12

The groups were splitting up, heading off to their Bob directed “staging areas”, when Yasha appeared.
The mark on her forehead was something like a red and black ‘s’ - a snake symbol. As Bob handed her
a Ganesha fetish, Logan asked, “Was it bad?”

She shrugged. “Holy water was worse.”  He suspected she was lying, but he wasn’t going to press her about it.

While team Vindaloo went out the front and team Octopus went out the back (ground team had gone to the kitchen to get a drink - he knew Marc would be disappointed by no beer), leaving the three of them loitering in the lounge. “So where do we go from here?” Logan wondered.

Bob grinned at them, all teeth and bravado. “We’re gonna pay a visit to the Brothers, and ask them who does their gouging.”

“Can I bring some salt to rub into their sockets?” Yasha asked. Ouch - bitter much?

“You don’t need that - you’ve got me,” Bob claimed, with a strange cheerfulness. “I’m ten thousand times worse.”

Oddly enough, Logan had no problem believing that.

***

Scott felt like a moron, but what else could he do?

So he stood with Tom, Xia, and Helga on the front lawn, jade elephants around their necks, waiting for … what the hell were they waiting for anyways? Bob had been vague about that too.

The chaos wave was closer, you could see it in the weather. The wind was whipping the trees around like a gale was moving in, and the sky was one of the oddest colors he had ever seen - a reddish, muddy purple, like decayed meat, shot through with broken blood vessels of livid red. If he wanted to be really dramatic, he could say it looked like the sky was actually breaking under the constant assault, but he wasn’t that dramatic.

“So, that mark means you’re being protected by a god?” Xia must have asked Helga.

“Yeah, Moros, the god of the depressed.”

Was she kidding?

“Never heard of him,” Xia admitted, possibly humoring her.

“Neither had I until Bob told me about him. He’s the brother of Thanatos, the Greek god of death. Moros is extremely powerful, but he never gets out of bed. Apparently he’s been in a suicidal funk for several millennia, but his brother won’t kill him, and everyone else is afraid of him. So he just lounges around his dimension like an out of work actor, and never does anything but be miserable.”

There was a huge pause before Xia asked, “Are you serious?”

“Well, of course she is,” Bob said, joining them. “I’m the only one who’s a bit crook around here.”

Scott sighed as he stared at him, wondering if he could ever actually punch him. And what the hell was with that t-shirt he was wearing? Did he not even take the possible end of the world seriously? “Can we just get this over with?”

Bob gave him a toothy grin that just made him want to smash his face in. “The fact that you’re eager to go tells me you don’t actually know how weird this is all gonna be.”

“Can it be any weirder than you?”

Bob chuckled, and made a shooing ‘get back’ gesture with his hands. “I know it’s hard to believe, but yeah, it’s quite possible.”

“I just hope it’s not the waiting room again,” Helga said.

“Oh, it couldn’t be, love. That was my hell.”

Scott almost asked, but decided he really didn’t want to know.

He felt something thin and strong wrap around his arm and pull him back, and he glanced down just in time to see Helga’s whip like green tail slipping away. He had to suppress a shudder of revulsion. Maybe it was because she was so close to Bob and Logan at the same time (which brought on a minor case of the “Ewws”) , or just the thought of her as a demon or as an assassin, but something about her seemed to set his teeth on edge. He certainly didn’t want her touching him.

(And there was no way in hell Logan was a spy. Okay, he could almost buy that language thing - that was just creepy the way he did that - and assassin? Sure, he could buy that too. But spies had to be inconspicuous, right? There was no way he could ever be inconspicuous with that hair.)

Bob stood maybe twenty feet away, back towards them, and seemed to fold his arms across his chest while he looked up at the sky. But since his eyes were closed, he couldn’t have been looking at it.

Scott leaned back, and whispered, “What the hell is he doing?”

“He’s getting us our lift,” Helga whispered back. “Now shut your pie hole.”

But Bob didn’t seem to be doing anything, he was just standing there. Except … was he starting to glow?

Yes, he was; he was outlined in blue energy that seemed to have no source at all … unless it was bleeding through him …

The wind started to swirl around him like Storm was trying to encase him in a funnel, but Bob appeared perfectly untouched; not even his hair was mussed. Scott then realized the funnel wasn’t just around Bob, it was around all of them, kicking up a solid wall of debris that hid the mansion from their sight … and yet the wind wasn’t touching them at all. They were the eye of a very personal hurricane.

