The Trials of Trass Kathra Read Online Free PDF Page A

much. The changes he’d instigated in the Faith had both strengthened and buoyed their Church, hardened it in its resolve and redefined it in the face of its flock, all of these things ostensibly preparing it for what both its ministers and ever-growing number of worshippers believed was soon to come.
    The Ascension.
    Yes, the Ascension. The central tenet of their Church. The long-awaited and much sought moment of rapture when they would, each and every one of them, become one with their God.
    What utter nonsense.
    The poor, deluded fools really did have as little idea of what was happening as the Hooper girl had when she’d faced him at Bel’A’Gon’Shri. Less so. At least the bloody and battered little tomb thief had known some kind of threat was nearing her world, if not its actual nature; whereas these zealots, blinkered by their own teachings, believed it harmless, even benign.
    It was not wholly their fault, this ignorance. The fact was, he could control many things, but the one thing he could not control was the appearance in the skies of the Hel’ss. Visible in Twilight’s azure haze for months now, its presence lessened little even during the day. There was no avoiding it, no escaping it, and, if only to prevent the inconvenience to his plans that a mass panic might cause, it had needed to be explained. In such a way that suited his purposes. The glamour he had therefore insinuated into the minds of key members of the Faith’s elite had ensured they interpreted the approach of ‘the other’ as part of the process that would, as they wished, deliver them from their mortal coil into the embrace of their Lord of All.
    He had given much thought as to what form this glamour should take, considered many scenarios, but in the end it was a corruption of the actual truth that served him best.
    The ‘other’, he said, was a herald of the coming Ascension, which appeared in the heavens to facilitate the rapture itself. While it was true that the Hel’ss was linked to Kerberos, it was, of course, nothing of the kind, but he saw no reason to share this part of the entity’s sordid history with the humans. They would, after all, all be gone before they found this out.
    Oh, how simple it had been. While initially worried about the degree of will it would take to weave such a deception in the minds of so many, it had not taken long for the part truth to take on a life of its own. Such was the pliability of true believers that they were willing to accept anything that bolstered their own beliefs, and while it was true that he had been forced to ‘tweak’ the minds of a few who began to express doubts, the slavering vegetables they had become were no longer a problem. Otherwise the elite of the Final Faith had delivered his wondrous news to their underlings who had, in turn and through means subtle and otherwise, dutifully instilled that belief in the minds of the masses.
    So it was that the thing that was about to annihilate them all was perceived to be an object not of death but of life. Glorious, everlasting afterlife.
    Yes, they were fools. But they were happy fools.
    Even Makennon – although it was true to say she was less happy than most.
    Ah, Katherine, Redigor thought. He missed the feel of her, her inner fire , as it were, but in his new guise it would not have been appropriate for him to take advantage of the Anointed Lord in that way. If he had been capable of feeling sorry for anyone, he would have felt sorry for Katherine. The woman – strong, proud, but fallibly human – had barely been released from servitude to him when her mind had once more become no longer her own. She, of all of them, had required the most delicate manipulation because she had felt his touch before, and with one slip he could have revealed his true self to her. He could not remove her faculties in the way he had with the others, she was too prominent for that, so instead it had been necessary for him to... deaden certain parts of