Page 134

“What I want to say.” I looked up at Calestine. “You should know your place. The gods have been gracious to you.”

All I could do was stare at her blankly.

“By turning me into an incubator?”

Calestine stared back, just as motionless as I was, except that she looked as if she were frozen in shock.

Suddenly, her gaze darted toward the massive double oak doors that the Custodes must have closed, before her eyes snapped back to me and she rushed around the table, stopping in front of me and lowering her voice.

“Be careful how you speak down here,” she hissed, as if I had angered her. “It’s people like you who are the reason the Lucillians haven’t returned yet.” Her eyebrow twitched oddly. “You’re incurring the wrath of the gods.”

“You mean that of the Councils.”

Because I couldn’t imagine that the gods would dwell on the mistakes of one member of the faith, let alone that I possessed the power to block the return of a lost species of apostles. The mere fact that everyone here believed I was the mother of the chosen one was tantamount to unfounded delusion.

Something in Calestine’s gaze had shifted, and only now did I notice that she was staring.

With a sharp movement, she straightened up and took a step back.

“You should go now.”

With those words, she turned away from me and returned to her writing place, where she sat down.

One last time, my eyes were drawn to the shimmering bronze banners, in which the flickering light of the candle flames reflected harmoniously, as if the noble fabric had sprung from their flames. Only if one looked long enough, the wild flickering gave the creeping impression that the fire which had brought the fabric to life was also capable of destroying it again.

Alan Wake

Petri Alanko

The two female Custodes closed the massive oak door adorned with carved vines and Quatura symbols, and immediately my gaze was drawn to the enormous mosaic that decorated the torch-lit masonry in the small corridor hall with the statue in its center.

Elemental Mosaics. A traditional Quatura art form in which the Quattuor Magistri – a group of four trained master craftsmen representing the four elements – composed planned mosaic works on the walls through a carefully coordinated interplay of their elements. A process, also known as elemental forging, in which the Earth Magister shaped the material, while the Fire Magister heated it to make it workable. The Air Magister precisely moved the heated material into position, and the Water Magister rapidly cooled it, fixing it in place. A tradition that had often been performed during festivities.

In recent decades, the holding of celebrations had become increasingly rare, and those that did take place were nowhere near as spectacular as those recorded in the ancient writings and old elemental mosaics. The reason for that was the political reorganization of the inner Quatura society.

The Councils insisted on the continuation and restoration of the old traditions, while the Global Quatura Parliament was overwhelmed by the task of prioritizing secrecy and the survival of the own species without becoming too dependent on the Councils and their promised protection.

In short, Quatura politics were chaotic, and festivities and celebrations were postponed until better times, though every political party within Quatura society had a different idea of what better times meant.

My gaze wandered over one of the largest Quatura mosaics in existence.

Single Cell

Angus McRae, Rick Leigh

The elaborate ceramic artwork depicted a garden with strange trees bearing fruit that resembled oversized apples. In the center stood three large figures in long all-white robes, their faces covered with white honeycomb masks with no eye holes.

Quatura in traditional robes representing each element knelt in prayer before the three figures, their feet bound by ivy, their faces full of anguish.

Snakes wound around the trunks of the trees, crept across the ground, and slithered up the Quatura. Yet they seemed to take no interest in the white-robed figures.

While one of the white-clad figures touched a snake writhing in panic with her white-glowing hand, causing other snakes to recoil from her, another of the three figures pointed into the distance toward an island in the adjacent sea. Massive cloud towers loomed above it, beneath them the island's snow-capped mountains, on whose highest peak a pointed white tower rose into the sky.

I stepped closer, because towers that resembled Roman architecture seemed to rise from the clouds, and only then did I notice the many bees that were part of the mosaic and that seemed to be emerging from large, round beehives in the thicket of the fruit trees.

All I knew about this mosaic, known as Via Lucis Salvifica, was that it had been created here in 1803 during a great celebration, and that, according to the Consignat’s interpretations, it depicted the return of the fourth species.

The ancient scriptures called them Lucillians. Also known as The Children of the Stars. The Holy People of Light. The Celestials.