11-08-2018, 02:01 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-08-2018, 02:09 AM by Ascendancy.)
It was not often that dreams wracked his sleep, but the night of the ball was filled with torment. Something chased him through the city streets he could never quite glimpse. The walls closed in as he ducked through allies. The sky darkened and finally he was cornered. When he turned to face his assailant, it was while brimming with the power of the universe, power he unleashed with everything he had. Then it all burned and he woke from licking flames searing his skin.
He was slicked with sweat when he attempted to regain his bearings. The disconcerting moments that followed swirled a man like lost in a snowstorm. When recognition of his surroundings settled, it was not comforting. The gilded rooms were dark and hollow; palace of the tsars a cavernous, cold marble. He ripped the blankets from his lap and angrily stalked toward a shower.
Anger billowed like the power from his dream. At whom the anger was directed was as indecipherable as the assailant chasing him throughout it. Stalked in his own home, teased and mocked by the Atharim, humiliated before his aristocracy, and impotent to defend himself, he trembled with fury throughout the entire ordeal of the morning. The routine itself was a show; even the pristine way his hair was combed was but another masquerade. But the costume was donned as it was daily. Imagery was everything to him. Identity was nothing but what others assigned. The weakness and impotence displayed at the ball could be erased from the minds of those present if repainted and replaced. Persistence, he told himself, was key; and patience.
When he emerged from his rooms, a studious examination fell upon the first staffer he encountered in the Executive Offices of the Ascendancy. They quickly averted their gaze and hurried about their business. It only soured his already thin demeanor. Only his Deputy-Consul Chief of Staff, Viktor was brave enough to approach.
The rest of the morning was spent mitigating fallout from the ball. He wrote personal messages to each of the attendees, or at least drafted a template message for the staffers to customize to each guest before approving their distribution. Most of the contents were similar, inquiring about their wellbeing, ensuring his own and the strength of the Kremlin, promises to avenge the flagrant disrespect shown to them, vows to protect from further sleights, gratitude for support, commitment to the Custody’s missions foreign and domestic, so on and so forth. Finally, he asked to see Alexandrova sometime mid-morning. The look on her face the previous evening was not lost on Nikolai. Clearly, she required a conversation about topics she dared not confront without invitation: namely, Evelyn. Some of his simmering mood was lidded behind the mask of the man named Nikolai Brandon by the time she arrived. He would be careful as handling fine china because Alexandrova was valuable to him for many reasons. Offending her was not something he desired, the opposite actually. But at one point, he had to share an insight to a truth he’d never reveal completely to anyone. “I need Evelyn, you must see that.” She may assume he meant to manipulate the pretty, young American, but there was a stretch to his voice that he wasn’t sure he obscured perfectly. His gaze settled on something far-sighted when Alexandrova asked a pointed question that she eventually retracted. Nik didn’t know the answer himself and had little inclination to delve in search of it.
Evelyn would be departing Moscow in the coming days. Her entourage of American politicians had come to its end, and Nikolai grew increasingly sharper as the time for their parting drew near. He understood the need, but the box of reason was wrapped with barbed wire for ribbon in his mind. Logic, cold and calculated, became his central dogma. Others noticed it, the mask was more transparent than before, but remained. Only one brief moment when Evelyn squeezed his hand under the table of a state dinner did the façade fade and the man within revealed. He centered himself on her, and the epiphany that flashed through his mind was startling.
In that moment, he came to a decision.
Later, he inquired about the state of communications with the resurrected Atharim Regus. Another was named from Vatican City, but Nikolai barely bothered with the news. It was obvious the Atharim were choosing new tactics and the Catholic Church was careful to toe their association with an apparent terrorist organization. It was only for the love of his Catholic citizenship that he did not denounce the entire church the same time he did the Atharim. To reveal the truth of their demonic allegiance would throw the world’s largest religious organization into chaos, and that was a play Nikolai would save for only the direst of moments.
Instead, he guessed where the real power behind the Atharim slept, and such was a beast he wanted to rouse. Thus far, his messages to Armande were undeliverable or unanswered.
His mood was nearly reconsolidated when the cabaret was brought to his attention. In the shadows of a long evening alone in his office, he watched the video in its entirety. Every shred of footage as could be recovered from social media outbursts to reaction from the street, he consumed it all.
That was the first moment in his life he feared his control over the CCD was slipping.
“Kill them all,” he told Viktor coldly.
“Deserved, Ascendancy, but I advise against so harsh a reaction.” Viktor responded unflinchingly.
Nik fixed him with a stare that dared him to question the order a second time.
But Viktor was unwavering, and logic was slow to trickle through the cracks of blind fury. “Only the owner. Then strip the theater of everything not bolted down and turn it into a school for the impoverished. I want everyone on that stage tonight to lose everything. They won’t be able to get a job cleaning the toilets after the Custody is done with them.”
