Knock, knock—
Alger Wilson snapped out of his reverie as he stared at his palm, looked toward the office door, and said quietly:
"Come in."
A Mandated Punisher strode briskly through the door, carefully placed a thick stack of documents on the desk before him, then left, closing the door behind him.
Gathering his thoughts, Alger, Cardinal Bishop of the Wave Church and the Blue Mountain Island diocese, skimmed through the documents and learned more about the strange phenomena that had occurred around the world over the past two days.
One day earlier, at noon last Sunday, the seals beneath this church had suddenly failed, allowing the powers of the many Sealed Artifacts, Mystical Items, and Beyonder characteristics within to leak out to varying degrees.
As the central church of the Church of Storms' largest overseas diocese, the Wave Church housed three Grade 1 Sealed Artifacts and nearly ten Grade 2 and Grade 3 Sealed Artifacts. If anything went wrong, their negative effects could compound and amplify one another, devastating the entire city.
He had intended to have his subordinates leave with the less dangerous Sealed Artifacts while he selected the most difficult Grade 1 Sealed Artifact to deal with and took it out to sea. That would already have been all a Sequence 4 Saint could reasonably do. But to keep all of Bayam, especially the schools and poorhouses near the church, from being destroyed, Alger had still gone down to the underground seals alone, confronting three out-of-control Sealed Artifacts single-handedly and nearly sacrificing his life.
Fortunately, Mr. Fool had helped him in the end...
Glancing once more at the faint Snowflake-shaped Mark in his palm, Alger let out a long breath.
At the same time, similar disturbances had occurred in every church of the Church of Storms. Tightly