AUTHOR'S NOTE!: I am sorry for the delay! Why was I so late? I got lost on the road of life and spent the last two months trying to find my way back. It was pretty hard since I lost my Map of Life. The old lady with a walker whom I had to help thrice to cross the road did not help. The only other excuse I have for being late is that I am a sorry excuse for a human being who could not get off his ass to work since there were no reviews to motivate him. So if you want faster updates, better start providing me with tasty reviews.

Also worth noting is that none of my characters learn a dance form in this chapter, so don't expect the title to tell you what will happen.

EDIT: 07/04/2020 18:28: I went through the chapter and corrected a majority of the typos and other formatting errors. There are no changes in the story so do not worry. Feel free to PM me if you spot any more.

AND DON'T FORGET. REVIEW!

Learning The Waltz

"So let me get this straight," said the —as of yet— nameless girl, "You had to somehow change me into a girl, so that The Sentience, the medallion thing which is a non-living sentient being, would accept me in the ranks of your divine order after you performed the initiation ritual on me, but since I am... well was a boy, there was no way of the initiation ritual working on me and in order to make the deadline of six hours, you had to either get another female rookie — which, given the accidentally formed half-bond I had with the Sentience because of touching it at the wrong time, the Sentience prevented you from doing, by protecting me from all harmful things which included you simply giving it away to someone else by replacing or killing me — or somehow turning me into a female, permanently or temporarily, so that the ritual would work and I could turn into a fully fledged Sentinel, for good or for bad, to infinity and beyond, and the way you chose to change me into a girl was by a taking a sinfully simple ritual, made specifically by a misandristic goddess for the specific purpose of gender-swapping, and then altering and tinkering with it so that along with changing my gender, it would also turn me into a better version of myself, physically, biologically, and mentally, but would cause me a lot of pain and suffering — which it did because of a botched-up compulsion charm of all things — and probably was extremely dangerous and risky given that many of the ingredients, after in-taking orally or ocularly (both of which I did), would have weird and previously unrecorded effects on my body and psychology, one of which was the aforementioned spell botch-up, by the end of which I had to go through all of that bodily pain and otherworldly torture while completely conscious and accidentally caused my pain to summon the medallion to me which in it's haste to protect me, not only destroyed a seemingly indestructible door which could have probably withstood a direct blast from Zues' lightning bolt but also interrupted in the second half the ritual — where you tried to fit a past Sentinel's fucking spirit inside my body so that I would not have to waste another decade on training and learning, like all rooks do, but would directly be prepared for field duty, albeit with a sexually unstable spirit in control of my body, — and caused the whole thing to go haywire cause the ritual was pushing the spirit inside my body, while the Sentience, after identifying it as a part of the ritual, tried to push it out of my body, and the battle between the two of them, just coincidentally enough was centered around my chest area where the opposing forces finally settled down, but made me go into a magical-breathless coma kinda thing where my heart stopped beating and would remain so unless you somehow managed to get enough energy inside me to give me a magical shock, a kick start of sorts, and the Sentience sensing the problem, absorbed all the ambient energy of the room —which was a lot— and was waiting for my magical channels to accept it — I wasn't even aware before today that I had a magical channel in my body to pump energy through — which was pretty much impossible given my non-divine status Unless! you somehow turned me into a Sentinel which would give me partial immortality and make me safe against magical energy transfusion, for which you called in a favor from the previously mentioned misandristic goddess — whom I owe a life debt now, which she might just decide to put aside her hatred towards males and ask me to honour — and had her turn me into a girl, using her original brand of gender-swap magic, so that you could make me a Sentinel, thus giving me semi-divinity, thus allowing the Sentience to give the Super Powered Magical Defibrillation and finally revive me, but being conscious means having to deal with a crazy nymphomaniac inside my head whom you tried to place there in the first place and is now stuck inside me cause of the effects of the ritual and the fact that having her present inside my body forks off some of the Sentience's energy towards her, effectively saving me from being Magic-Fried by four millennia worth of Magicka and going down like a supernatural nuclear bomb and destroying all non-organic things in a 10 mile radius and converting all organic life into a mutated version of itself which would indirectly lead to the Olympian Exposure Age, because the Divine world would have no choice but to interfere in the blood bath that would ensue the magical beasts getting loose, and in the end, lead to the thing which your order has worked hard to prevent for six millennia."

