Unfolding Information

[Aria]

Aria sighed. This was going to be tedious. And they wouldn't ever be happy with her information. And she wasn't about to draw them a map. Not that it really mattered if she wasn't really there, but she felt the need to be there to see the plan through to fruition. To watch either Ascendancy or the Regus perish in the battle. Aria had her doubts that the man leading the Atharim actually understood the power that the Ascendancy wielded.

If the awe from Nox's expression was anything to go by when they met Ascendancy he was not your run of the mill sort of god. He was powerful - he was Apollyon. He was death and destruction and he would slay the beast. Aria smiled at the thought of watching the Regus die a blood and torturous death. The only thing better would for it to be at her hands, but that was likely never to be the case.

Aria told the Regus about the entrance. It's exact location. There was minimal security as it was a hidden entrance. Cameras were the only true measure of security. Aria was certain that the entrance would be decommissioned after this bout with Ascendancy. There were other tunnels, other ways out. This one was just most convenient.

The path on the other hand was little more complicated. It wasn't a matter of drawing a path. It was much like the tunnels below the surface of Moscow itself. A bunch of twists and turns, and circular paths that appeared to loop in on themselves but didn't. Aria didn't mention that there might be a direct path. That path was full of security and the less people dead the better off this op would go. Aria didn't want to have the Atharim taking down innocent security guards because they stood in the way. The other path was cleared of most personnel except for a few. Or that was the plan anyway.

Aria could have withheld information. But she couldn't draw the map, it was impossible.

[Armande]

Armande listened as the girl described everything she said she knew. He pulled area maps up on his desktop. Their agents and backchannels into various organizations and governments meant that their visual surveillance was not as hampered by military security as that of civilians might be. He found the entrance she described, far from the Kremlin itself. In fact it looked exactly the kind of hidden back tunnel the Czars and then members of the Politburo might have used in times of trouble. Though of course, it had done either of them no good in the end. Rasputin might have played a role in that.

Apollyon, though, would no doubt have expanded the complex of underground entrances and peppered them with cameras and guards. They were one issue, but Aria had gotten in unseen and with no collateral damage to alert Apollyon. And they had technology to help with that. But again, if she was telling the truth.

That was the difficulty. A sentient sat before him and it grated at him that she could read him, mold herself to what he expected, adjust her reactions. Not perfectly, no. Microexpressions and body language gave a great deal away. But it gave her an advantage.

It was very likely behind her constantly flip tones, a mask that made you focus on it rather than on the truth. He resolved to not allow her to anger him further. Mentally, he assumed a relaxed meditative state, the beginning of the Chongg Ran. All his senses expanded under his control. She would feel it, of course, with her ability. But now that he was relaxed, breathing even, pulse strong and steady, his blue eyes took in everything. Her ability, in this moment, in this state, did not bother him.

He watched her, not with malice, but with intent. There was something in her explanation that needed clarifying. "Your intelligence is thorough. But you have not explained to me why you cannot roughly map out the route we need to take. Why it must be you that shows the way." He raised a finger preemptively, raising his eyebrow to forestall an outburst. The girl felt put upon and he did his best to keep things logical and clear. "Before you get defensive and let your mouth put you in further danger, consider. You are here. Now. And you have our attention. There will be other opportunities to attack Apollyon. The very fact you have made it inside and out unharmed indicates the man has weaknesses that he is unaware of. If he has one, he will have others. I imagine the next few days and weeks will see the number of things that demand his attention multiply exponentially as a result of his announcement. One might almost think he was purposely making things difficult on himself."

He paused, noting the thought for future consideration. Then continued with his inexorable logic. "Your intelligence can be actionable. Or it can be put aside for other plans. So do not take my question as a personal attack. I understand underground tunnels are confusing. Mapping in three-dimensions can be difficult unless one has the proper equipment. If that is the case, say it plain. Or if there is another reason you can lead us but cannot show us the route ahead of time, state that plainly."

