Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

The Heart of the Creed

No one was sure why they had picked this location. Some said it was because the ground was neutral, others said it was because there was some sort of spiritual energy left over by the makers. Personally Maverick was pretty sure they had picked this venue simply because it looked cool. If that was, indeed, the case, it was soemthing she could support .

The surface of the small moon was a geometrical landscape of smooth milky crystal grown in sharp angled patterns stretching on from horizon to horizon. When she walked her feet clattered against the crystal, a crystal which seemed to glow with its own strange light. The further she walked the more she could agree that the chosen venue had been a sound decision. They could have met anywhere, but there was something about this small exo moon that just felt right.

All around her, others trudged slowly forward making their way down into the small bason where a large natural amphitheater was waiting for them. The different delegations took their places on waiting seats and settled in to listen. Some had brought pillows with them, while other seemed fine with simply sitting on the crystal. Maverick kept to the back sitting where she could see everything happening down around her.

This was an unprecedented event.

The largest collection of religious leaders the galaxy had ever seen in one place .

Religious leaders don't gather often. IN fact, even on earth she had only ever seen three of them in the same room at the same time, but now there were hundreds, from different planets and different species, and if the leader could not come, they had at least sent someone in their place. Down at the base of the bowl, Sunny was surprised to find the cloaked figure of Naktan sitting quietly with his hands clasped in his lap.

She wasn't sure how he had gotten here but honestly, she wouldn't have been surprised if the Drev shaman had teleported himself using his mystical spiritual connection to the Ania or whatever. She recognized a few delegations of human religions, some men in opulent robes, and others in modest suits with garish ties likely purchased for them by family members. She recognized the leader of the Martian Church of the Divine Covenant , as well as the Kymopoleia delegation.

Their planet had a complicated situation. The people that lived there had just re instated belief in the Greek pantheon before everything went to shit, so their entire religion had been plowed over in one day only shortly after they had raised it back up.

But like most people do, they had simply adapted, The gods weren't literal beings, they were metaphorical representations of human archetypes or soemthing similar. In Maverick's opinion it was almost better that they have their religion struck down so early.

For the rest of them, things weren't so easy.

Thousands of years of religious tradition suddenly called into question by revelations from the Polaris archive. There were plenty of religions that had originally refused to accept what had been dug up in the Polaris archive, after all it could have been an elaborate hoax by members of the UNSC and GA, unfortunately that hox because harder and harder to disprove when someone on the Omen, no one was sure who, had leaked footage of revelation, and then Adam had returned with the Maker's ship.

Sure plenty of religions were still holding onto the hoax idea, but the vast majority had seen the footage of revelation and something had come over them .

Usually when people are confronted by something that questions their beliefs, they tend to dig in their heels and become more and more stubborn, and she almost would have expected it in this case too, but there was soemthing about that footage, about being able to see revelation in whatever form that had caused people pause.

It hadn't entirely caused the collapse of known religion, but it had caused a mass doctrinal shift. A lot of religions worked to find similarity between themselves and the Maker reality. Some religions had to stretch further than others to do it, but in the end they had all made it, ending in a bunch of religions that resembled each other even more so than they ever had.