He smiled with his eyes and stepped back to give me space.
I exhaled sharply as a stronger wave of primordial power brushed my senses.
A calling.
A summons.
I answered, crossing to the throne and laying my hand on the armrest.
An icy zing skated over my skin. But it wasn’t invasive this time. The chill abated, and the stone beneath my palm heated in welcome, but I held myself tense, waiting for the intrusion of communication. The grinding sensation that had filled my head the last time that I’d touched the throne. Long seconds passed, and the discomfort didn’t come; instead, something at the back of my mind relaxed and eased. Like a breath. Like a sigh. A shiver tightened my nape as if disembodied fingers had grazed my skin.
“Well?” My voice echoed around the chamber. “I’m ready. Are you?”
Another shiver skated across my nape, and the base of my skull tightened suddenly. I inhaled sharply as words filled mymind, alien and incomprehensible at first, repeated over and over until they took form. Until my mind untangled them.
Fractured not broken. Forged in flame. Ready to reign? We shall see…
Hot air blasted my skin, and the throne lit up in starlight glow.
An image bloomed in my mind. A gray and silver landscape, a night sky filled with throbbing balls of gas, some large, some smaller, and in the distance an epic structure made of metal and shaped like a spiral set on its side. The image filled my head until it was no longer in my mind but all around me. Until my boots were pressed to dark earth and the cosmic lightshow of throbbing stars was hanging above me. A sob swelled in my chest, and tears sprang to my eyes.
The stars were dying.
Why were they dying?
I blinked, and the terrain shifted, leaving me standing at the base of the monolith spiral.
Whoomp. Whoomp. Whoomp.
The vibration beat against my skin. My scalp prickled in awareness of the presences around me. I wanted to turn to look at them, but my body was immovable. All I could do was stare ahead and listen to the grinding voices that rose around me.
Feel the signature…
True…
Home…
Yes. We are ready.
Yes. We accept.
An invisible force wrapped around me and yanked me back. The world whizzed away, shrinking as darkness filled my field of vision. I jolted back to the throne chamber, the stone beneath my hand now cool. The glyphs stopped glowing.
The throne slept once more.
I peeled my palm from the stone, pulse racing.
What had I seen?
What had I experienced?
“Leela, you did it,” Chandra said softly from behind me.
I turned to him, my mouth dry, mind still scrambling to make sense of what had just happened and was met with a beaming smile.
“You did it…” he said again.
I’d done it? I’d really fucking done it. The throne had accepted me.