His eyes hardened to make it clear that the time for childish outbursts was over. "But in any case, do so dispassionately. You are not a child." It would be difficult to trust this girl. But if she was telling the truth...it could be worth the risk.

[Aria]

Aria fought the urge to roll her eyes. This was becoming tedious. The plan had said to bring the Regus and Martin. The two most difficult people to convince to trust her. Fine she told her self. She was tired of playing games.

Aria wished her ability was functioning. She hoped it was only temporary but at this point she just wanted to be away from these two infuriating men. She needed to hit something - that hadn't worked either. Aria sighed to herself she missed the warehouse - missed the hard work Nox put into making it a home that they could use for their lifestyle - the Atharim.

Aria nodded. "I did not have landwarriors with me when I went in. I wasn't expecting to explore. The way is complicated. Drawing it would become tedious and complicated. And my memory is not that keen on every detail and I would likely lead you awry without meaning to. And there were sticky places, where knowing what lie around the corner before you got there was important. I didn't stay to explore the timing of security patrols. Some places I remember by the senses I have of more permanent facilities. Labs and things like that."

[Armande]

He watched her carefully, senses fully extended. Her irritation was there, in her face, in her voice. She resented being here, being the serpent caught in a cleft stick. But her words were true enough. More importantly, they were logical.

Not that he trusted her. He never would. But you had to use the tools you had. His eye flicked to the package, he thought about Theiss. It would be enough. Hopefully.

He stood to his full height, towering over her seated form- already small. "Alright. You may return to the exercise room or the library or wherever if you wish. Just do not leave the mansion. I would not lose you, little bird. Not when you are the only one who can follow the breadcrumbs." His voice was cool and still, at peace.

When she was gone, he turned to Barovsky and relaxed, letting the meditative state go. He was with a man he trusted, a man as close to a friend as he would allow. And that was only so far. "The girl is a trial. But hopefully the trial will be over soon."

[Borovsky]

Martin listened to the whelps information without saying a word. Her and her american boy had mapping software - they used it religiously in the tunnels. But he wasn't surprised when he said she didn't have them on her the day she was scouting above ground. Why would you? He understood. It made sense.

Though he had his doubts still and apparently the Regus did as well. Martin could only nod at his statement. "She is at that."
He couldn't wait till the girls usefulness was up. He wanted to see what color her blood ran. To see the smile fade off her smug little face.

Martin pushed the thoughts away. He was tired of the girl - so very tired of having a monster working for him.

"I didn't want to question you in front of the girl. But what is all this talk about the Ijiraq, the relevance is very far off base."

[Armande]

Armande looked at Martin directly, blue eyes furnaces in which burned the secrets that would set an age on fire. ”No, my friend. Not irrelevant at all. Sit down.” Martin complied and he studied him for a moment. Martin did not have the same intellectual curiosity as he himself did. To Armande, intellectual and historical puzzles were as thrilling as the greatest of physical challenges.

The man, by contrast, best enjoyed the hunt, the prey, the dangerous quarry. He was a weapon, to be sharpened and pointed at will. A sword did not ask where to strike, a dagger decide which heart was necessary to stop beating. It was for the mind and the heart of the person wielding the weapon to decide how it was used.

But in this case, it would do the man good to know. ”You have been an excellent hunter. From the moment I found you, I was impressed by your single mindedness. But you have moved beyond a simple hunter. You were the High Inquisitor. You are now Metatron, leader of the first Canticle. Each level you ascend has required more of your mind. Now that we are facing the most dangerous man of the age, perhaps of any age, more shall again be required of you.”

He let the words sink in. Martin never shied away from a challenge, however unliked. If nothing else, his pride refused to let it best him. Now it was time to give away some of the pieces. ”Until now, I doubt you have ever really wondered at the creation of the creatures the Atharim kill. Most Atharim hunt. It is enough for them to kill Oni and Rakshasa and even the D’jinn. However, they did not spring into existence of their own accord. Every one of them was a direct creation or a byproduct of the gods meddling with forces that should have been left alone.”

