Dornavon Thorteya clutched the railings of the Seat, staring into columns of soldiers five hundred meters below.

The navigator could pick out their details even from this height. Steel armor clung to their bodies, glinting against the shine of the midday sun. Each held a rifle either in their arms or on their backs, with a sword or mace at their side—depending on their role—and a tower shield as tall as themselves in one hand. Flagbearers decorated the front of each column, carrying banners so large that Dorn could read their words like a book. For any event other than today, the spectacle would have been unwarranted, but he would not have ignored a message from the Seat. After all, it was the first that had come in a century.

Beside Dorn, a portly man had strode up to the balcony. His dark beard, long but groomed to a knife’s perfection, was littered with beige flecks. Dorn had guessed it was sand. Age had crept up to the man, but the olive tan of his skin urged youthfulness unrivaled by many of the other navigators gathering at the Seat today. He was taller than Dorn but wider as well. Dorn had been Guidance Borvos’s friend since the man was born, and neither saw an end to that anytime soon.

“Couldn’t hold your appetite?” Dorn asked.

Borvos smiled before wiping a hand across his beard. “Aye. Are you not hungry? I feel we are in for a long discussion. A hundred years past, Dorn. Almost on the dot, give or take a few months. They will likely have much to say.” Borvos spoke as if Dorn had not counted the days like him. “And who knows if they will let us interrupt the discussion with servants. Is that even frowned upon?” His nose wrinkled. “You’d best sneak something in, maybe a banana. I brought some, you know.”

Dorn smiled at his friend. “You know, even when called to the Seat, your mind is still on food.” He put a hand on the navigator’s shoulder. “I’m sure whatever they have to say will not take long.” Dorn tried to sound confident. In truth, the Seekers could mention anything today. Maybe they would even give them a date. Dorn did not want to think of that now, but then again, he hadn’t wanted to think of that since the hundred years before he came here.

A woman strode into Dorn’s vision. The woman hadn’t bothered donning her ceremonial garments, still wearing a tunic fit for a day of riding. Their retinue—seven navigators and seven ranks of soldiers—had arrived at the Seat earlier that morning, and the navigators themselves had climbed the great steps that wrapped around the Seat over an hour ago. There had been plenty of time left for Guidance Mari to change out of her traveling clothes. Even spurs still clung to her black boots, and she knew others noticed how she walked along the balcony.

“It’s the impression,” Mari said, stepping forward to the place beside Borvos. “They will want to see that we have been hard at work, and what better way than with this?” She gestured towards herself as if the two men had not noticed her already. “The Seekers will think me so busy that changing would waste time. They will think I’ve come so far on a whim—that I dropped everything to be here.”

“They will think you’re more naïve than anything,” Borvos said. He swapped a glance to Dorn for recognition but was too deep in thought to respond.

They had ridden here in haste, but Dorn had always seen Mari as a girl much younger than her age or responsibility implied. Perhaps the size of her eyes--larger than any of the navigators present at the seat today——seemed to emphasize whatever emotion she had been feeling at the time. The gills on her neck did not help either. Hundreds of years among the Ongiarans and their gifts still distracted Dorn.

Mari’s smile quickly turned stern as she must have realized that Dorn had been staring at her. “Well, in any case, I hope I leave an impression and they do not forget about me. Unlike my ancestors, I am concerned with how the Seekers see me.” She walked off behind them after saying, “They are almost ready for us, you two. Perhaps they will even give us a time.”

Dorn did not want to debate the idea at a time like this. In truth, he was nervous enough. His hands shook, but he held them close to his jacket. Sweat sheened in his palms, but he blamed that on the sun. If the Seekers sprang a date on him now, he would not know what to do.

“Say, Dorn.” Guidance Borvos turned to him. Mari had started a conversation with the four remaining navigators, leaving the two men alone at the balcony’s edge. You are the only one of us who was summoned here before. Not even my father mentioned anything about the meeting before he passed. What should I expect?”

Dorn thought carefully for a moment. He was not an expert on speaking with the Seekers, but experience would suggest he was precisely that in this small group of seven. Borvos was correct; no others had even seen the Seekers here, aside from him. “Do not look away when you speak to them,” Dorn said. “Show confidence, and be stern in your ideas, decisions, and rationale, even though they will seem like they don’t want to hear it. They do, but they don’t want it to seem like it.” He continued reciting the last meeting earnestly, and Borvos listened as a student would to their teacher. He did not want to tell his friend that nothing would prepare him for what the Seekers would say, what they would all see, and what would have changed.

