1 Selection

Cirrus hefted his pack up higher on his shoulders and glowered as he stepped between the massive entry pillars to Pantheon. This wasn't how he was supposed to be arriving. This was all her fault.

Becoming a Guardian was his lifelong dream, and he was supposed to be here triumphantly, at the head of the new class of Acolytes. Not walking in through the front pillars and preparing to take part in the trials for the last three spots like all the other hopeful nobodies who were only here so they could tell stories, decades from now, about how grandad was almost someone.

He watched those others around him - hundreds of them. Low achievers giving it one last try, rich brats just following mommy and daddy's demands to try and make something of themselves, a gaggle of Astral monks probably looking to escape the cloth, and a few ragged-looking ferals desperate to escape whatever slums they came from. All of them stood no chance.

Cirrus shouldered his way past a short person in a cloak, knocking them aside. Cirrus made eye contact momentarily and stopped cold. It was a girl, a young one - barely old enough to be here. He was transfixed by her eyes, green around the outside and shifting to a cool good around large pupils. They burned with an intense inner fire. Silence simmered between them as she didn't break eye contact. Cirrus hesitated and then glanced away.

"Excuse me," he said, staring at nothing in particular on the ground, "Sorry for bumping you."

She didn't respond. He looked up, and she was gone. He was taken aback; he hadn't averted his eyes for more than a few seconds and she had completely disappeared. He scanned the crowd, but she was nowhere to be seen.

After a moment, he shrugged and continued toward the trial grounds. He could hear the drums of the ceremony and the dull, distant and discordant hum of ten thousand conversations all overlapping each other. The trial grounds were a kilometer in diameter, with another kilometer-diameter worth of hand-cut stone seating. As he reached the entrance to head underneath the arena where the trial hopefuls were to gather, he caught a glimpse of the shimmering Thompson dome, the shaped force field that protected the spectators from the raw power released during the trial. He swallowed hard and headed into the dark tunnel.