Chapter 1

  The Abyss opened

  Falling like a leaf in the Wind

  Everything turned sideways

  Fell away

  Disappears.

  When will the Fall end?

  How will it end?

  And is there a way back?

  The light was the first thing Setenaya saw, when she opened her eyes. Blinding white light. Hastily She closed them again, fearing that she permanently ruined her sight. With closed eyes the light was endurable. ‘Where am I? What happened?’. She tried to remember. The last thing she knew, was sitting in a Cafe in Paris, enjoying a cup… ‘Oh my God, the fall… How am I still alive? Am I still alive? Maybe this is heaven. A lot of white light could be an indicator for that. Couldn’t it?’

  Carefully she tried to sense around her. The floor underneath seemed to be real enough. Cool, hard stone. ‘Granite maybe?’ In some distance she heard water dripping, except for that it was quiet. She pinched her self carefully. It seemed real enough, but she still wasn’t completely sure that all of this was real.

  She drew with some hesitation a rune for darkness into the air. But when she channeled magic into the rune, there was so much magic rushing into the rune, that she could see it even through her closed eyes. She cut the magic flow to the rune immediately. The realization that there was no light at all, and everything she saw as light was magic, hit like a white truck. There was more magic here, then even in the most dens area of her grandfathers abode. She sat down, and draw magic into her core. Before she had taken 12 breaths, she could feel that she couldn’t hold more and had to stop. ‘Amazing’ she whispered.

  That left her with a Problem, witch she could never had imagined. What to do with her over sensitive eyes?

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  Suddenly she through herself to the side. She could hear a noise like sharp claws on stone from where she stood only a heartbeat before. Her instincts and long years of training kicked in. She shifted into her tiger form and jumped on top of the place where she heard the noise. The fight was brutal and short and ended with the last breath of her enemy missing his throat. But the its long claws left deep wounds in her side.

  She painted a small Rune of healing on her side and watched in fascination, as the wounds closed in seconds. But as miraculous as the overabundance of magic was, it changed nothing at the fact, that the nutrition for her healing had to come from somewhere.

  As she took stock of her situation it didn’t look good. She was in a place with extreme amounts of magic, couldn’t see anything and shared this location with predators who saw her as food.

  She sniffed the corps in front of her carefully. It didn’t smell after any poison she could recognize. She took a small bit and spit it directly out again.

  It didn’t taste good, but she still couldn’t detect anything that would make it inedible. So she ate. The taste didn’t get better. Mostly bones, skin, and hard mussel. But the magic in the creature was a nice boon. She would still have preferred a mouse, or any of the game she had hunted with her grandfather.

  She finished fast, not knowing, if other predators would come use the situation. Then she cocked her head and listened. Food wasn’t a problem for now, but water would become one eventually. So she followed the sound of dripping water, and the the direction in witch the small amount of water flowed. It took her a while.

  She most definitely was in some kind of cave system. Maybe there would be an exit somewhere ahead? The water had to go somewhere. Right?

  The tunnels where boring. Sometimes wider, then smaller, sometimes a bit of moss. But it was hard to properly evaluate her surroundings with out her eyes.

  Then a scream of some kind of animal broke the silent and filled the tunnels with echos.

  Then the silent rained again, this time even more then before. ‘Right, boring is good! Boring means you keep breathing,’ she reminded her self.

  Then something changed, and her next step brought her to the edge of water. There was a noise like thousands of water droplets hitting a underground lake. She gave the water a sniff, but nothing stood out. When she took a sip, it tasted like the most clear and refreshing water she had ever tasted. For a moment she just enjoyed the water, then she through herself backwards, and the giant click in front of her, told her, that she had made the right move. The fact that she was still alive was also a god indicator.

  The heavy splash and a good amount of water that crashed into her, gave her an idea about the size of what ever that was. And she was very sure that she didn’t want to meet that thing.