Tales of the Journeyman. The Golden Arch

PROLOGUE

'Ilar spoke and the light from his staff lit up the void and he said. “So it begins”, and the sound filled the emptiness, light became form and the seed was planted and grew. The Meraclor travelled through it, and when the Invar came, they watched the passing of it and recorded it so'.

First Chapter of the Book of Life, the Invar Chronicles.

                                                                   PROLOGUE

       There was a time, or there is, or there will be because time is relative, when a bright object was seen to streak silently across the great orbit of Demeter, shimmer for a microsecond, and disappear off the shoulder of the gas giant’s ring system. At about the same time, because one cannot be exact about these things, a strange craft burst forth from the Tazec Gate in a stream of incandescent light energy which disappeared in the vastness of the space it occupied. The ship slipped silently on through the void, its speed apparent against the stillness of the Atal sun.
                                                                                                                                          
       It was a dull grey, egg shaped craft leading with the heavy end, its girth bound with a ring-like girdle of the same metal. A blue luminescence glowed from a huge screen at the top front end, which extended just a little below the leading edge of the metallic girdle. The ship was heading towards Evos, the fifth planet in the Atalar System and its occupants were as strange as the craft 
       If we could have looked in through the bridge screen of the Sentinel, for this was the name of the star cruiser, we would see three beings. The largest, a male, stands tall, facing the instrument panels. He is a humanoid, heavily bearded and broad of shoulder. The other two, male and female, are not of our world. The male is slightly smaller in height than the bearded man and is much slimmer. The female is even less in stature but still about six feet tall and there is a strong family resemblance to her male counterpart. They are in fact brother and sister and have a strange elvish appearance. The three stand motionless on the bridge of the Sentinel as it slips silently through this remote, distant system: a mysterious craft on a strange mission, somewhere in space and time.