Peniel

[Armande]

The line clicked off and the cab of the vehicle went quiet. He closed his eyes, feeling the deep silence as if it pressed in around him.

The Chongg Ran came on him without thought, enveloping him. That had never happened before. He felt peace permeate him, extending his senses out from his body, hyperaware of everything around him.

He felt more than heard the movement of the women in the back as a stirring of the air. The whisper of feet and Valeriya's spicy sweet scent filling his nostrils spoke of her presence before he felt her hand on his shoulder. He turned his head to marvel at her, eyes emerald embers that smoldered with life, full lips curved, hair wild in chaotic disarray, as if windswept, the memory of the frenzy in her eyes, the jerking movement of hand as fist clenched and unclenched, scrabbling for flesh or sheets, something to steady her as she rode the wave to its crest.

Her voice was warm and firm and he paused, remembering her reaction to the vision. He looked at her, curious. "The man who is titled Pope." He wanted to see her reaction.

Before she could speak, the door whispered again, and Rowan appeared, hair in some semblance of order, face and hair bright as the sun, the gown she wore seeming to flow around her as she walked. She came up behind Valeriya and slipped her hand around her waist to pull her close, whispering of their night together.

He smiled at the two. To Rowan and Valeriya he spoke, "The fourth from your vision will be joining us. Pope Patricus. It seems he was called in a dream." He well remembered the man's exclamation. There was no doubt he'd had the same.

He looked at Valeriya, considering. "Be aware, my Love, the man is thin skinned." He laughed after a moment. "Do not completely take his hide from him." Mostly a joke. He trusted Valeriya not to kill the man. But she'd have even less interest in his position than Armande did.

Strangely, he was a bit interested in seeing what happened. He smiled at Rowan, his voice a bit sly. "We may have to play peacemaker." It was funny. Peace was never his stock and trade.

[Valeriya]

Valeriya looked upon the empty place where the ghost from their vision previously occupied. One brow rose and she snorted with contempt. “Those who follow titles are fools. I follow the man,” she said and knelt to one knee, aware that she was slipping from the shade of the White Eye behind her. There, she looked up into the face she knew better than her own (there were no mirrors in The Below). “I follow you because you are great, not because you are the Great One,” she kissed his knuckles reverently, but his proclamation for her restraint teased a tempting smile to her lips. “I make no such promises. If Patricus behaves, his skin will remain intact,” she said.

[Rowan Finnegan]

Rowan’s heart leapt at the word ‘Pope.’ Oh, she was a true Voodoo Queen, but one was not raised Irish Catholic to turn their back on such a figure. And besides, New Orleans Voodoo had taken on facets of the Faith, if only so that the slave owners did not force conversion on the poor souls they had taken; but after so many years of working such iconography into your rituals… Well, Rowan still held a certain reverence for the Father of the Church – whether she followed its teachings or not. Oh, Mother would just die if she heard that her own daughter would be having an audience with the Holy Father.

Rowan smirked at the thought.

Armande looked to her and spoke, clearly referencing her sister. Surely, they would not have to play peacemaker with the Pope… Then again, wouldn’t they? Rowan was not entirely sure what Armande’s relationship with the man was. Come to think of it, why did he know the Pope of all people? The realization that she had pledged to follow a man she knew next to nothing about hit her again; it was not the first time and it certainly would not be the last. What games had fate been playing with her? The visions only told her so much.

‘Follow to survive, forsake to die.’

Rowan felt a shiver coming on at the memory of the ethereal words but suppressed it at the last moment. So what if she did not fully know Armande? She would come to. Now was not the time to consider such things. Visions of the previous night danced along her memory and the smirk on her face widened. They had chemistry in spades and there was that strange butterfly feeling in her stomach when she looked upon his face, that would have to be enough for now. And besides, she had her sister with her.

Vale knelt herself in a way that would have looked submissive on anyone else, but on her? She looked like a lioness bowing to her equal. No being alive would ever dominate Valeriya and that was a trait Rowan admired in her sister. She was fierce, proud, and loyal.

Rowan’s hands slipped from the chairback and settled onto Armande’s shoulders, deftly working at the large knots that had formed in his muscles. She pulled him back into the chair and rubbed deeper, quicker.

