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As you enter the sanctioning branch, the smell of motor oil and carbonized metal gives way to incense and hot wax. The utilitarian uniformity of the Suppression Bureau is less pervasive here. Many of the narrower hallways are festooned with flickering candles and thrice-polished mirrors. Pinned lengths of annotated parchment flutter in the light breeze, casting a shifting interplay of light and shadow along the walls.
After spending nearly half an hour weaving around robed adepts, you arrive at the central chapel - just in time to catch the second half of Father Gregori's service. As Ren alluded to days earlier, there is something incongruous about the way he carries himself. One one hand, his face captures the thin, kindly features of a rural minister. But whenever he makes a particularly vivid point, his voice bellows with passion and his eyes burn with suppressed hatred.
"...I have read the words, I know of the changes they bring, and I have seen the monstrous transfigurations that visit upon the helpless. But all souls are equal under the eyes of our Illuminated Patron, who enlightens without regard for... "
Unsurprisingly, much of the sermon is lost on you. Even allowing for the haziness of your memories, you are confident that the good father's teachings diverge radically from any religion you are familiar with. There are moments where you are uncertain if he is trying to inspiring worship, devotion, or abject fear. In either case, the vision he paints is stark: a choice between uncompromising light and merciful darkness. Following a lord-patron who embraces utter enlightenment or rejecting him for an eternity of base ignorance.
The sermon concludes with a slow chant that extols the coming of the eternal dawn. The language is alien. Your poor attempts at mimicking the pronunciation leave a hot, tingling sensation on your tongue that slowly morphs into the dry taste of wood-ash.
