[System Initializing…]

[System Access Granted]

[Designation: Ren Ellis]

[You have been Chosen!]

[Updated Status: Assigned]

[Assignment: Sentinel]

[Skill Lock Removed]

[Class Options Available]

[Access List At Grantor Node And Make Your Selection, Sentinel.]

“Oh, fuck!” I gasp, inhaling the food I’d been chewing on while daydreaming about scenarios where someone is a jerk and I’m suddenly amazing at comebacks. Falling out of my chair as my feet tangle in my haste to stand up, I land straight on my back, the ball of rice dislodging from my esophagus in a violent expulsion of air and falling unceremoniously onto my cheek with a gross, wet splat.

I had knocked the wind out of myself, luckily unseen by anyone else because I would have died immediately had anyone seen a single second of that, and was left heaving for air that didn’t seem to want to enter my lungs.

Thankfully, a few seconds of rolling around on the floor like a dying insect later I manage to draw in a breath, alleviating the burn from the lack of oxygen I’d been afflicted with, and, after a second of furious internal shame, I wipe the wet glob of chewed food from my cheek onto the floor. I sit up, eyes wide as I stare at the bold, black, floating words taking up the majority of my field of view.

“Sentinel,” I read aloud, voice barely a whisper. I’ve been Chosen. Chosen! Not only Chosen, but Assigned! If any of my family were home, I might have assumed they had somehow faked it. If I hadn’t literally watched them leave the confines of Esh’s walls, I would have been searching the house for the culprit of this frankly evil prank.

No one’s home, though.

It’s real. It’s really real. I’m a Chosen. Not only a Chosen, but a Sentinel. A member of one of the most sought after groups in all of Auron. Void, not only Auron, but every planet in our star system and beyond! If around five percent of the population is Chosen, then less than one percent is Assigned. I am part of that one percent now!

“What the hell am I still doing here?” I yell at myself, standing up as fast as I can and all but sprinting out the front door of my house. The Grantor Node. I have to get to the Grantor Node.

I slow down a few seconds later when my logic catches up with my excitement. I’m still in pajamas. I have none of my things packed. I have to tell Mom, too. I can’t just go, can I? She would be devastated if she came back from Grel and I was just … gone. Even if I left a note, that wouldn’t be much better.

My brothers wouldn’t be much happier.

“Void’s wrath, this is such a terrible time for me to receive such amazing news,” I groan, running my hands down my face in frustration. “They’re not going to be back until Yeilight!”

Looking up at the sky, my frustration mounts. Auron’s two suns high in the sky, Yei—the dimmer, more distant sun—slightly higher in the sky than Wei—the closer of the two; light brilliant and gold-hued, contrasting the blueish tint Yei gives off—marking it as being High Twinlight; Yeilight is several glasses away, yet, as Wei is only just reaching its peak.

I feel like stomping my feet in frustration, though I manage to hold back from actually doing so. There are people outside, after all. I’m no longer alone. Sentinel or not, if I embarrass myself—and, by extension, my mother—by acting childish in public, she’d beat me bloody. I can see it, now, even.

“You’ve not got your Class, yet, Ren!” She’d growl, chasing me through the house with some random object raised with the intention of striking me with it. “You’re not a child and I won’t have you acting like one while you’re still attached to me, you hear?”

Shaking my head, pulling my hair in frustration rather than any of the myriad ways I want to, I go back into the house and sit down at the table I’d been eating at, once again picking up my spoon and returning to the now much less satisfying task of eating.

“Gods above, to be so lucky yet so unlucky at the same time,” I shake my head. “I mean, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I did almost just kill myself, after all. Glad no one else saw the future Sentinel almost taken out by a glob of half-chewed rice. Mortals' sworn enemy, that.”

******** ********

By the time it reaches Yeilight, I’m almost bursting out of my skin in anticipation of my family—Mom and my three brothers, Ettin, Wayn, and Ade—returning. In fact, when I finally do hear the bur demons’ almost avian trills marking their approach, I nearly fly out of the house to meet them at the gates.

When the guards open the iron gates, I’m already standing off to the side so as not to be trampled by the large, gray skinned, quadrupedal beasts of burden pulling the carriage—they aren’t very smart, after all; who’s to say they would notice a skinny ginger boy crunching like popped corn underfoot?—and trying my very best not to jump into it the second I see the opening.

“Mom!” I yell out, cupping my hands over my mouth. “Mom!” I yell again a second later, not even waiting for her to respond.

There’s a whistle that sounds from the driver, signaling the bur demons to stop their slow crawl forward, and three balls of red-headed chaos pour out of the side of the carriage, barreling toward me at top speed. I don’t quite manage to maintain my footing, landing heavily on my back, though I laugh fiercely as I push the three adorable, identical, little demon-spawns I call brothers off me.

