Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) by Caleb Wachter

characters are necessary, is the sequence and timing of their combination necessary to form a complex, functional structure.
    I can’t explain why I was able to do any of it in the first place, but it came naturally enough and even felt ‘intuitive,’ if that’s the proper word. It was almost as though the right selections came to the forefront of my mind unbidden, and it was just a matter of ‘remembering’ how and when they went together, kind of like a familiar puzzle.
    This particular spell was a complicated one, but it didn’t require much energy to cast. So I brought the right symbols together in my mind, and they formed a kind of triangle which glowed bright white in my mental landscape. Then I imagined that symbol, writhing and churning constantly but somehow maintaining its exact shape, to manifest itself on my forehead.
    Satisfied that I had cast the spell correctly when I felt heat on my forehead, I opened my eyes. I can’t explain how it is to see with three eyes, especially when the third one doesn’t see like the other two, but that was what had happened.
    I knew that it wasn’t really a third eye on my forehead, and was just the same white triangular shape I had envisioned in my mind’s eye glowing in the space above my eyes, but it still made me self-conscious.
    I looked over the papers one by one, as I knew I could maintain the spell as long as was necessary considering how little power it required, but after only a few minutes I had read all of the papers except the last.
    When I came to that paper, I froze. It was covered with the same scribbling as the other ones, as well as a few unfamiliar diagrams, but it was what I saw beneath the ink that caught my eye.
    There were colors cascading back and forth, like laser-lights at a dance club. I tried to focus on them individually, but just when I thought I had tracked one down long enough to get a good look at it, it broke into two very different bits of swirling light. Those lights in turn danced hypnotically across the page, tearing my attention in two different directions.
    For a moment I couldn’t resist the urge to try to maintain focus on them, even when they each split into two more, quite different bits of flashing color whose speed appeared to have increased. In frustration, I narrowed my focus and followed them all the way through to the third division. I was then following eight separate bits of light, and my mind felt ready to burst at the strain.
    I closed my eyes, turned my head away abruptly and cut power to the Third Eye spell. “All of them except this one are normal,” I said, never having taken my hands off the enchanted scroll. A bout of vertigo overcame me and I steadied myself against the table to prevent myself from falling to the floor.
    “What does it say?” Pi’Vari asked eagerly.
    I shook my head a few times before opening my eyes, trying to clear the cobwebs caused by my attempt to read the magical writings. “It’s encrypted,” I explained, “I could probably break it with a few weeks of study, but we don’t have that kind of time.”
    Pi’Vari’s shoulder slumped slightly. “I suppose that one must come with us, then,” he said with mock regret.
    I nodded as I rolled it up carefully. “I agree. I might get lucky and be able to decipher it on the road, but even if I can’t, we still have to take it with us,” I said regretfully before continuing, “Which means we might as well take the whole lot and save ourselves the time it takes you to transcribe them.” I returned the sheets to their original order before carefully placing them inside the scroll tube. “I need to make an official request for these before we go,” I said absent-mindedly, waving the tube as though to remind myself.
    “We have a destination, then?” asked Aemir hopefully.
    Pi’Vari and I nodded. “The sketching of the flying monsters also showed an unmistakable landmark, which appears to be where the author observed the