The Church of the Unified Pantheon was the biggest amongst the major religious orders of Monde.
It stood as a testament of their power that they could claim a Great Kingdom of Argus for their own. As Argus was the richest and most populous of the three human habitable continents of Monde.
Depending on how you looked at it, Albus the home of the church was either the biggest kingdom or the smallest. Possessing only one major city, its capital Neriah.
Looked at from one angle when compared to the other Great Kingdoms, Albus was positively tiny. On the other hand Albus was just the home of main church, with each of Neriah’s twenty-districts dedicated to one of the twenty-one main gods.
The true church was everywhere, its roots deep and entrenched and entangled with everything, touching almost everyone on the continent.
From the courts of the royalty, to the noble houses, to the business, sects and guilds and farmers. Spilling over onto all three of the habitable continents. Their influence deep, their presence nigh onto ubiquitous.
*****
The home of the Primus, the head of the church, always lay in the central district of Neriah. The district that was dedicated to the chief god Alceus, the song breaker.
The god who broke the chaotic spellstorms and stopped the aetheric overflow event that nearly destroyed the world. Allowing it to begin anew.
This century’s Primus was a man named Alphonse, he dwelled in a place of white stone. Dressed in white vestments. Surrounded by surprisingly few outward signs of wealth, though what he did have was all quality and top of the line.
If one wanted to see what the position of a Primus bought you, it was best to look around him, to look at the vast rose garden that lay in his yard. To look at the portraits that bore his visage. To look into his eyes.
Clear blue, filled with an incandescent brightness. His visage unlined and preternaturally youthful despite the fact that he was nearing his three hundredth year. He looked less like a man of faith and more like a ex-soldier.
A young soldier, the kind that had to lie about his age to enlist and still only managed to join because the army was desperate for bodies and men and the recruiter couldn’t care if he was a year or five too young.Lean, slightly too lean. Skinny but fit. A thin scar crawling down the left side of his face and ending at his jaw.
This was what a man who more or less ran a third of the world looked like.
“Mhm?....Oh my.”
Across from him was a young woman, or at least a woman who appeared young though as far he knew she was even older than he was. She was Ophelia Delphi, the current head of the Ministry of Public Order. Pale skin, white hair, old pale eyes.
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Her ministry was third amongst the three big powers of Monde. If the church was almost everywhere then it could be said the ministry reached places that even the church couldn’t reach. Observation by their agents, a simple fact of life.
The Ministry ever watchful lest the world fall out of step again.
Every two weeks or so the two of them tried to get together and play chess. Taking the time to talk, get reacquainted and tacitly trying to ply each other for information.
“What is it?” said Alphonse.
“We didn’t lose Jelani.”
Alphonse blinked. Then without looking at the board he moved his knight forwards and put her king in check.
Ophelia frowned and moved her queen to take his knight. He moved his pawn to take her queen. Now it was Alphonse turn to frown, somehow “he’d” ended up in check.
“Really?”
“Yes.” said Ophelia.
Ophelia was a powerful psychic, while Alphonse had to rely on missives and relayed messages that relied on couriers, magic and guild computers the ministry worked powered by a vast psychic network.
One in which every secret was shared, all of it being piled and accumulated in the mind of the woman across from him.
Alphonse frowned, instead of psychics the church had oracles and Precogs and all of those had said that Jelani was slated for destruction. It’s fall would harken an age of decline for the kingdom of Meallan which would possibly result in its fall.
“Good. Gods be praised.” said Alphonse. Annoyed but only a little annoyed, though he could hardly afford to let any of that show. Thinking of all the people he’d have to send away for. He’d been preparing for this for months.
Expecting the board for the big game, the true game, to change. Now it seemed that that wasn’t so. It was great news for the people of Meallan, but very inconvenient for everyone else.
Nobles who’d abandoned their courts. Merchants who’d abandoned their markets. Armies who’d abandoned the field. THis would throw everything out of order.
“Do your people know why?”
Ophelia opened her mouth like she was about to answer, but then instead she smiled.
“And what would you trade for that information?” said the head of the Ministry of Public Order. Her smile more beatific and peaceful than that any of saints whose face were painted in the reliefs of the church’s temples.
“A few new predictions for the apparently altered future?”
She considered it and then she nodded.
“Deal. I’ll have my people look into it.”
*****
No one in the desert that day was completely blind, even those who couldn’t actually see what was in the sky that day, could at least feel it. Using sharpened senses and aether to witness what was happening.
The Great Dragon’s immense pressure and presence was as radiant as the sun and condemning as the executioner's blade.
When the beast appeared all hearts were filled with the despair and the knowledge that this was the day they’d die. Though the Jelani subjugation force still fought on, they only fought because they didn’t know what else to do.
Already assuming that they wouldn’t be making it home that day. Every last man and woman present fully expected the massive dragon to simply fly over and cook them wholesale. Reducing them all to ash and cinder.
But it didn’t. Instead something else appeared, a darting, dark something, ominous blot in space, that spiralled ever upwards while drawing the beast away. The sounds of their struggle deafening. The stray blasts they let loose killing off man but also thinning the number of serpents.
Then like a miracle, like an unbelievable lie, the beast fell. Shortly after landing, shaking the whole world as it did so, it and many of its brethren's corpses simply disappeared.
Enzo stood at the back of the subjugation force. Standing with his group of elites fighting to keep the serpents from breaking through. He watched the beast fall like burning moon of gold, then he watched it disappear.
It’s pressure and presence disappearing. There were no words for what it felt like. There were no words for what he’d seen. There was just relief and the realization that the festival of snakes was finally ending.
While there’d still be serpents and draconics to kill during this fall, they wouldn’t threaten the city. Their numbers would thin and spread out to something manageable.Their world, his world, wasn’t ending.
Only three words came to mind.
“Oh, thank fuck.”