Ezio was transfixed. He looked at the statues ranged round the walls. Venus. Mercury. Vulcan. Mars …

There was a noise like glass breaking in the distance, or the sound a falling star might make - it was her laughter. ‘No - not gods. We simply came before. Even when we walked the world, humankind struggled to understand our existence. We were just more advanced in time.’ She paused. ‘But, although you may not comprehend us, you must take note of our warning.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Don’t be frightened. I wish to speak to you but also through you. You are the Chosen One for your time. The Prophet.’

Ezio felt a mother’s warmth embrace all his weariness.

Minerva raised her arms and the roof of the vault became the firmament. Her glittering face bore an expression of inexpressible sadness.

‘Listen and see.’

Ezio could hardly bear the memory: he had seen the whole earth and the heavens surrounding it as far as the Milky Way, the galaxy, and his mind could barely comprehend his vision. He saw a world - his world - destroyed by Man, and a windswept plain. But then he saw people - broken, ephemeral, but undismayed.

‘We gave you Eden,’ said Minerva, ‘but it became Hades. The world burned until naught remained but ash. But we created you in our image, and we created you, whatever you did, however much cancerous evil was in you, by choice, because we gave you choice, to survive. And we rebuilt. After the devastation, we rebuilt the world and it has become, after aeons, the world you know and inhabit. We endeavoured to ensure that such a tragedy would never again be repeated.’

Ezio looked at the sky again. A horizon. On it, temples and shapes, carvings in stone like writing, libraries full of scrolls, and ships, and cities, and music and dancing. Shapes and forms from ancient civilizations he didn’t know, but recognized as the work of his fellow beings.

‘But now my people are dying,’ Minerva was saying. ‘And time will work against us … truth will be turned into myth and legend. But Ezio, prophet and leader, though you have the physical force of a mere human, your will ranks with ours, and in you shall my words be preserved.’