"You may feel out of sorts and lost for guidance. An unexpected occurrence may put you off the routine of daily life. A confrontation with someone close to you will leave you food for thought. Be on your guard around electricity. Let go of your worries and concerns. Have faith and the answers will come to you."

Ricaltha's lower jaw hung haphazardly from its hinges as he listened to Shanwe. He eyed his colleague incredulously as the junior mechanic sat at a table in a dark corner of the room fiddling with an alitheon reader prototype. Shanwe puzzled over the dancing lights the device emitted.

"I'm going to regret asking," Ricaltha started, "but what was that bunch of ambiguous bollocks about?" Shanwe looked up, pointing her screwdriver at the device.

"It's your fortune for today. Says right here." The Irin mechanic prodded at a lens case beside her. It read Sixth Era, year 21, 348th day - 7th gen King's Guarde, knave of service, engraved in a plain font. The wooden case, as most of the many thousands collected here in Cloud Temple, was unremarkable. They had not even bothered to include the name of the Seer who had made the prophetic content it bore.

"A member of the King's Guard? That could be anyone, Shan."

"The 'seventh generation' narrows it down," his friend shrugged.

"And service is about as broad as can be, what with the Empyrean Forces and Convocation delegates added to the ranks of the King's Guard. It doesn't only seem unlikely that it refers to my station as servicer of the Artefact of Truth, but highly improbable that it refers to me specifically. How did you read it out anyway? That thing you've got there is a prototype and isn't even powered by lightning."

"It works on air magic. It's brilliant, Rick," Shanwe beamed. "Imagine any aeromancer being able to read out fortunes and prophecies simply by channelling their saba through the reader and bam-" she smacked her fist into her open palm, "everyone will have access to the data. No privileges, no fees, and best of all, no health risks." Ricaltha let out a laboured sigh.

"Sounds great, if those aeromancers knew how to interpret them."

"They know." It was a statement given with as much certainty and conviction as one would state that the suns rise each morning. The tone of it gave Ricaltha the beginnings of a headache.

"Shan, look," the mechanic began. "Prophecies are revealed in visions. Interpreting them is not like reading the news articles. It is how the Axioms communicate with us mortals. Visions wash over you, beset you, touch upon your every sense." He gestured at the humming device on the table. "Trying to interpret prophecies by gazing at lights and patterns is like scrying a crystal ball. You get an incomplete picture at best, and a total misinterpretation at worst. And reading out prophecies wrong is dangerous, Shan."

"Losing your mind to someone else's is even more so," Shanwe replied sharply. She pressed her brows into a dark frown. "What is the toll you pay for using the Artefact of Truth, Rick? How many Seers did we lose to the gruelling strain that forcing others' thoughts into your brain puts on your sanity? How many good and wise men did we have to drag off to the Clinic after the Artefact burned their sense of self to ash, for the sake of allowing other Seer's visions into their minds? That is dangerous, Rick. The Artefact is dangerous."

The senior mechanic curled his fist around the wrench. "I know, Shan. I know that," he spat. Ricaltha looked up at the intricate construct before him.

The Artefact of Truth was a relic of an age long gone. Engineered by the now extinct civilisation of Caeldis, utilising an equally lost art of harnessing the power of Raw Magic, the room-filling device was as imposing as it was enigmatic. Three man-sized pillars of tempered amber capacitors stood arranged in a triangle, encaged in intricately designed copper housings, every inch polished to a shine. From them leaped three steel and silver arches, the metal elegantly curved to contrast the solidity of the materials used. Where the arches met in the middle, was another copper casing. Consisting of several cylindrical segments, it put one in mind of a wide telescope. From the bottom-most segment came metal clamps, which would be secured to the head of the Seer who would stand beneath it.

Ricaltha let out a brisk huff and got up.

"It is a small price to pay," he judged, wandering over to stand beneath the centre piece. The push of a button ejected a slot from the uppermost segment. There was a smooth, concave lens in it. "The Artefact etches the prophecies into the alitheon lenses with great precision," Ricaltha said as he brushed a finger lightly across the glassy surface. "The only way to read out the contents of the discs as precisely as they were engraved, is through the same device that made them." He pushed the slot back in its place. It closed with a soft but definite click.

