The Siege of the High Cathedral

The High Cathedral of the Concordat stood like an arrogant white fortress in the center of the upper acropolis, surrounded by sixty-foot walls of polished white marble and colossal iron gates forged in the likeness of snarling dire wolves. Beneath the great bronze dome, three thousand fanatical imperial inquisitors had barricaded the courtyards, their heavy arbalests trained through arrow slits, their armor gleaming with dark blood-runes etched by Malachi’s surviving…