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| "Casseopea" 151 Concept Art by John Krissilas |
Originally produced to use in my "elevator pitch" video for the Pitch Live! Contest, this haunting image shows, for the first time, the other side of Ilium: the Colonies.
Seventeen-year-old Casseopea is an Apprentice of Ilium Colony 1158 and on the verge of facing her Trials, which she must pass in order to stay a member of her Colony's 150. But when she suffers a terrible loss at the hands of her new Head Mistress, her place in the Colony falls into question even more. In this scene, Casseopea is seeking solitude in the Astrolabe Room, gazing out at the other Colonies of Ilium.
Here's an excerpt from the novel:
It wasn’t often that she saw the moon during the day, hanging in the deep blue sky like a giant orb. Waiting for the stars. Waiting for them to predict what lay in store for her. Casseopea stared through the clear glass dome of the Astrolabe Room at the top-most point of her Colony Spire, watching the moon inch its way across the sky.
In this room, she was alone. But looking out through the dome, at the horizon, at the sea of dark Spires, poking through the mist, she felt like each of the Colonies of Ilium were with her. She had once thought, back when she was a little girl in the Nursery, that the world would be hers for the taking. That her home, her Colony, was just a launching pad for all of her dreams. For all of the adventures that she’d have in the outside world—in Ilium and beyond. But day by day, as she got older, as she worked her way through the Colony’s quotas, as she grew into an Apprentice and now, very soon, a Labourer, she began to realize the horrible truth. These walls, this Colony, was not a home. It was a prison.
Please comment and let me know what you think!