Backlund, North Borough, Saint Samuel Cathedral.
In a spacious underground plaza, a large crowd knelt on the ground with their hands over their heads.
There were men and women, young and old. Some were well-dressed members of the middle class; others were ragged, pitiful vagrants.
Before today, these people might have had all sorts of different identities, but at this moment they shared only one label.
Cultists.
"Don't move."
"Keep your heads down!"
Nighthawks and elite Red Gloves stood posted throughout the plaza, the dark muzzles of their guns sweeping over the captives. Anyone who made a suspicious move would be shot without hesitation.
Silas walked through the crowd.
"This one. This one. And that one..."
His crimson eyes reflected the faces of the cultists as he raised a hand again and again, picking people out one by one.
Each time he singled someone out, a Nighthawk stepped forward, hauled them to their feet, and dragged them out of the plaza.
It looked like a butcher picking out lambs for slaughter.
"No, please! Let me go! I can believe in the Goddess instead..."
"Hahaha! The Lord will descend eventually! Our souls will be reborn at the apocalypse..."
These cultists were all ordinary people; the Beyonders among them had already been separated out. They had no hope of resisting the Nighthawks, and as they were dragged away, some wept and begged while others kept proclaiming their fanatical faith.
But the Nighthawks were professionals. They knew better than to trust a single word out of a cultist's mouth. Unmoved, they simply gagged the loud ones and hauled them off even faster.
Soon the plaza had gone quiet.
A heavy sense of dread hung over everyone left. Each of them feared that the man deciding their fate would stop in front of them next.
"Mm. That should be about all of them."
After making three passes through the crowd, Silas finally stopped.
The people he'd chosen were those who'd been influenced too deeply by the True Creator, already beyond saving.
With his exceptionally powerful Spirit Vision, and the Secrets Suppliant Pathway's sensitivity to the True Creator, telling them apart from the rest had been easy.
"Handle these according to procedure." Silas turned to Soest, who had been following him the whole time. "Contact the police where necessary, and send the rest to the religious tribunal."
The process for dealing with cultists tended to be complicated, because the crimes they committed were often just as complicated.
A well-trained cultist, for instance, might have taken part in a Black Mass, sacrificed a living person, or spread a curse that led to a dangerous incident with casualties and financial losses.
Cases like that fell under both police jurisdiction and religious authority.
So once cultists were captured alive, they faced judgment from both sides: tried in the secular courts and before the religious tribunal, with their punishment decided according to the severity of their crimes and the danger they posed.
Once the evidence was gathered and the trials confirmed their guilt beyond doubt, sentencing would follow.
Even the ones who survived their trials would likely never see the sky again for the rest of their lives.
Some might wonder why anyone bothered with procedures this complicated when cultists posed such a serious threat. Why not just shoot them on the spot?
That was more or less what Intis had done, out west.
The result was that the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun had accumulated enormous power. Whoever it declared a heretic was punished as one.
Eventually everyone lived in fear, wary of their neighbors, terrified of being reported.
Plenty of innocent people got swept up in the persecution along the way. From the cities to the countryside, daily life and production were badly disrupted.
The chaos in Intis only started to ease once the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery and Roselle grew strong enough to counterbalance it.
Loen, by contrast, followed three orthodox deities whose churches kept each other in check. Compared to Intis, it placed far more weight on due process.
By the time Silas finished his selection, barely a tenth of the original group remained in the plaza.
"Your Excellency Ishmael, what should we do with the rest?" Soest asked.
"The rest?"
Silas swept his gaze slowly over the remaining crowd.
Fear showed plainly on their faces. They were certain his next words would be something like "shoot them."
"They're basically uncontaminated. They can still be saved."
His words hit them like a pardon.
These people had likely only brushed up against the cult in passing and hadn't yet started praying to the True Creator. Their souls hadn't been corroded by the evil god's influence.
"They can still be saved?"
Soest and several of the Nighthawks found that hard to believe.
As far as they were concerned, anyone who'd had contact with a cult was basically a lost cause.
How had the Deacon managed to pick these people out so precisely, and be so sure they were still all right?
"Yes. I'll handle them." Silas's voice was calm. "The rest of you can go."
"Yes, sir!"
Once the Deacon gave an order, no one disobeyed.
The others holstered their weapons and filed out of the plaza.
They guessed that whatever His Excellency Ishmael was about to do probably touched on one of his personal secrets, not something meant to be seen by just anyone.
Soest, ever perceptive, even posted team members at the exits to make sure no one wandered in and saw something they shouldn't.
The people left behind in the plaza were still deeply uneasy, with no idea what Silas meant to do with them.
Then they heard the cold man's voice, one that brooked no argument.
"All right. Everyone, look at me."
His voice carried authority, a command impossible to resist.
To ordinary people, people who weren't even Beyonders, that voice was absolute law.
They lifted their heads in a daze and met Silas's golden, vertically slit pupils.
"The True Creator is a filthy, depraved evil god. Anyone stupid enough to worship him is an idiot with something wrong in his head."
His voice echoed directly inside their minds, planting the strongest possible suggestion deep in their subconscious.
"He's neither omniscient nor omnipotent. He can't even climb down off an upside-down cross."
Golden light flickered in everyone's eyes, and contempt spread naturally across their faces.
Their emotions resonated with Silas's. From that moment on, they rejected the True Creator completely.
"All right."
Seeing this, Silas released them from the hypnosis.
As the crowd slowly came back to themselves, he said, "Go outside and give your information. Once that's done, you're free to go."
Their information would be recorded. They'd become priority surveillance targets, checked on regularly in future investigations.
Still, that beat ending up before the religious tribunal by a wide margin.
Once the most pressing matters were settled, Silas went to report to Archbishop Saint Anthony.
"You did very well."
The elderly man listened quietly to the full report before a faint smile crossed his face.
"You killed a Saint. The escaped Oracle is dead. Everyone else was either killed or taken alive... You handled it even more cleanly than I expected."
"I did make you a promise, after all," Silas said. "The spoils have already been sent behind Chanis Gate. You can decide what to do with them. If there's nothing else, I'll take my leave."
"Wait."
Anthony smiled.
"Ishmael. Don't forget our agreement. You're coming to the ball."