The Letter from Brother Anton:



Dear Brother Nikolai,

It was our sixth prayer together in silent chamber when His holy suffering was shared with us. Perhaps for some reason of divine providence, only brother Pavel was spared this agony. As if to answer our devotion with task, or to challenge our steadfastness with trembling, our hearts were filled with great burden, pain and sorrow.

We believe that it was He of The Iron Will that physically flogged us with invisible force as images filled our minds. Wounds upon us opened. Our very spirits were wracked in agony, and many of the Adorned openly wept.

The images were that of children bleeding to death upon black altars, of thousands burying their kin, and places of our beloved motherland, The Vast, becoming washed away by a poisoned rain. And brother Nikolai, we witnessed the very stones of St. Sollars become ashes, pounded beneath the marching heels of hideous armies. Two twins grappled each other, one bearing a crown and a scepter and the other falling to the earth beneath the first.

No longer a novice, we have long deemed Pavel to be gifted. As he was somehow purposefully spared this beautiful torture, he may also be anointed. Therefore, we bestow both skullcap and ambassadorship upon him with all the honor, rights, privileges thereunto appertaining. Perhaps in this way, unlike the others here, he may travel freely, carrying with him our vision and our hope that these scenes may never come to pass.

Shouldering your hardship,
The Disciples of St. Sollars,

Brother Anton Ziguri