Colonel Ulysses Walker felt a tremor in the immaterium, even as he was informing the lovely Lady Elise, his executive protection principle and regent for his future overlord, that her own little pups and their pup-retainers had skipped out on their martial lessons for the day. Not that he necessarily was upset by this. Sure, the young-ones could very well have time-off every now and then, and especially on this, their royal majesty’s seventeenth name-day, he just would have preferred if they had asked permission first, or even just sent word, that's all. For fighting was not something for fits and moods and passing interest, but was deadly serious business for those born to martial class.
And then he felt not just a tremor, but a full-blown Murphy-damned mind-quake, rising up from right underneath his very feet. Suddenly he was falling, fighting, failing to avoid being pulled into the immaterial vortex forming all 'around', invisible yet potent, immaterial yet present, at the threshold yet far, far away. Blood drained from his face and started running freely from his nose, eyes, and ears.
"Oh, what have ye done ye little pups" he spat his blood from frothy lips and croaked out at the room where everyone was suddenly staring at him, before the now forgotten goblet of wine slipped from nerveless fingers and crashed to the floor, staining a likely priceless antique Persian rug blood-red as his suddenly glowing-violet eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
...
Ulysses awoke and found his immaterial self standing on a featureless white astral plane, with a featureless white sky above. The white upon white of the featureless infinitely expansive yet also confined space should have been oppressive and disorienting. But for veteran immaterial pioneer and astralnaut Ulysses Walker, it was familiar as home.
"Your charges have stolen a march on you Ollie," said Major MacIntosh, "sloppy that."
"Hey, you try keeping up with the pups Iovar, might be easier for a dead man, and that's Colonel Ollie to ye."
"That's my Coloncie you're swearing with, Careful Ollie, that I might not take your tongue for it." Said Colonel Schmitt.
"And old-man Elias too, oh Lord! Have mercy!"
"He's busy, now listen," said MacIntosh.
"Your pups are fine, all of the Black-Watch going back to the founding have walked with them through the awakening, and they did it proper, their guardian angels alone should have been sufficient, not that the ‘Watch takes unnecessary chances, mind." said Schmitt.
"The important thing now is the men from the stars, Ulysses," said Iovar.
"The what now?"
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