“Glad to see you, too,” I say, pushing myself to my feet, wrapping all three of them up in a hug and lifting them off the ground. They all squeal and squirm, small giggles emanating from each of them as they attempt to extricate themselves.

“Let go, you big pile of demon dung!” Wayn laughs, punching at my stomach futilely with what little room he has, arms trapped beneath my own as they are.

“Oh, well, if you insist,” I reply cheekily, smirking as I let them all go at the same time, all three of them crashing to the ground with little grunts of surprise.

“Again, again!” Ade insists, his arms raised high in askance, followed quickly by Ettin and Wayn.

“Boys, leave Ren alone. Can’t you see he’s almost soiling himself with anticipation? What’s eating you?” Mom says, having finally exited the carriage and paid the four copper fee to the driver for the trip home. I shouldn’t have been surprised she’d noticed my excitement, even amidst the antics of the boys’ greeting, but I am, my eyebrows disappearing beneath my bangs.

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Mom laughs, her hands now held out to each side so the boys can hold onto them. They immediately run over to her, Wayn and Ade each holding one of Mom’s hands and Ettin holding onto Wayn’s free hand. The triplets have a system of alternating positions so it’s fair. They’d even come up with it themselves, according to Mom.

“Don’t look so surprised, little bird. What kind of Mom’d I be if I couldn’t tell what you were feelin’?” she says.

Her accent seemed to come out more when she was displaying emotion of any kind, as if she were letting some walls down and the accent just slipped out. She’s from Northern Anora, whereas Esh is located in the far south, and everyone down here has much softer sounding speech.

Many find Mom intimidating, I’ve noticed, simply because of that. It’s less frequent now that she's managed to tamp it down, but when she’s angry it comes out in full force. She’s cowed many a drunkard with that voice.

“It’s really important, yeah,” I say, excitement and nerves twisting around each other in my stomach in anticipation of telling her the news. What will she say? How will she react? Will she be happy, sad, mad, scared? All of the above?

I wring my hands to cope with the feeling, suddenly not quite sure what else to do with them. Mom’s eyes search my face, and something she sees there causes her smile to drop and her expression to become serious. She nods once and turns around, walking with determination, triplets in tow, toward the house.

“Come on, boys. I bet Henry’s rested enough for you to show him how to wrestle again.” It’s obvious to me what she’s doing—cajoling the boys to go play outside with Henry, a large swine we’d never mustered the heart to butcher, while she and I talk inside—but obviously not to the boys. Perhaps because they’re barely seven years old.

In any case, they start tugging at Mom’s arms, jerking her forward in stuttering steps in an attempt to get to the house faster, screeching in delight about showing Henry some new moves they’d learned from the other boys at school.

Mom laughs all the way, face red with the intensity of it, and doesn’t stop until we’re alone in the kitchen, seated across from each other at the table.

“What happened?” she asks, her Mom-face in full effect.

“It ha—” My voice catches. I clear my throat, suddenly too dry, before starting again. “It happened,” I finish, eyes on hers. Her eyebrows furrow for the barest of seconds before understanding enters her eyes. Along with fear. A lot of fear.

“Ren,” she whispers, her hand over her mouth, shaking like a leaf after harvesting season.

“I was running over to Town Hall, barefoot, still in my night clothes, so ready to pick my Class and then I realized I couldn’t just go. I couldn’t just do that without talking to you first. So I waited,” I continue. I don’t know exactly why that’s what I choose to say, but that’s what comes out of my mouth.

“You were Chosen?” She asks, as if she doesn’t already know what I mean, as if needing to hear me say the words.

“Assigned,” I say after that.

I knew, I suppose, that she was going to be upset. At least a bit. I mean, being Assigned means I have to leave. To go out into the universe and do Assigned things.

She’d always said she supported me in whatever I wanted, and had put me in all those training groups when I told her I wanted to be a Chosen someday—she’d never once told me to give up on that dream even though we were all aware of the chances of this happening, and how much of a financial burden it put on her when she could have easily told me to stuff it where the suns don’t shine—but she also knew the dangers. I knew the dangers. I know the dangers.

But being a Chosen, much less an Assigned, is just too much station to truly ever discount the desire for entirely. You’re the first line of defense against the Demons who pour through the Rifts, the ones who save cities from natural disasters, the ones who fight Dragons and delve Dungeons, the ones who travel space and visit other worlds and civilizations, the ones who learn magic! Real magic! You get a Class! Spells! Fighting!

