The Gathering

Prologue: The First Gathering

"During the ninth hour, the emissaries must descend to gather that which has been borrowed. The faithful shall kneel and give what is owed. Do this, I command, until our Father is whole again." – His Divine Regent, Gabriel.

Blinding light.

The boom of a thunderclap.

That was all that filled Jonah's senses as he knelt on the concrete, unable to command his body to move. His head spun. As he began to open his eyes, the world around him came into view. Though still blurry and overexposed, he could make out the shapes of two others, framed in the morning sun. On his left, tall and standing straight up; a woman. The one on his right was smaller and knelt on the ground as Jonah did, though he appeared more steadied. Suddenly his mind seemed to jolt back to life, on his left was Seraphiel, her porcelain white skin seemed to glow in the gradient sunrise. Her angular face as stoic as ever, her blonde hair braided back behind her, encircling her head. She carried gleaming bronze sword attached to her belt. She wore fitted plates of matching bronze on her chests, forearms, and shins.

The man to his right was a teenager like him, his name was Asmodel, slightly younger than Jonah but much more capable, he stood a few inches taller as well. His dark hair was short and slightly curled, framing his tanned face which was adorned with a smug grin. As looked down at Jonah, who was still struggling to get to his feet.

"You look like a baby deer trying to take its first steps!" chided As. Jonah, now more determined to balance himself, concentrated on the ground beneath him. He had read that his first descent would be disorienting, but he hadn't thought it would last this long. As rolled his eyes and reached out a hand to Jonah, "come on, we don't have too long!" He said, excitedly anxious to begin. Jonah took As' hand and steadied himself on his feet. His vision was nearly back to normal as he saw in front of him some kind of tall, drab looking building.

"Here?" Jonah asked.

"Here." Sera instructed, pointing her finger at a man standing outside one of the building's doors smoking a cigarette. "One demonstration, then you two will gather your first." She strode confidently towards the man, who acted like he didn't even notice the six-foot-tall, bronze plated Angel right in front of him, 'because he didn't' Jonah remembered. As the man brought the cigarette to his lips from another drag, Seraphiel reached out and placed her palm on the man's forehead, her fingers extended like the legs of a spider, gripping his scalp. The man's face went from oblivious to terrified, his eyes dilated and buzzing around his sockets. "Now you reach out..." she instructed to As and Jonah, the man's forehead began to glow red, as if a lightbulb was being pushed against the inside of his skin, his eyes turned back in his head and became bloodshot and white. Sera closed her eyes to concentrate as the man seemed to go limp under her angelic influence, still standing but no longer trying to move or resist Sera's touch inside his mind. "This one is putrid..." she said with a grimace on her face. She raised her hand from the man's forehead and into the air, with it came a baseball-sized orb.

Jonah had never seen one in person and this one was right in front of him. It shone in seemingly every color at once, a rainbow encased in brilliant light, pulsating and writhing in Sera's steel grip - a human soul.

Seraphiel took the soul in her hand, grasping it. She closed her fist on it, collapsing the light into nothingness. The man's eyes stopped their twitching and he fell with a thud on the pavement, limp. As looked on with wonderment, this was the first time that either him or Jonah had seen a soul so close, let alone a gathering. While As was clearly enthralled, Jonah was frightened, he didn't know if he was strong enough to contain a soul in his grip. The rose bush's soul he had practiced on seemed more and more insignificant. Feeling overwhelmed, he took a deep breath, the air on Earth stung his throat, then his lungs, with dirt and pollutants. He coughed lightly. This was also Jonah's first time on Earth, As had been down once before with his father, and Sera had taken the journey thousands of times.