“Now remember, clear your mind of all thoughts,” Bob said, pivoting to face him. His eyes were now all blue, the same electric blue as the aura, and tendrils bled beyond the confines of his sockets. For some reason, it was always startling to see him look so inhuman, even though he was never anything but. “Expect nothing. Prepare for anything.”

That almost sounded like a Zen koan. It was then Scott got the oddest feeling, and looked up -

- in time to see something black and limned with bright silver energy fall right on top of them.

***

Even though he was told he would be safe, Angel instinctively cringed and lingered in the doorway, not wanting to step out into daylight.

No matter that the sun had been swallowed by a sky as magenta as a club kid’s hair, or that it might not even be the sky proper - with a chaos wave, they could be looking at an interdimensional bleed, or up at the ground of another dimension or even through someone else’s sea. It could be anything, and probably was.

The mutant trio of Clive, Ororo, and Piotr all looked back at him curiously. “Is something wrong?” Clive asked. “Well, beyond everything, I mean.”

“Uh, no,” he lied, holding his hand out tentatively, awaiting the burn. But it didn’t happen, so he edged out warily, body still tensed for instant flight. It was hard to conquer the atavistic response. Somewhere, beneath all this oddity, he could smell the sun. It was out there somewhere, just hidden for the moment. Or for all eternity, depending on how this played out.

Piotr - the guy who turned metal (which could be unfortunate if it happened while he was swimming) - looked up at the would be sky, and said, “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

“It’s wrong,” Storm - it was just easier to call her Storm - said, with a sour frown. “I can’t even control anything.”

“Really?” The big guy held his own hand up to his face, and Angel watched as metal seemed to flow over the palm - well, no, it was his skin, wasn’t it? It just looked like it was moving as it changed density. “Mine works.”

“Yours isn’t tied to the elements,” she replied brusquely. “They’re all wrong.”

“The chaos wave would hit the atmosphere hardest,” Angel said, although that was probably patently obvious now. “Weather is a chaos based system, so it would be the first to go apeshit.”

They all stared at him like he was on fire (Was he?! No, no, he wasn’t even smoking - good), and finally Clive took pity on him. “I guess so,” he agreed, glancing up at the alien sky.

Angel felt a prickling sensation along his skin, something both familiar and odd, and turned around, expecting to see … what? He honestly didn’t know, just not anything as mundane as the back of the house, which was all he saw.

Storm was still staring at him, and he guessed she really hated vampires; it wasn’t personal, just a species thing. “How do you know Bob?” She said it like an accusation. She didn’t like Bob either? Well, that was reasonable too.

“He helped me out once. And, uh … we stopped a Hellmouth from opening in L.A. once.”

“Hellmouth?” Piotr asked. “What’s that?”

“How did he help you out?” Clive asked.

He sighed, aware he shouldn’t have brought it up. “A Hellmouth is a stable opening into a Hell dimension. And Bob helped me kill an indestructible Hell guardian. But he didn’t help all that much - he just gave me a knife and Spike a chainsaw.”

There was that group stare again, like he’d just grown an extra head out of his back. “Spike?” Piotr repeated curiously. “Hell guardian?”

“Chainsaw?” Clive added.

“There’s a lot of back story we’re missing here, aren’t we?” Storm said.

“Um, yeah. I’m not sure there’s time to explain.” Actually, he hoped there wasn’t. He really shouldn’t have mentioned it.

“No worries, Angel, you’ve been saved by the apocalypse,” Bob said, suddenly appearing by the back door. He started towards them, hands in his pants pockets, blue veins standing out in his temples. “Bet that’s happened before, ‘ey?”

Angel rolled his eyes and looked away, trying to restrain the urge to tackle him. It would probably never work, but it was nice to dream.

“By the way, you might want this,” Bob said, and suddenly threw a doubled headed battle axe at him - where the hell had that come from?! Angel caught it by its leather wrapped handle, and was impressed by its weight. It was a good one. And powerful too … smelling of blood. Bob’s blood.

He examined the blade closely, and saw a streak of blue on the edge of it. He glanced up at Bob with a quirked eyebrow. “Is this thing gonna burn me?”

