The candlelights reflection didn't move while Daedalus gazed at it. Marcel

Daedalus could practically feel the chill wafting off the stone walls in his vision. He mused that he could be seeing Marcel today, a hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, and it would all look the same: the rough stone monastery walls, the dim light, the orderly rows of desks, Three hundred years ago, every desk would have been occupied. But today kw Irish families committed younger sons to God so they'd have one less mouth to feed. As a result, only two other occupants kept Marcel silent company in the large hall.

Marcel was hunched over a large book: an original, hand-illuminated manuscript. The gold leaf had faded hardly at all since the time it was ever so carefully pressed in place by a penitent servant of the Holy Mother Church.

Daedalus sent his message, smiling at his own creativity, proud of his strength. Marcel could deny what he was; Daedalus never would, Ouida could ignore her powers, the same powers that Daedalus reveled in daily, Sophie could fill her time with learning and other intellectual pursuits, Daedalus spent his time harvesting strength.

Which was why he was greater than they; why he was the sender and they the receivers.

In the monastery, Marcel's thin shoulders hunched over his manuscript. The beauty of the art in the margins was filling his soul with a too-pleasurable torment-was it a sin to feel such human joy upon seeing the work of men before him? Or had their hands been divinely guided, their illuminations divinely inspired? In which case Marcel was only paying homage to their God by his admiration.

His lips barely moved as he read the Latin words. But-he frowned. He blinked and rubbed a rough sleeve over his eyes. The letters were moving,… Oh no.