Can't stop now

You listen at the door and think you can hear muffled muttering. You open it slowly, ready to run if it sounds like you’ve been noticed, and you can hear the noise is a chant, a bunch of girls answering a single woman.

Past the door is a narrow balcony above an oval room lit by more thick candles, and you crouch down, peering over the edge. Spiral stairs descend to the main floor a few feet from the door. On the main floor a raised platform with two heavy wooden chairs are at one end an oval room. A hooded figure in bright red robes sits in one chair, as another red-robed figure stands and leads the chant.

The floor is decorated with a picture of a nest of thorns surrounding a white rose. In front of the platform there is a long altar covered in black cloth, empty except for candelabra burning at each end. Nine figures in white hooded robes stand around the altar, chanting some nonsense, Latin maybe? None of them are looking up, at least, but you keep as still as you can anyway.

Suddenly, the leader switches to English. "We are the Sisters of the White Briary, the Keepers of the Pure Light, the Guardians of the Thorn." The white robed girls echo the words in unison.

"We are the Chosen. We are Stainless. We are the Righteous." Once again the words are repeated.

"We hold the Truth, the Virtue, and the Judgement. So it is, so it shall ever be, and so it has been since the beginning." These last words are not echoed and the scarlet robed figure steps back and sits in the empty chair. The other figure steps forward, casting back its hood to reveal a white mask of a woman’s face.

"Let us begin," a woman's voice says with authority, looking around the circle of white hooded girls.