Guardian

Her calves burn as though she has been climbing the stairs for hours.

She knows her ascent will not last nearly long enough.

Her feet make hardly any noise on the wide stone steps. She imagines that she is not here at all, that this tower continues to remain undisturbed since her predecessor ascended ages ago. But she is here, tracing his steps, and she knows he waits for her at the top.

At long last and all too soon, the twisting stairwell releases her onto a landing made of yet more interlocking blocks of stone. The precise arrangement of different colored slabs forms images depicting the usual symbols, primary among them being the great serpent winding its way across the floor, circling back again to devour its own tail. She understands the builders of this tower were not the only society to independently develop this symbol, but they very well may have been the first.

The lone door set in the wall at the summit of the tower stands ajar. There is no putting off this moment any longer, and so with a conscious effort to keep her breathing measured, she steps into the room beyond.

A robed figure stands erect facing away from the room's entrance, hands clasped behind his back. Candles burn atop iron pillars that reach up from the floor, and she wonders at them. With no one entering or exiting this place for as long as they have, there would have been no replacing any that had burned to their end, guttering out with nothing left to feed the flame.

Sensing her presence, the figure turns in place in an unhurried motion, and they are standing face to face. The slim frame concealed in draping plain-weave fabric and the loss of all body hair may have obscured his sex, but she knows that before he was this, he was a man.

A wry twist of lips mars the unlined perfection of his face. "So it's you."

"Apparently."

He hears the tremor in her voice, his own takes on a note of empathy.

"We do not choose our destiny."

She lets her eyes rove over his nearly translucent skin, the branching lines that flash light then dark beneath its surface, flickering in a way that makes him shimmer like a star long ago shaken loose from the firmament. When she answers, she says, "It took me a long time to accept that."

"And now that you have, here you are. And I'm afraid we have no time to lose."

Without further remark, he tenses up the length of his body and screws his face into a moue. She watches, transfixed, as he hunches forward and retches into his hand. When he straightens, face already smoothed back to an expression of placidity, a ball of light the size of a marble hovers just above his palm. They both stare. The air fills with the scent of ozone and becomes charged with a force that lifts the hair on her arms.

Extending the Radiance in her direction, he tells her, "This is yours now. May Fate have mercy on you."

Heart fluttering against her ribs, mind racing with questions about each action she has taken and every decision she has made that has led her to this moment, she holds out her own hand. The shimmering globe floats from his palm to hers. She expects to feel heat emanating off the coruscating surface, some tangible sign of the power contained within, but there is none.

Sending out a last silent plea to the universe that this is right, this is meant for her and what she is meant for, she lifts the light to her lips and accepts her destiny.