Chapter 487 — The Heresy Tribunal
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The great search within Frostfall City had begun.
The sabotage carried out by the Military Intelligence Bureau's action teams in the outer city had finally pushed the chaos and division of the Mystic City to its peak, and faced with an order that was slipping from their grasp, the clerics of the Grand Cathedral adopted the response they had always found effective—
The discipline monks and the knightly orders at last held nothing back. They began to break into every house, to interrogate every citizen, to seize all things suspected of taint with heresy, to take away all those suspected of wavering in their faith. From "Iron Cross Street" in the north of the city all the way to "White Pine Avenue" in the south, the black-robed clergymen and the armored knights swept through the entire outer city like a tide of terror.
When the tide came, the unarmed common folk were thrown into panic and dread. For a time the knights' curses and whip-cracks and the people's wailing filled every street, and when the tide had passed, only a dead silence remained between the streets, and soft weeping hidden in the corners. On the surface it seemed this tide had flattened everything, yet anyone of even modest wit who walked a circle through Frostfall City at this moment would discover an unsettling fact:
In the alleys and lanes, among those trembling Luanese citizens, among these people who held the most devout faith in the God of Holy Light anywhere in the Southern Reach, not a single prayer could be heard any longer.
Unfortunately, at this very moment the Yaoxiao Cathedral could no longer hear or see the true state of the outer city. Those who held the cathedral in their hands had only one goal in mind: to carry out the heresy tribunal as quickly as possible, to put an end to this chaos that had already spun out of control.
Meanwhile, outside the walls of Mingyuan City, in the streets of a city at the heart of the Southern Reach, great holographic images were being projected above the public Magic Web terminals set up in the plazas. The witch Gibri, who had lately become a "celebrity," sat within the image, and behind her another dynamic scene was displayed: the chaotic streets of Frostfall City.
"...Frostfall City is sinking into enormous chaos. The clerics of the Grand Cathedral are hunting down innocent citizens throughout the city... all who refuse to obey the cathedral's orders have been branded heretics, and the clerics and knights are beating unarmed commoners...
"Our lord is still trying to communicate with the clergy of Frostfall City, yet the open letters sent into the city were seized by the Grand Cathedral and burned in public...
"The Mingyao Church within the city seems to have wholly rejected our wish for peace. The armies led by Generals Philip and Byron, though they could have destroyed the Frostbalance Cathedral at any moment, withdrew of their own accord to a place several kilometers beyond the walls. Our soldiers waited bitterly in the wilderness outside the city for eighty-six days, only to receive unilateral hostility and rejection from the Frostbalance Cathedral... We cannot help but ask: what do the clerics in the Grand Cathedral actually want? We have refrained from sending a single soldier, and yet you instead begin to slaughter your own innocent people?"
As Gibri's anguished words went on, images flickered continuously across the holographic projection: great heaps of flyers and pamphlets burned in public, cruel executions at the stake, church soldiers ransacking homes and terrorizing the people, and in the final image, an enraged, hideous church soldier had a commoner trampled beneath his foot, the soldier's roar carrying through the picture: "...You dared to harbor Cecil's... who gave you the nerve to defy the bishop's orders?!"