“If the Holy Father understands that the world is at stake in what we do, I am sure he will be most agreeable,” Rowan spoke in honeyed tones to her two lovers, “Let us use words first, sister, we may need his skin intact if our vision proves true. If he insists on resistance to our mission, well, I am certain you will make him see the light, sister.”

Rowan laughed a tinkling sound at the last statement before turning her words to Armande, “Will he be meeting us abroad, then? Or will we be traveling to the Vatican? I should still be able to charter a private jet for us, should the need arise. I do know ways to ensure our passage is discreet. No one knew I came to First Dominance until I opened the café, after all.”

[Armande]

Despite himself, pride surged through Armande as he beheld Valeriya on her knees before him, kissing his hand, Rowan at his back, massaging his shoulders. Not at the actual physical submission they expressed. Valeriya was not weak in any way and and even kneeling, the word submissive refused to fit. Her eyes said as much the way they blazed challenge and she spoke of taking the hide of Patricus. And yet, there she was all the same, this lioness, pledging to follow him, extolling him. It was thrilling in a way he did not expect. Not solely her posture, anyway. He still was a man, after all. He was no longer interested in making excuses for his feelings, as if his humanness and masculinity were somehow wrong. No.

But far more than simply their actions, what filled him with pride and a sense of pregnant power was what it all meant. These powerful women followed him by their choice. They trusted him to lead. They- the Black and the White Eye- had seen beyond, had shared their sight with him. They were his Eyes and they had pierced the veil, had seen his role.

This was who and what he was, the tool of the...pattern was the term that most fit. That weaving of reality and souls into an incomprehensible tapestry. Their role, he amended. 

It was a new kind of Trinity. Not God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost of traditional Christianity; not Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer of Hinduism; not the Lord of Wisdom Ahura Mazda, Mithra the Binder and the Goddess Anahita, the Source of the River of Life and Fertility of Zoroastrianism.

The closest, maybe, were the Morai or the Norns. Which made him laugh to himself. He one of the three women who see beyond, telling or setting fate, depending on the need? The image was amusing. 

And yet...

Perhaps they were not the first time the Pattern had used a triad. Maybe those legends were mere echoes of that possibility. It did not diminish the role they would play. Not in the slightest.

He smiled at Valeriya, nodding, his eyes cool fires of possibility. "He will be civil, my Love. He faces the Black Queen and the White Queen, you who see beyond. The three of us..." tilting his head to the side to include Rowan. "The Pattern has chosen us three. As before, so again." He paused, the words of the Congregator coming to mind.

"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun."



It was a heady thing to contemplate. He spoke to Rowan. "There is no need to go anywhere, Dearest. He will meet us on our journey. He has been called, you see."

He touched a finger to the console and a map displayed. their location near Lake Baikal clearly marked with a red flag. The Naval of the World. Over the it, he overlaid the image from the reindeer skin map. That one was artistically stylized- it didn't fit perfectly in regard to distance proportions and shapes. And he had had to use geological databases to reconstruct various land configurations over the last 10,000 years. Between the two, though, the map he now displayed showed the route they were to take.

Their endpoint hung in the air to the north west. It had been something he suspected as the watched the various permutations run through. It seemed almost...poetic. Tunguska. Only 140 years ago- not coincidentally near when Rasputin had hidden away the Khylsty, he had noticed- the event had shocked everyone. A meteor exploding over the Siberian Taiga, the Kremlin had said.

It was no accident, though. Something had happened. The fact that an ancient map millenias old point to that location made it plain.

He pointed. "He will meet us here." He smiled and raised an eyebrow at Valeriya. "Paradise was the word you said, my Love. We are going to meet him in paradise."

[Patricus I]

Patricus I traveled abroad less than his predecessors travelled in a single year. He couldn’t allow his reputation to be tarnished now. Therefore, as the plane chartered by the Vatican landed in the obscurity of Siberian plains, a helicopter deposited meaningless staffers on the Vatican helipad. None could wear the white robes only allowed to dress the back of the Holy Father, so a decoy Pope was out of the question. It was sworn to him upon threat of medieval torture devices concealed in the Vatican Archives that the number of eyes witnessing the apparent return of the Pope would be limited to none. Only those in the highest levels of the Pope’s confidence knew he wasn’t within the boundaries of his sovereign home.

