Predatory Ethics Book I - Mad Gods

Chapter 01 - Monaxia -

Prologue

TIME: MAY 29TH, 1960, ISTANBUL, TURKEY 

Father Antonio Quentin searched for the Truth.

He glimpsed it walk through the crowds of people milling about the Istanbul streets. It stopped periodically as if searching for something or someone. One second he would be walking in an aimless pattern and the next the Truth was focused and intent. If Father Quentin didn’t know any better he would think the Truth was a madman or possessed.

Father Quentin did know better.

He knew about madmen and as a Vatican Slayer he knew about the possessed. He’d been sent to Istanbul to find the man he now followed. The Vatican only knew him as the Truth, a magician, and sorcerer who commanded the dead. Once Quentin spotted him however, he knew he was something far worse than a mere black magician. Decades before, Aleister Crowley had turned the world on its ear with a claim of black magician, yet the Vatican Slayers left him alone because he was a harmless blowhard who succeeded only in killing himself with the abuse of narcotics and hallucinogens.

The Truth at that very moment had a real name and was part of a family known to be members of the Black Nobility. He was Kostadinos Paleologos, the twelfth man to wear that name. The eleventh was the last Byzantine emperor who lost Istanbul centuries before. According to Vatican records the Paleologos family had fallen on worse times following their loss of position and empire.

Written in ages old parchment held in the Vatican’s Secret Archives, were accounts of unholy pacts to reclaim their former power and glory. It was whispered in those condemned texts that in every generation a member of the Paleologos clan came back to Istanbul to offer up the wandering souls of the defenders of the city when it was Constantinople. That the name, the Truth referred to something they would never share with their former subjects. They lied and cajoled them into damnation for their own goals. This was indeed the Truth, and he was a far greater threat than Quentin could deal with.

The day before he had called ahead to his superiors and requested a more direct response to the Paleologos threat. They dispatched a strike team to enforce the elimination orders for any member of the Black Nobility. Father Quentin saw his replacement amongst the crowd, stalking the Truth and leading his team to corner him in a desolate and quiet alley. Father Quentin turned and decided to let Mr. Paleologos find the Church’s Truth.

- Monaxia - 

TIME: MAY 29TH, 1960, ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Istanbul bled history, images of ages past littering its streets. Medieval sculptures and mosaics stood among electric streetlights and movie posters. Kosta walked its crowds seeing the past amidst modern hustle and bustle and felt monaxia - a longing for home and family. Everywhere, he saw faded glory, and turned Istanbul to Kostadinoupoli: Greeks to Byzantines.

He returned to the city every year on May 29th. It was a duty handed down through generations of this family with brown eyes, and brown hair. They were successors to Athens, Sparta, and Rome. Pericles, Leonidas, and Caesars, evolved into the Byzantine Emperor. He was Christ’s Caesar and ruled by divine decree, undreamt of by later pretenders. France’s Napoleon, and England’s Charles paled in comparison to Justinian and Constantine. They were history, gone in every way but memory. Nothing remained as it was. No amount of prayer or hope could change that.

Kosta knew this and came to Istanbul, because there were souls still clinging to the history of their memories. Just as people prayed to God, Greeks felt monaxia and souls roamed Kostadinoupoli. To them, it was still 1453, and they fought desperately to keep their city. These unfortunates were unable to leave. They wandered and died in their memory. Over and over, they suffered lesser pain, than the total agony of death. They were terrified to face this absolute split from life. They were unable to accept the fact that they lived in history, because giving into its finality would utterly destroy them.