[The Garden] Praeceptor of the Reliquiae

[Helena]

Helena followed in silence. She sat in silence. Yet silence was not natural for Helena, a woman accustomed to speaking her mind irrespective of whether or not her words were well received. She detested restraint simply for the sake of pride and bureaucracy, but she also accepted that it was prudent to hold her tongue in such a situation. Eliot presented himself as more humble petitioner than she would have urged him to be, yet she did not interrupt. She wanted to see how he handled himself in the crucible of the moment, she supposed. Though admitting, out loud, that Durante had “back doors” into Atharim intel was frankly an embarrassment, not something which should have been so blithely shared like it was simply amusing. It made them look weak. It made him look foolish.

“I am not of the Atharim,” she said plainly, once the Ascendancy turned his attention upon her in the conference room.

A dead husband. A cold search for answers. An alliance extended to shape the new world, rather than be beholden to it. She would explain how she came to be tangled in this if he required more, though she found the details irrelevant enough not to speak them unsolicited. Enough words had already been wasted.

“They are a tool to be refashioned. Pushed unwilling into the light, and revealed to already be broken within themselves.” She gestured to Nox as case in point: a man exemplary of the Atharim’s ethos, and yet hunted because of the power he harboured. He persisted despite numerous attempts on his life, proof a channeler was no easy thing to kill, and of the internal fractures which made their organisation unsustainable. But more importantly, Nox continued to fulfil his purpose. Clearly the Ascendancy also recognised something in Nox himself, for the trust bestowed was no small thing. This meeting was testament. Her gaze then moved to the blonde, stone-faced Dominion whose name had been among Eliot’s files. A defector who accepted the Custody’s amnesty. He did not speak. She could read nothing of his expression. But she let him feel the weight of her attention.

“Death has long since ceased to be a sustainable answer, and yet they cling to it even when they fail to deliver it. The godhood they so fear can no longer be contained – and many of them know it, not just those already touched by its hand. Change is upon them, whether they wish it or not. And we, the hands who will seek to shape it anew. This is not about salvation, Ascendancy; it is about order.

“I cannot promise bloodlessness. You would think me a liar if I did. But I would say to you that a man who seeks to claim the entire world under his banner will always have others thirsty for his head. It makes his choice of allies all the more important.”

She did not much blink as she spoke, still watching the light doused around him with an unwavering intensity. Eliot had already said that their vision would begin only in Moscow, and he could elaborate if he wished. For Helena, it was the linchpin. She came from a family whose shadowy influence indeed infiltrated the world entire, not a city alone, but for now, Moscow was what mattered most.