Chapter 182: The Frustration in the Vatican Chambers
The air inside the subterranean papal war room three levels beneath the marble foundations of Saint Peter’s Basilica was thick with the heavy scent of burning frankincense, melted beeswax, and old, damp parchment.
There were no windows cut into the four-foot-thick stone walls of the ancient vault, only vaulted arches lined with gilded mosaics depicting Saint Michael casting down the ancient serpent into the fiery pit.
Beneath the glowing mosaics, twenty high-ranking prelates of the Sacred College of Cardinals sat around an elongated oak table, their scarlet silk cassocks reflecting the dim yellow candlelight of heavy bronze candelabras.
At the head of the table sat Pope Clement XV, an eighty-year-old pontiff with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and trembling hands that clutched a heavy gold rosary blessed by generations of saints.
Beside him stood High Inquisitor Malachi, a towering man in his fifties clad in black ceremonial armor covered in consecrated runes, his gauntlets resting heavily upon the pommel of a massive holy greatsword that had been passed down through the centuries as a symbol of divine retribution.
In the center of the oak table, an encrypted audio relay terminal provided by the Swiss Banking Consortium crackled with harsh quantum static, transmitting the trembling, broken voice of Cardinal D’Angelo directly from Berth One in Sector Zero.
“They took everything, Your Holiness,” D’Angelo’s voice rumbled through the speaker, distorted by salt spray and distance. “The Class-S divine relics, the fifty tons of holy silver, and the four hundred consecrated mana cores. Their quartermaster cataloged our sacred treasures as industrial scrap metal and transferred them directly into their abyssal foundry bays.”
A collective, horrified gasp echoed through the papal chamber.
Several cardinals crossed themselves frantically, while others slammed their age-spotted hands onto the oak table, their voices rising in a chaotic chorus of disbelief and outrage.
“The Relic of the True Cross?” High Inquisitor Malachi barked, leaning over the table toward the speaker terminal, his dark brows drawn together in fury. “Did that heathen monster dare lay his hands upon the sacred wood?”
“The relic was stripped of its consecrated containment field in less than three seconds, Malachi,” D’Angelo answered, a dry sob catching in his throat. “Their monarch did not even look at the cross. He handed it to his shadow knight like an empty iron bar. They are currently melting down our holy silver to forge armor plates for their heavy constructs.”
High Inquisitor Malachi drew his gauntleted fist back and slammed it against the oak table, cracking the polished wood straight down the center.
“Sacrilege!” Malachi roared, his voice bouncing off the ancient stone arches. “This is an act of war against Almighty God! Your Holiness, we can no longer sit in this chamber discussing diplomatic protocols and economic tariffs while a dark sovereign desecrates the holy treasures of the Church!”
Pope Clement XV raised a fragile, trembling hand, his breathing shallow and labored as he looked around at his panicked cardinals.
“What would you have us do, Malachi?” the Pope asked softly, his voice barely audible above the hum of the cooling fans inside the communication terminal. “Our Swiss Guard paladins disarmed themselves without firing a single shot. The Seventh Fleet sits at the bottom of the ocean, and General Vance’s kinetic colossus was converted into shadow iron. With what force shall we march against a monarch who commands twenty-five thousand abyssal soldiers?”
“We still possess the Order of the Radiant Dawn!” Malachi shouted, pointing toward the heavy bronze doors of the vault. “We have three thousand consecrated paladins standing by in the Vatican barracks! We have the secret divine seals locked within the Apostolic Library! We can declare a Holy Crusade! The faithful across Europe will rise to join our banners!”
Before Malachi could continue his fiery speech, the encrypted audio terminal in the center of the oak table stopped crackling with static.
The dim yellow candlelight flickering in the bronze candelabras suddenly died, plunging the papal war room into total, pitch-black darkness.
A wave of freezing, absolute gravimetric pressure swept through the ancient stone chamber, bypassing three hundred feet of bedrock and lead shielding as if the earth above were made of thin glass.
The air grew so cold in an instant that the breath of the twenty cardinals condensed into thick white plumes, and the fine wine in the crystal decanters froze solid against the glass walls.
In the center of the dark table, the small digital screen of the communication terminal did not show D’Angelo’s audio waveform anymore.
It illuminated with a deep, solid field of light-devouring obsidian blackness, within which a four-inch crest burning with cold silver-violet fire ignited like an unholy brand.
Renan’s voice did not emerge from the tiny speaker cone of the terminal.
It echoed directly inside the skulls of every cardinal sitting in the room, calm, level, absolute, and carrying the merciless weight of twenty-four thousand eight hundred units of core density.
