Cardinal Spyridon I: Winter Greys
The Eleventh Day of the First Moon, 874 AD.
Athio, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.
Fascinating. The words of the book had been truly fascinating.
Cardinal Spyridon was not a heretic. He did not align himself with those beliefs that were seen as too unorthodox even for the mainstream churches. He did not believe in them.
That did not mean that the words themselves were not fascinating.
Saint Khidon had truly possessed a way with words, and having now read the most widely-known and reviled of his works Spyridon was under no illusions as to how his deceased friend had fallen to worshipping such beliefs. The words of Khidon would surely have been enough to make almost any man believe, for not only were they the words of a gifted orator and author but also the words of an academician, of a scholar. They were words for both the faithful and the learned, for the rich and the poor, the humble and the proud.
Perhaps above all, they had been words that could reasonably have been applied to almost any faith in the world instead of just to the Church of the First Saint. Barbaroi corvid-gods, southern winged-men and slavers, Terranean pagan cults, all could coexist with the words of Saint Khidon.
It was no wonder the churches of old had seen him as such a threat to their influence. To their power. Of course, given that a not-inconsiderable section of the book had been dedicated to the 'proper' way for a priest or monk to live out their lives, that of course being a life steeped in ascetism and revolving around charity, he had also been a threat to their wealth. No wonder he'd been executed for heresy.
Spyridon was no Khidonean, not by a long shot. He believed in the words of the more mainstream sects of the church, when they weren't being used to burn and torture the innocent that was. He was no follower of Khidon's words, and yet he could not deny that many of the criticisms the ancient man had put forth so long ago still applied today.
Indeed, it seemed that many of them were more applicable now than they ever had been before.
His readings and preparations had carried him through the first half of winter's chills, the thought that he might avenge his friend keeping him warm even on the coldest of nights, but now the preparations were made. It was time.
There had been no word from Aegos for more than a month now. The last thing they had heard was that the last of the old guard had been fighting in the streets with Admeta's loyalists after the death of Adikos, and that scouting parties wearing the sigils of the Imperator north of the river Daedala had been seen on the outskirts of nearby villages.
That told them that war was coming. It may even have been already here, cloaked behind the veil of chaos surrounding the capital that none wished to go near at the moment.
The news had been carried by the Aegan watch, who were more afraid of coming under inquisitorial oversight than they were of risking everything by abandoning their posts and marching to Athio. They'd been accepted with open arms, warm hearths, and hot soup by the members of the church in Athio. It was important to remember that, for every clergyman and woman who had willingly blinded themselves to the cruelty of the regime, there was another who had tried to help people whilst not drawing suspicion on themselves and getting their charges killed. There were still plenty of good people in the Aegan hills, and now they flocked to Athio for a chance at overthrowing the towering edifice that lay at the heart of all their ills.
But of course, any major campaign would have to wait until the worst of winter was over. To march an army through snows such as these would be madness, and to expect them to fight at the end of it would be even more so. Athio could not take the fight to Admeta or the Imperator at the moment, and so instead the people within its walls waited.
They cooked meals for the hungry, they sewed both clothes capable of withstanding the weather and gambesons capable of withstanding attacks, they fletched bolts and arrows with feathers from birds they'd caught for food, repaired weapons and maintained armour, ran drills, and most of all they prayed. Oh, how they prayed.
Spyridon was a Cardinal in the church, he had seen many prayers in his lifetime, but he'd never seen any quite like this. No matter the chill, no matter the snow, people huddled into the grand Cathedral of Athio and the dozens of churches and chapels that dotted the cityscape, and they prayed for salvation.
As he delivered his weekly sermons Spyridon got the sense that the people of this city were not used to being spoken to by their Cardinal. It made sense, for Sin had never been one for conventional prayers or the giving of alms, but if nothing else it gave Spyridon the sense that at least he was able to do something for these people. When he delivered his sermons calling for the people of the city to set aside the dogmatic views that had been forced upon them, that had been forced upon him, and learn to live alongside the other sects of the faith in harmony, he felt as though he were actually helping to make a difference in this city. His rhetoric of community was helping to push change forwards, and even those members of the other cults had begun to be accepted back into the city as equals. They had come back cautiously at first, afraid that it was a trick, but when they had realised it was no trick they came in their hundreds.
All of the sects of the church were welcome in Athio again, and soon they would be welcome across all of the Aegan hills.