That was the understatement to define all understatements. The gods had taken godhood as a mantle upon themselves. What then was it to use the power of the gods to create things of nightmare. But, even the gods followed a logic, however twisted and evil it was.

”I now set before you a task for your imagination. The godwars have been raging for centuries. The oldest records indicate that the earliest wars involved two groups, the Titans and the Olympians. Their wars have decimated the land and they are tiring. You are a Titan, seeking a way to remove your enemies from the field while losing as few of your precious resources as possible. Assuming you have the power to warp living things, what would you create? What kind of tool? What would be the most advantageous to you? Think tactically.” The man already had been given the answer, even if he did not yet see it.

He watched Barovsky’s eyes as the man mulled over the problem. The man had intelligence. He could get this. The frontal war was dangerous and had cost far too much. Stealth had to reign. And then he saw the recognition in his eyes, the slow smile threatening to take over his face. ”Assassins,”
he whispered. ”Able to move wraithlike into whatever room or tent or corridor they desired. They’d have to have some kind of protection against the power, too! Are you saying Ijiraq…?”


Armande was pleased. ”Indeed. That is exactly the decision those gods of old made. The histories, as distorted with time as they are, indicate exactly that. It was the Titan Ouranos that they are most associated with. Creatures created by him, or those under him, in order to seek out and kill the other gods.”

He paused, letting it sink in. ”The whisper of them is found in the oldest of Greek myth. The Arai, the Erinys, the Furies, whom Hesiod called the daughters of Ouranos. Implacable and unrelenting pursuers of those deserving of the god’s punishment, as Aeschylus wrote:

Queens are we and mindful of our solemn vengeance.
Not by tear or prayer
Shall a man avert it. In unhonoured darkness,
Far from gods, we fare,
Lit unto our task with torch of sunless regions,
And o'er a deadly way-
Deadly to the living as to those who see not
Life and light of day-
Hunt we and press onward.
“

He stopped. He could get carried away in this, the teasing out of the puzzle: Eumenedes below the earth, Roman Furiae and Dirae on and above it; Homer’s enigmatic Erebos, the place they reside until a ‘curse’, an arae, calls them forth- where did they hide all these millennia? What have they been doing? Has someone been calling them forth now, here?; hair of serpents- Is that a reference to their being used by the ancient Atharim?

”I had hoped the girl’s account chould shed light on some of the questions the histories and myths raise concerning these assassins. Whether they were being controlled. If so, how. Had they had a target and why. But she was of little help. And so we must use the information he have and proceed.”

His eyes dropped to the package on his table again, inviting Martin to notice it.

[[Barovsky modded with permission]]

[Borovsky]

Martin nodded slowly in understanding - maybe. He really had little interest in the scholarly ways. He could lead, he could do as he was told, but if his job was going to start requiring long hours in the library the Regus was mistaken. He could sit at his desk, but he was no scholar. But at the moment he wanted to hunt this god, the Regus had a plan and Martin was starting to see the mechanisms of it falling into place.

Ijiraq were assassins - at least that is what the stories said. They now hunted of their own free will - recently returned. Once thought eradicated had been a lie. Where had they gone, what had they done? Only now to come.

Martin glanced at the package the Regus kept eyeing and fingering without thought. He was proud of his object - it was clear to Martin. "So my illustrious leader how do you intend to send an Ijiraq after the Ascendancy?
He was certain the hidden object was that key.


Edited by Borovsky, Aug 18 2016, 08:22 AM.

[Armande]

Armande smiled, now. His eyes were cold blue fire, but he felt anticipation to his core. He picked up the package Daniat had given him, opened it, slipped out what was inside, a square piece of copper about the size of his palm, still bright and orange-brown, with none of the green stains and splotches that indicated the vastness of its age. No nicks or scratches marred its surface, aside from the striated shallow brush marks that indicated it had once been tooled by man. It had been dusted of any detritus, carefully, so very carefully. And on its surface, etched as though machined, ancient characters.

