Huh.

I hadn’t even considered the fact before, but the Radiant Holy Auspicious Butterfly Emperor had indeed revealed Light Magic to Humanity before the Lords of Light/Nirvana arrived here. The successive Prophets were likely swayed more and more by the Lords of Light, until the Son of Light and Last Prophet flat-out broke from the Kabbalist Tradition and founded the Church of Light in doing so.

-Inform them that I will inquire into the matter as courtesy to an Emperor Beast permits me, Stephanie,- I /told her calmly.

-Yes, Lady Fae,- she /confirmed, and I turned my attention back to a dead man’s head.

Let’s see how well the soul-securing magic of the Synod worked against the residual energies left in this backstabber’s skull...

------

It was the most magical city in the world.

More Archmages, half-Sages, and Sages called this place home than any other location on the entire planet, with only Athens and the Acropolis coming close. It was the City of Light, the City of Enlightenment, the City of the High Magic, the Gateway to Heaven, the City of God.

It was Rome, the home of the Church of Light, the domicile of the mighty Synod, and the location of the feared Center of the Mage Association. The only worldwide organization not based here was the Magical Court. It was ostensibly centered in Geneva for purposes of neutrality, but everyone in the know knew that it ultimately bowed to the Synod’s wishes.

Here the most powerful Light Mages in the world were taught, as well as Archmages of almost all other Elements. Even the Dark Elements, frowned upon as they were, were wielded by some servants of the Church, and there were exceptional tutors here for all servants of the Church to study under.

The city had been inhabited by Humans since it was merely seven hills on the sea, and it had been reinforced by magic and Wards for thousands of years. The likelihood that any Aquatic force could successfully attack the city was so small as to be laughable, unless numerous Emperors showed up personally to press the assault. Even then, without a High Emperor there to lead them, they were gambling with their own lives to attack the center of the Church of Light upon this world, and so the people of the city were massively unconcerned about such an event, secure under the protection of their beloved Archangels.

There were dark elements in the city, factions and forces that inevitably fell below the lofty gazes of the Light, including creatures and beings of Dark power that had dwelled there for centuries, tolerated and even made use of by the Church long ago, and possibly even today. The natives of the city might have been very surprised by the nature of some of their neighbors, but what they did not know could not shake their faith.

Into the heart of the power of the Church of Light came Sama Rantha.

She had no magic on her that any Wards or Templars of the Church could sense. Indeed, she exuded less magic than the trees and flowers on the street she passed by, so beneath notice that the most fanatical and alert eyes automatically skipped past her without really registering her presence, so ordinary and plain and obvious that she was effectively invisible to even the most monstrous of the beings there, an ant not worth their time or attention to acknowledge.

Her behavior was similar to that of any other tourist, her attire expensive enough to not be poor, cheap enough to not be wealthy. She visited the famous sites, she took pictures of the ancient temples and churches and sacred sites as she was allowed to, and she wandered here and there through the streets of the place with energy and enthusiasm for the history on display all around here.

And once her Lived-Line extended to enough places, she started killing.

---

Death stalked the Synod of the Church of Light, heart of its power, home of its greatest defenders, the most magically impervious and well-protected place in the city of Rome. Even the home of the Hierophant of the Church was not so well-defended, if only because the Sages of the Synod were far more powerful than even the Hierophant Guards.

A Null naturally wasn’t too bothered about those magical defenses at all. Magical Wards? She walked right through them. Sealed doors? She suppressed the alarms and Seals and went through. Locks? Horrors, who knew how to pick magical locks in this day and age? Living creatures and spirits, alert guards? Ahh, the power of contested skill checks between magic-dependent mages and skill-dependent Nulls was not a thing in the favor of the former, and, hey, Hide in Plain Sight was not a magical effect, thank you.

Nor were the One Strike Ruby assassinations on all those who worked in Phanuel’s department at the Synod.

His department was fuller than usual because six of his Psalms had ended up vanishing, along with a good three dozen of their personal operatives and members of his intelligence network, spread across four continents. There was no trace of the attackers, no remains left behind, no blood, no messages, no warnings, no threats, no bloody anything.

There HAD been a very public and failed assassination attempt on Lady Fae a week before, laid at the Synod’s feet, and Phanuel himself pointedly. The fact it was completely true was naturally emphatically denied by the Synod, as anyone accusing an Archangel of acting in such an unjust matter had to be completely mad.

Then Phanuel’s people up and started vanishing, one after another, and nothing seemed to stop whoever was doing it. Phanuel himself had left one of his safe houses in Belize for breakfast, come back, and everyone inside had gone missing, only a single spurt of blood on the walls indicating that something had gone horribly wrong.

Certainly nothing could happen to him and his people here in the very Synod, while murderously intent agents of the organization scoured about everywhere looking for some trace of the killer.

Archangel Phanuel was actually the first to die, because he might have sensed the others passing. Sama entered his office in the shadow of his loyal secretary, and smoothly removed his head as the angry and frightened Archangel glared out the window of his office, frustrated at the unseen threat hounding him, and never realizing he had died until the last moment when things went abruptly black.

