xp_logs | Plot - Sing Me a Prayer: Chapter II

Wherein Our Heroes Have a Religious Experience And An Irishman is Bald.

"No, for the last time, I have no idea why Hampshire would send a picture of this church to Farouk." Garrison looked up at the imposing stone structure, soaked grey by a presistent drizzle. Milan was hardly a sun drenched paradise today, caught in the midst of a wet spring, and showing a furtive face to visitors. It had taken a few hours to identify the building in the photo Hampshire had sent. Kane had tried to reach her directly, but none of the numbers he was able to locate had rung through to the woman. It could have been code between her and the Professor. Or a clue; a warning - virtually anything that would render this trip across the ocean to Italy as nothing other than a fool's errend.

"Maybe he did get religion." He muttered under his breath as they approached the doors.

"I really highly doubt it," Amanda replied, just as sotto voce as she fidgeted slightly besides him. Churches tended to have their own energy and it tended to put her on edge. The doors creaked Kane pushed them open, their footsteps echoing on the stone. "Knowing Farouk, this'll be the Church of the Unholy Monstrosity."

Wanda snorted. "Amanda, please do not tempt the fates. If anyone would end up winding up being eaten by tentacled monsters in a church, it would be us." Unlike Amanda, Wanda actually enjoyed churches - you could not swing a dead cat in Europe without hitting a church but she'd always found them to be soothing. Also, a lot of times the alms boxes had sported very poor and easily broken locks. "Do we have someone we are meeting?" she asked the other two.

"We are trying to figure out what Farouk might possibly want from this photo. It's either this or visting morgues looking for John Does that smell like old cigars and wet carpet."Kane said, pushing through the door and stepping into the nave of the old cathedral. There were a sprinkling of people sitting in the pews, but there was no service going on, or open confessionals. He huffed into his beard, wondering where to look.

"Can I help you, folks?" The Dominican monk approaching them was well into his sixties, yet still exuded a magnetic kind of vitality, the large physical frame gliding smoothly across the floor, the cassock's edges brushing the tiles like a royal mantle. His English was fluent, albeit tinged with a pronounced accent of Southern Italy, "You seem a bit lost."

"Not as lost as some," Wanda said in reply. "We were wondering if you could tell us a little about this church. Is there anything - esoteric that might draw people outside the normal tourist attraction or worship?"

The Dominican was clearly taken a back a little by the question, the black eyes narrowing in thought. "I am afraid not. It's been here for a very long time, it is true. But most of that history has, thankfully, has been rather pacific. There is a legend that Francesco Sforza once fought off a gang of bravos in here, but personally I always suspected it was pure apocrypha."

Wanda glanced at Kane, whose face for a moment looked as if he was being force-fed a sour lemon with a twist of strychnine. She rather sympathized. Half way around the world for a wild goose cha--

"Of course, I am only a simple hobbyist in these matters." The monk continued earnestly. "If you would be willing to wait a few moments, I all ask if Father Connelly might meet with you. He's is a true expert. He might have the information you are looking for."

"Hell." Kane muttered and shrugged as they looked at him. "He was involved in the- thing. Last year."

"'Thing'?" Amanda asked, cocking an eyebrow. "Please tell that means some weird shite and not a romantic getaway between the two of you."

"Please, not in front of the nice monk," Wanda responded, really not wanting to know but having a horrible feeling that she was going to have to find out.

"That would be wonderful, thank you, we would love to speak with Father Connelly." She waited until he nodded and turned away before looking at Garrison. "What is this "thing"?"

"Templars trying to create a Babylon Woman - whatever the hell that is. Pope's personal special forces. Some kind of big powerful mutant at the end. You know, a 'thing'."

"It's as if I was there." The hint of brogue was heavier than usual in the acidic comment, as the broad-shouldered Jesuit made his way through the pews. "And they say that you Canadians have no gift of gab."

Kane turned and his rejoinder died a swift and violent death, choked off into a snorting whistle of mild shock and quiet joy.

Connelly scowled back at him, running the callused hand over the bald head - the leonine mane and beard that had hidden it for the last decade gone long enough for even the pale flesh of the Irishman to darken with a faint tan. "Let me guess. Farouk sent you and he needs something again?"

The silence stretched for a long moment, and Father Andrew signed disgustedly, muttering to himself in a high-pitche imitation of someone. "Your life might be in danger, Connelly. Come hide with the Dominicans, Connelly. Milan is a wonderful town, Connelly. They'll never find you here, Connelly. God's blood! I knew should have shot that fucking heathen Arab the day I met him."

Wanda smiled at the Jesuit sympathetically. "He gets that reaction a lot."

"Uh-huh. What do you lot want?"

"Actually, we were hoping you'd know." Kane said. "Farouk has gone missing, and as usual, didn't bother to leave us a forwarding address. All that we've got is this picture of this church sent to him from the Red Rook. Ideas?"

Connelly's eyes darkened at the revelation and he reached into his robe. After a minute's rummaging he came up with ancient horn-rimmed glasses and reached out imperiously. "Lemme see the doodle."

Griping about the poor lighting under his breath, he examined the picture with care that seemed vaguely incongruous coming from man that massive. Finally offering it back he shrugged. "Nothing in the picture that rings a bell. My guess is that Hampshire just got a big mouth. I sort of fell off the radar a while back. Amahl may have gone looking and that Hellfire chit found me for him. She came by a bit ago, nosing around. I told her what I could, don't see why she couldn't just forward it to him..."

The mutants exchanged a brief look. A Jesuit involved with the occult or not, Connelly had only ever been on the margins of the Great Game. Certainly too far removed from things to fully appreciate the nuanced depths Farouk's finely tuned paranoia.

