The Waypoint at Eos is where my service began, where once I had enlisted in the legions. Despite its lack of atmosphere, heat on Eos is higher than many asteroids as its low albedo means it absorbs more of the sun’s rays than it reflects. Absorptive methods of energy generation were pioneered on Earth’s arctic and Antarctic regions, but finally realized on Eos – still it’s stark surface and domed structures of almost ancient crystal construction gave the sense not of a place of deep science and great breakthroughs of the Luminaries but of the darkness and severity of the barely restrained universe crouching to pounce back.

The last moments with my family on the cargo ship are still precious to me, too precious to share for fear that they are not quite what I remember. I have the mad despair that in attempting to re-tell them that I might change them and rob from them their pure savor for I recall them often – especially Daria and Devon.

              I cared not to count the time from Mars to Eos, though someone could surely provide that. What I can say is it was not long enough with my beloved. We docked in the port nearest the military conclave after a long wait. The fleet of ships I saw on our approach seemed to double the size of the asteroid field as they gravity anchored to nearby objects to conserve fuel.

              Little news had reached us, expectations of retaliations, whispers of terror and extremism. Despite clear initial concern from the men aboard the ship that I and my family may have been in some way responsible for the event at the Crimson Sanctum, the narratives shifted. The Captain, Lowan was his name – an interesting providence, ahi hakatan – he spilled some news to me I think in hopes of my explaining the flame. This I could not do, for at the time I knew far less than I do now, and even now I dare not claim to fully understand the Gift.

              He told me that there were darksiders, anti-luminarian forces who had set the event in motion as a message against the Luminaries, a warning not to venture too far on the path to singularity and to return to the roots of humanity, to reconnect to our beast ancestors.  How much was strict truth and how much rhetoric is ever a debate, and hardly worth discussing.

              “How do you wield it? What can it do? Why did the specialist not survive it?” I recall his questions as he would pull me away from my family, and I sought merely to get him to leave me to them.

              Ahi hakatan, I curse myself for this as well. Had I known, even thought to know, what his bearing of the flame meant at the time, I would have taken him to my arms and sought every moment of his growth in the Unseen Way.

              I know that they wish me to reveal the secrets of our strength, the source of what they deem “sorcery,” but they would not understand anyway – though you yourself know. We could tell them point blank and still they would seek answers other than our claims. We could give them all the proofs of argument and every piece of evidence, sing them songs of the source of the gift and wonder and might and majesty, but they would not hear even the faintest note. They would mistake its melody for madness, its harmonies for horrors.

              The captain seemed somewhat the same, though he held a true spark which I did not have the delight to see fanned into flame. I never saw him again after the time on the ship, after I was transferred to the custody of the Prison Legion on Eos.

              Sarai embraced me, but her words are mine to own not yours or any of the luminarians. Ahi hakatan…

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Convergence Conclave Clerical Note:

The translation of ANCIENT’s transmission here stops. A series of undecipherable wordings have baffled this translator and I confess that I am at a loss. Were we to grant this to MYSTIC he may decipher on our behalf, but we could not, perhaps, trust the translation. There is no conceivable reason why the othermind translators should be so incapable in this regard, though my own failings certainly can also not be forgiven. What I thought I knew of the tongue of the sorcerers is less than I realized.

I beg your pardon and request aid from more devout scholars than I. If ANCIENT and MYSTIC are to be of any help to us, we must find some way. I beg the intervention of your luminous grace for the sake of our glorious purpose to know to understand to grasp, and I ask your mercy.

Humbly,

RJ4 Marceus