Book of Faith

Chapter 2: The Kiraman Katibin

Pitch black. That's all Brody could see as he ambled blindly through the darkness. It felt like an eon as he stumbled aimlessly into the unyielding obscurity. Unexpectedly, his eyes were awash with the bright light of the whitest most polished room he had ever seen. It vaguely reminded him of the cells you see in movies that they keep insane people locked up in with straitjackets.

Once his vision had adjusted to the onslaught of radiance, he looked around the round room full of stone chairs — no not chairs, thrones — which were full of people whose faces he couldn't quite make out. He rubbed his eyes thoroughly, but no matter how hard he tried, the faces of the people remained blurred and unclear. Piercing through the silence, one of the people spoke with a loud, booming voice.

"Yet another family has been abducted," said the deep voice to Brody's right.

"At this rate," another voice said — clearly female — opposite to the first. "We're going to lose all of the Augur population by the end of this year."

"Who could have imagined it would ever get this bad?" another voice said.

"If you had listened to me from the very beginning," the female voice resounded sternly, "we wouldn't be in this predicament."

"You're just as guilty as any of us!" accused another voice. "You see yourself as just, yet you have done nothing more than protect your own Sanctum! Beyond that, the fate of the Augurs has always come second to you!"

"I would watch your tone, Feare!" the woman hissed, her anger evident. "I've done more to help in this crisis than you would know sitting behind your desk filing paperwork! I — as well as all the other Archmagim who have had to take in the families of those that have been abducted — have been forced in this situation to make some tranquility in the communities around the world."

"And yet you've done nothing to combat the Faith whatsoever," litigated the first deep voice.

"And what are we to do?" demanded the woman in a rage. "We are nothing more than emissaries of Metis! We may have our own laws within the Sanctums, but any act against the Faith is an act of civil war! That is not an action I — any of us — wish to commit lightly, lest we lead to a follow up as great to that of Aldrich Magnhild!"

Brody could feel his pulse in his ears. He didn't know what he had found himself in the middle of. By the sound of it, it was a bad situation. He suddenly felt glad that none of the people in their thrones could see him.

"That is enough."

The voice that had said it was calm, the way that it was said caused a shiver to run down Brody's spine. Silence fell amongst the squabbling politicians whose gazes all became transfixed on one of the three tallest thrones in the room which seemed to shine brighter than the rest of them.

"Such petty bickering will lead us nowhere."

"Agreed," said the leftmost of the three. "We shouldn't be focused on what has happened up until this point. We should focus on what we must do about this threat now that it has gotten too out of hand."

There was a quiet murmur amid the previously squabbling politicians. Whomever these three men were, they incited both great fear and great respect in the others.

"The threat the Faith poses, not only to the Augurs but the rest of the Hidden World can no longer be ignored. Who is to say that they will stop with just the Augurs — or the Magim for that matter? Whatever these radicals are after, they must be dealt with before they cause upright panic and anarchy."

The woman stood from her throne at full height in a flash.

"All things that I — and Tarech Romulus — have been attempting to persuade this Council of for years before you cast him down from his position!" she exclaimed irately. "You are all fools, cowardly and stubborn and self-serving! You have doomed the Augurs to this fate by not acting in enough advance in order to maintain a peace that has already been disrupted! It is only after they have been reduced to nothing and wiped from the population that you decide it is time to redeem yourselves and restore the peace we've lost!