Two things had brought this to his attention. The tablet itself had been discovered during an Atharim archaeological expedition in Crete, though far below the old site of Knossos itself. The discoveries made and shared by John Smith had proven fruitful. Smith could not know the full extent of what he had found, for without the context and "rosetta stones" found in the carefully preserved artifacts, writings and prophecies of the Atharim themselves, once stored in the Historical Archives of the Vatican and now concealed here in Bacccarat mansion, they made little sense.

The entrance to the hollowed out lava tube that led to the chamber was far below sea level and had been blocked by stones sealed by by centuries of fossilized algae and bacteria, thriving and growing and dying as they fed on the trapped gasses being released below. Growth that was constant and known. Calculating how many millenia it had taken for the accumulation was a simple thing. Millenia had passed since this tunnel had been exposed to the outside world. Millenia for it and the chamber it led to, almost as if it had been preserved and waiting for now.

And in that hidden alcove were found many relics that could only have come from the ancient Atharii themselves, back when they had first rose up as the champions of humankind. Writings that had numerous scholars within these walls and at the Vatican already hard at work mining them for information. Artifacts whose use was known only to those who'd left them here those many years ago.

But this one, this one had gotten Daniat's attention, along with another copper scroll, this one pocked and green and calcified with age and mineral accumulation. It was the script on both, the second thing aside from their age, that marked them out. The words, in true Proto-IndoEuropean, written in an antecedent of Linear A, demanded attention.

*ml̥s-bhā-mo
To speak evil

The verb form was imperative, a command. "To Curse"

And another.

*'i-dhēs
Hidden One.

The diacritics on the word were nymic, indicating a name, held in high esteem. Or awe. Or fear.

He recognized the path this one had taken, through proto-Greek and into Greek itself.
*'i-dhēs
to Ai-dhēs
Hades
Hades had often been associated with Curse Tablets, in myth. Whether this named him the creator or whether it was in his honor was still being deciphered.

And a third. The most important.

*‌‌gweplən
The Destroyer

The most interesting. The nymic diacritic was there. A name feared.

But there was another too, a warding against evil, a way of writing the name without summoning evil's attention.

But the root of it, that was the key. "‌‌gwelə-, initially meant "to pierce" as with a spear or arrow. And over time it had come to mean many other things. Its route through proto-Germanic became "kuljan", and then the English "kill". In proto-Greek, though, the original meaning of "gweblən" was retained even as its pronunciation and spelling changed, the "gw" sound falling away. eplən
becoming Apləon
. Finally, "Apollyon". The One who destroys. A cognate to the Hebrew term, Abaddon.

The same name, with the same markers, appeared in the aged and ruined copper scroll, along with the familiar words of Atharim prophecy, though in this case, only fragments remained.

“..and a new god shall rise, an abomination born in the newest of lands, essence of evil divine, he shall be the over thrower and destroyer [*‌‌gweplən
] of the human race. — And evil Power will be given him to desolate the whole earth with authority which thou hast not seen before.”

And more. An indication of what the tablet was.

Of course, he shared none of this with Martin. The man's earlier deduction had taxed his interest in this esoterica. Which was a pity, since it was this historical puzzle that would aid them in killing Apollyon.

"The is a curse tablet, once common among many cultures around the Mediterranean. To these ancient peoples, they were a way to call down evil on those they wished, bringing ruin or disease or death to their homes or lives. The petition was always made to Hades, for him to release a cursing from the underworld onto the intended recipient. Nonsense of course." He waved his hand airily as if to dismiss it.

Then he let himself smile holding the tablet up to Martin. "This, however, predates that by more than 10,000 years. Left by our ancient bretheren and forebears, the Atharim who fought and exterminated the gods themselves." He couldn't help the awe that crept into his voice. "Over 10,000 years old. Yet it looks newly-made. A gift to us, at the end of days. A weapon to be used against our enemy." He focused, calling his attention to the writings on it. "With it, my friend, we will be able to summon an ijiraq assassin. We will unleash it on Apollyon."

