"Thank you for your service!" the Cathedral's greeter bows deeply at each of us veterans as we file into the main hall.

Things had gotten rather intense during the last Fallen incursion, with Command firing off messages to my phone ordering me to the wall. After Lisa had assured me that she would be fine hiding out at the school until the crisis was over, I rushed to the designated location and assembled with an ad-hoc unit made out of other reservists.

By the time I reached the wall, things had gotten really hairy. The Valkyries and Auxilia were in full flight and most of the deployed Militia had managed to get themselves killed. Plus there was the monster elephant hosing down the ramparts with its flamethrower trunk. My unit promptly ran back into a nearby shelter while the elites dealt with that class A monstrosity. Once the elephant had been taken out, we were ordered to charge the Fallen with the remaining the survivors.

It was pure chaos. My unit had been put together at the last minute and we had never fought together before. The only person I recognized was the drooler, that old semi-senile Valkyrie who worked with me as an Operator at the transmission station. There was no coordination or plan when we attacked. We just summoned our bulwarks and command ordered us to throw ourselves at the enemy. Of course, the charge almost immediately lost momentum when a large chunk of the unit began lagging behind, thanks to the overwhelming confidence we had in our suddenly appointed Valkyrie officers. On my part, I kept the drooler between myself and the Fallen at all times, occasionally taking a few pot shots at the enemy with my pistols and rockets.

No need to be too enthusiastic about things when there was no experience to be harvested after all.

We nevertheless managed to keep the Fallen contained long enough for the defeated army to get their nerve back and conduct a counterattack, tipping the battle decisively in the Citadel's favor. So the day was won and the Cathedral decided to hold a special service conducted by the chorus just for us reservists in recognition of our contribution.

"Operator Kuat?" a hooded priestess approaches me as I look for a free spot among the pews, "This way please."

"I qualify for VIP seating?" I ask curiously, but the priestess ignores my question and leads me through a door at the rear of the hall. We enter a plain office, with clergy attending to paperwork at their desks. The priestess picks up a large box from one of the tables and hands it to me.

"Uh, what is this?" I mutter, eyeballing the box.

"The chorus still needs time to prepare for their sermon, so I thought we could get this out of the way." the priestess explains, "The Cathedral has been helping with recording the recharge prayers for injured Valkyries. We would be grateful if you could take the thumb drives back to the station for processing as soon as possible."

"I just got back from fighting for my life out there a day ago." I protest in a deadpan voice. Not really true, but its technically correct at any rate.

"The Divines thank you for your service." the priestess bows deeply.

"I'm being sent back to the station after this session to handle the chorus there as well." I continue with my objection.

"The Divines are grateful for your devotion." the priestess holds her bow, not moving.

I rub my scalp in exasperation as I pull out the last excuse remaining to get out of this bit of extra work, "I haven't eaten lunch yet."

The priestess reverts to standing position in triumph, "There will be refreshments provided after the service."

"Fine. Fine." I mutter and accept the proffered box, "Why is the chorus taking so long to get ready?"

"Well, one of the choristers just made it back from the concrete desert." the priestess explains somewhat uncomfortably, "It was at short notice after all."

"Concrete desert?" I query, "What was she doing there?"

"Well ..." the priestess's voice trails off, clearly uncomfortable with discussing this topic.

Then, all of a sudden, a loud cry booms throughout the office.

"REEEE!"

"Oh no, she's at it again." the priestess face palms, "Please leave right now Operator Kuat. I need to help with something urgent."

"What's going on?" I look in the direction the noise is coming from. I can't see anything, thanks to a partition blocking my line of sight, but I can hear the pounding of feet and panicked voices.

"Please, just leave." the priestess insists urgently and begins pushing me out of the office. Everyone else in the room has already made themselves scarce. And that odd shout keeps getting closer.

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"REEEEE!"

The partition is knocked down with a crash and out comes stumbling a woman dressed in a stained green burka. A stained, smelly green burka. And there's only one type of person who wears a colored burka in the Citadel.

"Is that a chorister?" I query with a disbelieving voice, "And is that shit smeared on her robes?"

The chorister knocks aside the priestess that I've been talking to and grabs me by the collar of my shirt, before pulling me right before her face. The stench of feces rising from the chorister's clothes is overwhelming and I lose the battle not to gag. A group of Valkyries rush up from behind the chorister and attempt to pry the woman off me, to no avail.

"REEEEEEEE!" the woman shrieks from behind the burka with unrestrained lunacy. But when I look into her eyes, I get a shock. There's no madness in them. Just a calm, calculating intelligence. As if the chorister was sizing me up, weighing my importance. There's a subtle nod from the woman and her grip slackens, allowing the minders to pull her away from me. The chorister then throws herself across the floor and rolls about, spreading feces everywhere on the carpet.