"And what did the Red Rook want from you?" Amanda asked, not liking this at all. Hellfire and Templars, that was a recipe for fun.

Connelly looked at the witch assessingly, the clever blue eyes unsure for a second. "You be Amanda, yes? He mentioned you." Visibly coming to a decision he leaned back against the wall. "The London Chapter of our dear friends had a bit of an excitement recently. Someone stole the only functional Antikythera device in the world. Being the brain trust that they are, nobody there knew or cared what the fuck the device was - until it suddenly went missing, o'course. Once it did, they started digging and Hampshire dug here. Smart girl, that one."

Wanda blinked and then blinked again. An Antikythera device? She'd heard of it before but had never done much more than surface research on it. Agatha, though, probably knew a great deal more than she did but the idea of going to the old woman after not talking to her since the problem at the museum, made her determined not to unless they had to.

"Wait, the Anticath-, Antikai-, Anti-"

"Kid, relax before you hurt yourself." Connelly said, putting up his hand. "It's a computer. An ancient computer."

Amanda, already uncomfortable to find out Farouk had been talking about her to his strange friends, spoke up: "An ancient computer meant to calculate what exactly?" she asked. "And why would someone want to steal it?"

"All very good questions that some scholers devoted their entire lives to solving. Come up into the cloisters. We don't want to discuss this any further in the open." He waved them back, through the apse and then down a narrow stone hall until he reached a door. "This used to house a small order of monks who were tasked to the care of the cathedral. In the sevententh century, it was turned into living quarters for the bishop. He had a taste for young men and not a lot of interest in their opinions on the matter. You can still see pleas for help and mercy stratched into the stone using their fingernails. He almost become Pope."

"That is quite distressing," Wanda responded, eying the room with distaste as they were ushered through. History had a habit of lingering and the more wrong or perverse it was, the stronger it lingered. "So, was Farouk after the Antikythera device, do you think, or is that simply - eh, icing on the cake?"

"Beats me," The Jesuit spread his arms in a classic Gallic shrug. "But that'd be the way to bet, I'd say. That Hellfire bint was surely excited about it. A bit more than simple investigative trip warranted. And Amahl and her have been thick as thieves the last year or so. Almost indecent really..."

"Ew." Amanda wrinkled her nose at the mental image as they took seats. "So, moving away from the vomit-inducing images, can we get back to the ancient calculator, please?"

"Oh," Connelly shrugged, looking vaguely bored. "you know. The usual. Ancient and mysterious Gods programmed it to calculate the end of the world. As you do."

"The literal end of the world? What is it, some kind of clock or something?"

"It is a clockwork device that was smithed in the time of Ancient Greece. Most contemporary historians believe it to be a kind of astronomical calculator, to aid in celestial navigation. Others think it's the sign that the Greeks had a more complex understanding of machining than we assume, and potentially used clockwork extensively. They don't like explaining what happened to all of it." Connelly said. "As a magical artifact, it is believed to be a sort of countdown; the different components measuring factors on the planet and slowly shifting towards alignment as various events take place."

"What happens when the alarm goes off?" Kane pointed out. Connelly merely shrugged again.

"I have no idea. There have been dozens of theories over the years. The Vatican privately believes that it could be a way of measuring our progress towards the birth of a new messiah. They are, of course, morons."

For a moment, Wanda looked like she'd just eaten something sour. "But it proves that the Vatican, at least, believes it to be of import, regardless of how bizarre their stance on it is," she commented. "Which means there are enough fringe groups, or perhaps some that are far less fringe, that believe it does something else. Enough to go after it and enough, it seems, to put Farouk in the middle of it." She shrugged. "Or else he is an idiot and went looking for it in the first place."

"Or they thought he could help them with it - either find it or use it," Amanda suggested. "When the Templers were after him last time, what were they after?"

"Destroying his old organization - Alamut - which they effectively did."

"Maybe they think him vulnerable." She spread her hands slightly. "His old group was fairly comprehensively destroyed, under their watch, and we apparently have no idea when we misplace him. Though, to be fair, I have doubts that he would have confided in most of us, anyway. We have perhaps why, perhaps what - the question now, though, is now what?"

Connelly who turned away to dig through a partcularly tall and precarious pile of papers, while the mutants conferred, glanced at them briefly. "I just love it when you cloak and dagger mob come to visit. Everything gets so exciting... Here."

Wanda uncertainly took posession of a yellowed piece of paper. "Uh... What is this, exactly?"

"Very cheap printer paper." The Jesuit sighed and with a magician's grace produced a thin metal flask out of thin air. "I fucked around with the mythology around the Device, when I was young and stupid. Mostly dead-ends, and a lot of abruptly pulled funding once the Hellfire fuckos got the wind of it. That there is pretty much the only useful thing I was able to chase down." He took a long pull on his flask and his eyes narrowed in a painful kind of appreciation. "Ack! Good times. Well, 'useful' comparatively speaking, anyway."

Wanda stared at the paper for a second before turning the sheet mutely around and holding it up for Kane and Amanda.

There was not much to see. Only one line of writing, the black even letters stark against the aging paper.

A man with two souls and the beast with none will sing the prayer for the first.

"Whatever the hell that means." Kane said.

Connelly's phone beeped and the priest took a quick look at it. "Speak of the devil..."

"What?"

"Hampshire. You lot might be in luck." He said, answering the phone. "Hello. Is this the painted jezabel doomed to burn for all eternity? Yes, yes, trapped in a medieval mode of thought that encourages a eroticized mindset towards torture and suffering, of course. If you're not busy on your knees, I have some people here you might want to talk to..."