Behind them, the other five navigators had gathered around a tall door carved into the Seat’s wall. Seen at a distance, it was indistinguishable from the rest of the structure, but up close, the lattices were visible. The weaving curlicues depicted churning water or smoke rising from a fire. At the center point where the patterns converged was a blue jewel lying inside a hole as large as Dorn’s fist. Its surface pulsed a dark sapphire shade like a slow heartbeat. It blinked on and on, and the navigators did nothing but stare at it. Even now, Dorn could see it was quickening.

They watched until the light pounded so fast that—had it been brighter—Dorn would have had to cover his eyes. After reaching its shortest pulse, the jewel brightened to its highest intensity and then extinguished. The gem’s blue light flowed outwards along the carved filigree, reaching past the door and around the surface of the Seat, wrapping like vines until smothering its entirety in a grasp of blue light. Memories flooded back to Dorn, some that he had cherished and others that he did not want to remember.

Then, as quickly as it came, the light faded. A slight clicking sound sprang out from the door, fainter than the step of boots. Something behind the door snapped, and the panels began to unfurl toward Dorn and the navigators. The Seat opened its arms to them. He was the last one to follow them into the darkness.

A hundred years had not aged the memory of this place. The balcony opened to a room so dark and large that Dorn could not see the other side. From the entrance, a platform hugged the edge of the Seat from the inside, making its way around until the shadows swallowed it. Each of the navigators lit a torch and began walking around the perimeter. Dorn walked to the left behind Borvos until stopping at a balcony facing inwards to the center of the ark.

A chair sat at the front of the balcony, jetting out from the floor and becoming one with the structure. Dorn walked up to it and saw the other navigators on the other side of the circular platform. Their torchlights were tiny in the expanse of the great ark, and even in the darkness, Dorn could see that they were not sitting either; they were staring into the abyss below.

Darkness stared up at Dorn from below his balcony. He wasn’t sure if the torch made him sweat or the memory of the place since his time back home. Nothing had changed here; he remembered looking down into that abyss and knowing it ended almost a kilometer above. Any one of the navigators could have dropped their torches and would not have seen it touch the bottom.

A small light was Dorn’s only warning. The bright dot danced in the center of the darkness like a firefly, at eye level where each navigator could see. Dorn took his seat on the throne. The other torches bobbed until the others had taken their positions as well.

Like sparks in a fire, the firefly burst into fragments of light that spread up to the ceiling of the Seat and down to the floor. The smaller sparks were not smaller at all but equal in size, and they, too, began to writhe and burst until a fireworks display was lighting up in front of them. A frenzy ignited before the navigators as the shadows crept back to reveal the hollow interior of the ark. They did not heed the Seat; their eyes were on the display before them.

Suddenly, Dorn realized the lights were not exploding anymore. A hundred tiny dots floated in the darkness of the ark. They rotated slowly around the room, seeming to adhere to a force somewhere in the center of the ark where Dorn could not see, somewhere in the darkness.

Before he could investigate further, the lights seemed to move into the middle of the room. Something was sucking them in, and Dorn could see them sticking to each other. One by one, the lights combined to form a larger glowing ball of the same white radiance, large enough to blind them. But Dorn did not look away; he could not look away. It was exactly as he remembered.

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Seven dark shapes floated around the giant ball of light, some closer than others. The surface of each shape was as detailed as a painting. Dorn took in the blues of the oceans as one planet crossed his vision. Another passed, giving him a glimpse into the greens of forests and grasslands and another even brighter with rivers running between their brighter hues. The next held the dark brown of arid deserts, the one after a gray, jagged landscape. The furthest from the center was the darkest, but its rotation past Dorn revealed a pale white surface, cracks running along it. He held his breath as the last of the tiny balls fell into place in front of him.

