Mah'se

Seraphic Order Homeworld

One week after the probe sighting

Anat climbed down from Tik'vah Nish'kach the small, decrepit celestial barque used by the ascetics of HaShalah on the rare occasions when they had cause to leave the station, and stepped down onto the cracked stonework of the Temple Courtyard. There was no one to greet her, indeed no one in sight at all and the only fanfare she received was the soft hiss of her vessel's ion sails as they cooled in the Courtyard's endless, moaning wind. Miles in the distance, she could see the towering edifice of the Temple itself, a monument to the true Temple, HaHeyk'hal, which the Architects brought into being - or tamed, if you listened to the heretical sermons of the Revisionist sect - not that Anat would admit to knowing anything of them. The temple was so sacred that no other construction was was allowed within five miles of it, hence the dessert-like Courtyard, which actually extended fifteen miles radially from the Temple in its center, because why risk it? A similar rule restricted spacecraft and other vehicles, so Anat would have to walk from where she was.

The journey from HaShalah had been relatively simple, travelling through the mostly empty systems of the Seraphic Order, stopping only once to refuel at a lonely outpost with no name that Anat could find. She sustained herself with sleep and meditation, only rarely having to check on the controls of the barque as it, like most of the Order's technology, was Architect-made and, other than the fact that it did what she told it, she had little understanding of its workings.

The final part of the journey had been into the a atmosphere of Mah'se itself - a journey fraught with peril as the barque wove its way through the cloud of debris encircling the planet, remnants of the stations, ships and machines built by the Architects millennia ago. If the ship developed a failure - as some were known to - the first she would know about it would be her own rapid decompression through a hole in the hull. A practical way to develop faith.

Inside the debris cloud, the barque descended through streams of bitter, vaporous wind before levelling out in the gloom of the graveyard world beneath, soaring over populous ruins until reaching the Courtyard. And all the while, Anat had been preparing herself for her audience.

Even now, as the dusty miles of the Courtyard stretched out before her, she found herself reciting prayers and scripture to calm herself. There was no way of know how this would go. Afterall, she would be arriving unannounced before HaKohen HaGodol, the High Priest of the Seraphic Order himself.