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– 65 –

EXTANT/PRESENT

sibling scions:
Mireille – ambitious, structured
Cristobal – reserved, considerate
Carlo – tempestuous, decisive

ascendant, son-in-line:
Grant Vario – distinguished, worthy

regent:
myself, Celeste – steadfast, unrelenting

DECEASED/MISSING

ascendant:
Charlotte – ferocious, efficient

scion, absent:
Soleil – piercing, valorous

[from the Annals of Celeste, Magus the 24th]

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– 66 –

A human skull with fine chain threaded through the eyeholes, around the jaw and through the nose. It’s my skull, hanging from an invisible ceiling. Light comes from inside it. The air around it is filled with mist and incense smoke, upon which the light forms symbols, letters perhaps. The skull rotates to face me directly, and the light goes out. That’s not the end of my dream. I reach forward in the dark to find it – since after all, it is my skull – but instead I find a stone, whose weight falls into my hands. It feels at first like one of the large round cobbles from the old wall of the royal court. I hold it against my chest as though it’s protecting me, and the shape in my hands changes to feel more like the lodestone: smaller, smooth and crystalline variegated, yet still heavy. Then the stone breaks in my hands! I fall apart in that moment, as well. As it crumbles, so do I, and through the cracks shows a new, green light. I can see through my hands. I try to pick up the broken pieces, but my body has become spectral and I can’t touch anything. The new light grows, pieces of the stone crumbling away into nothing, and a strange dawn reveals a world I cannot see.

I woke up yearning, both missing and wishing, gently cradled in detachment like under a blanket of soft frost.

[From the Annals of Celeste, Magus the 24th]

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– 17TH SEQUENCE –

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– 67 –

Beloved, thou hast survived thine own experience; now you understand that which unjustly murdered many. Now you can see, and if you should find a grain of truth, then beloved, thou may join it to the others to form a picture they can know. They will not doubt thee, their dearest who remains. They may feel the indignation as to what brought this trial to you, that this may never again be so long as they breathe. Beloved, thou art the doorstep on which falls the words that they will hear. The key to opening their hearts will fall from your lips, to move their blood to their hands, that they may join and bar the way of destruction.

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– 68 –

I believe thee thine intentions: that you wish to progress and further. I believe everyone in this group to be important, that each holds a part of the key. That which displays itself before our eyes, and instruments, shapes my belief in its undeniable elegance. I believe thee thine results, far-reaching and widely implicated, applicable everywhere and replicable in all corners. I believe we’ve figured out what we’re looking at! I believe of thee a true beginning, and that it will link you to your earnest allies by the extent of your effect. I believe thee deserving of a path both clear and guarded from attack. I believe you needn’t be worried by details other than that which can bring us to the threshold. Though I wasn’t sure until now what this is, I believe we may be the ones who will do this. I believe of thee the moment of impact.

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