Thorteya was his home, his name, and his empire. The world where he had been born appeared not to have changed since he had come to Kefoine if there was any truth to the image floating in front of him. It had not even changed since the Seekers had last called him here. The Thorsea dominated the planet’s surface, swallowing the twelve continents that Dorn had still known the names of. He had grown up in the largest of them, but his family had sailed and visited them all for trade or pleasure. Each of those twelve land masses was spread almost evenly throughout the planet, a mix of flatlands and mountains between them. He could still remember the view from his family’s great ark. In the faint images, Dorn thought he could see tiny black squares flying above the land, too high even to leave a shadow.

Slowly, the images of the planets faded until there was nothing but the lights of a thousand rotating fireflies. Dorn did not know which star Thorteya orbited as they all looked the same from here. Before he could think any more of it, the thousand stars began to converge again into a different shape. It started as an oval, its flat surface facing Dorn, but gained more features over time. First, the nose came, then the cheekbones, followed by the eyes. More oval shapes followed until a group faced him. The color came next, as did the background and the scenery until Dorn was staring at an image of his family.

“Dorn?” The oval face as the center said. Goosebumps prickled the navigator’s skin. “Dorn, is that you?”

Casselda’s face had not wrinkled in the century he had been apart from her. Her gaze caught Dorn the same way it had when he had first laid eyes on her, which seemed to him now like eons ago. But it was her voice that stood out from the rest. Yearning and calm at the same time, it carried the weight of thousands of days past.

“You’re healthy.” That was all Dorn could manage without bursting into tears. He wanted to reach out and touch that face, to lean over the edge of the Seat and stroke the warmth of the fireflies forming it. It was futile. Dorn did not know when he would see his wife again.

“And you,” Casselda said, “are as pained as the day I saw you last. Is everything alright there? Is Kefoine as magnificent as the others say?”

Dorn did not know the others she referred to, but he let the questions hang; the last thing on his mind was anything outside the room. “It is good to see you, my love. Now, are they with you now?” This time, he did not hide the desperation in his voice. “Please tell me they are with you now, Cass. Please. I want to see them.”

The faintest smile rose to Casselda’s rosebud lips, eclipsed only by the beaming shine of her eyes. She nodded before turning aside to reveal three figures, and Dorn felt he was looking into three different mirrors. Their hair was as dark as his own, their skin fair, their eyes dark. The two twins were not old enough to grow facial hair--that would come after another fifty years—but Dorn’s oldest stood between them, a full beard where one had not been before his departure.

Dorn was out of words, but he put together something that would do for now: “Are you well, boys? How is life there? Are they in school, Cassy?”

“They are, my love, but they cannot hear you now. They know it is you, though; you can see that. The Seekers only permit one of us to speak to you, but I will tell your sons what you have said, down to every word, Dorn. I promise you.”

Centuries away from his children had taken a harder toll than Dorn had thought possible. At that moment, the thoughts of his kingdom, his armies, and the state of his accounts in the ark’s treasury were nothing to him. A part of him convinced him it would have been alright to have locked himself in the Seat forever, with nothing to do but converse with that reflection until his death. It was a dangerous thought. Perhaps it was best that the Seat was closed to him.

“Kefoine is a beautiful place, ship of my skies. It is much larger than Thorteya and larger than the other worlds if you could combine them. There is not a day that I do not wake up in wonder. Casselda, there are animals! Many animals, some you would never think existed. You would love them all.” He remembered the young noblewoman accompanying her family on a hunt with the other Thorteyans. His life after that had been bliss.

“I will be brief,” he continued. Casselda blinked before her sunken eyes turned to water. One of the twins stepped forward and took his mother’s shoulder, their expression almost as sullen. Dorn breathed in. “Cassy, you are a mother again. I will not say it to the boys, but I know you have always wanted one. It is a girl, Cassy. She is seventy-nine now. She…” Dorn lifted himself in the torrent of words before saying, “She very much wants to meet her mother.”

Casselda appeared to stare through Dorn into nothingness. Her expression was still, her eyes devoid of any emotion. It was for a second that Dorn wished he had not told her the news. If it had been Dorn’s choice, he would have taken his family with her, but an intrepid world was no place to bring the navigators of a new age.

In an instant, her expression changed. A smile began to form on those lips again, her eyes wide, roiling with a storm of recognition and comprehension. The second twin and Dorn’s oldest came to console their mother. She glowed.

“A girl, my love?” Her voice cracked as she spoke, her expression nothing but pure wonder. “My daughter. I have a daughter.” The boys turned to their mother, their eyes now wider than hers. Dorn could read the words on their lips. They had wanted a sister almost as much as Casselda wanted a daughter.