"REE! REEEE! REEEEEEEE!"

The priestess manages to pick herself up and hustles me out of the room, away from the ridiculous sight. The moment we leave the office, she slams the door shut firmly and ushers me to the vacant backstage area of the main hall.

"Forget everything you've seen today." the priestess pleads, "Don't mention anything to anyone."

"Green. She was wearing green." I muse, "Was that the chorister of Haiwal?"

The priestess sighs in defeat, "Her holiness usually has it together when she is assembled with the rest of the chorus. We need to get her to calm down and clean her up."

'But why was she like that?" I press, suspecting the answer but wanting to know the official line anyway.

"Each chorister takes on the traits of the Divine they represent." the priestess says, "You should know that as an Operator."

"Haiwal line is always engaged." I point out, "I don't think any Operator has managed to connect to her realm ever since the end of the Age of Strife."

"Her holiness can nevertheless draw on Haiwal's divine power." the priestess clasps her hands in prayer, "That's what makes her a chorister after all. And with that power, comes sacrifice."

"I don't understand." I complain. No really, I don't. The jamming signal the Management is running should prevent that from happening. We even have a dedicated transmitter for this job back on earth.

"We call it Haiwal's Curse." the priestess sighs, "The goddess's power is somehow distorted, probably because of her sphere of jurisdiction. Or maybe Haiwal has not bothered to be gentle in her touch. Whatever the case, the health of Haiwal's choristers usually decline very quickly and severely. Her holiness can be considered to be lucky. Most of her predecessors would be dead by now while her problems are limited to random shouting."

"And rolling in, uh, dirt?" I ask.

" The Cathedral lets her holiness live in the concrete desert when her presence is not required." the priestess face palms again, "Under supervision of course. We found it less disruptive this way."

"Haiwal must like the present chorister then." I smile, a sense of relief overwhelming me. Hoo boy, I thought for a moment the jamming no longer worked. Thankfully, that crazy woman got a full blast of it and was too addled to confront me, which I'm sure was what she wanted to do. Strange she managed to last for so long though. The pain is supposed to be unbearable, at least based on the briefing I received.

"The goddess of fang and horn does show favor in strange ways." the priestess agrees, ignorant to what I'm really talking about, "But when the chorus comes together as one, at least the other choristers can share in the burden."

"That's a thing?" I blurt out, genuinely surprised this time.

"Oh yes." the priestess nods approvingly, "The Seven as One. It applies in all things, not just the creation of the world."

"Praise the Divines." I murmur reverentially, "Hey, could I use the scripture room for a moment? What happened just now gave me plenty to think about."

"Certainly." the priestess agrees, "It will take some time before the sermon starts."

I thank the priestess and make my way to the scripture room, basically a library storing books teaching the claptrap that's so popular in the Citadel. Since I am already saddled with a pile of extra work, I must as well perform an errand while I'm here.

Walking into the scripture room, I notice that all the tables for guests are empty. The librarian is not even here, probably busy preparing for the sermon. The only company I have are the towering bookcases loaded with tomes, both old and new. I walk past shelves filled with scholarly commentaries, religious jurisprudence and the histories of the Saints. What I'm looking for is right at the back of the library.

I grab a step ladder by the side of one of the shelves and bring it to a lonely corner of the room, where the most basic texts are stored. Most of the stuff in this section would be taught in elementary school. Nothing here would be of interest to a scholar, or even an adult lay person. I suspect the scripture room collects these books for the sake of form more than anything else.

But that's fine. Mounting the stepladder, I scale the shelf and pull out my target. A thick, heavy leather bound tome titled 'The Complete and Unabridged Creation of The World'. Not only is it dreadfully boring reading, there are no annotations or commentaries in it that would make it of interest to the more mature reader.

The perfect spot to use as a dead drop.

My fingers seek out the slit made in the book's binding and find a thin slip of paper hidden within. A message from Sarkar. I unfold the paper and begin working out the cipher used to encode the message. Not only is the message protected by code, there's a second layer of obfuscation involved in its construction.

All Operatives are fluent in multiple earth languages. We can understand the in-universe language thanks to our hosts, but the locals have no way of decrypting a message written in a tongue they have no idea even exists. To make things even more complicated for any Yellow Rose watcher that may stumble upon this message, we don't consistently use the same earth language either. Sarkar prefers Hindi, Wu writes in Mandarin and I in English. We can all understand each other, but the constant variations will foil any attempt at translation.

Its a bit of a headache though, to communicate in a different language, but after a bit of wrangling, you get used to it. And here we go, message decrypted and translated.

'RUNNING OUT OF TIME. LEADER ORDERED RETRIEVAL MISSION. IS OUR SAINT READY?'

Shit.