The Holy Roman Templar Tribunal

A choir raised their voice in unison, a clamouring of joined voices singing praises to the light and the teachings of fallen masters and martyrs of the order. Few know how many of these masters and martyrs were actually killed by the tyrannical leaders they follow, and of those few, even less live to prove it. barely any of those left undeceived by the teachings of the tribunal get beyond sounding like babbling conspiracy theorists, those that do,they don't have much of a shelf life.

It was an empty, dark chamber of stone.the largest room of a cathedral. Normally it could've housed a congregation of a few over 900...tonight however it lay barren besides the choir of featureless ivory masks, singing in the darkness as three shadowy figures stood before a fourth who seemed to be on trial. The air was heavy but slowly pushing towards the great doors the man had entered from. An oppressive weight from the 3 heavily cloaked beings before the thin framed, reflective mask wearing grunt. The male, or at least what used to be one, was from Silus squad of the north american chapter of the order. He was also the soul survivor of the slaughter that was originally a routine scouting and retrieval mission. His report ,he thought, went rather nicely all things considered, as the sole survivor he expected wide eyes and minor concern for the order's safety as a best outcome. The alternative being death literally taking him on sight.

He got something in between.

The leftmost figure wore a dark red cloak, It was the same ruddy color of coagulated blood. hood and cloak covering his hands and feet, while also obscuring most of his face. what could be seen under the heavy hood was a black, tiny horned mask. mouthless and smooth between the nose and chin like some nameless ghoul dressed in the robes of a priest. He was also the reason the Agent in front of him was Standing still as a mannequin. mind you the man before this red giant was in excruciating pain with his muscles and joints locked. The marrow of his bones was quite literally, for lack of a better term, on fire. he was very much in the hot seat. this was a capital execution, body and the holy unbridled flame were kinda the forte of the Vicar of the Body of light since that meteoric explosion that ended the cretaceous period. The crimson clad “Priest” looked more like and iron bound muscle head than a representative of the divine. not to mention he was actually “Vader-ing” a lackey because he found his failure disturbing.

To the right, in gawdy violet and embroidered with an obscene amount of gold, stood a lithe man who looked like a Dionysian actor with all the white plastered on his creepy, overly expressive, mime like face. Currently he was displaying worry and fear while swaying to the music. Wailing dramatic lamentations all the while and gripping at his hair in a frenzy. The Vicar of The Heart of light was just as distasteful as the giant, scarlet golem of a man 5 feet to his left that was fervently pain raping the poor, quickly paling man before them both. The Gaudily dressed thespian man was mimicking and mocking the feelings the tortured report giver was feeling. his movements so light, to light for even the air around him as he whipped from stane to stance like some over the top contortionist's expressive dance of sorrow.

Shitty acting and violence,(Accompanied by the Evanescence themed background music) ,aside, the man between the gaudy and the hateful was most disturbing.

Literally over 10 feet tall and draped in moth eaten,frayed,ancient, stark white robes, with a papal crown on his head, stood the visage of spirit.arms outstretched eternally in the “creepy uncle” hug sent straight from beyond the grave, due mostly to the fact the giant was little more than an unnaturally pure white mummified corpse. Or at least it seemed. Surely his chest still rose an fell and his heart did beat, but the flies dead at his feet and the air growing stale at his mere presence painted one hell of a ghastly light for the apparent Representation of the soul and spirit of the Light.

Incidentally it was watching with a skeletal grin on its face as the man started to steam and disassemble at a molecular level, slowly falling to the red mist his body was emitting as he cooked from the inside out and his spirit was rent apart .so yeah, probs more of an enemy I guess.

REGARDLESS the weaker, Less overpowered man ceased to exist the second his mind turned into molten gravy and he kinda sploded into a steaming spatter mark made of chunks of cooked man meat and stray, now gelatinous bone fragments.the choir had reached a dramatic crescendo and the gold cloaked weirdo threw himself to the mess. The second he touched the remains they started to turn into solid gold.which, he manically started scarfing down with an unhinged jaw and horrible tenacity.

