Call of Kerberos: Twilight of Kerberos, The - Jonathan Oliver Page 0,60

the Faith was now facing was not this sinister new conjunction, but the increasingly panicked questions of the laity.

The people couldn't fail to notice the dark spec on the face of Kerberos and many were taking it upon themselves to proclaim it to be a sign of the end times. It didn't help that some of the clergy, in the more rural parishes, were going along with this assessment, preaching services full of the threat of damnation.

It was decided that, in order to staunch the panic before it spread to every community and began to destabilise the Faith's hold on their flock, there would have to be a proclamation from Katherine Makennon herself.

When the next Tenthday rolled around, therefore, Makennon stood on a high balcony at the cathedral at Scholten and - looking down on the mass of people gathered in the great square below - made her pronouncement.

These were not the end times, she proclaimed, starting with at least a small note of comfort. This was, however, a time to be afraid, for the dark manifestation on the face of Kerberos was the eye of the Lord of All. He was gazing down on Twilight and taking stock of his people, for their morals had become lax and their behaviour questionable. Any man, woman or child the Lord of All found lacking would be judged with the full force of his fury. So, the people should look up at Kerberos and take it into their hearts to change their ways.

Much to Katherine Makennon's relief the proclamation seemed to work. Sometimes, she considered, the best panacea for fear was fear itself, because through wielding it one could control the people.

Over the next few days, reports coming in from every major city in the Empire showed a fall in crime across the entire region. There was also a fall in the number of heresies being committed. There were even stories of heretics willingly giving themselves up to the cleansing fires of the naphtha gibbets, claiming that now they could see the face of the Lord of All, they had come to realise the true horror of their sins.

All in all, Makennon considered, the arrival of this new planetary body had turned out to be no bad thing. Church attendance was up, collection plates brimmed with coin and the masses submitted to even the harshest decree.

This renaissance of faith, however, was not to last.

Days after the dark moon had moved into conjunction with Kerberos, the attacks on the coast began.

From every major port in Vosburg, reports flooded in of creatures walking out of the sea and launching vicious assaults on the populous. The military were stretched almost to breaking point defending the maritime provinces, and the channelling of resources away from the in-land cities meant that crime rose steeply in these areas. The Final Faith were forced to bolster the Empire's troops with detachments of the Order of The Swords of Dawn and, as a result, some heresies were now going unpunished, as all available Faith troops were put to use against the Chadassa menace.

The fighting was intense and casualties on both sides were high. For a while it seemed that some of the major ports would fall. But Freiport suddenly joined the conflict - briefly allying with a nation that they had openly spurned for years - and, with a last desperate push, the creatures were driven back into the sea.

Some of the smaller coastal settlements, however, had not had the might of the Empire to back them up and entire generations had been slaughtered, villages reduced to rubble before the sea demons - their hunger apparently sated - had withdrawn.

But not all of the creatures had escaped. A special cadre of the Order of The Swords of Dawn - under the supervision of Querilous Fitch - had managed to capture a handful of prisoners. And now that the Final Faith had the Chadassa back in residence at the dungeons in Scholten, they would use all means at their disposal to discover the true nature of their plans.

Silus sat and watched Katya and Zac sleep.

The bedchamber to which Win had taken them was opulent but dusty, though Katya hadn't complained and she was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Beside his mother, Zac had burbled and cooed for a while before joining her in slumber. Silus would have joined them himself but, even though he was more exhausted than he had ever been, he couldn't sleep. Instead,