“You speak of Crusades in a dark room beneath Rome, Malachi,” Renan spoke softly, his words chilling the marrow in the inquisitor’s bones. “You believe that by waving ancient iron blades and chanting Latin prayers, you can command the tide that sleeps beneath the crust of this earth.”
High Inquisitor Malachi gasped, his hands flying to his head as he stumbled backward against his chair, his consecrated armor humming erratically as its holy runes short-circuited under the overwhelming abyssal pressure.
“Heresy!” Malachi choked out, trying to draw his holy greatsword from its scabbard, but his arms felt as heavy as lead pillars, pinned to his sides by an invisible, crushing weight. “Demon! By the light of Heaven, I command you to depart from this sanctuary!”
“Your sanctuary is built on top of a limestone cavern that is currently cracking under the pressure of the Pacific abyssal rifts, Malachi,” Renan replied, his tone remaining infuriatingly smooth and unhurried. “Your heaven did not stop my shadow skirmishers from opening your sacred vaults in Tokyo, and your prayers did not save your holy silver from my foundry fires.”
Pope Clement XV fell forward onto his knees, his gold rosary slipping from his numb fingers and rattling onto the stone floor as he stared at the glowing violet crest on the terminal screen.
“What… what do you seek from the Church of Rome, Sovereign?” the Pope whispered, his trembling voice echoing through the dark, freezing chamber. “You have taken our relics, you have broken our trade lines, and you have humiliated our envoys. Is there no boundary to your conquest?”
“I did not come to conquer your church, Clement,” Renan answered, his violet pupils seeming to burn through the digital screen into the pontiff’s soul. “I came to inform you that your church no longer has a role to play in the governance of human survival. The era where men hid behind spiritual authority while selling indulgences to the highest bidder in Geneva is over.”
Renan’s core density pulsed once, sending a shockwave through the communication channel that shattered every crystal glass and porcelain pitcher on the oak table into a thousand fine fragments.
“Keep your cathedrals,” Renan commanded, his voice dropping into a register of supreme, irreversible finality. “Keep your Latin prayers. But if another vessel bearing your papal banners crosses my fifty-nautical-mile demarcation line without a Sovereign registry flag, I will not merely levy a ninety percent sea tax. I will send Arthur to dismantle the gates of Saint Peter’s brick by brick, and I will use your altar stones to pave my docks.”
CLACK!
The long-range subspace transmission severed instantly.
The glowing violet crest dissolved from the terminal screen, leaving the papal war room in absolute, suffocating silence.
A second later, the bronze candelabras flickered back to life, casting dim, yellow light across the room.
The twenty cardinals sat frozen in their leather chairs, their faces drained of every drop of color, their trembling hands clutching their vestments as they stared at the shattered crystal littering the dark mahogany table.
High Inquisitor Malachi stood motionless against his chair, his gauntlets limp at his sides, his holy greatsword remaining half-drawn in its scabbard.
The fierce, fanatical light that had burned in his eyes moments before was completely gone, replaced by a cold, hollow terror that no sermon or prayer could ever erase.
Pope Clement XV slowly pushed himself up from his knees, looking around at the silent, broken leaders of the Holy See.
“Cancel the mobilization of the Order of the Radiant Dawn,” the Pope whispered, his voice dry and hollow as he looked down at his broken rosary on the floor. “Tell Malachi to seal the library gates. We are not going to fight the Monarch.”
Far across the ocean, deep within the primary command bridge of Sector Zero, Renan lowered his hand from the subspace broadcast console, adjusting his dark woolen coat cuffs as Sylas stepped up beside him.
“The Vatican signal is completely dark, Sovereign,” Sylas reported, his optical visor flickering with green confirmation icons. “Their internal communications indicate total military stand-down across all European dioceses.”
Renan looked out through the wide reinforced observation window toward the ocean, where the dark, rolling swells were continuing to rise higher against the star-iron breakwaters under the heavy grey sky.
“The last spiritual mask of the old world has fallen, Sylas,” Renan spoke softly, his violet eyes narrowing with cold, unyielding resolve. “Now let us see what the ten World-Class Hunters do when they realize that no god is coming to save their thrones.”
Deep beneath the floor of the Pacific Ocean, three thousand miles away, a sudden, massive underwater seismic explosion detonated along the outer wall of the Mariana Trench, sending a shockwave through the deep water that made the primary sonar sensors in Sector Zero scream in chorus, announcing that the countdown to the grand assembly of humanity’s peak champions had officially begun.