Thousands of miles to the east, Philip crawled from another helicopter, a charter out of Vanavara village, a place more accustomed to extreme adventurers and conspiracy theorists than holy sovereigns. It wasn’t easy to conceal his arrival, but the cloak of nighttime and the red drape of an actual cape did most of the work. Money did the rest.

The sun lifted above the horizon just as the pilot spoke over the headset.
“We are five minutes from landing. The Tunguska event fields are below us now,” the pilot said.

The event in mention was the one that drew conspiracists and adventurers to this remote landscape. He was more than accustomed to helicopter travel. He’d been on one at least three times. As Philip looked out the window, he couldn’t discern the trees rolling below to be the outgrowth of a scorched earth one and a half centuries beforehand. Nor did the sky roll with the ashes of an explosion that was heard six hundred miles away.

They soon landed in a clearing alongside the glassy course of a river. Naturally, Philip’s memory was drawn elsewhere, but the alpine forest and tufted grass was unfamiliar. His gaze swept the field of view, lovely as it was, for larch trees, but even to his trained eye, none were in sight. He didn’t know what to expect, but his disappointment was growing into regret with each passing minute.

“Is this the epicenter?” he asked the pilot after being assisted out. By then the helicopter was powered down and the solemn silence of nature and solitude blasted all their ears.

“No, Holy Father,” he replied. “It is a short hike to the clearing fields where nothing will grow. The only remains are the husks of barkless, limbless trees. There are no safe landing zones. When you are ready, we can begin the journey.”

He nodded and turned back to the river. It reminded him of a watershed more than a river: wide and shallow rather than deep and ancient. He half wondered if Nimeda would manifest herself on the bank, but he knew such visions to be foolishness, and he turned back with a nod. He arranged the pellegrina of his cape about his shoulders and fitted the brim of the saturno cap upon his head. “I am ready,” he ordered.

After the pilot gathered the necessary supplies, they proceeded toward the tree line. He clutched his hands tightly at his waist while they walked, but not due to the tricky terrain. Red leather Armani was not the recommended footwear for a hike.

[Armande]

The drive northwest into Siberia was breathtaking. The forests like a lush verdant carpet, the road they traveled a scar cut into it. At times, it almost felt like a tunnel, the trees were so high. They stopped frequently so he and the women could get out and walk. The smell of pine and spruce cut sharply into the nose. The Taiga, as the boreal forest was called, was a unique biome unlike any on the planet, stretching across the northern quarter of the planet across Eurasia and North America. It was idyllic, almost as if they had entered a Russian folktale. He half expected Ivan the Fool or Baba Yaga to burst out of the trees at times.

Podkamennaya River was only spotted once they got close to it but it was beautiful, an artery of water that branched off into veins and capillaries to feed the forest. Villages and small cities dotted the region, smoke or steam from the wood processing that was the life blood of area rising obscenely from the ground and hovering around trapped by the nearby trees.

He enjoyed the women's reactions to the Taiga, especially Valeriya. Her scrawlings on the rock face had come to life in a way she could not have imagined. She seemed to have fallen in love with the world. Rowan felt the ancient majesty and magik of the forest. He was no stranger to the world but being with them gave him new Eyes to see it, new ways to experience it. Their energy and excitement during the day came out during their nights in the camper as they explored each other, got to know each other's bodies in new and novel ways, hungers stoked and teased and fired and fed. Radyeni writ large. Valeriya and Rowan as enamored and lustful for each other as for him. He felt 30 years old again, his energy never flagging. Waking, of course, was a burden, but one he gladly bore, the feel of their silky smooth skin, their taut hard bodies against his.

Finally, they arrived and he could not help but feel a sense of sorrow and the end of their journey. But they were here for a reason. He had pored over the map, endlessly questioning Valeriya about specific words and their meaning. Sadly, her knowledge of the ancient language was primarily ceremonial and limited. In the end, he knew little more than he had at the beginning of their trip.

