When paying my country a visit for a tour of the Holy Land, foreign tourists often had difficulty appreciating the complexities of our religion. If you showed them a picture of this primly dressed young man, they’d probably have thought he was a missionary sent by the Church, bent on converting them. They would be correct about the conversion part, but wrong about the rest.

Pulling a stool out from under the counter beneath the metal cabinets on the wall, I sat down, only to flinch with discomfort.

I must have hit my tailbone.

Fortunately, repositioning myself closer to the stool’s edge took care of the trouble.

Clearing my throat, I addressed the siblings. “Tell me what’s bothering you.” I intentionally made eye contact with both of them. If on the off chance that whatever was going on with Nina had been going on for a while, my display of openness just might sway her to spill the beans about it.

“I just fell, sir,” Paul, bowing his head with deep deference. “It’s really nothing to worry about. Actually,” shaking his head, he made the Bond-sign, “I might be feeling a little… sluggish, I guess? I’m not sure what the right word is.” He watched his hand attentively, slowly waving it through the air. “But, I think it’s nothing you should trouble yourself over,” he said, smiling back at me.

Since the beginning, people had been arguing over the status of the “true” part of the “one, true faith,” and detailed arguments existed on both sides. In the middle, there was a period of time when similar arguments had been held about the “one” part of the “one, true faith,” though to far more violent ends.

As the so-called Unlassedite Marvyn Galster had put it: “the Church is to the Faith what a pine needle is to a forest.” Though the Inquisition eventually succeeded in killing the so-called Arch-Heretic, they made him a martyr and gave his ideas wings. The Angelical movements launched by his ideas eventually supplanted the Old Believers, though the process took centuries. Some Angelicals, however, refused to ally with the Church even after its Resurrection.

Nina shook her head and wept. “Ossé moyo Lopé, haven’t you seen what’s going on out there?” She flung her hands as she pointed at the window. “People aren’t just getting sick. They’re dying! What if you’ve got it?”

The young woman’s emotional outburst was accompanied by another minor light show. This time, the colors and forms were the same metallic, gold blue threads that I’d conjured in the changing room, albeit with a slight tinge of coppery green. Nina’s beaded hair swayed in a conjured wind as the filaments swirled around her upper body. Her blouse rippled slightly.

I thought back to my own experience: my psychokinetic incident yesterday morning, with the car on Seacrest Boulevard. A spurt of emotion had drawn out my powers. It looked like the same was true for Nina.

Was she a transformee like me? And if she wasn’t, then what the heck was going on?

“It’s not up to me, Nina,” Paul said. He gazed at her with deep serenity. “Only the Moonlight Queen truly knows.”

On a whim, I focused until Nina’s aura came into view. My body started glowing with my own aura as I did so. There wasn’t anything notable about hers; it looked just like my colleagues’ auras. Interestingly, I saw no sign of the violet, ultramarine lacework that coursed around my body alongside my aura. But then I looked at Paul/Lopé, and a chill ran down my spine. The same lacework that was on my body was present on his. Curiously—it was concentrated on his head and chest, though part of it had begun to extend along one of his arms.

Did that mean he was infected?

“Dr. Howl, my brother…” Nina reached out with her arms as she turned to face me. “He’s turned into this—ay caramba—this thing! Look at what they’ve done to him!”

Fortunately, nothing crazy happened.

Unfortunately, as far as the deeds of my ancestors were concerned (at least on my father’s side), Nina’s woes were pretty much par for the course. So far, my country was responsible for using religion to establish an empire not once, but twice. And whenever the Trentonian people banded together to declare a new, more perfect form of politics, two things would happen, without fail.

Thing One: the new government, empire, regime—whatever you want to call it—would launch a crusade. These could happen either at home, or abroad—or both—and their targets were always the same: weeding out the heretics and the unorthodox, and conquering, subjugating, and converting pagans and other infidels, both at home and abroad.

Thing Two: Thing One would eventually blow up in our face—usually because our crusaders decided to turn their attention to Southern Dixon—and, in the process, new flavors of the one, true faith would pop up like weeds.

Nina rose from her seat. “This is a kid who built a robot from fucking scratch when he was ten!” With nearly every word, she stabbed a finger in her brother’s direction.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

And this time, something happened.

Faint ripples spilled out from her—soft blue. I could have sworn I felt a gentle wave of heat against my face, though my mask blocked some of it, and, I don’t think I would have noticed it without the light show to indicate something was going on.

I hated multitasking, and this was a perfect reminder of why. I wanted to be there for these kids emotionally, but at the same time I was wrapped up in scrutinizing their auras. I looked Nina in the eyes until her and her brother’s auras became almost painfully bright.

There was no sign of the violet lacework in her. Nor was there any sign of the multicolored twitching—almost electric—spikes that I’d seen in Mr. Isafobe’s corpse.

