present

“Again.”

“We’ve done it seven times.”

“And you messed it up every time.”

Orion threw himself down on the steps of the dais that spanned the width of the front of the throne room. Two long shadows stretched out on either side of him, speaking to the lateness of the hour. Just outside the floor to ceiling length windows behind the two dark wood thrones, the sun was setting. With every degree it dropped further in the sky, he drew one more minute closer to his oath swearing ceremony. Although, if his recent efforts were any indication of how tonight was going to go, the only swearing that would be occurring would have little to do with an oath of allegiance.

The sacred vows he needed to have memorized felt like paste in his mouth, thickening his words until they became whatever jumbled gibberish he could manage to spit out. He was exhausted. He was frustrated. Above all else, he was horribly embarrassed. Sentinels had been performing his ceremony since time in memorium, since the original Sentinels were selected by the Sisters from the first citizens of ancient Evren. If they could do it, why couldn’t he?

Nagging him from the back of his head was a voice of doubt telling him exactly why he couldn’t do something so simple as memorizing a few lines and repeating them back. He was a fraud. The Soraline had made a mistake, or the Oracle had misinterpreted the vision and they had come for the wrong kid. This wasn’t his destiny, and that’s why he wasn’t enough, would never be enough.

“Stop it.”

Orion noticed a solid form take shape in the shadow beside him as Captain Padgett joined him on the steps.

Feigning ignorance, he responded curtly. “Stop what?”

Whatever you’re telling yourself in that silly head of yours.” Padgett reached over and ruffled Orion’s dirty blond mop. “Whatever you’re sulking about, just stop. I know this is hard, and it’s new and strange, and quite honestly, I don’t get why you have to swear allegiance if you’re destiny is written do so anyway… but the point is, you can do this.”

“How long have you been a soldier, Captain?”

“Since I was old enough to enlist.”

“Did you start out as a captain?”

“Well, no. I had to earn my ranks.”A cringe of embrrassment crept across his face. “Although, I suppose befriending the heir to the throne as he completed his own military training didn’t hurt my chances for advancement.”

“If I were the Imperator, I would want someone I trust as my Captain of the Guard. I’d choose my friend too, someone who had proven their ability and their loyalty.” He dropped his head towards his knees and drove his fingers into his hair, bracing himself in frustration. “I wouldn’t just pick someone off the street and announce they would be in charge of protecting the royal family.”

“Is this about whether or not you deserve this?”

“It’s about trust.” He shot up, clenching his hands in fists. “If I don’t trust myself to be able to do this nobody else will either.”

“The most important thing to remember is that the Sisters trust you,” Padgett raised his hand and clasped Orion’s shoulder. “Chose you.”

“I can’t even remember the damn oath.”

“It’s not about remembering a few lines, kid. It’s about the duty that those few lines promise to uphold.”

Orion let out a scoff of laughter. “Yeah... and what happenss when I can’t do that either?”

Padgett opened his mouth to respond, but hesitated just a second before actually responding.

“Orie, look— “

Another voice entered the space, echoing into the throneroom from outside in the entry chamber of the palace, followed by the determined, resounding clicks of heels. It was a sound he was already beginning to associate with the Dowager Impera. Two men came in after few seconds, carrying a large rug between them, hoisted up on their shoulders.

“... will need to be repositioned so that they are symmetrical when the new one is added.”

He hadn’t spent much time around the Dowager Impera in the few days he had been at the palace. Mostly, he saw her in passing, moving in opposite directions on the way to their own tasks. A regal woman with a permanent sense of urgency, often surrounded by a cloud of people to which she was dictating directions. Serene, capable, confident, and most of all, powerful.

Another person so perfectly tailored for their duty in life, trained from an early age to step into their place in the sun. He envied that. If he was so important, chosen even as Padgett liked to remind him, then why had the Sisters waited so long to retrieve him. How many years had he spent alone after his parents had died, scraping by in the slums, learning the skills of a criminal when he should have been learning the skills of a soldier, a hero, a Sentinel. He bit back at anger, pushing away the bitter questions, forcing a distraction by asking another question rather than the ones nagging at his subconscious.

“What are they doing?”

“Come take a look.”