She took a deep breath. "Did I miss anything?"

Selene's eyes were the size of the moon when she asked, "How many periods did that explanation have? And while we are on it, how many times did you breathe when saying that?"

'I wonder what else that throat can take,' Mystery thought, mentally rubbing her shoulder against the girl's mental barriers to entice her.

'SHUT UP! We'll discuss my superior oral skills later,' the girl thought back.

"And as for you, don't try to change the topic," the newly minted Sentinel said, trying her best to ignore the new weight on her chest. "What the fuck was that all about!?"

She then looked down at herself and after a quick peek inside her hospital robe to confirm that she still had boobs, she asked in a calm voice, "And why the fuck am I not panicking about my current ordeal?"

Selene stood from her chair and looked at the girl, "There's a lot that you still need to learn, my dearest Sentinel," she said. "I can answer all of your questions, but not here. You have had a busy night which ate up most of your energy. You need to get some food in your body to make up for the," she paused to search for the right word and then added, "lost fat." She smiled at her subtlety, pointing a small finger at her boobs when the girl showed signs of confusion. "Just follow me and I'll tell you everything you need to know," said Selene and extended an arm towards her for her to take.

"And to be honest, those hospital garbs do your body no favour," she added almost dryly.

'She does have a point you know...' said Mystery, 'We do need more form-fitting robes.'

"Fine," the girl groaned, before taking the offered hand and slowly getting up to her feet. Selene led them through hallways and stairs, often walking through doors that did not exist a moment ago, and brought them to a canteen. The table in the centre had healthy food and juices. The walls were lined with storage barrels. Small fires blazed inside, many of them with pots on. A large hearth with a set of armchairs burned near them.

Selene sat on one and motioned her brand new Sentinel to take the other. A wave of her hand brought a fruit basket to the table between them. Another resulted in a glass of wine being placed in Selene's hand. Taking a sip from her glass, she told the girl to eat some fruits. When an apple had been bitten into, she began, "Your summary of what has been happening these past few hours is mostly correct, so I won't waste any time on that. Our first order of business for the day is getting you a new name."

"What's wrong with my current name?" she asked, before realising that Tushar probably did not sound good on a girl. "Oh right... gender swap... I'm gonna need a new name," she said, thinking that The Girl was probably not a good name. At least not until she got some new adjectives to go along with it. Maybe The Killer Girl might work, but she did not want any writer narrating her story in the future to waste countless pages on meaningless and confusing pronouns.

"How about Mystery?" suggested Lady Moon, "You are kind of sharing a body with her..."

"I don't know," she said, "it does not feel original. No offence to her, but I don't exactly feel like being her..."

'I wouldn't want to be you either, you nutless squirrel!' came the retort from her mind, which she promptly ignored sensing the playful nature behind it.

"You looked up to your sister didn't you?" asked Selene. "What would she choose?"

She looked up from the half-eaten apple to find Selene looking at her, warmth and compassion in her eyes. "I don't know about that anymore."

"Before today, I always looked up to her for being able to do so much with her life at such a young age. She did everything I dreamt of doing. She lived the life I read about in my books. She did what I never could. I wanted to be like her since I was old enough to wish." She looked down at the half-eaten apple in her hand and took another large bite out of it, chewing it slowly while looking at the flames dance in the hearth in front of her. She chewed for a minute, slowly thinking about her words and her feelings. A few more minutes passed while she ate the whole apple, staring into the dancing fire all the while. Selene waiting patiently for her to speak, knowing that her next words would shape her future.

"I used to think that she was perfect," the girl began, tossing the now fully eaten apple core into the flames — 'Don't throw your waste in there, you culture-less shoelace!' Mystery had said while mentally smacking her head. — where it burned with a crackle, "but now that I finally have an opportunity to create my own destiny and make my name by myself, I think that I don't wanna follow in her footsteps."

"You see, she was Aarushi. The star of the family. The pride of the community. The perfect example of humanity. The one who everyone wanted to be. I wanted to be that long ago. I wanted to be that till a few hours ago. But now, I don't."

"She was blinding light. I have always been the comforting darkness. She is Fire when I am Ice. She felt like the dawn, while I acted like the dusk. She is red Sunburns, while I am blue Frostbites."

