São Paulo Metropolitan Cathedral
The grounds were silent save for the gaggle of new intruders and their unlikely conductor, the darkened stone face of the building deceitfully peaceful in the warm, hazy night. To normal eyes the stone slept, not even the slightest light escaping the faceted windows hung over the front doors. To those not called by the Grail it was the stillness of Christmastide, a jolly emptiness that promised the dutiful community of the Catedral da Sé home for the holidays. For the damned of São Paulo, the Magi and their familiars, it was merely the brittle tranquility that followed bringers of death, a silence perched on a razor's edge. It came clattering down as the first Master to reveal themselves rapped on the center set of twin doors. The sound echoed back from within the great hollow on the other side. The wood tingled the skin, the bounded field reaching across the threshold pulsing upon contact with a Magus. An invisible ripple passed through the ether, an alert to the caretaker of the grounds and a caution to those trespassing that their violations would not go unnoticed.
The ornate doors swung inwards after the knocking ceased, their hinges silent enough to highlight the gentle rush of stale air from inside of the building, the smell of ancient parchment and burnt down candles drifting past. Just as the windows suggested, the inside of the cathedral had been left unlit. Residual light from the city stabbed in across the glossy floor, lighting the way and casting a monstrously long silhouette of the humanity gathered in the entrance across the abyssal depths of the nave. What diffused through the room was enough to see by, the rows of jet black pews easily visible against the ashy, natural dark that surrounded them. Hundreds of seats, all empty, stood audience for the welcoming arms of the cathedral's twin pulpits, gilded cages hung from two of the many pillars reaching up into the deeply vaulted ceiling. The altar was swathed in dark, the periphery of the enormous room danced with eerie shapes conjured by the night time mist. The cautious eye found more than phantasm in the corners, the ghostly forms of observation familiars skittering about outside the reach of the light, soundless, shapeless perturbances of magecraft that made no effort to hide themselves from other Magi. After all, this was to be neutral ground. Various schools publicly laid their eyes upon the ritual, the Association's own handiwork on flippant display in the ravens and owls haunting the corners.
A heel clicked on the tile, a noise that threatened to deafen in the sensory deprivation that surrounded the first comers' little island of light. Moonlight colored skin bobbed above a waterfall of charcoal fabric as a patch of the darkness tore itself away into the slender shape of a woman's face. A broad smile bloomed on the priestess, a sinister sliver of glinting teeth stretching outwards as she spread her arms to this bizarre flock. Golden eyes traced circles in their sockets, passing over the unsightly gaggle brought before the altar with sleepy-eyed forgiveness. She made a poor show of hiding her disappointment behind that affected smile and deathly glare. There was no rule saying that one must come alone, but it certainly simplified things when there were not a guaranteed dozen witnesses present in the room. A Servant encompassing multiple people? A team of Masters? She looked upon them more closely. Appearances were deceitful things, cultivated by humanity for little more than to disguise the beauty of the soul and turn the eyes of others from the true enmity of their deeds. A shame then, that it was not in the eyes of other humans that they were judged. More pressingly, any body meandered into her abode could be a Master or a Servant, though the only male body present was the logical starting point. The radiant preacher at the head of the... procession, or so she supposed from the way the women addressed him as they had approached the cathedral.
The Overseer stepped forward into the dimness, peeling from the shaded background as the light painted her habits deep blue. A tall, hooked staff rose up in her left hand, its ornamental body forged in white and gold. The two meter height of the ornamental crozier, wrapped in engravings of many-winged creatures, called attention to the modest height of the woman holding it. No longer the looming specter of pale and black, the golden hair that fell from her veil bounced as she walked forward. The loud sound of her shoes against the marble almost managed to disguise the metallic clink of her movements. The smile upon her face suggested a personality that cared little to hide a thing, and to follow she cast her arms wide open for the fresh congregation.
"Rejoice, for you are welcomed to the House of God. The hour may be late," And, she hadn't the heart to say, the grounds were indeed closed,
"But it is only within the passing dark that we may witness the coming of His light."
The Overseer's eyes flickered across them, attempting to engage the church-goers and sort the inconsistencies in her mind. There was no urgency, she worried not for finding the Servant and Master, if they wished only to observe they were certainly in good company. She stopped on the man in charge, alluringly dainty and robed in the smug liturgical prowess that she witnessed daily in many of her colleagues. Were her memory less than what it was, he could have easily passed for being one of her own. Indeed, the seed of doubt had somehow crept into her own musing on the matter. Had she forgotten someone, some outlier?
"Forgive me, I fail to recognize neither rank nor face upon you Brother. Though you are welcomed the date is such that I must inquire as to your business here."
She knew it was a fault even as she committed it, but she anticipated that if anyone in the crowd was interested in making contact they already had a plan in motion for such. If this man she peered into the eyes of was a Magus then he most certainly already knew, already felt the horrible, anxious weight of the lesser Grail in this place.