As if the weird couldn't get weirder, the mummified giant, striding forward with the real Mask of the red death walking in tow. they both joined into the fray, what the mummy touched becoming sand , and for the Man in red, coals. They didn't speak. They didn't have too.though they didn't agree, with each other often they shared a singular thought in their shared mind, as the heads of the mighty Templars Devoured their tail of an underling. Well two thoughts. One, that the being they were reported about was some wayward freak of nature or some other monstrosity.but there was a nagging feeling… that something more was too this dusky skinned and seemingly double gendered...shell. The report was clear. The agents all could see souls, after being robbed of their sight and were practically superhuman. Yet they could barely track or fight this creature unless its movements were empowered. which in it of itself was a skill only 4 kinds of people knew. the high ranking priests ,some martial artists, real essence users, and the Quasi-dead paladins of the vicar of Spirit only being on earth capable of such a feat. and no one could generate enough or concentrate it to equate not one, but many souls. Getting anywhere close should destroy everything but a diamond.and even that can only hold half a soul's endlessly regenerating worth of raw energy.

They thought this all as they ate As one mind.but something else bothered this trinity of a hive mind more…..

How many of those fat tenners in the choir could it eat before the sound was diminished?

“....Damn” they said in unison, pondering the new thought as they rose, marching towards the unsuspecting choir.

“...We just got the numbers back up….”

*********************************************************

Rome was pissed. I've never seen a temper tantrum that included mind shredding feats of demonic strength and black magic, aimlessly and effortlessly flung around, for something seemingly so minute. Her prized apartment, loaded with weapons,rations, generalized gear, and many wards and spells, lay ransacked and smoldering. However much i might understand her upset, This being the 4th safe house we visited tonight in such condition, It seems whatever those sparkle prone templars were doing included taking out the "Vampyre demi-goddess " as she calls herself. They had systematically taken out her nests and all residents ,slaves,and guards, without her even noticing they had found even one of her locations. Seemingly her being alive was solely based on her being with me and jolie and this sudden schedule change leaving 2 templar squads scrambling to find them.when they did did they were not prepared for a brunette stoner girl and a dread-headed drop of chocolate violence to ruin their day with fists and much A’swearin’ .

Regardless she was piiiiiiiissed. So much so she used magic to track and torment the lingering recon agents left milling about every area….each time one was found, at least an hour of gross sounds and R-rated content followed. Now, at the fourth and final House-that’s-literally-a-safe-house, she was cursing the very ground and air around her and slinging spells like a 3 year old with a Tommy Gun. needless to say me and Jolie found ourselves standing about a block away and around a corner, and STILL we could hear Rome screaming and see blasts fly past our location.

Maybe a nap and paci would….you know what?nope, nevermind.

What could be said about that situation says nothing about how royally boned we were, we even went to go by Jolie’s just for her and Rome to swear under their respective breaths vehemently as a bunch of uniformed men in cars with red and blue lights searched the yard in front and around her apartment as they carried out dozens of he pretty green plants and small terrariums that held mushrooms with blue stems. As well as bags of both of these plants, dried and preserved.

Jolie looked like she could cry.

The only place at this point was my house,which could be used as an access and rally point for now while we got together supplies. After rome caused almost an entire mile stretch of earth to become deadland, we headed towards one of my nifty cracks in reality. Neither had been through,seen, or done anything close to this before. Well, except that one time Rome told me about. something about Oblivion Gates and some world she called, what was it? Tambourine?…

Either way Jolie was looking around the endless white void with hitched breath. Rome however was as pale as the dead. well, Double dead undead. She looked like she might shit herself and the sky was crashing on her head or something. I tried to ask why but she didn't even talk. She just walked with newfound purpose and speed, Almost barreling ahead and Getting lost in the 5 minutes it takes to traverse to literally anywhere.

