They are the stuff of nightmarish and cautionary tales told to children. Sirens of the swamps, the Ilsead lure unsuspecting suitors in an effort to climb the ranks of southern society. Then, once entrenched and under the guise of nobility, the Ilsead begin to breed. Their children born skinless, these terrible creatures then rip the flesh from Human babies in order to dress their own. Should you be unfortunate enough to be kissed by the Ilsead, she'll steal your soul and inherit your very spirit, leaving you for dead and getting high from your lifeline. These are the fabled Boo Hags of the southern wilds and, as with most folklore, it leaves such a quite unflattering portrait and, in the end, it's utter b.s. In truth, the Ilsead are an ancient order of souls, not of the Third Dimension. They exist to right wrongs in the present timeline. We learn that there are troublesome souls that have been directed to disrupt the preferred end of the Dark Age and these transgressors must be stopped. The Ilsead fulfill this role. Allied with the Third Order of Lucifer, the Ilsead are immortal creatures that set about their mission many millennia before, at the dawn of the Human population on Earth. They are sadly and, at best, misunderstood. In this volume of ASCENSION, we meet one such sect of Ilsead. The Gullah understood. At least they once did. The GeeChee of the South Carolina isles revered the Ilsead and took them in as equals and protectors. The Ilsead in turn honored their Human counterparts and made them Symposiarchs; sires that would breed new vessels as needed and direct them to the many wants of the masses. Crops were protected, oppressors were frightened away and, eventually, political offices were taken. It was all for the betterment of the timeline. Benny Watt, though, had an agenda. The Ilsead, he'd heard could be crudely utilized as assassins. He had certain enemies that he would prefer removed and so he longed for Edith. He dreamt of her. Perhaps he thought her a pet but he was awfully mistaken. He was predestined to meet her. Unbeknownst to him, Benny is a decedent of a great line of Symposiarchs and Edith was merely calling him home. As he discovers his destiny, he also comes to realize that the Ilsead have become lazy. Preoccupied with the spoils of the Third, their mission has gone terribly awry. Petty jealousies and power struggles within the sects of Ilsead had given way to disruption of the mission. While he doesn't stand a chance to right all of the many errors (the sinking of the Titanic, for example, was inexplicably the Ilsead's doing), Benny must come to terms with his role. He and his offspring must set the timeline right and learn to protect the greater good; the cessation of the Human Ascension. It's an insurmountable task but the comedy of errors that leads Benny and Edith together is told, at first, in tribute to the American Romantic stylings of Edgar Allen Poe and Washington Irving, the story then takes a decidedly comic and more modern turn as readers are jolted into present day as we learn of the legacy of Benny Watt's Ilsead and their haphazard attempt at completing their mission, all the while attempting to overcome the beauty and distractions of the Third Dimension.