Interlude: Tzadkiel's Proclamation

Before beginning their next operation, Seraph Squad accompanied their controller Serenity on a pilgrimage to Artheniapolis. There she would not only take in the sights of a new Orthodox convert, but also seek any remains of James Kaios. Seraph Squad had made multiple sightings of Kaios during their missions, and sought to confirm if and how a person who's death was recorded centuries ago in history was still alive.

Upon arriving in Artheniapolis the squad met with Bishop Rothylus and gained access to the catacombs under the Cathedral of Freedom. In the chambers below they met a mysterious young woman who “was a lamp.” She led the squad to a tomb where they each had a mystical experience.

Upon entering the mausoleum the room seems to fade before your eyes, and you find yourself in a green field of lazy hills. The daylight shining in summer fullness warms the abundant grass to an unnatural glow, and a mirror-like sea blinds you from a valley below. But the meadow is not soft underfoot - the plants do not yield to your body or clothing, but move through you as if you were a specter. If not for the adrenaline in your panicking heart you would collapse in agony as the blades yaw in the breeze, seeming to slice every molecule in your feet. This place is more real than you are.

A thundering voice wrenches your gaze up. Though every word is said as a whisper, it echoes off the land and causes the wind to howl, with each blowing grain of dust like a bullet as it passes through you. A winged giant clothed in white stands tall holding a spear of gold and silver. Fresh blood drips down it, and it burns and sets ablaze all around it with a fire that does not consume. His skin is like glowing steel, and his eyes and long hair radiate golden light. He speaks again, “Fear not, for I have brought you here for the glory of the Righteous One.”

He points his spear to the sky, and your vision is drawn up to the distant source of light. It is no mundane sun, but a titanic circle of white-hot conflagration, spinning and heaving in on itself. Countless winged creatures orbit the circle, singing. And as your mind folds in on itself trying to understand these wonders, you realize you were meant to pass through to a world beyond these flames, but that you cannot. The fires are the doom of you, your world, and all in it; held at bay in impatient clemency. You stand on a sort of bridge between worlds, catching only a glimpse. If the world behind the fire were not veiled like this it would consume the shadow that is your universe as the sun burns away the night sky.

And as you feel the light dissolving you to a fleeting illusion the voice leads you back down to some small sense of realness, “I am Tzadkiel, guardian of freedom. Sons of dust and dragon, blessed are you, for worthy are the righteous, and the unrighteous are still hidden. This warning is for you alone, but heed it faithfully lest the light in your world be extinguished, and the fires unleashed. There are still many to gather…Now ask me your three questions quickly, and we will answer with the Truth.”

The questions they asked were:

1. Why take the form of James Kaios?
2. How do you defeat a Divine Machine?
3. What should we do next?

Record questions answers