"In a few days, our little bird is going to lead us to Apollyon. And then, we shall see." An Ijiraq and all the new weapons the Atharim could carry. Apollyon had no idea what was coming for him.


Edited by Regus, Aug 18 2016, 05:47 PM.

[Borovsky]

Martin smiled happily at the idea of using their own tools against them but they didn't know what this thing did. What if it blew up the world? What ifs.... Martin hated what ifs.

It was partially why he disliked working with a team he hadn't personally vetted. Cross had proven a good hunter, but she was not a team player and that irked Martin. This was a great tool - if it worked.

"I'm all great to hear about theory, sir. But does it work? I'm not going to go in and make my bets on killing Ascendancy on an artifact that may or may not work as intended. We already have one monster at our backside, we will be facing the biggest and worst monster in the coming days. I do not like having a third monster to fight against without at least knowing we can control it."
He knew it was out of line but this was a weapon they had to know how it worked before hand.

[Armande]

Armande felt his mouth tighten even as he felt a pang of disappointment. So much of humanity, including many of the Atharim, had lost their curiosity. Among his brethren, so many of them lived solely for the hunt. They relied on weaponry- on sword or dagger or guns- meticulously, almost worshipfully, taking care of them. They cleaned them regularly, sharpened them to razor's edge, practiced with them, honed their skills with them, as if it were an extension of themselves. Their ritual of training and maintenance bordered on the fanatical.

But even as they took care of their physical bodies, training to be at the top of their craft, the best humanity had to offer, so many neglected their greatest weapon, the greatest tool they had. Their mind.

They lived for the hunt. Dedicated, true. Martin was as fiercely loyal as an Atharim could be. He lived for their organization and their purpose. His work as High Inquisitor had shown a directness of mind, a toleration of no heterodoxy. He possessed the requisite zeal and drive to be his successor.

But the Atharim needed more than just heart, more than just pure unadulterated loyalty, more than just zeal, especially in one who be called Regus, Vicar of Iscariot. They needed a mind. For the greatest weapon and tool available to man was his mind. A mind that quested along infinite paths, seeking for connections and links, for patterns, thirsting for information like a man in the desert. One who sought knowledge not for pure practicality or utility, but for its own sake. Only by doing so, did the mind find all that was possible.

It was mind that had allowed weak mankind to defeat the gods. It was mind that had lifted man, so far fallen at the end of the god wars, from the barely maintained subsistence of the aftermath to so much more. The men who had trained and honed their mind, expanded it, a living machine that so perfectly expressed the Dialectic, Fichte's resolution of Kant's Dyad dilemma: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. A lie, of course, to attribute its existence so late in human history. Thales of Miletus, more than 2000 years before Kant, had already discovered this truth. The birth of Greek philosophy and deduction that was the bedrock of science and western civilization.

It saddened him that Barovsky would never be that. A deadly instrument, a trusted and loyal tool. But not a leader.

He did not understand. He did not see. This was not mere theory, a dry and dusty recounting of myths and history long past. They fit perfectly. There was a consistency here, the perfect fit of pieces across languages, myths and archaeology, across millenia. No accidental confluence of occurrences and discoveries could create such a perfect pattern. This was True. It was fact. Armande had no fear in using it the tablet, his unanswered questions to the Sentient notwithstanding.

Still, Barovsky wanted something more. He raised an eyebrow. "If you require it, perhaps something can be arranged. However, you must understand. The Ijiraq assassins were made to hunt the gods. While they may attack a normal human at random when they are not in Erebos, that is not what we are speaking of. We are talking about control. About siccing, for lack of a better word, the Ijiraq on a specific target." The imagery appealed to him. He picked up the tablet, examined the relevant markings. The commands- people later replaced them with incantations in their mythologies- were in the broken scroll, the ancient words. "But that would require something. Someone, rather. We would need a reborn god. Do you have one? Do you think you could hold one for a test?"

The question was rhetorical. He did not feel the need for a test. But he was willing to mollify Martin. For a short while. Apollyon had made his move. He could not be allowed much more time. Not even for Barovsky's questioning heart.