So, none of the light-shows associated with the infection were present in her; however, the same could not be said for her brother.

Merciful Angel, please don’t tell me this boy is turning into a wyrm…

A rabidly Neangelical wyrm (with psychokinesis; with psychokinesis!) sounded like a terrible thing to behold.

I swallowed hard.

A wandering mind almost guaranteed terrors. Case in point: my mind wandered back to scripture.

It was the wave of heat that had triggered it.

Empirical tests were the lifeblood of modern knowledge. The medical sciences were born when brave fellows decided to hold the Testaments and the Voices and their assertions of wisdom to account and test them in practical experiments. That was what first clue my countrymen into the fact that, perhaps, scripture was not an authoritative guide to all knowledge after all.

But what if, in this instance, it was?

The more I thought about it, the worse it got.

The bulk of the Testaments’ contents were in the Elder Voices, and the majority of the Elder Voices consisted of what remained of the accounts of Righteous Five, the Lass’ personal companions, and the first five Lassedites to follow after Her.

The details varied, and no doubt had been corrupted over time by errors in transmission, but Dennis I, Judd I, Amphelise, Wybert, and Duncan I were in unanimous agreement that, as the Angel’s chosen, the Lass Enille was gifted with extraordinary powers. She could walk upon the Bay as if the water was solid ground. She’d tamed the winds with the Beast’s thunderous roar. With a wave of her hand or a sweep of the Sword, she could call down holy fire, or split yawning chasms in the earth or the sea. She could summon the servants of the Moonlight Queen and speak the language of the birds.

So far, I’d only been able to do one thing: psychokinesis—moving objects with one’s mind—and, so far, all of the transformees who had displayed powers had displayed psychokinesis as well. Of them, Letty’s abilities were the most well-developed. She’d been able to move objects with enough control and potency that she’d stopped bullets midair.

But, if the disturbances Nina caused were any indication, she could do more than that.

By the Angel… what if it was true?

According to legend, the Era of Miracles came to an end after Lassedite Eadric Athelmarch’s disastrous abuse of the Sword of the Angel.

But what if the miracles were coming back? Did that make this Judgment Day, or something else, altogether? And if so, what was Nina? What was Dr. Horosha? What were Andalon and the transformees and the wyrms?

“Is something amiss, sir?” the boy asked.

I shook my head apologetically. I turned to Nina. “I’m sorry, I got lost in thought. You were saying something about robots?”

Nina nodded. “I’ve gone with him to his night math classes at the Polytechnic and,” she shook her head, “I thought geometry proofs were scary, but the stuff he does…”

Biting her lip, Nina ran her fingers down her face mask’s translucent shell. “I… I guess I’ve always been overprotective of my brother.”

Nina met eyes with him, and he responded with a grateful smile. “And you were wonderful Nina,” he said, “but that was then, and this is now.”

The young woman’s head trembled side to side. She sniffled. “I can’t believe you! When we were real little, you didn’t talk. You didn’t talk for nothing.” She threw her arms up in the air. “Now, you won’t shut up.” She laughed bitterly. “Course, that’s been your problem for years.”

Nina turned to me.

“I tried everything to get him to talk. I didn’t want to be alone, Doctor, and I didn’t want him to be alone. Then, one day, like a miracle, poof,” she waved her fingers, “he starts talking. Since then, he hasn’t stopped. It drives Papi kookoo. But now, I’d give anything to have that Lopé back again.”

There was no point in my holding back any longer. It was obvious that Lopé had fallen in with one of the more evangelical strains of Neangelicalism. Why else would a Maikokan wear a Trueshore knot, unless he’d come under the sway of some East-coast fundamentalists?

I glanced at Paul before looking his sister in the eye.

“Are you alright with him hearing all of this?”

Nina threw her hands up again. “Fuck me if I know!” She laughed, broken, and piteous. Yellow-green waves sloshed around her face, distorting her laughs, as if she was speaking into a microphone.

Even her brother stared, but his eyes quickly turned to me.

“It’s alright, Dr. Howle,” Paul said, “I’ve learned how to cope with it. It can’t be worse than the National Science Fair!” he added, with a silky smile.

He’d probably seen the concern in my eyes and thought it was about him.

Paul/Lopé rested his hands in his lap and pleated his fingers together. “You know, I’ve won more Science Fairs than I can count. Gee willickers, I can count so well, I even helped simplify the proof of the Twin Prime Conjecture,” he added, with a smirk, “and that’s a lot of counting—but…” his expression softened into wistfulness, “do Science Fairs tell you how to be a real man? Is there a mathematical proof of what really matters in life? Is there any equation you can throw up on the board and solve for Love?” He shook his head. “No, Sir. Not at all.” He sat up tall and inhaled deeply.

Faint trails of white motes began to swirl around Nina as she watched her brother recite his spiel.

A gathering storm.