She smiled finally, and slowly looked up at Selene. "She revelled in her Prominence. I shall work from my Obscurity. She was Clarity."

"I am Mist."

'Cue epic intro music' thought the newly dubbed Mist.

'Drama Queen!' Replied the spirit inside her.

"Not to put a damper on your moment," said Selene softly, "but Mist is a male name."

"..."

"..."

"..."

The No-Longer Mist started mentally sobbing while Mystery started braying at the destruction she received. "ONE CHANCE TO LOOK COOL IS ALL I ASK FOR! Is it too much to hope for?" She moaned.

Selene threw a patronizing 'aww' towards her, which had her glaring daggers at her, but it quickly stopped when she said, "You can always be Miss T. That's the same as Mist."

Misty looked up at Selene, all her anger and sadness turned into love, like a kicked pup being offered tasty food.

'It will also connect with my name!' added Mystery. 'We can be Name-Mates!'

"That's a nice name I suppose," said Misty, "Miss Freeloader also likes it since it's so close to Mystery."

"It's decided then, the newest Sentinel on the team is going to be Misty," said Selene, clapping her hands in a loud booming gesture.

"Don't we have any grand ceremony that needs to be done? Something dramatic and cinematic?" asked Misty raising an eyebrow at Selene. "Not even a performance by some band? Maybe the muses?"

"There used to be such celebrations, but that was way back. That was a time when the Sentinels were not all cloak and dagger. At that time, each of the 12 Olympians, and even some of the other deities that weren't Olympians but were important enough to not be ignored, gave us a champion. Each of them a representative of their patron," she said, smiling wistfully at the days of her prime, "The Sentinels were known by everyone as someone to be feared. We had more than one member in those days, so killing off a member came with a heavy price attached to it. A very heavy price." She took a drink from her glass, and stared into the dancing flames, her eyes unblinking, "But those were the old days. This was back when the Gods still had a presence in the mortal world. Nothing has been the same since we retreated into the shadows." She turned to face Misty, her eyes a metallic silver, "More so for people like you..."

"What do you mean?" questioned a curious Misty, her hands now peeling an orange.

"You have been awake for an hour and have been here almost since yesterday evening. Do you not worry about what your parents might be thinking?"

"Fuck," said Misty, and that word seemed to sum up her thoughts pretty precisely. In all of this excitement, she had completely forgotten to cook up an excuse about her absence... and had also forgotten that they would be looking for her in the morning. Something told her however that it was something that she wouldn't have to worry about for long. That the something was in Lady Moon's eyes, was not important.

"Exactly. Sentinels aren't exclusively demigods or nature spirits like the Hunters of Artemis or the other groups. We don't care about your parentage. The selection process done by the Sentience is purely based on eligibility," said Selene. "If you have the potential to make a great Sentinel, the Sentience will come to you. It might fail in predicting whether or not you will make a good Sentinel, but it has a clear way of sensing the potential in people. There have been cases, where the Sentinel was not good enough for her job and gets killed in the first few years of her work. There have also been cases like yours before where people who have not been selected get transferred here, but that was mostly when the first candidate died, and none of them have been boys before," she explained.

"Regardless, all of these eligibility tests ensured that the post was not exclusive to demigods. And because of that, a good number of mortals also got into the celestial world without any warning. They did not have the option of leaving behind everything like demigods to live among the Sentinels. That was when we made The Ritual," said Selene. "It's quite an interesting piece of work. Hecate herself worked on this and counts this spell among one of her greatest masterpieces."

"The function of this ritual is quite simple." She took another sip from the wine glass that seemed to never run out of wine. "It completely erases your existence from the universe."

"WHAT!" shouted Misty.

'That is actually true,' added Mystery. 'I had to leave behind my only family when I joined this field.'

'Everyone has one family. There was no need to say 'only',' Misty said.

Mystery chose to say silent on this rebuke, which frankly shocked Misty a bit.

"It is true. That's why a new Sentinel is asked to give herself a new identity. Their previous identity is wiped off the face of the Earth. Nothing short of a spell to wipe out the Mist could stop this from happening. And as far as I'm aware, nothing of that scale has been made yet," she said, "At least not before we could stop it." She added with a smirk.