Except for the Church of Bloodied Purity. Because fuck those slave-owners.
He'd... he'd not talked with Hawk all that much, honestly. The two of them weren't on bad terms, and they both completed all the work they needed to daily, but they didn't talk to each other much. Spyridon was fairly confident that they both sort of knew that if they started talking about Sin again, which they doubtless would, the conversation would only end in a row surrounding who's plans were the correct way to move forwards, and who was to shoulder the blame for their shortcomings. Neither of them needed that sort of environment at the moment, so they decided instead to meet up with each other after Spyridon had delivered his sermons once a week and review the progress they had made in their work and question the other about anything strange they had seen in each other's reports and paperwork.
In short they still communicated well and worked together, but their teamwork was at arms length and tooth-clenched at the best of times. He had no doubts that if either of them could lead this rebellion without the other, they'd do so in a heartbeat. They couldn't however, and so their cooperation continued on.
The last of the harvests had already been brought in by the time the Day of Ascension rolled around, the last of the winter barley and winter wheat crops having been harvested in the eleventh and twelfth moons respectively, and so it was now simply a matter of keeping an eye on the tallies of food they had stockpiled in the city and waiting out the winter. As soon as the snows had melted and the chill was bearable, the armies that had coalesced in Athio would march on the city of Aegos and put an end to the Most Devout Church and it's reign of blood and fear, never mind the morass of mud that the melting snows and spring rains would leave all around them.
They only needed to stick to the roads, after all. If the old Tyrants and Imperators of Aegos had left anything behind, then it was the straight and well-maintained roads that linked the great cities that had once formed the heartlands of their empire. Those roads were all the armies of the various warring factions in Aegos would need to take themselves to victory, and whoever controlled the roads would be able to severely restrict the movement of the other armies for as long as that control remained. He might not have had a military or strategic mind, but he knew that control of the roads would be pivotal in any quick conflict. People would adapt to not using them and traversing the countryside with their armies if the war dragged on long enough, but the opening months would certainly stick to the roads.
Hawk seemed to agree with him on at least that much, which was nice. The man seemed to not enjoy agreeing with him, but as someone with far more experience than Spyridon on military matters it was nice to know that when the man disagreed with him it was because Spyridon was actually wrong, and not just out of a sense of pride and distaste.
Yes, the two of them didn't get on very well, but they hadn't let that interfere with their goals. They couldn't afford to, not when the freedom of all Aegos was on the line. Not when the death of Sin was still fresh enough in their minds to seem like an open wound on some days, oozing with lost futures and half-dreamed memories.
If there was anything he could say that would make it clear that he was helping their rebellion, then it was surely that he was a wonderous administrator. Sin had done a well-enough job here, and everything was neatly organised and filed away so that he could easily access papers and files whenever he might need it, but Spyridon was more at home here than his much lamented friend could ever be.
Spyridon was known for bookkeeping and organisation, for giving out alms and managing tithes. He had little experience leading people into battle, but plenty at telling them which files told them what and where they were all kept.
All of that to say that Athio was being run better than it ever had before, and though his own demesne of Chytos was likely suffering under slight inefficiencies due to the island city now being run by messenger birds, he knew that there couldn't have been any administrative crises that had developed over there without his knowledge. He'd left their administrators in far too organised a state for that to occur.
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It was only his knowledge of bookkeeping that made him feel like he was actually making a difference here. Not only was he responsible for ensuring that these lands ran smoother than they ever had before, but also it was surprising to him just how transferrable some of those skills were to times of war; Spyridon would still make no claim to being ready to lead people on the frontlines, but at the very least he found that his knowledge of administration had given him something of a head start when it came to learning about supply lines and the home front.
The winter skies were dull, the winds cold, and the frost deadly. He couldn't send an army to march through such conditions, and so the soldiers had hunkered down in the many monastery-barracks scattered around Athio and continued with their drills whilst they waited for his command to march. It would be Hawk's command, in truth, but Spyridon was still the figurehead. It had to look like he was the one in charge, if for no other reason than he already had some level of repute amongst the people of Aegos whereas Hawk was entirely unknown.
If people knew the leader of a rebellion, then they were more likely to join the fight compared to a rebellion with an unknown leader. It was that simple.