“Not my kind; my kind seems to like you,” he replied nonchalantly, making Angel wonder what the fuck he was talking about. He couldn’t handle that god blessed knife of his without wearing gloves, so what was Bob saying exactly? It was established he was a fallen god, no matter how he lied and pretended to be something different.

Was Wesley’s theory right? Bob was a fallen Power? He had actually asked them once, and they denied it - but whenever he met them through their Oracles, the PTB’s were frustratingly cryptic and sometimes outwardly hostile. They had lied to him before - well, in a roundabout way; they just didn’t tell him something he needed to know. It wasn’t a big leap for them to deny something and be less than honest.

(But what was the difference between a god and a Power That Be? Wesley said there was some division, but he couldn’t specify. Maybe it was that gods seemed to have very specific powers - like mutants? - while PTB’s were simply powerful, without a specific limitation. But that didn’t make sense, because Bob had limits - he couldn’t read Ressiks and Freniks, for one. Then again, if Bob was the Fallen, he’d had his ass booted out of the club: they wouldn’t let him be as powerful as the rest of them. Shit, this was starting to make a lot of sense…)

“Are we all getting axes?” Clive asked, sounding less than enthused about the prospect.

“I don’t know how to handle a chainsaw,” Piotr volunteered nervously.

Bob chuckled warmly. “No worries, mate. Only Angel gets the medieval gear. He can fight without a weapon, but he usually likes to have one.”

Did he have to say that out loud? “I don’t …” He protested, looking at the others. “I’ve fought without weapons lots of time. I’m a vampire - I am a weapon!”

But they really didn’t care; impatience was etched on all their faces. The longer they were here, the more anxious they got. Better to get it all over with. When you were busy doing something, you didn’t have time to think, to ponder how bad things were and how bad they could get. In the thick of things, you usually didn’t think about the end of the world; you just thought about surviving.

“Get close,” Bob instructed. “The dimensional breach isn’t that large, and I want to make sure you all end up in the exact same place.”

“Back to back,” Angel added. “We don’t know what we may end up in the middle of.”

Bob gave him a lopsided grin as his bright cobalt irises seemed to expand, spreading across his inky pupils like a stain, making the whites disappear beneath a sea of blue. “See, this is why I figured we’d need you Angel. You can’t beat an apocalypse veteran to lead a charge.”

“Veteran?” Storm asked. “How many times has the world almost ended?”

“Umm … well, I haven’t really kept count,” Angel admitted, grimacing in embarrassment. He knew he had missed several; many were before his time. “I’ve only been involved in five … or is it six? I know there were at least two I only heard about later …” He trailed off as Storm continued to stare at him with her pale blue eyes, and he didn’t know if she was angry for lying, stunned, or just unable to believe that there had been several near Armageddons that no one heard about. Well, no one that wasn’t involved in creating them or stopping them. There was a whole other world out there that people had a tendency to ignore, until it crashed right into their own living rooms. And even then, sometimes the wall of denial was still impenetrable.

“Chat later,” Bob suggested. His eyes were completely full of blue energy now, and he was surrounded by an animate aura of it like a skin tight visible force field. Angel could feel it like static electricity. “It’s time to fly, my pretties.”

Angel now felt something else. That prickling sensation again, this time ten thousand times worse, and he couldn’t help but tense, gripping the handle of the axe so hard he could barely feel his fingers. He hated inter-dimensional transport - hated it.

The sense of power enveloped them, followed by a darkness that was as much a tangible thing as a transitional state.

He wondered where they’d end up, and how bad it was going to be.

 
13

It was a joke; a sick, twisted Bob joke. Next time he saw him - if he ever saw him again - he was going to kick his demon/god ass.

After a moment of nausea and dizziness, Scott found out he was standing - well, staggering - in a field of waist high golden grass, beneath a bright yellow sun and clear blue sky. Had that dirty son of a bitch just transported them all to Kansas?

“This is another world?” Xia asked in disbelief, the first one of them to speak aloud. “It looks like Nebraska.”

Nebraska, Kansas - close enough.  One of those flat states kind of in the middle.

Helga didn’t seem all that affected by the transport, probably because she was demonic.  Her tail
twitched like an irritated cat’s, and she said, “We're definitely not in Kansas anymore.”  Oh what, was
she telepathic now? “This place stinks of death.”

“It does?” He took a deep breath, and smelled … plants.  Some kind of grain slowly baking in sunlight, or perhaps hay. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell at all; there was a sweet undertone of clover as well. “Um, no it doesn’t.”

