A Binding Vow (event)
The glowing thread twists before me, and I am drawn with it through the skein of time. When I come to, I am surfacing as if through a glassy pool of water. The room above me stretches and warps around me as if viewed through warped glass.
'My lady' A young man with tanned skin and raven-dark hair straightens from a deep bow, maintaining a demeanor of deliberate courtly decorum with polished ease. The room around me takes a moment to clarify, but as my visions clears around me appear a broad court packed with uniformed soldiers, courtiers, and servants. The entire tableau is lit from above with mid-day sun, cascading down the faces of all those in attendance, most prominently the hawkish face of a young woman of similar age. She sits atop a throne of dark cedar, inlaid with a filigree of a metal the hue of the setting sun, and stares down at him with an expression mirroring his in poise and manufactured grace. Both shine with the silver skein of destiny about them. The fate of a continent rests here, not with an army, but with one man and one woman.
'If you would take my hand in union, I pledge to you that I will make right the honor of your family as if it were my own. I offer you a marriage of equals - what is yours is mine, and mine yours, until the Final Ending take us both.' A clever piece of theater - the woman doesn't even shift from her throne as she accepts the proposal with a curt and poised 'yes'. Both radiate the threads of destiny, and I feel as if I am drowning in a flood of spiderwebs.
It's theater now, but in time she will love him in her own pragmatic way. A younger version of her struggles to maintain composure as she stands in the presence of the ruptured and burnt body of a girl who cannot be older than eight summers. She sits aged and with a physician, her husband away on campaign with many years left to live, and she the last of her name. A youth once more, she rides precariously between the arrayed lines of two armies, bellowing a defiant cry as her cavalry charges in the name of a doomed cause.
The young man also bleeds destiny. A dozen generations will preach in his name. Will kill in his name. Will die in his name. His fame will be stamped across the fate of a continent, and then further beyond.
I gasp as if rising from suffocation as the vision ends and I find myself in my ritual chamber once more.
They shall ripple through history.