But… you also have to actually fight. And kill. And die, if it comes to that. The strong are truly, truly strong—they have to be, to survive so damn long—but, well, most are not strong. Most don’t have the power to fight with, the will to keep going, the strength to say goodbye to everything they know and continue to push, push, push until something eventually gets the better of them.

Maybe Mom never truly thought I would get Chosen, and that’s why she allowed me to pursue the dream I had, despite all the reasons she had to do otherwise. I don’t blame her for that, not really. I mean, I never lost hope, or lost the drive to learn and grow to prepare for my eventual Choosing, but probably anyone else would have by now.

Not that I’ve been Chosen late, or anything. Most receive their Choosing—I say most, but, again, very few people get Chosen at all, so “most” in this case is relative—before their 25th birthday, and I’ve barely passed my 18th.

For some reason, the thought that she never really had the same faith in my dreams coming true that I had hurts. Even though, logically, I know she still did all those other things to validate my feelings outwardly. I do my best to push it aside.

“Ren,” Mom says shakily. “Honey, I—”

“I know you probably never thought I would get Chosen, Mom. I know it. Everyone else thought I was crazy, but you always just… believed. In me. Or at least, I thought you believed in me. Were you just lying? Did you do it all to humor me? Were you preparing yourself to just hug me one day and tell me it would all be okay because I have you and the boys and I could just take over the farm? Because I’ve been Chosen, Mom, and that means now I get to go. I get to go and fight and learn magic and do things! Are you disappointed? Are you—”

She interrupts my rambling by pulling me into a crushing hug, and … she just cries. No words, no explanations, just this raw, unguarded sobbing. I’ve never seen her like this. She’s always been strong. Always the rock holding everything together after Dad died.

She took over the farm without hesitation, dealt with the merchants, taught us how to do the work—hell, she did most of the work herself over the years rather than hiring it out. She never broke down, never showed a crack in that armor. She just kept going. Working harder than anyone else, like she could will the world into submission through sheer grit.

And I guess… that strength rubbed off on me. It made me push myself. Study harder. Learn everything I could—history, theory, languages, how to fight with my hands and a staff. I dove into everything about the System, the Chosen, the Assigned, the Sentinels, Voidwalkers, Denizens, the Guard, and the Ministry—anything to feel like I was keeping up, like I was doing my part.

But now, here she is. Holding me like I’m the one keeping her together, and crying like the weight of everything she’s carried is finally crushing her. And me? I have no idea what to do.

Do I hug her back? Tell her it’s okay? Would that make it worse? Would I just end up saying something stupid?

In the end, I don’t do anything. I just let her hug me, awkward as it feels, because I’m afraid of making it worse. And because, deep down, I think maybe this is what she needs—someone to just be here. Even if I don’t know how to be that person. Not really.

She cries for a little while longer before she eventually calms down.

“Ren. I’ve always believed in you, honey. Maybe I didn’t always believe it would actually happen, but I hoped. I saw how happy it made you—learning all that stuff. How alive you looked when you talked about it. Of course, I wouldn’t take that away from you!”

She pulls back then, her hands firm on my shoulders, her eyes locking onto mine.

“What kind of mom would I be if I ruined the magic of one of your dreams over something as silly as chance? What were the chances I’d have four absolutely beautiful boys, huh? Or that I’d become the foremost farmer in Southern Anora? Pretty slim, right? But I know what it’s like—having people tell you you’re going to fail at something you want with all your heart. I couldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t.”

My throat tightens, and I can feel my eyes sting. I don’t say anything, though. The tears are totally manly. Definitely manly.

“So, no, Ren, I’m not disappointed. I’m so, so, so proud of you. You’re getting to do what you’ve wanted since your daddy was alive. And I know he’d be proud of you too.” Her voice wavers, and her hands tremble just a little as they grip my shoulders.

“But I think I’m also allowed to be sad, right? My baby bird’s leaving the nest. You’re going to go out there, fight bad guys, learn magic, do dangerous, crazy things. And I won’t know about any of it because, of course, you’re not going to call me. Nobody ever calls their mama,” she adds, her voice cracking as she tries to smile through it.

This time, it’s my turn to pull her into a hug. “I will call you, Mom. Of course I will. I… just don’t know how the service will be out in space. Or what planet I’ll be on. Or… any of that stuff. But I’ll call you as often as I can. I’ll miss you! I love you, okay?”

She scoffs, though she doesn’t pull away, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me tighter. “You better, or so help me I’ll spank the System’s ass until it Assigns me just long enough to come beat your butt, you hear me?”

I can’t help but choke out a laugh even as my throat tightens a bit more in response. Then it grows freer when she says, “I love you, too, brat.”