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Actually it would be the most interesting if Isabella won ;)
 
Avernite: At one point he was indoctrinated into the Spanish network otherwise it would have been hard for him to be trusted as a lieutenant or colonel etc in the army working directly under the Silent Room's command . Considering his high clearance with respect to the other individuals , he probably took some core courses that allowed him to easily integrate into the plans . Learning about the Timepiece , I should probably clarify , is not a major requirement in the Academy . Most of the people who talk about the Timepiece either got clearance to learn about it or learned about it from their sponsors (like Jakob learned from the Cardinal etc)

English Patriot: Yes , final battle time ! XD

Grubnessul: For the sake of his rose bride , he must indeed win !

English Patriot: Yes you did get it first XD and congrats !

Incognitia: Actually , I remember addressing this in a post a long time back . There are indeed anachronistic elements in the language , but there are several reasons for that . Part of it is that I'm not as good of a historian as say good ole JM , and I usually take literary license as far as language goes in order to make it more applicable to reading today . I even went so far as to describe it as anime style diction in its anachronism . Furthermore , these bonuses are a tribute to the post-modernist fairy tale . Lastly , anachronisms are sometimes used to help exemplify points that would be applicable to the audience of the time -- such as the idea of a date . Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida gave the Greeks knowledge of Aristotle although the Trojan War Greeks would have been 200+ years ahead of Aristotle's time . But point well taken ! I wish I had both a grammar/spelling editor and a historical auditor !

Mettermrck: Yes ! Excited to see who will win myself XD XD

Grubnessul: Haha , well now that's a thought XD
 
VILenin said:
Well this will either inspire Bevan to incredible feats or doom him to a messy failure! :p And yeah, the next bonus chapter title is wonderful. ;)

Poor guy . Especially against the cocky playboyish Sebastian . If he loses here , ouch . By the way , i haven't seen you on messenger yet ! You should get on that =P
 
Incognitia said:
Eeeeexcellent.
This is shaping up nicely to have confusion and carnage, with some of the difficulties and conflicts of the following generation being set up nicely.

Can't entirely figure out who will win; or in fact who should win; or even who I want to win. This makes it all the more interesting.

One quick anachronism note...use of the word date. I don't entirely know what should replace it (paramour? chaperone? consort? escort? honestly don't know) but I'm pretty sure date is a recent word, and it nagged at me when I read it.

I think he is clearly drawing on the bachelor / bachelorette TV show for inspiration...but I could be wrong!

Go Bevan! Win that deserved 'date'!

I'm intrigued to see what the interplay between Antonio and Isabella (and yes I guessed it too...) will be like.

<still reading>
TheExecuter
 
TheExecuter said:
I think he is clearly drawing on the bachelor / bachelorette TV show for inspiration...but I could be wrong!

Go Bevan! Win that deserved 'date'!

I'm intrigued to see what the interplay between Antonio and Isabella (and yes I guessed it too...) will be like.

<still reading>
TheExecuter

Haha , with the rose being held I can see why you would think of the bachelor/bachelorette ! XD

Update coming tonight !
 
So...wait...Antonio and Isabella, introduced in chapter 8 or so, are still alive for chapter 60+? And, apparently, still young and attractive?

Chapter 8 was 1581...chapter 75 is 1609...and at that rate...chapter 580 will bring us to the end of Timelines. <mind boggles>
 
dharper said:
So...wait...Antonio and Isabella, introduced in chapter 8 or so, are still alive for chapter 60+? And, apparently, still young and attractive?

Chapter 8 was 1581...chapter 75 is 1609...and at that rate...chapter 580 will bring us to the end of Timelines. <mind boggles>

Haha , no , that was just a bonus chapter . You'll see when you catch up ! XD But there will be around 3 other seasons yes . so it'll be a little while . Just think of it as a series of books ! XD
 
VILenin said:
No complaint about the length from me. But, to paraphrase the Spacing Guild, the Updates MUST Flow! :D

Haha , gosh . The pressure ! Update will be up in a few hours !
 
Nice interview. Phoenix Dace seems like a man after my own heart when it comes to writing. Damn, now I might have to go read his piece just to get some pointers on espionage stuff.
 
grayghost said:
Nice interview. Phoenix Dace seems like a man after my own heart when it comes to writing. Damn, now I might have to go read his piece just to get some pointers on espionage stuff.

Yeah ! He really knows his tuff about that and it's very charming indeed !

Update coming in about 30 min . Just proofreading it now :D
 
chapter76tile.gif


Chapter LXXVI: The Twin​

5 June 1609

Standing at the map end of the large chamber, the flickering lights of the lamps hanging from the ceiling cast several monolithic shadows in a triune fashion from His Eminence. Red vestments capped by a red zucchetto on graying hair absorbed the incoming brightness and bled out a heavy crimson in an aura about him. Along the bony shoulders of the man was the glimmer of a golden artifice of office.

