't help."
"Ah! Good points, both of them. The profligates are these slavemongering creatures you currently serve, and the Three Shadows are who you spoke to in the far below! As for the second point, what if I and the other mounts could help you? Concentrate for a bit, focus your mind on the use of the rivers! And then patiently cast it, but use it to split up their forces! Create little islands! Split them up so the defenders can slay them with ease! And we, the so-called riding animals, could help you in this! Carry you away, or forward, and make their commanders topple from their lofty positions! Create chaos!"
Author
Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus (Read 273411 times)