"It burns the contents of the disc into their minds, Rick."

"To see what the original Seer saw," bit Ricaltha off. "To feel what they felt, to experience the vision in its full intensity. Its full intention."

"You believe that anyone who lost control over their own mind, is able to truthfully and accurately convey whatever the Artefact has forced into their heads?" Shanwe hissed, straining to keep composure. "They must surrender their selves in order to-"

"To do their duty!" Ricaltha cut her off. His face was a mask of emotionless determination. "To be a Seer is be a medium of Fate, of the will of the Axioms. If the Seers of old had had even a fraction of the sense of duty they should have had, many disasters could have been predicted. Prevented even."

"Most of them lost their minds in the darkness that the most dire of prophecies contain."

"Then they were unsuitable for the job," ruled Ricaltha without mercy. "We, the Irin, hold this divine power of prophecy. We have the unique gift of presage, and with it comes the responsibility to keep the world from harm." Ricaltha stepped back and returned to his seat at the base of one of the amber capacitors. He lined up his wrench to one of the bolts on the copper casing and continued, "There are lives at stake. The sacrifice a Seer must make, exposing themselves to the visions of their predecessors through the Artefact, is not only a matter-of-course, it is honourable. It is their duty to protect their people. To protect Ceon and prevent any such disasters as-"

"-as the Great Collision," finished Shanwe. "Yes, I know. You're pretty wound up about that."

"And for good reason!" Ricaltha shot up and jerked around to face his colleague. "They knew, Shanwe. They knew it had been predicted and still it happened! Countless lives could have been spared if the Seer had sat through the reading of the prophecy concerning the cosmic crash with planet Tsuron until the end. If he had taken responsibility."

"You don't know that, Rick!" retorted Shanwe. "You don't know what would have happened if the prophecy regarding the collision had been revealed to him in its entirety. For my money, Ceon may still have crashed, the only difference being the people knowing of their inexorable fate beforehand. And I, for one, would have preferred not to know!"

The two colleagues fell silent. Slowly, Ricaltha lowered back onto his knees. The soft whirring of the Artefact of Truth and the humming of Shanwe's prototype broke an otherwise uncomfortable silence.

"Look, I'm sorry," came Shanwe after a few minutes of contemplative quiet. "It's not like I know what would have happened either. All I know is that we are here now, and we must do what we can to help our Seers make Ceon a better world." She gestured her screwdriver at the hulking machine beneath which Ricaltha sat briskly applying his wrench to a stubborn bolt. "Seeing as that is the only device with which to record brainwaves, we must make sure it picks up the right stuff and doesn't go and chalk up yesterday's news articles." Ricaltha could not stifle a barking laugh.

"Having the right information isn't half as important as being able to interpret it," he sighed. "The largest part of which depends on a thing as fallible as intuition. Even if you can endure the mental beating of having an ancient vision planted in your brain, you've got to translate it into something as limited as language if you are to act upon that vision." The mechanic stared ahead to where the centre piece sat. The segmented device was girdled with wires, some of which were directly attached to amber shards that dotted the largest of the outer rings. The faint golden glow they emitted, pulsated in slow waves, as if the stones were breathing. From Shanwe's corner came a challenging phah.

"Dodgy as that may be, it would become a lot less liable to mess up if you've got your wits still about you." Shanwe lightly tapped a hand on the machine before her. A transparent cylinder sat atop a heavy marble foot of the same size. On top of the cylinder was a copper segment, above which sat a smooth, polished silver dome inlaid with copper in intricate patterns. "With this, the Seer will not have to have his brain fried to read the prophecy."

"How does it work?" Ricaltha tried not to sound too interested, but failed to hide the hint of hopeful anticipation in his voice.