The saving grace of winter was that no-one else could send armies around on the march either. Until the campaigning season started in the third moon of the year, it was unlikely that anyone would risk making a move. They were content to remain in Athio for now, biding their time, and Admeta's forces likely still had their hands full restoring order in Aegos itself before winter fell.
And as for Imperator Thrax, who's forces north of Aegos across the river Daedala had definitely been watching the events in the Most Devout Empire intently and waiting for an opportune moment to strike, trying to ferry an entire army across a river without a real bridge across it was already difficult enough. Spyridon doubted that the Imperator would attempt to make things even more difficult for himself by doing so in the winter and causing many of his men to freeze to death or drown after going into shock if they fell into the waters of the river. Imperator Thrax had been a very successful general before he'd tried to seize complete power of Aegos as part of his rivalry with Archcardinal Adikos, and Spyridon doubted that the man's mental faculties had deteriorated so much so as to allow so suicidal a manoeuvre.
For now though, such thoughts could be laid to rest. They were only really distracting him from the papers he was filing at the moment anyway, and there was always enough work to take care of that he couldn't really afford to waste time thinking on currently unrelated matters. They might technically have been in open rebellion against Aegos, but that didn't mean that matters of state and economy could be left to fall by the wayside.
Especially not under the cold and dark cover of winter.
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The paperwork and musings continued long into the gloaming hours, the fog outside only being kept at bay with what almost seemed to be a wall of candles burning bright. An exaggeration of course, but the mental image made him smile nonetheless.
It was only when those candles suddenly blew out as one, however, that he looked up from his paperwork. As he did so, the suddenly-extinguished candles seemed to ignite with a blaze of light brighter than any flame he had ever seen.
At first he was terrified, convinced that this was some moment of great import and perhaps even of divine origin. It didn't take long for such delusions to pass him by of course, but the fact that they had occurred at all should probably have showed just how fragile a state his mind was in at the moment.
He stuck his head out into the hall outside his room, and called out to see if anyone was there.
"Hello?"
Nothing. That's strange; there's nearly always a few servants and menials performing tasks out here no matter the hour.
"Anyone?"
Still nothing. He lit a candle at his desk, contained in a chamberstick, and held it before him as he stepped out fully into the hall. He wasn't sure why he was entertaining his mind's flights of fancy, but this seemed as good a time as any for a break from paperwork. If nothing else it would give him a good excuse to stretch his legs for a bit before returning to his evening work.
He was almost immediately ready to decry the candles as nothing more than a trick of the light, as something not entirely real, but at that moment the candle in his chamberstick seemed to blaze as those candles in the windowsill had. Not only that, but it almost seemed to go against the breeze and point to his left.
He turned to face the direction the flame had pointed, and was surprised to find that although he was now stood facing directly into the breeze that rose from the corridor the candle pointed in that direction still, unflinching and unflickering.
He set off walking in that direction, more curious now than anything, and tried his best to keep his footsteps light. He wasn't sure why he was being so cautious, for he was in the most secure building in all of Athio, but it still felt warranted nonetheless.
There were many corridors in the main keep of Athio, he'd come to realise these last few months. There were many corridors indeed, and they were spread out on many levels and stories. All of those above ground were well-maintained and in use, as were the basement levels, but the under-basement levels were old indeed. Old, and hardly understood. If a map ever existed that charted the labyrinth that lay beneath this keep, potentially beneath all of Athio, then it had gone missing long ago.
Still, Spyridon had no intention to go quite that low. Not willingly, anyway. The keep was safe, and whilst the under-basement levels were supposed to be safe as well it wasn't something he was willing to stake a bet on. He would play it safe and satiate his curiosity a little further, but no more than that.
As he continued trudging in the direction of the flame, he began to see a shadow on the wall. It moved always away from him, just as fast as he could move towards it, and as such he could never seem to get any closer to whatever it was that was casting the strange form onto the walls around him.
He didn't feel frightened in that moment, despite the fact that he'd already descended three flights of stairs and was set to head down into the first basement very soon, but he was still apprehensive. The shadow looked like that of a person, which might explain why it was moving away from him so effectively; if it was a person that didn't want to be seen, then heading downwards and away from him was certainly the best way to do it.
It was only there, on the steps heading down into the first cellar which for so long seemed to have stored nothing more than wine, that he thought he might have been able to cover just an inch of the distance between himself and this mystery figure. He recognised that he was being monumentally foolish in coming here, following this person here, by himself, but for some unknowable reason he felt perfectly safe whilst following whoever this person was. It was something he would have to consider later, certainly.
