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sacs that were growing around her.
    Soon those sacs would team with new life when the half-breed became one with the Queen. From her would then come the Land Walkers, the new race, a mighty and unstoppable army. They would stride across Twilight, laying waste to the humankind until they came to the great mountains at the edge of the world. There they would call upon their god to break apart those ancient stones and reveal the heart of this world, bared for him to pour into it his very essence, this Great Flood leading into the reshaping of all reality to the glory of the Chadassa.
    Through the window Belck could now see the approach of the elders as they swam into view. Quickly checking over his ceremonial garb, he swam out to join them.
     
    Together they swam to the edge of the city where they followed the descent of the seabed as it shelved down, before dropping into the sheer sides of a trench. Standing on the edge of absolute darkness they acknowledged one another - "He is the Great Ocean," - before stepping off the edge.
    Belck quickly lost his buoyancy as he emptied his air sacs. The others followed him down and, for a moment, he saw them suspended in a line before the darkness took them. Even though they could no longer see each other, Belck could feel the touch of their minds near him. It was easy to lose himself in those thoughts as the walls of the trench fell away and that was just what he did, becoming - together with the elders - one mind.
    He is the Great Ocean .
    They came to rest. Around them they could feel nothing, not even the touch of the water that should have been freezing cold this far down.
    He is the Great Ocean .
    The voice of their consciousness echoed out into infinity and the part of them that was Belck urged that formlessness to take shape.
    Beyond time and the stars he waits.
    Belck's doubts tinged their thoughts for a moment but the group consciousness drove them back, consuming them in the fierceness of its belief.
    He will come again.
    And with the disappearance of those doubts small points of light began to illuminate the darkness.
    But they shone only for a moment before they began to wink out. However, the stars weren't going out, something was moving before them.
    The great sphere was darker than the emptiness between the stars and, as they moved across its surface, the great depth of its blackness seemed to stare back at them like an unblinking eye.
    Belck spoke for the gathered. "The half-breed has come of age and the Land Walkers will soon ravage Twilight. Your time is upon us. We call you forth to initiate the beginning of the Great Flood."
    He is the Great Ocean .
    There was the slightest movement across the sphere, as though a ripple were spreading through it, and then the stars were blurring as their God rushed past them. Belck joined with the others in revelling in the ecstasy of their God's wake.
    Then the stars that surrounded them began to fade as they rose from their communion and through the depths of the trench, exultant that he had finally come amongst them.

Chapter Five
     
    The room was thick with smoke and conspiracy. Heavy black curtains shut out the daylight and the men sitting around the table, whispering, looked up nervously every time someone passed by in the street outside.
    When a rapping came at the door they fell into an immediate silence. Dunsany put his hand on the heavy bolt and his eye to the spyhole.
    "It's okay. It's just Kelos."
    A collective sigh of relief was breathed as the bedraggled looking mage was let into the house.
    "Gods, the humidity of this place is insufferable!"
    "Just wait till you see the thunderstorms they get here," Dunsany chuckled. "You'll think that Kerberos itself is being torn apart. Come, sit down. You look like a man in need of a drink."
    "You're not wrong," said Kelos helping himself to a glass of flummox. "This constant back and forth between Sarcre and Nürn is beginning to age me, I'm telling you."
    "How did the recruitment