Padua, Italy. 1610.
A 45-year-old man sat on the top floor of his home, looking through the greatest invention of his time, one that would one day revolutionize astronomy.
The biting cold of the Padua winter made his body shiver as he handled the leather sleeves of his Perspicillum. The precursor of the Telescope as it would be called in the future.
The man called Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei, or Galileo as he preferred to be called, stared through the tool, looking at the stars.
His hand flew across the paper with his charcoal pencil, skillfully depicting the shapes he saw in the sky.
The distant planet of Jupiter and its moons that he had been observing for some time now.
However, as he continued looking at the sky, something else caught his eye.
A flash of green light, shooting through the sky before abruptly stopping in its place.
"The Green Sun? Finally"
Excitement surged through the man's body as he quickly adjusted the lenses and position of his device, trying to catch a glimpse of the greatest mystery in the skies of their world.
Throughout the centuries, it was a known fact that the Green Sun was an anomaly in the heavens.
Many religions and cultures speak of it in various capacities. Some claim it to be a god. Others say it is a demon. Some others call it a living star. While others call it a guardian.
Many are the names given to it throughout history, and many are the religious rituals tied to it.
Even the alchemists of old, and the Greece discuss it at length, calling it the fifth element, the Aether.
However, peculiarly enough, there is no concrete information on its movement or locations available anywhere in the world.
It is never possible to predict it, and never is it possible to track it.
It appears at will, and disappears at will.
That is why Galelio was so excited at the moment. Because finally, after so many years, he had the chance to take a close look at this anomalous object in the sky and put an end to the mystery once and for all.
Soon, he managed to turn the tool exactly how he wanted it to be. But what he saw there filled him with awe and terror beyond comprehension.
The pencil and paper fell from his powerless fingers as he beheld the majesty, the truth, of the Green Sun.
Segmented plates and beautiful scales, flexing with power. Golden lines and patterns that shone with intensity. Crimson glowing orbs lining the body at even intervals, as if crafted by the hands of God himself.
And those yellow eyes, oh, the yellow eyes.
They shone with intelligence, with power. With unfathomable knowledge and wisdom.
He watched blankly as the beast in the sky roared soundlessly to the endless void beyond the skies seconds before a burst of pure light erupted from its maw, aiming somewhere into the depths.
Then, he saw the target.
A rock, nearly the same size as the beast, glowing red due to the sheer power of the light with which the beast had attacked it, approached his world, only for the beast to snatch it with its arms and start to literally bite chunks out of it.
Galileo stumbled back from the tool, falling off his stool and staring blankly at the night sky where the Green Sun, the beast, moved away at unfathomable speeds, disappearing into the horizon.
That night, the man did not have the chance to sleep as he spent all his time recording what he saw in his books through anagrams and watermarks. The book titled Sidera Viridia would soon be released and would contain a secret that only his true supporters would know how to decipher.
Unfortunately, all of these copies would mysteriously disappear in his lifetime, either destroyed in 'accidents' or bought out by foreigners who disspeared form the face of the Earth soon after the purchase.
Later on in his life, during the Inquisition, Galileo would be approached by a strange Inquisitor during his house arrest. An inquisitor with blank, white eyes, yet able to navigate the world all by himself, and even capable of swordplay should the need arise.
Records claim that soon after the visit, all details about the man's discovery of the Green Sun's truth vanished into thin air, disappearing even from the vaults of the Vatican and the secret storages of the Inquisition.
Just who was this Inquisitor? And what secrets did he coerce the old man of science to keep?
Nobody knows.
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