Sama dropped his head and corpse into her Portable Hole, put said Hole back inside its lead-lined pocket, and then went out and coldly and calmly murdered every Psalm Angel, Synod operative, and office functionary in Phanuel’s division, their corpses soon joining that of their bosses in her Hole.

Over a thousand people had died in the fallout from those assassination attempts by the Synod, innocent civilians or soldiers caught in the area effect of Archmagicks or even Sage-level spells before they were Countered or Dispelled. Sama had no more hesitation about putting these people in the ground than they did working for fanatics whose actions they happily condoned.

They died quickly, perhaps a bit unfortunately, not burning in agonizing Light that shredded their souls, or with their bodies and souls ravaged by Poisons, or being drained to husks by lethal Shadows.

The time was early in the evening, just around the end of normal business hours, about when those staying late would head to their quarters in the building, to the cafeteria for a late meal, or out for their outside homes or meals there.

The absence of people from the Psalms division was noticed, but not remarked on, as those working there just assumed they’d missed seeing someone. Perhaps they were asked to work later, or they’d left earlier and just been missed.

It would be another few hours before those with partners or spouses started calling in asking where they were, and why their phones weren’t being answered. Within an hour after that, all such phones would be found beeping in the Psalms Division, but there was no sign of those who had died.

None, save some sprays of blood here, there... and everywhere.

Also, there seemed to be a lot of computer drives missing from the offices...

-------

Despite frantic attempts to lock down the information, it got out with breathless speed. News outlets the world over reported that numerous civilian and mage employees of the Synod seemed to have not come home, and the Synod itself was saying nothing about the matter. Rumors flew as ‘worried people’ tried to contact those they knew, and were unable to reach those who worked in the Psalms Division of the Synod.

------

Some hours later, in the morning...

Sama coolly plugged in a few more wires, opened up her laptop, and started punching keys.

Mundane skills. Her heaven’s-blue eyes glittered intently.

Phanuel himself had been a literal goldmine of information related to the finances of the Synod, as the Archangels were often rivals and kept tabs on their peers. Finding out oh-so-many juicy secrets, scandals, conspiracies, and downright atrocities perpetrated by the Archangels in pursuit of One Planet Under God was downright inspiring in its motivational power to those who’d had to suffer under their thumb.

That was especially true for those who’d been ‘rescued’ by the Church from circumstances it had manufactured to gain their support and trust, an extremely common tactic, both blaming enemies of the Church for dreadful mishaps and reinforcing the loyalty and support of wavering Families and governments.

Sama smirked as she continued her work. She had a completely valid work order set up several days ago, concerning an annoying quirk in their systems that had to be addressed. The firm she was ostensibly from really did exist, and would bill and get paid for her work, completely above the board. The bored guard at the other end of the room playing on his phone could be standing over her shoulder and staring at her screen as she did her thing, and would completely miss the ultraviolet screen parallel to the visible one, the latter being where she was indeed correcting some programming flaws, ironing out some bugs, and getting rid of a random virus.

Underneath all of that, her activity was actually being watched by a couple suspicious techies in their office upstairs as she fiddled with the coding (and actually copied them on all of her work, much to their impressed disbelief).

Too bad you fucktards don’t realize that tech is as immersive as magic, she thought, humming along to a current Italian pop tune. She wasn’t dumb enough to say anything subversive in a building that definitely had Sound Mages in it, see.

Sama continued split-typing, trading keystrokes with the kind of dexterity the most nimble of mages didn’t have as the Tech Level 16 coding from the ultraviolet screen was inserted into their servers.

There were exactly three people in the world right now with the coding skills to stop what she was doing, and they were the ones driving this infiltration. Archmages didn’t put sixteen Ranks into Computer Programming; that kind of drivel was for powerless flunkies to do. There might be some really devoted Adepts who got to ten Ranks, but they were rare as heck and working at the main technomagic firms like, oh, Coralost Inc., not for the magical powerhouses.

Spending precious time and energy and skill Ranks on things non-magical, when Mages needed all their magical knowledge and Control skills? For something that could be as huge a time suck as computer programming?

Programs spun off directly into the hardware, completely ignoring and bypassing the software functioning here.

Here, in the Blessed Bank of the Synod, which managed the finances of the Church of Light and the Synod.

Oh, look at that, they didn’t shut down all Phanuel’s passwords and clearances in time. Once she was in, not that she couldn’t have hacked the shit around their security systems with the technomagic programs bubbling in her laptop and waiting to be unleashed, she calmly set up a second operating system inside their own, occupying empty areas of their network and not even able to be sensed by their rapidly-compromised monitoring software.

Pretty soon she had their entire computer system laid out in front of her and was going through it with dizzying speed, happily dumping details into the Markspace even faster than she was making connections to a small office of computer specialists set up in a small building in Rome here. They were tracking everything and preparing to make some absolutely devastating moves with the Synod’s money.

There was so much filth and so many lies attached to this money, the mere thought of liberating it from those misspending the charity and contributions of their faithful brought a happy, sunny smile to her face, and she sang along to the music, rather to the enjoyment of the guard over there, who appreciated her fine throaty voice and the sight of an attractive techie enjoying her work.