"Like I said, air magic," smiled Shanwe. "We will still need the Artefact for the engraving of new prophecies, since that is only possible with Raw Magic technology we cannot control or replicate, but the reading of them may be done with the aid of air magic, which, by Lady Cirsei's grace, we do control." The junior mechanic pointed at the copper segment. "The alitheon lens is slotted in here, much like how they are clicked into the Artefact's top slot. The cylinder is sealed and contains nitrogen and oxygen under high pressure. When you place your hands on the dome, like this, and channel your saba through it, you spin the alitheon lens and charge a laser that reads the grooves engraved in it." While Shanwe pressed her hands to the silver-and-copper surface, a faint glow began to spread throughout the transparent cylinder and threw a soft light across the dim lit corner of the chamber. "The particles in the tube are ionised according to the variations and patterns engraved in the lens. The result is a visualisation of the recorded brainwaves in four dimensions; 3D waves moving over time. It looks surreal."

Ricaltha had to agree with his colleague on that matter: the display of dancing lights in the glass cylinder was entrancing to say the least. The charged particles flowed gracefully as if dancing on calm water. Their colours shifted from moss green to violet to light blue in a spectacle of light, undulating like a sheet in the wind. The senior servicer had not noticed himself approaching the prototype reader as if drawn by invisible strings, until he saw his own breath fog upon the glass as he breathed out his silent awe. Ever so slowly, he extended a finger and touched the copper lens slot. An electric shock made him hiss and jerk his hand away. "Is that-... are these brainwaves?" he whispered, sucking his finger. Shanwe did not answer. Ricaltha tore his gaze away and looked up. The inventor's face was contorted in concentration, a bead of sweat hanging from the small down feathers that fringed her forehead. She pulled her hands from the dome and sank back into her chair with a laboured sigh.

"A representation of them, yeah," she breathed. "In a nutshell, the Artefact of Truth picks these up and inscribes them into the alitheon lenses. If you flip the lens around and charge it, it will put the recorded message back into your head. But this," Shanwe wiggled a forefinger at the prototype. "This will project it into the ionised air. Safe, unspoilt and pretty to boot." Ricaltha's face was alight with excitement before it flickered out into the dull glow of disappointment. "Safe, yes. Beautiful, sure. But incomprehensible." He straightened up and crossed his arms before his chest. "How are you supposed to make heads or tails of those floating colours?" To this, Shanwe shrugged.

"The scholars of Cloud Temple have centuries of research into brainwave interpretation under their belts," she offered. "I say, with a Seer's brain still their own and their wits intact, they may be able to interpret the visuals to a significant enough extent, if not as thorough as when they would relive the memory." Next to her, Ricaltha shot a glance at the Artefact of Truth in the centre of the chamber. As its senior serviceman, he had had the honour to witness a few of the ritualistically executed readings done with the aid of the ancient relic. The three amber capacitors required constant charge, draining the aeromancers present of their saba to the point of exhaustion. The designated Seer, positioned underneath the telescopic centre piece, received the visions directly into his brain as if they were his own thoughts, experiencing the prophecy through every one of his senses. However, if the Seer would be able to regain composure and relay even a part of the message, it would be after spending several days of unconsciousness or delirious rambling in the capital's mental clinic. Most of them never recovered of what the man in the street calls 'vision sickness'. Ricaltha let out a wistful sigh.

"The Artefact is a powerful relic. It allows our people to share knowledge of immeasurable significance. Divine knowledge. It is only natural that its use would come at a price." Ricaltha closed his eyes, and continued in a softer voice, "But the price is steep. I have seen wise and brave Seers sacrifice their sanity to receive the visions they believe contain precious insights into the future and how to get there. I cannot be sure I would be willing to make that same sacrifice, even for the betterment of the world." He looked down onto Shanwe's prototype. "If there is any way to utilise our gift of prophecy that would minimise the hazards, I suppose it would be welcome. I should have faith in that and hope for the best." Shanwe wrapped a hand before her mouth and laughed. Her colleague pulled a brow.

"What is that for?" When Shanwe looked up, there was a knowing twinkle in her eyes.

"I told you it was your fortune," she smiled.