The demarcation between the forest and the epicenter of the Tunguska event was sharp, as if someone had leveled a massive area of trees. Nothing seemed to grow, at least nothing large. They stood at the age, studying the terrain, not yet ready to head out into it. They were not yet complete anyway.

As if a summons, noises drew their attention. He couldn't help but smile at the burst of red and white from the forest line. Patricus loved his Papal regalia. He looked at Rowan and Valeriya with a tight smile and one raised eyebrow, before turning back to the Pope. He stepped forward and held out his hand. "Greetings, Holy Father. We are glad you made it." He didn't mind the honorific, this time. But he had no inclination to kneel or kiss his ring. He gestured. "This is Valeriya, the Black Eye of the Khylsty. And Rowan, the White Voodoo Queen of the Bottom of the Cup." He smiled at the titles.

[Patricus I]

The grass crunched underfoot, though Philip did not attribute its parched death to ongoing draught. Modern science couldn’t explain the lifelessness, and for a moment, Philip searched the distant sun as if demanding an answer from the face of God himself. He once told Nimeda that the beauty of questions was in lacking their answers, and such nonsense was why nobody should listen to a thing he said. He tsk'd himself and turned away.

They saw him before the other way around. The pilot gave him moment to pause, gesturing toward the three silhouettes, otherwise the Pope may have gone some minutes in oblivion. Armande led two others, a smile of reunion splitting his mouth with the most unnatural of lines. Imagining the vicar of Iscariot smiling was the sort of thing that would give him nightmares later. And not for reasons one may expect.

He stopped a handful of steps away from the trio, hands hidden by the red drape spilling from his shoulders. Armande was healthy, vigorous even, far from the crispy undead that he imagined crawled from a belly of fire. His successor explained Armande’s supposed demise, and now he realized the depth of the deception.

When the women were introduced, Philip’s gaze sliced each from brow to ankle in turn. His gaze was cold more than predatory; distant and uncaring. He recognized neither, and it was to Armande he finally addressed. “Khylst and Vodou? You've strayed far from the embrace of our Mother Church,” he spoke. Armande was once a priest and although released of his vows long ago, he supposedly believed once upon a time. Then again, Philip might describe as much about himself.

“And I am far from my home. I haven’t had a decent vanilla coke zero in weeks. So let's end the mystery. Why?” he asked. Armande spoke of pillars and destiny, the sort of thing that burrowed into Philip’s skin, leaving an itch he could not scratch. It was why he was here at all.

[Valeriya]

Their journey plunged into the green heart of the world. Armande was obsessed with the word, paradise, but it was Valeriya who marveled at what the word surely meant. So much green. She had no idea so much of the color filled the whole of all that existed as what they found.

Pleasures followed their journey to paradise. Like the green unknown, she never fathomed such bodily euphoria could exist as when she, Rowan, and their Great Love came together. When the time of their arrival came, Vale bounded forth into what must be their next great adventure. The column of faces beckoned, and she knew that within was buried the key to her Great Love’s quest.

They soon found the man that Armande said was important to their needs. When introduced, Vale planted her hands on her hips and raised her chin high. She was the Eye of the Khylsty and the consort of the Great One. She was a queen of the night and seer of the beyond. Her sister was also a queen of another domain. Together, they were impenetrable. Her smile was hungry, baring teeth. The man called pope glistened like the sun ran bloody from his shoulders. More than that, he was beautiful. Should she ever desire a concubine, he would do nicely. All queens deserved a play thing.

While the men swat words like swords, she spoke to Rowan. “I like his cape. I think I’ll take it from him,” she promised, biding her time.

[Armande]

Armande couldn't help the smile. Seeing the face of Patricus- even more than that of Theiss- felt like revisiting another life from long ago. The last time he had met with the Pontiff had been in his chambers more than an year ago. Though his war with Apollyon- indeed all the gods- predated that meeting, it felt like a different time and place. Things had seemed clearer, more simple. Black and white. But that wasn't reality And the world had gone through indescribable changes. 

He had changed.

