In the predawn darkness, The Citywide Speaker System crackled to life with a brief sputtering of static and a long moment of White Noise Silence, as was the tradition. And then the familiar music, which was dedicated exclusively to this particular day of the year, began to play voluminously.
[ SFX Que: 000 ~ Music: Vivaldi, 'The Four Seasons ~ Winter' ]
As if on cue, the Crack of Dawn broke open just then, revealing a cold, frosty, still, and somber scene.
The first rays of feeble light illuminated a world gone mad. The Dawn's Early Light shone down from Heaven on the City State Capital of the Krumpft Empire.
The snow had stopped falling at 4 am, as scheduled, leaving fresh unmarked virgin piles packed high against every building in the Capital. The usual bustling hubbub of activity muted. The corridors of commerce dark. The avenues of political pandering empty. The streets silent, all traffic officially 'in absentia religionis', as mandated by dogmatic prescription of the Church.
The only break in the freshly laid manufactured snow were the tracks of shuffling footsteps on the path leading to the main entrance of the Cathedral of Death. Vivaldi's haunting overture would play on loop, 'ad nauseam requiritur ad infinitum', for the entire day until midnight, echoing down every major thoroughfare and minor side street, filling every alley and reverberating around every cul-de-sac, calling everyone with ears that hear to listen with mandatory reverence.
The date, December 20th, being the Rectified Day of Celebration known as
" Summus Dies Sanctus Mortis Oferentis Oblatones Amet Deo Thenatifórus Aeternus "
The High Holy Day of Death Offerings to The God known as Thenatifórus Eternal
aka... "The Death Bringer's Day"
The call to service and ceremonial sacrifice was once more upon them, its yearly celebration mandatory on pain of execution. The irony of this was not lost on our skeptical heroine whom we are slowly zeroing in on in the massive crowd. She successfully blended in, despite not being technically worthy of inclusion in this flock of psychotic zealots. She banished the thought of her otherness from her mind for the umpteenth time that day, returning her focus on compliance with the universal exception of complicity. And so they had all gathered as prescribed, each in accordance to their order and sect, arranged in ceremonial fashion with lost meanings and absurd symbolism embedded in the rank and file sequencing of who sat where and next to whom.
The cavernous Cathedral of Death filled to the rafters with the pious members of this elite Congregation.
Solemn sanctimonious piety on full display, like somber peacock feathers.
Everyone complicit in the Ritual and eager to get on with it.
The procession to fill the pews had taken precisely 33 minutes, no more, no less. And with impossible precision, the massive doors of the temple had closed exactly at the top of the new hour, with a thunderous cacophony of stone-on-stone that had reverberated throughout the Cathedral of Death for a full 3 minutes, and then gently given way to absolute stillness.
In this void, she sat, one amongst a multitude of several hundred thousand supplicants. Entirely alone in her thoughts, despite being surrounded by a sea of her compatriots.
The ponderous silence of the massive, stone-cold, tabernacle temple hall was abruptly broken
by the booming voice of 'The Reader of the Readings' who rose to pronounce the initiation of this morning's services of sacrifice.
"Greetings and Salutations, Oh Ye of little Faith!" he called out from atop the Ritual Dais.
"Salutations!" responded the entire audience in perfect choral.
YOU ARE READING
zero hour
Action"Set in an experimental sci-fi comic book action adventure literary world-building project universe of multi-book series nested within other book series, 'The Zeppoverse' may be a bit disorienting to navigate at first... but you kind get used to it...
