[The Garden] Praeceptor of the Reliquiae

[Nox]

At least he wasn't that long winded in this answer. Though he was less interested in the words and more interested in watching the Ascendnacy's reaction to Eliot. Eliot was playing the handicapped channeler. Though he was harder and smarter than he wanted to be thought of in the moment. Both men were playing a game and the Ascendancy would win. Eliot was on his own, he wasn't going to stand up to the Ascendancy after he'd smited a woman for disobeying. Nox was not looking to die. He wasn't looking to help Eliot either.

But the cold was seaping into his bones and he knew, the smirk on Allan's face was all about his discomfort. Nox wasn't sure what he'd done to the man but Allan didn't look at him. And Nox avoided looking too long at Jay, and the other dominion Nox didn't know. But his eyes never lingered long except for on the Ascendancy. He wasn't sure what to expect, and he hadn't been asked any questions so he wasn't about to speak up. This was all Eliot's game.

[Helena]

She did not flinch; death was not an unknown companion. Helena had never been afraid of mortality, hers or others, and despite the ferocity of the action she did not feel any true fear. Or guilt for her part in it, either. Perhaps she had been loose with her phrasing. No one who mattered would die today. In truth she found it entirely wasteful even for a show of power, and to her it felt rather more like the tantrum of a child who had been thwarted. In other circumstances she might have noted the irony aloud, and she certainly noted it internally: that they petitioned a man who in one cruel gesture framed himself the very god the Atharim were sworn to eradicate. Who the Reliquiae meant to tame. What held her tongue from the observation was not self-preservation, however. It was what she saw the moment she clapped her eyes on the would-be god.

It was not the first time she had been able to… distinguish one mortal from another, and so assess their importance to the future. It was the very reason she had once watched Cillian die, knowing his life would ultimately make no difference whatever his supposedly exalted Finnegren bloodline. But it was the first time the distinction was so marvellously apparent to her. Nikolai Brandon glowed like a sun, as though he were a focal point on which light itself bent.

Helena was still as a statue, but her silence spoke volumes. She stared with intensity. Not quite awe. But something.

Elliot explained too much. Not that their plans weren’t admirable, but the man just murdered one of his subordinates to make a point about transgression. If the lives of channelers mattered to him, he would have broken the Atharim when he revealed their faces to the world. The minutiae of reformation were of no interest to him. He wanted to know what all great men wanted to know. Why him.

“We are here because you are the needle through which this thread must pass. And not only this thread, it would seem. That is why I came. To see you for myself. Though I did not quite expect…” Her lips pursed. “It changes around you. Everything.” Her family would kill for the moment she had claimed for herself, though they would never hear about it from her. Helena availed of their resources, but she had not truly been one of them for a long time. Perhaps not ever. Such details were inconsequential. The Di Inferi had been right about his importance, just wrong about why.