We popped into my living room, Jolie stumbling and Rome running Straight for the kitchen and ripping vodka from somewhere in my fridge, Guzzling it and Panting like it's the grandest water and she's Been running for 2 weeks. I stared at her quizzically for a second but decided not to ask. I went up the stairs as jolies walked around, Amazed at the beautiful inside and gliding her hands along the walls.

I, on the other hand, Immediately took stock of the situation and started putting the place on supernatural lock down. Wards, illusions, incorporeal bindings and reinforcement. And enough alarms and booby traps to make the bat cave look like a child’s tree house. I set up three areas for the Portals that were the only ways in at this point, i had read up in the past weeks using Rome's books and libraries that were now ashes to gain a whole set list of new application of my abilities to create a pocket dimension tethered to the house. this paradox made it to where this place was separate from even the house it was in, but for the sake of laziness i had left it tied to the house it originally was. each enchantment and portal were set with a function that would quite literally unbind the atoms in anything that wasn't seen as a friend,need, or a possession to the 3 beings now presiding over the site. I mean, Of course a literal atom destroying filter was a bit extreme, but anyone would prefer being knocked out to being literally erased. besides , i was kinda short on mercy at the moment. i had however separated the pocket dimension from the waking world. you could walk right into the house i was molded in and find nothing but an abandoned building. you could tear down the physical structure but this space would be absolutely fine unless one could travel the seams like we could. even then the harshness of the filter had not a weakness beyond one literally killing me. that's the best i could do.

By the time i was done Rome was significantly less shaken from her “Fast Travel” experience. She was also plopped face first on the couch in the front room. Jo was Nearby, sitting at the foot of the same couch and looking around still, less amazed and more bemused with a strange smirk on her face.

“Do i even want to know where half this crap came from? How you’re managing to make a house keep the abandoned,broken look but also make it all orderly and neat?” she chuckled, a hand to her forehead in exasperation, “ why is it that even your house has to even reflect your contradictory self?"

“Well, there's no point in a cat sleeping in a dog house y'know?” i shrug it off with a smirk. laughing at the contradictory atrocity of my pun, I walk around the couch. going between it and a Deep, Dark brown padded Rocking chair i proceeded to drop my tired ass in.

gently rocking forward and back, content for the time being. then,speaking aloud, “The issue we Are facing now is finding more of those soldiers. If we could wring some info out of some of the smaller fish, maybe we could get a shot at their mysterious asshat leader. They obviously were sent to us..”, i bring a hand to my face, looking dead at Rome, “Whoever this person is that sent them, We need to find them at all costs.they obviously have you in their sights particularly.” don't get me wrong, i wasn't saying this because we thought there was a reason so big it could swallow the earth, or something like justice.

To be totally honest Rome just wanted to take Requisition for he destroyed stuff off their asses, individually, respectively, and collectively. And while Jolie had not been mad at first, the waves of bloodlust that came from her when the uniformed men took away the Plant life and fungi was so intense i was surprised that it didn't just kill the men outright by permeating the air when we were watching them. I on the other hand had little to no reason to be upset. Well, they obliterated my training room but beyond that all they did was hit me very hard. But they tried killing my friends. For that i would fight anyone,so, i decided to help my friends at least.

“Always such the GentleMan-Lady thing,” said Rome,grinning lightly.

Ok.maybe i should've let them stake her.

I rolled my eyes before looking at jolie. She had a look of concern on her face. “so..these templars are some kind of supernatural slayers?” the question kind of hung in the air. I of course knew nothing except the rough definitions of what everything was. So a lot of concepts had holes. I can tell you every plants name if you showed it to me but not its history. I just barely learned governments had ways to be run beyond The US and its democracy.

“ They,” Rome spoke in an irritated tone,“ are a group of pretentious, holy upstarts. a division of the catholic church. To keep this exposition short, they are very powerful trio of egomaniacs that experiment with binding light and dark and twisting it to push their agenda. they want Us dead or locked down obviously, and above all else, their collective dick is muuuuuuch bigger than mine. bigger than all of ours,” at this point Rome turns and looks at jolly, and jerks her chin at me. “ at least until our princess here manages to gear up and give us the biggest rager possible.”