Viktor nodded. “And Scion Marveet’s son?”
Nikolai fixed the frozen image of Jaxen’s smirking, smug face in his view.
“Send him a message he won’t forget. Then bring Scion to me.”
He was slicked with sweat when he attempted to regain his bearings. The disconcerting moments that followed swirled a man like lost in a snowstorm. When recognition of his surroundings settled, it was not comforting. The gilded rooms were dark and hollow; palace of the tsars a cavernous, cold marble. He ripped the blankets from his lap and angrily stalked toward a shower.
Anger billowed like the power from his dream. At whom the anger was directed was as indecipherable as the assailant chasing him throughout it. Stalked in his own home, teased and mocked by the Atharim, humiliated before his aristocracy, and impotent to defend himself, he trembled with fury throughout the entire ordeal of the morning. The routine itself was a show; even the pristine way his hair was combed was but another masquerade. But the costume was donned as it was daily. Imagery was everything to him. Identity was nothing but what others assigned. The weakness and impotence displayed at the ball could be erased from the minds of those present if repainted and replaced. Persistence, he told himself, was key; and patience.
When he emerged from his rooms, a studious examination fell upon the first staffer he encountered in the Executive Offices of the Ascendancy. They quickly averted their gaze and hurried about their business. It only soured his already thin demeanor. Only his Deputy-Consul Chief of Staff, Viktor was brave enough to approach.
The rest of the morning was spent mitigating fallout from the ball. He wrote personal messages to each of the attendees, or at least drafted a template message for the staffers to customize to each guest before approving their distribution. Most of the contents were similar, inquiring about their wellbeing, ensuring his own and the strength of the Kremlin, promises to avenge the flagrant disrespect shown to them, vows to protect from further sleights, gratitude for support, commitment to the Custody’s missions foreign and domestic, so on and so forth. Finally, he asked to see Alexandrova sometime mid-morning. The look on her face the previous evening was not lost on Nikolai. Clearly, she required a conversation about topics she dared not confront without invitation: namely, Evelyn. Some of his simmering mood was lidded behind the mask of the man named Nikolai Brandon by the time she arrived. He would be careful as handling fine china because Alexandrova was valuable to him for many reasons. Offending her was not something he desired, the opposite actually. But at one point, he had to share an insight to a truth he’d never reveal completely to anyone. “I need Evelyn, you must see that.” She may assume he meant to manipulate the pretty, young American, but there was a stretch to his voice that he wasn’t sure he obscured perfectly. His gaze settled on something far-sighted when Alexandrova asked a pointed question that she eventually retracted. Nik didn’t know the answer himself and had little inclination to delve in search of it.
Evelyn would be departing Moscow in the coming days. Her entourage of American politicians had come to its end, and Nikolai grew increasingly sharper as the time for their parting drew near. He understood the need, but the box of reason was wrapped with barbed wire for ribbon in his mind. Logic, cold and calculated, became his central dogma. Others noticed it, the mask was more transparent than before, but remained. Only one brief moment when Evelyn squeezed his hand under the table of a state dinner did the façade fade and the man within revealed. He centered himself on her, and the epiphany that flashed through his mind was startling.
In that moment, he came to a decision.
Later, he inquired about the state of communications with the resurrected Atharim Regus. Another was named from Vatican City, but Nikolai barely bothered with the news. It was obvious the Atharim were choosing new tactics and the Catholic Church was careful to toe their association with an apparent terrorist organization. It was only for the love of his Catholic citizenship that he did not denounce the entire church the same time he did the Atharim. To reveal the truth of their demonic allegiance would throw the world’s largest religious organization into chaos, and that was a play Nikolai would save for only the direst of moments.
Instead, he guessed where the real power behind the Atharim slept, and such was a beast he wanted to rouse. Thus far, his messages to Armande were undeliverable or unanswered.
His mood was nearly reconsolidated when the cabaret was brought to his attention. In the shadows of a long evening alone in his office, he watched the video in its entirety. Every shred of footage as could be recovered from social media outbursts to reaction from the street, he consumed it all.
That was the first moment in his life he feared his control over the CCD was slipping.
“Kill them all,” he told Viktor coldly.
“Deserved, Ascendancy, but I advise against so harsh a reaction.” Viktor responded unflinchingly.
Nik fixed him with a stare that dared him to question the order a second time.
But Viktor was unwavering, and logic was slow to trickle through the cracks of blind fury. “Only the owner. Then strip the theater of everything not bolted down and turn it into a school for the impoverished. I want everyone on that stage tonight to lose everything. They won’t be able to get a job cleaning the toilets after the Custody is done with them.”
Viktor nodded. “And Scion Marveet’s son?”
Nikolai fixed the frozen image of Jaxen’s smirking, smug face in his view.
“Send him a message he won’t forget. Then bring Scion to me.”