"Hail, Queen of Heav'n, the ocean star,
Guide of the trav'ler here below.
Thrown on life's surge, we claim thy care;
Save us from peril and from woe."
At the center of Hell's Eden, at what was the focus point for a continent of men without a native land, stands the hideously deformed ruin of the once-awesome Cathedral of Holy Mary Star of the Sea. Its dominant spires now curl back upon themselves, writhing around the slanted mass of the darkened edifice. When the enigmatic plague struck, its energies seemed to take an almost perverse delight in warping this symbol of hope. The triumph of resurrection and rebirth now lies the headstone of the once-again dead husk of the changed Africa, home of unlife.
This particular Dark Age was showing no signs of abating any time soon. And the pale figure smiles to himself. He smiles all the while he walks down the twisted and misshapen aisles of the church, his great blue cloak drawn tightly round him. He smiled as he passes each molten and garish stained-glass window, testaments to cataclysm and upheaval, disease and sorcery, zealous fury and unbridled pride.
Tossing his golden-red locks, he turns his gaze upward in wonder. It seems like only yesterday those fools Gano and Stellias had given him the power to save this land. In fact, to him it was yesterday. Such was part of his cursed nature: to be constantly present at all points, yet not to have the focus to walk in a straight line. In any case, it mattered very little. He would never had saved Eden, even if the faith of its people had been strong enough to move mountains. That was not his task. In all forty centuries of his wretched existence--that he knew of--that was never his task. And the faith to move mountains means little to a man who even now watches them rise and crumble in the same blink of his blazing blue eye.
Still, just because the hills once again belong to rough dirt, the vales to dead kings, doesn't mean that there are no...inquiries still to be made. "Strong man!," he speaks inside his mind, as he searches the misty Dreamscape for the psyche of the tormented Gabriel Sands, "It is time for us to meet again. Come to me here. Now."
