24991116 | 0242
Temple Church | River Thames | City 06
51°30′28.50″ N
000°06′22.46″ W
The Avenger-class gunship did not land; it hovered, anti-grav thrusters holding it in place.
Ripples of displaced force washed across the well-kempt grass beyond the Temple Church lawn.
The craft hovered above the hover-pad built across the road from the ancient structure.
A hiss of displaced air. The side of the craft split open, and its ramp lowered.
The Harbingers came forth.
They descended the short stairs as the gunship killed its engine.
At their approach, hundreds of devoted acolytes huddling just out of the church’s perimeter came forth.
The faithful awaited their coming.
They crept forward.
Fearful, apprehensive.
Hoping to catch a glimpse of their champions.
Adam Nightblade and his brothers disembarked.
In their wake, hundreds of the faithful reached out in reverence.
They rose, a mass of unwashed wretches.
Pitiful and pathetic.
They touched the velvet flowing cloak, the crucifix embossed upon the pauldrons of the Harbingers.
They had partaken in the ritual, praying and reciting the words from the holy scriptures even as they watched the ceremony on their phones or their data-pads; streamed live across the InterEx, hundreds of miles away.
The faithful bore witness to the Ritual of the Anointed, presided over by the High Priestess herself.
They believed, and now their faith was rewarded.
“Harbinger,” they whispered, in awe and reverence, “Harbinger.”
The High Priestess hath spoken, the promised day cometh.
Adam avoided their eyes; full of false hope, expectations, reverence they do not understand.
He saw it in their sunken eyes.
Reverence, awe.
Worship.
Adam felt them pressing closer.
Thin figures wrapped in rag-woven tatters; hands outstretched to stroke their trailing cloaks.
To catch a glimpse of the Harbingers as they passed.
They knelt in the mud beside cracked candles and makeshift shrines, murmuring prayers that mixed with the distant hum of the tramlines.
They reached out, in reverence.
It took all his will, to stay his hand.
Whispers clung to him as he passed.
They will lift us to the Promised Land…
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
No more hunger, once the Harbingers march…
I prayed. I prayed. I prayed…
We are worthy. We are worthy.
Adam kept walking.
Shanties were propped up haphazardly, scores of the faithful huddled beneath patched plastic sheets fluttering against cold, bore upon the chill of the river wind as it howled through the slums.
Barrel-fires burned low, throwing orange light on tired faces.
Makeshift campfires with dented kettles and pots with unappetizing slop.
Gaunt vendors pushed carts through oil-slick puddles, whispering offers of hallucinogens and cut-rate meds to anyone desperate enough to listen.
They found no shortage of buyers among the masses.
For the penniless, payment came in flesh.
They took the pretty ones, the rest they laughed away.
Somewhere, a child coughed.
The entrance to Temple Church stood unguarded and unbarred.
But the mass of the Faithful dared not enter.
The High Priestess of the Nine had consecrated these grounds herself.
By her decree, the faithful were not suffered to tread upon hallowed ground.
Ironic.
This one decree kept the homeless, the wretched, and the desperate from their one solace.
Prayers.
They huddled beyond the gate and the sacred sanctity of the Temple Church, languishing.
They huddled in rags, some bore babies, wasted and sunken, wailing constantly.
They offered alms, offerings, songs and prayers, but from without.
They prayed with what little they have – candles, laurels of synthetic flowers or dried ration bars.
But most offered merely their prayers and reverence.
They knelt and lingered, day and night, before makeshift erected shrines and effigies.
The Faithful, rendered to this state by the Church.
Yet, they continued blindly, to give their all.
In the name of their devotion, in the name of service.
In Service.
To the Church.
Offering prayers.
In hopes of deliverance.
Adam watched with distaste, bordering on contempt.
Prayers had never saved him.
He and his Harbingers cared not.
For the affairs of the faith are no concern of theirs.
They are the warriors chosen.
The four moved fluidly through the throng of the homeless, the wretched and the desperate.
Adam’s mind reminisced then.
Back to his youth.
When he was one of them.
He shook the memory loose.
He ignored them, his sight fixed upon the monument before him.
The city had rotted around the Temple Church.
The Temple Church had changed little over the centuries, the masonry and tinted window were lovingly preserved even as the city surrounding it fell into ruins.
Somewhere else, the sirens of the city wardens wailed.
But the city officials did not draw near.
Yet the Church itself stood untouched.
The round nave rose from the filth like a buried monument, its smoke-stained pillars leaning outward as though exhausted by the centuries. Rusted braces and new steel plates held the structure together, but the stone carried its own weight and history.
History.
The monument had stood for over thirteen centuries.
To stand in its presence. Adam felt a weight in his heart.
It stood, time immemorial, invoking deep memories buried so deep even the Harbingers knew not.
Weathered, pitted, unbroken.
Neon from the skyline washed over the fa?ade and slid off the surface, as if the light found no purchase there.
Upon the egress to the Church, a pristine banner draped from the battlements.
A single sigil fluttered upon a field of violet.
The embroidery of the Church of the Nine.
Its velvet cloth a jarring contrast to the surrounding slums.
Adam slowed as he approached the outer gate.
The faithful huddled along the perimeter.
But none crossed the threshold.
None set foot within the church proper.
No guards forbade thus.
The mere decree of the High Priestess sufficed.
Fear kept them in line.
Adam stepped through without hesitation, his greaves clicking onto old cobblestone.
The press of the unwashed masses faded behind him, even the air within the churchyard felt fresh.
Real grass grew here, they brushed against his greaves with a softness that felt out of place.
Temple Church loomed before him.
Memories.
There was a time, when these hallowed grounds were sullied by the Unfaithful.
A time where Temple Church was opened to the masses.
As an exhibit.
During the ‘civilized’ age.
Its glorious past as the seat of the Knight Templars of old, its legacy forgotten and laid in dishonor.
The Church warred the corporations over the cities, they reclaimed the City 06.
Upon its reclamation, the Templars put the rabble to the sword and cleansed Temple Church of the filth of their blasphemous trespass.
The High Priestess decreed Temple Church, as all religious institutions and places of worships, to be sacred.
Temple Church was then, gifted back to the Templars, their militant arm.
Adam knew not if it was intentionally ironical or iconological for the Church to name their militant arm in honor of the Knight Templar of old.
But the symbology was not lost on Adam.
Theatrics.
Tapestry of velvet purple, lined and edged with gold, fluttered in the wind.
They then restored it, to a semblance of its former glory.
It served now, as the barracks, the armory and staging ground for the Templars.
Adam and his Harbingers lingered a moment, taking in the reprieve.
The faithful lingered beyond the threshold, their call and moaning followed the departing warriors beyond the forbidden threshold.
Harbinger, harbinger.
Pathetic, Adam thought again, scornfully.
Nonetheless he was relieved when he stepped through the ancient gate into the well-tended lawn of the perimeter leading to the structure itself.
Adam laid both his hands upon the heavy, double bronze doors and pushed.
