Germain: Bravo. You’ve slain the villain. That is how you’ve cast this little morality play in your mind, isn’t it? I’m not really here. I’m not really there, either. At the moment, I’m bleeding out on the floor of the Temple. But it seems the Father of Understanding has seen fit to give us this time to talk.
Ah. A particular favorite of mine. I did not understand the visions that haunted my mind, you see. Great towers of gold, cities shining white as silver. I thought I was going mad. Then I found this place – Jacques de Molay’s vault. Through his writings, I understood.
Arno: Understood what?
Germain: That somehow, through the centuries, I was connected to Grand Master de Molay. That I had been chosen to purge the Order of the decadence and corruption that had set in like rot. And to wash the world clean, and restore to the truth the Father of Understanding intended.
Arno: That seems to have gone over well.
Germain: Prophets are seldom appreciated in their own time. Exile and abasement forced me to reevaluate my strategy. Find new avenues for the realization of my purpose.
Arno: No matter the cost?
Germain: New order never comes without destruction of the old. And if men are made to fear untrammeled liberty, so much the better. A brief taste of chaos will remind them why they crave obedience.
It appears we part ways here. Think on this: the march of progress is slow, but it is inevitable as a glacier. All you have accomplished is to delay the inevitable. One death cannot stop the tide. Perhaps it will not be my hand that shepherds mankind back to its proper place – but it will be someone’s. Think on this when you remember her.