White clad silent ones scurried about their tall master pinning different movements here and there and kept their head low as they approached the man staring at the world before him. Skeletal fingers emerged from underneath the comfortable cover of the prelate’s dress and pressed against the substance of that well used paper in front of him.

Like some magical remembrance, he closed his eyes at the touch and seemed to commune in thought with the image in front of him. The world—like a sacred relic for which he was pleading for the cure of an ailment in his body—enveloped the lanky old features of the grimacing man and provided flesh where his bones seemed to be most prominent.

“… Your Eminence?” someone from the side softly called out. When there was no stir, the voice came again to repeat, “Your Eminence?” but this time with more urgency.

The Cardinal raised the lids of his eyes and disconnected from the wall with a laboured breath escaping him. He was still not used to the title even after all these years. Having been Auxiliary Archbishop of Dresden-Meißen for the majority of his tenure in the Church, he was much used to “Your Excellency.” Even when his patron had been called to Spain to serve as Lord Chancellor, he had expected to merely live out the rest of his old years as the careful steward of what Cardinal DeWitt had built in Germany. He had no idea he would be called to fill in for his old friend’s shoes at the very heart of Spain.

He still remembered the day Spanish officers had approached him around two decades ago and told him how the Cardinal had designated him to be his successor and that the Room approved of his appointment. He had prayed about it day and night for nearly three days before he finally putting his affairs into order and was brought to Madrid. He was elevated to Cardinal shortly afterward.

“Why could they not have selected someone local such as yourself?” he remembered asking his colleague, the Archbishop of Toledo, who had been in charge of briefing him.

“This task that has been given to us,” he remembered the Archbishop telling him, “is not something the men of Spain can do alone nor should they. This is something all Christians from all nations must undertake and while most of us in the episcopate here are busy with ecclesial matters, you are called to set some time apart for matters of the world.”

That memory gave him some consolation as he now turned towards the page who approached him. “Your Eminence,” the page addressed him as they faced each other, “We’ve just received word that the Turkish fleet is moving into the Eastern Mediterranean and that at least eighty thousand men are massing on the Danube.

The Cardinal rubbed against his pale forehead with his fingers momentarily. “Any word from Jerusalem?”

“I’m afraid it’s too soon,” the page replied, “it’ll be at least another week until the courier arrives by boat.”

“We expected the Turks to move,” the Cardinal said mostly to himself than to the page, “but this will make things difficult along the Austrian border.”

“I’m afraid there’s something more, Your Eminence,” the messenger continued slowly, “The garrison at the Alhambra is reporting that the Alpujarras is in open revolt and that the burghers we relocated from Granada are gathering there…” before the Cardinal could react, the messenger pressed on. “Furthermore, Constantine and Tunis have taken arms against the garrisons there and the Nile villages and towns all the way to the suburbs of Alexandria have taken arms as late as last month.”

The Cardinal straightened in his stature—when faced with such challenges his default response was always to stiffen his towering lance of a figure and allow the friction of thought against thought to give a heated glaze to his eyes. It held the men around him in stillness as they awaited his ruling.

“Send the transport flotilla to Vera Cruz immediately,” he said evenly, “and gather the twenty thousand we have garrisoned in Mexico to return to the Peninsula. Start with the insurrection in Granada and then move to North Africa.”

“Immediately!” the page acknowledged before running off with the orders.

The Cardinal turned to one of the assistants in the room and his intense look was enough to warrant the younger one’s attention. “Send word to General Gutierrez to move his men from France to the Danube. Keep sending the Praha army to the Adriatic. And tell my secretary to wake up and meet me in my study immediately.”

“Yes, Your Eminence!” was the response as that young man, too, swiftly left.

The Cardinal took one more look at the wall spanning map that was now being furiously redrawn by the white clad silent ones. The orders and the news elicited red and black cloth along the southern portions of Spain’s Mediterranean holdings. Red… a bloody colour, the Cardinal thought. Black… the colour of the days ahead.

---​

The Cardinal’s study did not permit too much light into the chamber despite the early hours of the day hosting the sun’s adamant rays slanting against the windows. It was here that the Cardinal’s secretary was waiting with pen and paper in hand for his master. The gilded doors rushed open and then shut again with little fanfare and the Cardinal swept into the place like an apparition.

“Alvaro, take this down,” were his first words, and already the young secretary aimed pen at the target on the desk. “Send a letter to our ambassador at Praha and tell him to move forward with the unification process there first. Inform the commanders that we will incorporate Bohemia into the Kingdom and then send some money to our ambassadors in Venice and England so that we can work on those two next. We’ll save Austria for last until at least we can make a stable front with the Turks.”