For the billionth time me and Jolie roll our eyes, but no smile is on Rome’s Face this time. no laughter or joke, purely because of how stupidly accurate the idea was. I was the only trans eternal being they knew, and their only hope. but we were having trouble fighting off and hiding from the grunts. This was a baaaaaaaaaaad situation.i sat back and we all just kind of were absorbed by thought and silence. jolie seemed the most worried, a hand was over her mouth and her eyes were closed in thought. Rome had resigned to laying back down with a flop on the couch. looking at options we had from the point of view of the distant story, we didn't have a lot of options at all. we all knew that. but the real question wasn’t what we were going to do as much as it was where the hell could we go. I needed the dive deep into my self.like DMT trip deep. Rome needed a serious level up, and Jo needed to not only learn and master all of her abilities, but also needed to learn what the hell they were. All of this needed to happen before we could even have a CONVERSATION about thinking to step to a secret society, one so strong and old that its leaders considered themselves the replacement of the vessel of dark and light.

All the bull considered i was stumped. Apparently Rome was to, due to the pissed off grunt i heard from her direction. i turned to look at her but was met to Jolie standing, looking at her creepy, insta-spawning knife.she stared for a moment,seeming to be reverently studying it. The runic carvings along the edge almost seemed to shift and twist as her face twitched. barely noticeable but there, a sudden feeling shot between her and the blade. Even with my empathetic bullshit i couldn't tell what such a quick flicker was. But after it Jolie nodded, let the thing vanish in a single flick of her wrist, and slapped Rome’s leg to get her attention before looking from her to me. “ So...i just got a bit of instinct. and..i think i have a...well its a course of action we can build off of as we go.” she took a deep breath, eyes closed, before continuing, “ i couldn't have just up and vanished before but, with the situation as it is.. none of us can really stay without causing a stir, we have info we need to get here, yes. But T,” she pointedly looked my way , “ is our nuke.without time to grow and seclude she may never get her human, meat suit version brain together, which will do us no favors when her beyond god tier, mind body soul thing kicks in, right?

Rome nods slowly, “ ok so..?”

“ soooo, what if us two move here, we combine knowledge and resources we rip from the minds of those sent to us, and we expand T’s powers?” she shrugs, “hell the bitch can jump through rifts in reality to teleport, that's one of the WEAK abilities. the damn starter pack is molecular manipulation of some fucking type according to you. What if we make an unsuspecting, run down house in a pocket dimension, into a mansion? An impenetrable fortress with illusions and totally unnoticeable?one where we can build around a rift and literally get anywhere on earth, not be tracked back to,and actually have a foothold instead of a safehouse with some traps or a trap house and a few drunken friends and literal bricks of chronic?”

By this point i've been totally silent, and Rome seemed dumbstruck. I get the feeling she felt absolutely stupid to throw a tantrum instead of find that glaringly obvious idea.but hilariously she just opened and closed her mouth once, sat for a second, and then flopped backwards onto the couch yet again with a groan and a facepalm. I smiled and shook my head, nodding. “ I think that's a good idea...as best as i tell that's better than anything else we’ve got,and expanding this little dimension seems easy compared to securing a physical spot on earth. But..portals should be just as secure as the base we build,and Arizona isn't safe anymore, if it ever was. so constructing outward might be a bit slow..maybe we can pull it off by linking one spot to another to start? expand there while coming here?”

Jo smiled and i raised an eyebrow, my own lazy smirk half disappearing. Uh oh…

“That sounds perfect love, i actually just got told of a good first place to build. one almost completely free of Holy Roman influence. abundant in plants i love, a place where you can learn to ‘human’ effectively. and with a cover story for someone like you that looks and acts somewhere between 16 and 20.”

Her smile split her face in a toothy grin “ Have you ever wanted to see a salt lake?”

Rome groaned even louder and i was mentally assaulted by visions of skull thumping bibles and walking 8 miles to the nearest liquor store.