“What is her name?” she asked, straining against a torrent of emotion. “Our daughter’s name.” She seemed to hang onto the word like a talisman. Daughter. Our daughter.

“Gila, my love,” Dorn said. She would be my heir, a navigator like myself. She would make our legacy proud.”

“Gila…” Casselda’s voice hung in the silence of the Seat. “Gila. It is a wonderful name. Please keep her safe until we see her again.”

Dorn looked up at the floating lights that made up Casselda’s face. They floated like tiny pins in water, bobbing and rippling her face. Her mouth moved, but the other navigators' only sounds in the chamber were the murmurs.

Dorn walked closer to the balcony. Her face did not move. “My love? Casselda? Are you excited?” The face continued to show no recognition. Before he noticed, Dorn had reached the balcony’s edge, his waste teetering over. “Casselda, speak to me! Speak! Please!” He looked up to the abyss as if someone there was listening. “I’m not done! Let her speak to me!”

When Dorn turned to see his wife, an empty room stared back at him. The shape that had been her face was now a rippling pool floating in the center of the abyss. Like a window of water, it blurred the colors of the place beneath but stilled as Dorn kept staring. A long table led to the far side of the room, with Dorn’s window placing him at one side. People sat at the table, perhaps twenty in total. Dorn recognized only a handful of them. He wasn’t sure if the others were new or if he had forgotten them.

“Navigator Thorteya,” a man said from the farthest side of the table. To Dorn, the distance had made the figure only a silhouette. The voice, however, stirred memories that he had forgotten until now.

“Your Guidance,” Dorn said, stepping back and making for a bow. The Thorteyan originator was the only man that Dorn would honor this way. “What news do you bring us?” He tried not to let the disappointment leech into his voice or allow it to slacken his posture. It might be a hundred years before he heard Casselda’s voice again.

“Rise, Dorn.” The Originator’s voice emanated through the Seat like the ark was speaking. “There is no time for your rituals. I have gathered everyone here for a reason. You are not in a position to bow to me,” the Originator said. “Not anymore. Not after what has happened.”

Dorn could feel the hesitation in the man, even from this far away. The questions began to run through, a hundred scenarios playing out in his mind. Through it all, Dorn asked, “What word do you have, Your Guidance?”

The Originator looked to his colleagues around the table. Dorn expected to recognize the members of Thorteya’s council. A hundred members, consisting of military officers, accountants, merchants, and nobles, represented his kingdom back home. As he examined their faces, Dorn noticed that he did not recognize any of them at all. After a few seconds of searching, he picked out the features of the Ongiarans, the Del’Tizans, the Minessonons, and the rest of the seven kingdoms. They were dressed similarly to the Thorteyan Originator, and their mouths moved fiercely in conversation, their faces staring at places across from them.

“This is our last communication, Navigator Thorteya. After this, there will be no need to contact us.”

Dorn froze. “What?”

“Guidance, please understand when I say that we owe you and your people a lifetime of gratitude. The names of every Intrepid will be written down in our history, and our children will memorize them for all eternity.”

Intrepids, Dorn had not heard the name for a century. It was given to those who left the original system for a place far beyond, far from the conflict that battered their kingdoms. A world of memories flooded him. He remembered the color of Thorteyan’s continents, one of the first to leave the planet and the system. He remembered docking on Kefoine and intercepting the shipbreakers. At that moment, he realized that the Originator had not once mentioned Kefoine. The man did not even speak Dorn’s name.

“We have made peace,” the Originator said. “The conflict is over. The treaties have passed hands, and we have signed our marks on each of them.” The originator paused. “I am sorry, navigator. You will be remembered.”

In an instant, the fireflies vanished, and seven torch lights provided the only illumination. The other navigators on their thrones sat facing where the projection had been. There was nothing but silence now and the warmth of the flames, which left sweat on Dorn’s face.

The navigators landed on Kefoine centuries ago, promising to make the planet the new home for humanity. Most of the people were still on the home system, living under the shadow of war as the various ark kingdoms vied for rule. The conflict lasted Milennia, until it was over.

How could they reach an agreement so quickly?

One thought rang clear above all the others, which Dorn could not silence: he would never see his family again.