The alchemists and their long robes worked far into the night. In every
portion of Europe and even in the holy land, behind random windows lay
men and in a few cases women obsessed with the incantations and the dark
strangenesses of alchemy and the underlying arts. They spent their days
and nights with retorts and beakers, curls of acrid smoke, searching for
homunculi among the fumes.
     Meanwhile, in the desolate western hemisphere, in the middle of the vast
empty sea, land began to rise.