Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky The Ninth Wave

Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky The Ninth WaveFrank Dicksee Romeo and JulietPierre Auguste Renoir A Girl with a Watering Can
With the Regent at the reins. He's concealed himself well, this Metatron. They speak of him in the apocryphal scriptures: he was a man once, a man called Enoch, the son of Jared, six generations away from Adam. And now he rules the Kingdom. And he's intending to do more than that, if that angel they found by the sulphur lake was correct, the one who entered the Clouded Mountain to spy. If he wins this battle, he intends to intervene directly in "Well, he's begun by invading the Republic," said Ogunwe. "Look, is that smoke?"
A drift of gray was leaving the Clouded Mountain, a slowly spreading smudge against the blue sky. But it couldn't have been smoke: it was drifting against the wind that tore at the clouds.
The king put his field glasses to his eyes and saw what it was. "Angels," he that, Ogunwe, a permanent Inquisition, worse than anything the Consistorial Court of Discipline could dream up, staffed by spies and traitors in every world and directed personally by the intelligence that's keeping that mountain aloft...The old Authority at least had the grace to withdraw; the dirty work of burning heretics and hanging witches was left to his priests. This new one will be far, far worse."