Tom nodded. “It smells like French fries, actually. Weird.”

Xia looked at him sharply. They were all spaced about three meters away from each other, Helga the crux of their loose circle. “No it doesn’t; it smells like apples.”

“You’re both wrong,” Scott pointed out. “It smells like a field.”

Helga scoffed, shaking her head, tail continuing to twitch back and forth. “Anybody got a coin we can flip to see who’s right?”

Bob had warned them of this, hadn’t they?  All getting what they expected.  But he didn’t expect to see a field - he didn’t expect anything.  And did Tom really think he’d smell French fries?  This didn’t make sense. “What does everyone see?” Scott asked. “Tell me.”

Things got immediately weirder, as they all apparently saw the same thing: a huge field of golden grass, stretching on unbroken for what seemed to be eternity, at some distant point connecting with the wide and lowering azure sky.  Except for one thing. “There’s something over there,” Helga insisted, pointing behind him.

Scott had done several three-sixties, carefully taking in the area, but there wasn’t much to take in - it was Earth as a field, as a sea of wheat or something similar.  It was a peaceful, pastoral wasteland, about as threatening as a wastepaper basket.

“There’s nothing anywhere,” Scott scoffed, glancing over his shoulder. Helga seemed to be pointing into nothingness, stuck between the gold and the blue. “And there’s nothing there either.  What - “ He stopped and froze, surprised. As he started to turn away, he saw it, out of the corner of his eye.

At first he thought it was a hillock of some sort, but the longer he watched, the more it seemed to … transform.  The mound became a mesa, then an edifice, something huge and black blotting out the open sky.

“What the fuck is that?” Tom exclaimed, as they all apparently saw it now.

Scott allowed himself to turn and face it head on.  The thing seemed to have swelled, become impossibly massive - maybe one hundred meters wide and at least that tall. It seemed to be a wall made of metal bars that showed through the egg white concrete like ribs through a starving man’s flesh.  Behind its enveloping walls was …a castle?  Something like a castle; they could see its sharply pointed top, like a gigantic spear stabbing out towards the sky.

There was no opening in the wall - none.  Not even a seam.

“How come we didn’t see this before?” Xia asked.  No one - not even Helga - had an answer for her.

After a moment of staring at it and waiting for something to happen, nothing did, and Scott let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. There was nothing right about this - the walls even sparkled vaguely, as if they contained mica - but he was relieved that some sixty foot monster hadn’t shambled through the wall, or some demonic army hadn’t come swarming over like ravenous cockroaches.

But they were here to stop some kind of dimensional siege, yes?  And as this was the only place in sight, if there was an attack in occurrence, this had to be its home base.

“Think we should knock on the door?” Helga said.  It wasn’t really a question.

“Yeah, we should,” Scott agreed.  He braced himself, in case he was overpowered (like when they'd fought Fenrir), and fired a tight beam at the wall.  He didn’t go flying backwards like that time, he had braced himself appropriately, but he could feel the energy he'd released was … greater somehow.

But not great enough.

The crimson beam hit the wall, and rebounded off it, like a laser hitting a mirror.

Shit. “Duck!” Scott shouted, diving into the grass.  He was pretty sure the others must have reacted just as quickly, as it seemed to zip off into nothingness; there was no sound of impact.

He laid there, looking up at a sky that looked like his own, peering through grass that could have been his own, and still smelled hay and clover. Whatever this place was, it was trying to look like Earth; be like Earth. But why?  If they hated it so much, why mimic the very thing they were trying to destroy.  It made no sense at all.

What was he thinking?  When did any of this make sense?  When did living in a world full of gods, vampires, and eyeless zombies start to seem reasonable?

He was insane. The cheese had fallen off his cracker, and he'd never even noticed until now.  He always thought madness was a screaming, raging thing - like Logan and his nighttime psychotic breaks - but maybe it could be more subtle than that.  Maybe your entire world could shift, and you’d never notice anything until you suddenly realized your paintings were crooked.

He just laid there, feeling the warmth of another sun, listening to the calming sound of a breeze rustling the grass, and suddenly Helga piped up, “Let’s not do that again.”

From a position several feet away from his, Xia said, “I think they may have a forcefield of some kind surrounding the parapet.  Let me have a try at it.”

