04-04-2014, 10:48 AM
Beneath the streets of the Vatican many secrets of the church were hidden away. At present, the flesh and blood that embodied many of those secrets were speaking quietly together in the coolness of one small office. The first man was seated behind a desk that he called his own. He had a distant dignity about him, his mind filled with knowledge most of his brethren in the gilded hallways above the surface would find inane. He was serving as host to the second man, who was, strangely enough, not himself a priest, yet the one who was very obviously deferred almost more than he would to the Holy Father, the head of the Catholic Church itself.
That second individual was of course, Armande Nicodemus, Regus of the Vatican Historical Society, and its secret enclave, the Atharim. Armande sat in the uncomfortable, stiff arms of a wooden chair. The layers of black cassock fell from legs crossed one over the other. His hands were laid on his lap, and the dignity by which Father Dmitry considered their present focus of attentions was but as a whimpering child in comparison to the marble-like hardness of the Regus' expression.
Armande touched the play emblem on a Wallet pushed to center of the desk between them. Immediately, a video was unscrambled and projected for both men to see. He watched, for the second time this day, a video of an abomination proclaim himself their enemy. Dmitry paled at the revelation. He did not take the news as well as the Pope.
"If this is true," Dmitry said quietly as the video dimmed and finally paused, the face of Nikolai Brandon was contorted with quiet rage. "then it means the end. Everything the Atharim has sought to prevent will be but for naught."
The Regus cut him off, correcting him with a sharp tone, "It is an ending, Father Dmitry, not the end. So long as I draw breath in my body, I will not allow it to be the end."
Noise in the hall drew both their attention. Armande glanced casually over one shoulder and into the corridor beyond. The door had not been fully closed. The wisp of a girl passed into his view, and he turned back to Father Dmitry. "Tell her to come in," he ordered. Father Dmitry seemed surprised, but bowed his head to obey.
"Aria, come in," he said.
That second individual was of course, Armande Nicodemus, Regus of the Vatican Historical Society, and its secret enclave, the Atharim. Armande sat in the uncomfortable, stiff arms of a wooden chair. The layers of black cassock fell from legs crossed one over the other. His hands were laid on his lap, and the dignity by which Father Dmitry considered their present focus of attentions was but as a whimpering child in comparison to the marble-like hardness of the Regus' expression.
Armande touched the play emblem on a Wallet pushed to center of the desk between them. Immediately, a video was unscrambled and projected for both men to see. He watched, for the second time this day, a video of an abomination proclaim himself their enemy. Dmitry paled at the revelation. He did not take the news as well as the Pope.
"If this is true," Dmitry said quietly as the video dimmed and finally paused, the face of Nikolai Brandon was contorted with quiet rage. "then it means the end. Everything the Atharim has sought to prevent will be but for naught."
The Regus cut him off, correcting him with a sharp tone, "It is an ending, Father Dmitry, not the end. So long as I draw breath in my body, I will not allow it to be the end."
Noise in the hall drew both their attention. Armande glanced casually over one shoulder and into the corridor beyond. The door had not been fully closed. The wisp of a girl passed into his view, and he turned back to Father Dmitry. "Tell her to come in," he ordered. Father Dmitry seemed surprised, but bowed his head to obey.
"Aria, come in," he said.