Walking away from the thrones, down the long aisle created between the two sides of chairs that had been set up in rows for the ceremony. With a heave, Orion got up and followed behind him. At the other end of the oblong room, the two laborers had set down their load, and turned their attention to setting up a scaffold that had already been brought into the room. The Dowager was admiring the heavy tapestries that were already hung on the wall, a colorful splash against the stark, monochromatic polished stone walls. As he approached, coming to a stop just slightly behind her, he imitated her, craning his neck towards the cascading story recorded in thread and fabric.

The first of the two, a series of images blending from one into another. At the top, the Soraline crowned the tapestry in arc, holding hands as they envisioned the face of young Rowan Starling. Scanning past a few of the images he didn’t really understand, smaller, less significant, he settled on the image of Rowan kneeling, taking the same oath that Orion would be taking in a few hours. Next, the middle image, the largest on the tapestry, a smoking crater of glass as Rowan pulled a beauty with sunflower hair from their carnage. A few more familiar images— a wedding, a coronation, the celebration of a newborn child with the dark hair of her father, the Indigo eyes of her mother, and a complexion the delicately blended combination of the dark and pale of her parents.

It was the image at the bottom of the tapestry that knocked the wind out of him, a punch in the stomach. Standing over her own kneeling Sentinel, the much older Imperatrix stood, her hand resting on n the head of a young man with dirty blonde hair in ceremonial armor.

“What is the fuck— “

The word ricocheted around the room, a profane echo chamber. The gathered group all turned towards him, Padgett biting back a smile, strangling a laugh behind tight lips. The Dowager pinned him down. He felt very small, a paramecium under a microscope, a dying star adrift in the distant Infinite viewable only through a telescope.

“Something bothering you, my boy?” The Dowager asked, he face an unreadable mask.

“It’s just… just that,” he grasped for the words, his head unable to send the correct ones to his mouth. “How is that possible?”

“Thest tapestries are a diving gift from the Soraline Order, enchanted with etheric properties by some of the strongest practitioners in Evren. As our history is written, the tapestries weave, unweave, and weave again. This,” she indicted upwards to the newest addition to the tapestry with a flick of her wrist, “appeared only just this morning.” Then she turned her hand over motioning towards the stilled rolled tapestry on the ground next to them. “Shortly after, this arrived completely unannounced.”

As if one cue the two laborers unfurled the tapestry. Compared to the other two, this one seemed blank. The images were far fewer, much bigger, leaving stories unwritten in time yet to come. Like the first tapestry, it had a similar arc of the Sisters, but this time they envisioned Orion’s face instead. Another replica of his oath held in smaller degree to the other. Interestingly, the majority of this tapestry held what could only be described as a holy image. Hands at heart center, the swirling tendrils of her magic between her two hands held at heart’s center, the pristine visage of a new Paragon, crowned not with metals and jewels, but a halo of shimmering light.

“What is that?”

The new voice came from the real life version of the girl stitched into the imagery. She stood there in a gown of rich midnight blue silk, embroidered with silvery stars formed into the common constellations of the night sky. She was magnificent, stunning with her ornately pinned hair and painted face. The light glistened off the silvery thread of the stars and the gems of her crown, amethyst and opal— the crown jewel of the Starling dynasty. For the second time in a few minutes, Orion felt his breathe leave his chest again.

But, when he realized that she was not looking at the recently unveiled tapestry, but past all of them to the only tapestry that he had ignored, he jerked towards where she had locked her gaze.

A familiar image to any child of Evren, perhaps that is why he had otherwise ignored it, one he had seen in temples his entire life. The formation of the realms by the Paragons, followed by the creation of all the forms of life, ending with the original races, one born of each of the Tangible Aspects. But, the images that followed were not ones that you would see celebrated in temples now. The creation of the Forbidden races, an act of spite and anger from the Paragon of Order for the slight of not being given the opportunity to help create the mortals. Later, the cosmic war that raged in the Infinite, the banishment, and at the bottom, the dark empty abyss of a dark night with falling stars with an empty space to represent hopelessness, the abandonment of the remaining Paragons. Then another holy image, like the one on the new tapestry, but she was not alone. The others, the Blends, all standing, back to back, in a circle, arms raised if in defense, as a dark, cloaked figure raised his hands towards them as if to pull them back into the dark.

A gasp. The Dowager reached for Verity, clutching the girl to her side.

“That’s impossible.”