Indeed, he was not the same man he had been. He looked from Valeriya to Rowan and then back to Patricus. Had changed...and yet the truth was, he was more himself than ever before. Fate or a divine will the Renaissance sculptor chipping away with hammer and chisel, as if detritus and extraneity had been cut away to leave him whole and unencumbered, freeing him from the final cocoon that had been "Regus of the Atharim".

Freshly from his idyll in the below and birthed through the forest, he was now revealed to the man feeling the cold wind bite against his ears and neck, rifle his exposed hair.

Patricus was his usual self, a curious mixture of believer and agnostic, narcissist and altruist. There was no judgement in the evaluation. Armande appreciated his candor and lack of self deprecation. People were driven by self-interest in most cases, for various definitions of "self"- family, community, nation, religion and so forth. At least Patricus was honest about it. It made, he had discovered, dealing with the man far easier. His choice of the man as Pope had indeed turned out to exactly what was needed- for himself and, he supposed, for the Holy Church.

Armande nodded with a slight laugh. "Ever the one to eschew waiting, despite your robes and the traditions inherent to your position." He waved it off as if it were no matter. He was much the same. "As for mystery...yes it is one. Not Mystery in the theological sense, with a capital M. Yet perhaps all the more true for all of that." He paused and considered all three of them before going on. "All of us have been given visions and tasked with an purpose. To find a garden and the pillar that is at the center. The pillar has four faces that you may recognize from the writings of Ezekiel and John the Revelator." He stopped, as he knew what he was about to say was more opinion than anything born out in that vision. "What we do there will save the world as we know it."

The vision of himself and Apollyon burning together came to him. Whatever the cost, he would pay it.

He raised an eyebrow to Patricus. "These women- The Eyes of Fate- have seen it. I have seen it. As have you, or you'd not have dropped everything to come here. Am I wrong? What did you see?"

[Patricus I]

“I am not that patient with the lord. Don't assume I have any more patience for my fellow man,” he retorted, eager for an explanation. Yet for the Pope’s proclamation of the virtues, even he laid his demands for the lord once in a while, and he was always answered.

Armande was different than Philip remembered. He looked much the same, but it was as if an imposter of the former Regus stood before them: a copy of body and mind, but sincerely reborn in a way that Philip witnessed rarely in men. A soul shifted. He could almost see newness exuding beneath transparent skin. To what purpose, he did not know. Was Armande delivered of his past or was he here to grapple an ally only for both to succumb to the abyss.

As a result of all these thoughts, Philip was hesitant. Armande may attribute his tension to the presence of women, but sin wasn’t scandalous for a priest. They lived in the pollution of sin with not but the armor of faith to protect from the poison that would infect the weak of will.

While the explanation unfolded, Patricus was a monolith of scarlet and white. The women may as well see their own dejected reflections in the mirror of his penetrating eyes. Indeed they would behold such a sight should he turn his attention their way.

Instead, he was transfixed upon Armande until the marble of his skin suddenly broke with exasperation. “Oh please. Don’t confuse me with someone who cares about saving the world. It was doomed at inception.” The misconception reminded him of their first conversation. A memorable one to be sure.

Which led to the question of his motives. Why was Patricus the first, Supreme Pontiff, Holy Father and Prince of the Apostles standing in a field of nothingness with a Jesuit and two heretics?

A weight settled upon his brow heavy enough to glimpse the burden of his memory. Did he desire to share something so personal and private with Armande that he alone knew the entirety of his life? A tightness scrunched his chest that made him uncomfortable. His gaze flicked briefly toward the women as if considering the significance of their presence. Armande implied their importance, but Philip was truthful when he denied desire to save the world. His only regret was that it would unravel under his reign. Yet what was written before creation was not his to undo.

“A dream,” he finally admitted. “The four-way pillar was a dream. I suppose if you can look upon my dreams, you also saw Nimeda, Tuuru and the key?”

Though the question may sound accusatory, he turned to walk without the heat of any emotion suggesting the sort and assumed the others would follow dutifully. Armande was allowed at his side while the women trailed. Finally, the pilot, who served as something of a bodyguard, carried a bag of supplies and whatever else rational people deemed important.

“Do you suggest that the pillar I dreamed about exists? Here of all places?” A scant glance hinted at none of the magnificence of the dreamy garden in which the pillar was hidden.