There, as he descended down the forth set of steps into the wine cellar, then down a fifth into an under-cellar, for the briefest of moments he caught sight of the slightest hint of crimson cloth. It was only for an instant, and then it was gone back around the corner. He moved to follow, but no matter how close he got the figure always seemed just as far away as before. He had remained in Athio for a couple of months now, but still felt far too inexperienced with traversing the dark hallways and granite chambers of the keep that had once been his friend's home. He was hardly certain he remembered these halls at all, for he rarely descended down into the under-cellars of Athio if he could help it.
There were too many secrets held by the dead for him to feel welcome down there.
Curiosity had compelled him to come this far, but upon realising just how many steps down he had gone he stilled. He wished to learn who this figure was, yes, but not enough to risk descending down into the only-partially mapped catacombs and mausoleums beneath the silent city.
As he came to a stop so too did the figure, or at least the shadow which Spyridon had been following the whole time did. Perhaps it was simply some sort of street-urchin, or one of the many dispossessed and forgotten dregs of society which were rumoured to survive beneath the city?
Myths, a voice in his head told him. Intriguing, said another.
He bit back a small huff of laughter. Was he really choosing now of all times to get curious, or was it simply something about Athio itself that drove people into that most dangerous of insanities known as curiosity? Sin certainly seemed to have held curiosity in spades, and he had been a native of the city, after all.
Or at least, he had been pretty sure that he was. Sin had struggled to hold on to most memories of who he was before the Most Devout Church of Aegos had taken him in. Before Archcardinal Adikos had taken him in.
He suppressed a shudder as he thought merely of the name of the man who for so long had been their twisted 'protector', their megalomaniacal saviour. Adikos was gone, and he couldn't hurt them anymore. He couldn't. He was dead.
He hated the man. Despised him for what he'd turned the three of them into. Hated him with a passion that belied his meek form, his bookish disposition. And yet he hoped the man had died cleanly. Hoped he had died well. Hoped that the last rites had been performed, so that he may be laid to rest properly.
Did that make him weak? To wish that the man who had tormented him and his friends had died at peace? Or did it make him strong, better than the man had been, rather than hoping for some foulness to befall his soul. Did it make him weak or strong?
He didn't know. He didn't know if he cared anymore either. He was Spyridon, he needed to act, and by all the Saints was he acting as he never had before. That would have to suffice for now.
The candle was blazing now. It seemed impossible that so small a candle should burn so hot, should be able to engulf the entire room in a yellow-orange light. He didn't know what had caused it to burn so strangely, but it must have had something to do with whatever it was that had brought him down here.
"Who are you?" He called out, and the figure stilled at his words. "Come, I mean you no harm! I have fresh food and clean water for you, friend."
The shadow on the wall remained for a moment longer, as though contemplating his words, and then bolted away. Spyridon frowned and sighed, but otherwise said nothing. Ah well, it was a mystery for another day. He would just have to station a guard at the mouth of the stairwell by the hall connecting to his room in the keep to make sure that there was no threat to him from whoever that figure was, but given that at no point had the figure tried to come near him whilst they were alone together in darkness, he was pretty sure that there was no harm intended towards him from whoever that had been.
The candle settled down, burning as it normally had. The amount of tallow that had already melted made it appear malformed and strange, but it was now burning normally. No real direction to the flame save that decided by the wind, no almighty blaze, and no sudden snuffing out of the wick. He was grateful for that last one, as he really wasn't keen on the idea of making his way back up five sets of stairs and through the winding corridors of the keep with no light to guide him.
Still, the events of the last hour had been more than passing strange. More than a little strange indeed. He got the sense that there was something going on here that he didn't quite understand, something that would come back to him one day.
Well, he couldn't dwell on it any longer. He needed to get back to his desk and keep up with his work, for he had far too much to do at the moment to warrant giving his attention to whatever that whole escapade had been about.
There was a revolution coming, and he needed to keep his mind focused on the plans he had made alongside Hawk instead of focused on strange figures donning bolts of crimson cloth.
He got back to work, attempted to sign the papers, and most of all he tried to blot out the image of crimson cloth and candles burning themselves out far too quickly
Oh Sin, what strange mysteries did you leave behind for me?