“Go,” Scott agreed. Well, at least Xia had a forcefield too - at worst, it was a stalemate.

She stood and started walking towards the fortification, hands balled into fists at her sides, and Scott climbed to his feet, not at all sure why he was reluctant to do so. Maybe it would have been better if this didn’t seem so much like Earth; if it was just more alien-looking, it would have been okay.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that they really hadn’t gone anywhere.  This was Earth, he knew it.  Just Earth … slightly off.

It made him wonder where everyone else had gone.

14

Henry Kissenger had been right - power was the greatest aphrodisiac.  But not in the way he'd meant.

Greg (no, no, his name was Gregori right now - he could see it in his mind, in bold Gothic script) stood on what had to be someone’s penthouse garden on the top of a tall condo in Manhattan, overlooking a good chunk of New York, the sky above a roiling sheet of pure energy cycling through the primary colors so fast it blurred into the blended colors: magenta, teal, orange, violet, brown, gray, pink, cyan, black. It gave the cityscape below him shadows that seemed like living things, crawling over rooftops and facades, sliding along the rutted gray streets like angry shadows.

And he had no eyes.  He was seeing all of this, and he had no eyes.

The realization brought on the same silly giggle it always did.  Idiots - morons!  See, he was right - he'd always known he was right.

He was once the same kind of nothing as those stupid people down there, scurrying for safety from the implacable tide.  His parents used to drag him to church when he was a child, and he used to believe that the god they shoved down his throat was dead or a fairy tale, but he would discover later that wasn’t true. The god they worshipped was a amalgamated myth, an easy to swallow encapsulation of several fables and traits of real gods rolled up into a single ball; it had never existed on its own.  It was one big joke, played by the higher beings on their lessers, to see what the fools could be induced to worship.  He was sure all of the “accepted” religions were that way as well.

Argus was a true god.  He'd promised his followers a part of his glory, a part of his kingdom, and he'd delivered.  In exchange for his eyes, Greg (Gregori) not only got a smidgen of His power, but he got new eyes - not physical ones, but better.  He could see from one side of Manhattan to the other; he could see Argus’s energy as it pulsed in the sky like His heart.

He could see the dead before they even knew they were doomed.

He could feel the power all around him like it was an extension of his own body.  It was sensual, erotic, and made him feel like he was the world; he was all of existence, and the little people below him were pests who had invaded him, foreign bodies that needed eradicating as soon as possible.

No drug could ever be this good.  He had never felt so alive in his entire life.  It seemed as if everything he was, had ever been, had been leading up to this moment.

He turned back to his followers, his loyal brotherhood, and stepped out of the air, back onto the solidity
of the rooftop garden. “All is as it should be,” he proclaimed, unable to keep the smile off his face.

His people, rid of their mundane and frail eyes, stared up at him from their spots around the garden.  He had no idea what these plants were - nor did he care - only that they were green and clipped down in a uniform style, brightened up with the occasional red, pink, and white flowers. It was all dull and bourgeois, right down to the mosaic tiles and the tiny water fountain with the bewinged faux stone angel in the center. He wondered who would dare own such a grotesque monument to excessive wealth.  Was it those people they'd sacrificed in the penthouse?  If so, they should have been much harder on them.

“But …” Mario began anxiously, pausing before he continued.  He was seated on a narrow cement bench by the fountain, hands twisting nervously in his lap. “I thought He was going to create a paradise.”

“He is. His paradise; ours will come after His.  Are you questioning His wisdom?”

“No!  No, Hierophant, I would never do that,” he claimed, leaping immediately into sycophant mode. Peasant. “ But … uh … I didn’t realize so many people were gonna die.  I thought he would just -”

“Just what?” He snapped.  Mario was weak, he’d always known it.  So why did he keep him on? Because he had the van?  There was no point anymore - he was either with them or against them, and if his faith was less than true, Argus would gut him and wear his entrails for a coat.  “Forgive the non-believers? Welcome them into his loving embrace? You have let the small minds brainwash you - gods are better than us. We are the mice in their homes, the vermin that feed on their crumbs.  There are no benevolent gods, not like the weak would have you believe.  The Highers that are kind to us are weak themselves; they have grown attached to their stupid pets, and cannot bear to be rid of them.  The strong have no need of the weak.” He pointed at the fountain behind Mario, and said, in the arcane language the voice of Argus had taught him, “Blood.”