As quickly as possible, Alvaro scribbled the instructions to the letter before looking up again at his patron who now brooded beside the fireplace which roared in defiance of the still-lingering morning cool. “Anything else, Your Eminence?”

“No, that’s all for now… the rest we leave to God.”

Alvaro stood up with the parchment and approached his master with it who reflexively pounded his signet ring onto the moist wax that Alvaro had dutifully prepared. The young man then went to a side doorway where he knocked and handed off the parchment to a waiting page on the other side. After the door closed, he could hear an audible sigh from behind him and he turned cautiously. “Your Eminence, may I have a word?”

The Cardinal looked to his side at the young man curiously before nodding and offering a cushioned seat. The Cardinal himself took the place of where his predecessor used to occupy in the room as the young man sat down opposite to him. “What’s bothering you, Alvaro?” the Cardinal asked pastorally.

“I wanted to first apologize for asking such questions the other day in the Room. I did not mean to interrupt the meeting like that with my impatience,” the younger one said referring back to his queries about the scrolls.

The one in red curled his fingers together and shook his head with a weary smile. “Don’t worry, my son,” he soothed the younger one with the pastoral tone increasing. “Such questions are important for you to ask. It’s only a pity we did not give you as much information as we could—as you know ever since The Disappearance the Room has been attempting to catch up and we’ve just been overstretched lately… and now especially with the insurrections and war…”

The Cardinal looked off hazily. Despite his towering stature, the recapitulation of the present troubles forced his shoulders to sag visibly into the seat behind him. Alvaro noticed the change in the demeanor and nodded silently. “I hope then,” Alvaro offered in an attempt to be optimistic, “that when they arrive, I can learn a lot from them.”

At these happier thoughts, the Cardinal turned back and resumed his smile, “Indeed,” he began, “when ready properly through the sight of the Tradition we have kept in the Room since the beginning, one can discern very fruitful things from the text. Everything from how the Timepiece and Keys arrived even to the reason why there is Twinship amongst them.”

The idea sank into Alvaro’s voracious consciousness for a moment. Twinship among the Timepieces and Keys, he thought to himself. “Your Eminence,” he couldn’t help but ask, “if they are twins, why is one always gold and the other silver?”

“That’s the way the second set came to us,” the Cardinal said narrowing his eyes as if to think about it himself, “though we’ve come to realize that the silver ones had silver added to them… it is all gold underneath. The scrolls should be able to tell us more.”

Alvaro already guessed silently that perhaps it was to distinguish one set from the other. “With Raul returning with the Constantinople key, pairing that up with the Key we won from France, that will complete the Keys of Saint Andrew. And then we would have all of them.”

The Cardinal, despite understanding Alvaro’s words as those of positive encouragement, brooded on the prospect for a moment. “It is a heavy responsibility,” he finally said to his aide. “The Keys of Saint Andrew,” he recalled wistfully, “from Constantinople and France; the Keys of Saint Peter from Antioch and Venice; the Keys of Saint James from Jerusalem and London; The Keys of Saint Mark from Alexandria and Vienna; and the most important… the Keys of Rome… the Keys of Saints Peter and Paul from Rome.”

The litany of saints and keys dazzled Alvaro for a moment and it started to dawn on him the significance of collecting all of these artifacts back in one place again. Each twin was somehow a mystery in itself, but Alvaro could not help but delve into the question with an unstoppable appetite. “Does the Twinship mean anything?”

Again, the Cardinal’s eyes narrowed in thought and seemed to see something in the distance of the room. “I suppose it does,” he finally said, “though probably not in the way that you think.” He let his eyes fall once more to the young man sitting across from him. “Many speculate that it is the same motif as the Papal Seal but what most don’t understand is that they are not twins at all.”

“What do you mean, Your Eminence?” the young one quirked his brow. The sudden confusing mystery compelled him to lean forward in the seat.

“It is something my predecessors told me about and something that has been understood by the Room—there are only five keys just as there is only one Timepiece.”

Again, Alvaro cringed in confusion but without any further words from the prelate, he sat back down in his chair attempting to assail the mystery with his own faculties. “Just one…” he seemed to whisper to himself. Yes… the Timepiece. He knew of it, he remembered. He even recalled how it felt in his younger hands.

“How is Father Julio?” he was interrupted by the Cardinal who now wished to satisfy his curiosity.

“He’s doing well,” Alvaro replied, “ever since my… late father’s lands were turned into his parish,” here, Alvaro treaded the subject uneasily; “he has made sure to take good care of me and mother.”