The water gurgling in the fountain became crimson, the blood of the non-believers, the sheep below.  Mario looked, jaw slack, and seemed to want to say something, but didn’t know what.

“I think you’re weak,” Gregori told him. “Are you weak, Mario?”  What was he going to do with him? Throwing him off the roof seemed so pedestrian, but it would be fun to see him splat on the pavement like a bug against the windshield.

He stared at him as best he could with empty sockets, the fear coming off of him visible in the air like tendrils of puce. “N-no -”

“The swallowed seeds of arrogance, breeding in the thoughts of ten thousand fools who fight irrelevance,” An unfamiliar, accented voice sang, before switching to speech. “Ya know what the worst part of all of this is? You may be a power drunk idiot, but you’re actually more on the mark about the Highers than you will ever know.”

Standing by the roof access door was a tall man in a Simpsons shirt and leather pants, head cocked to the side as he took them all in with a single glance, and almost instantaneously dismissing them; he could see it in his unnaturally bright eyes.

“Disembowel,” Gregori commanded in the Old language, pointing at him.

(The man … he didn’t look right at all, did he?  He was like a partial blind spot…)

The spell had worked before - he'd used it on that cabbie who almost hit him at the crosswalk - but absolutely nothing happened to the blind spot man. “You don’t fuck around at all, do ya, Greg?”

“Do not call me that,” he snapped.  How did he know his name?

“Even if I am your god?” He replied.  He finally placed his accent - Australian, like that annoying Crocodile Hunter guy. “I am Argus, my man.  Don’t you recognize me?”

“Blasphemer!” He roared. “You are not Him!”

He waved his hand dismissively, and said, “Flame on.”

All the shrubs suddenly burst into flames all around them, eliciting gasps of shock from the Brotherhood, most of whom instantly dropped to their knees and brought their foreheads down to the ground, classic poses of supplication.  But Gregori remained on his feet, furious at this … this pretender. “Extinguish!” He commanded, but nothing happened.  The shrubs continued to burn, the flames becoming an odd, clear blue that felt powerful, but seemed to give off no heat at all.

“Don’t piss on the parade, mate,” the interloper said with false amiability. He started stalking towards him, passing the idiotic worshippers prostrate at his feet. “This is classic!  Burning bushes - all gods have to have the burnin’ bush thing now.  Kinda like an Tom Jones impersonator always has to do “What‘s New, Pussycat”. It‘s just expected now.”

Gregori stood his ground, but now his stomach was starting to twist itself in knots.  The blind spot was starting to glow blue, like the flames, and he knew the man was not a Human warlock, or a Human at all.  He was … what could he be?  “Argus will crush you.”

“If he fell on me, I’ve no doubt he could,” he agreed. “But I don’t see him shifting his fat ass off the couch, not with a “Three’s Company” marathon on.”

He was so furious he could feel his blood pulsing in his head, the pressure so great he thought it might explode. “What the fuck do you want, heretic?”

The man chuckled good naturedly, while Gregori suddenly noticed two other people standing beside the door, a hairy man with a blue streak under his left eye, and an Asian woman with a snake tattoo on her forehead.  They too seemed to be masked somehow from his new vision. “Well, asshole, what I want is your connection to your supposed god.  You can let me have it, or I can take it. You have five seconds to decide, before I turn my friends loose on you.  You remember them, don’t you?  Is this the guy?”

“That’s the guy,” the hairy guy agreed.  Didn’t he look … familiar?

“Ah, okay.  So, Greg, make your choice - be mentally chewed up and spit out by a weak god, or be chewed up and spit out by a weak god after Wolverine and Lady Blood have beaten every single ounce
of shit out of you.  Five … four…”

Greg stepped back to the edge of the roof, and tried to take to the air, but his power seemed blocked somehow.  He could no longer cast spells, and seemed to be stuck here, on the top of this building, with some asshole pagan and his weird-ass followers, his own followers apparently gullible enough to believe
he was their god simply because he brought a bag of parlor tricks.

Maybe this was a test.  Perhaps Argus was testing his faith before showing him His true face. Why else cut him off from the source of his power?  Yes, that had to be it.  Argus wanted to see how loyal he would be in the face of seeming defeat.  There was only one thing he could do; only one thing that would prove himself to Argus once and for all, show him he was truly worthy of the power he bestowed on him.

He stepped backwards off the roof, and let himself fall.