“He was also adamant about you joining the Academy and then working here with me,” the Cardinal said with a rare chuckle. He could see Alvaro’s eyes warm up at the knowledge.

“Even though he is not my real father,” Alvaro explained, “it feels like he has raised me as such… Even though I only knew my real father for the schemes he did… somehow I feel comforted that giving Father Julio our family title has helped to atone for what my father did.”

“And you as well, Alvaro,” the Cardinal added, “you’re bringing honour back to your family name. And soon, the name of de Guzman will not be one associated with treachery.”

interlude2.gif


Interlude​

Carlos de Guzman sighed in the shower as the hot water trickled down his frame. The dark hair which crowned his head matted carelessly against his skin as the water sputtered steamy liquid onto it. He too, just like the others in the main living room, could hear the troubled moans of the one upstairs. Yes, he thought to himself, Thomas was still in pain.

His arms wrapped around his stomach and his palms found his slick sides before he let out another sigh and leaned against the tiled wall of the shower with his shoulder and his head. What have you done? The words curled through his mind like the steam circulating in the air. Throughout his life, he had been proud that he was the first to complete his training. His father, the former liaison to the Patriarchate, had given him books to read which he devoured and lessons to learn which he memorized. But how could he have blundered so much to have put Tom in danger.

He thought over the events of the past few weeks and replayed that crazy phone call he made to Rodrigo when he first brought Tom to the laboratory. He continued through the memories of subjecting Thomas to the Nightmare programme that would test that young man’s mettle. He can’t be the one, Carlos remembered saying to himself. Thomas would fail; he would succumb to the succession of Butchers that have plagued his line since the beginning. It would not be that Time. The End would not be now… the Dead Sea Scrolls had to be wrong.

The suds washed away slowly and left small cloudlike formations on the sheen of water near his feet. The thoughts that wracked his brain were at the threshold of those climactic events which had put Tom in the most danger—that strange doctor—that old man that had damaged Tom…

A knock interrupted his thoughts. “Carlos?” was a girl’s voice. Carlos blushed visibly when he realized it was Lara. He suddenly felt more embarrassed than if he had been discovered in his current state openly.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“Rodrigo and I are going to use your laptop to send a secure uplink to Madrid. We’re going to send a copy of the Scrolls,” she told him through the closed door.

“Go ahead,” he replied quickly his palms tightening around his lithe yet muscular frame—another side effect of the intensive training he received as a young man.

There was a moment of nothing but the gentle rain dance the water was making against the tub. “Are you alright, Carlos?” was the subtly concerned question coming from the other side of the door. Carlos’s blush reddened considerably.

“Yeah… I’ll be right out…” was his response. He could sense the young girl linger on the other side before finally moving away.

His eyes did not move away from the partition but instead the thought entered his head… Lara had forgiven him. As the water passed down from his head, he began the realization that Rodrigo and Hayato had forgiven him as well. For a minute, he held his breath in this thought, and then, as if he was lifted from underneath the surface of the waves, he let out a heaving sigh. It was time to start over…

---​

“Your Eminence,” someone entered into the dark room where the red clad man sat in his seat. “We’re receiving a message from the Duke’s son via the way station in Constantinople.”

“His son?” the one sitting seemed puzzled, “You’ll have to refresh my memory later, but what is it?” he asked sincerely. Indeed, only filling in for his predecessor for as many days as he can count on his hands, he had not time to catch up on the entire goings on in the world especially with the conflict in Baghdad increasing.

“He’s sending over a digital print of the Scrolls,” was the report.

“Good, send them down to Systems for checking,” was the command before that man settled once more into his seat as the screens in front of him indicated the flash of gunfire and the escape of civilians.

“Your Eminence,” someone said from his side urgently as he took up one of the remotes and switched it to a military feed, “it’s finally started. The Persians have stopped skirmishing and have started their offensive.”

The Cardinal curled breath out of his nose. It’s finally started, indeed.

Chapter LXXVII: Offensive (coming soon)
 
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Eegads! Black days ahead indeed. There are so many black things tumbling forth it could almost be called...ahem...a "Black Parade".:D
 
I see a red door and I want to paint it black... ;)

That graph is almost as complicated as the plot BTW... :D
 
Murmurandus said:
I see a red door and I want to paint it black... ;)

That might be a little to cryptic for some of these youngsters.:D
 
The Cardinal gives off a Richelieu-like quality, except he presides over a far greater stage than his French counterpart. I sense a great weariness in him, though, perhaps being in his position for so long. An intriguing character, nonetheless, and his ties into the keys. Good update....
 
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Murmurandus said:
I see a red door and I want to paint it black... ;)

Call Bishop Yagger por that :D