"When I went away to send off Artemis from the hospital wing, I activated the ritual sequence. As of today, Tushar Mukherjee is officially just a dream spoilt by a condom."

Misty was quiet when Selene ended her explanation. Too quiet for her liking if she was honest to herself. She had seen her as a boy during the first few hours and his curiosity was honestly an admirable quality in the goddess' eye. He had been this little curious kid who kept asking meaningless questions, not caring about the fact that he had just discovered a brand new world and been made an inseparable part of it. Infact, it looked as if he had expected it to happen all the time. Making him into a Sentinel by using Mystery's spirit and Artemis' help was not something she regretted either. She was short on time and there was too much that the boy would've asked if she'd told him the truth of Siproites.

She did not like to lie. Not at all. But she did what was necessary for the survival of the Sentinels. With only one Sentience left in her order to convert normal mortals and demigods into Sentinels, there was pretty much anything she could've done to help her order survive. She needed to if the Divide was to be kept intact. If not for The Order of the Waves and its Sentinels, the Mist would've torn apart a long time ago. There were too many people trying to do that every single moment, for it to not have broken down.

Putting a compulsion on the boy was a necessary action. She did not like it by any chance, but it was necessary. And had it not been for his overly curious mind's natural resistance to compulsion charms —which was something that she still found weird, because her compulsions were among the strongest possible compulsions in all the pantheons— he would not have to experience so much pain and he would've turned into Misty much sooner and much healthier.

Her goal was achieved in the end, even though it cost a favour to Artemis, and that was the important bit. That Tushar's curiosity and natural intellect had not been crushed by Mystery's presence or the ritual's side effects was something that she found wonderful. And throughout the entire roller-coaster ride that yesterday was, she did not find herself regretting making Misty a Sentinel; the girl did have great things written for her in her future.

But seeing her quiet like that? That was a new experience for her. The ritual had certainly worked on his brain to make it much sharper. His intelligence and wisdom along with his analytic skills had received a boost. All that being combined with his natural curiosity had made the newly formed girl, a power to be reckoned with. A sharp mind with an unconventional way of thinking led to greatness, and she was using every brain cell of hers from what Selene had noticed. Even the few times when their eyes met while Selene explained something, she had never been quiet. She could feel the gears turning inside her mind, she could see the conclusions that Misty was drawing from raw data. And all that time, she had never been quiet.

Selene did not like her being quiet.

An eternity passed for Selene before Misty spoke. "Okay," she said and stopped.

She ate another orange slice, took a moment to chew it(too long if you asked Selene) and after spitting one of the seeds into the hearth fire—Don't do that you spineless reptile, Mystery said— started to talk again, staring at the flames now, "I was never really attached to them anyways. And given the fact that I'm not allowed out of the house after 10, this Sentinel business wouldn't have worked out from home."

She turned to look at the moon goddess, her eyes playful and not at all sad, "And regardless, my father would've popped an artery thinking of the bill for a medical college instead of an engineering one."

"Oh! Did you want to be an engineer before this?"

"Nah. My father did," replied Misty. "I was planning on being a video game script writer. Spreading joy among young kids all over the world with well written offline RPGs. But that idea is not so popular back home."

Misty had finished the entire orange before Selene spoke again, "So you aren't going to miss your place?"

"Not much anyways. My parents were okay-ish, but nothing that I would feel attached to for the rest of my life. The school can shut down for all I care, I never really learned anything in there anyways," she said. "Besides, the library downstairs looked as if it had a lot of books in it. Especially some rare ones. Would it by any chance, have anything on Newtonian Physics? I did enjoy the subject a lot."

Selene chuckled and made a mental note to look into updating the normal library on the natural sciences the next chance she got; times were changing after all. "I will look for them, and if there aren't I will have some summoned. Any friends you might miss?" she asked.

"Meh." Misty shrugged. "There were two, and I might miss them in the future, but it's not like I can change the situation," she said, slightly sad. "Besides, if they found out that their best friend is now a well-endowed and sinfully hot girl, they might just wet themselves," she joked. "And not in the normal way either."

"All right. Just don't go around running to them! As a Sentinel, you will have to cut off all contact from the old world," Lady Moon said, her metallic silver eyes staring into the flames as if trying to remember some old forgotten mistake. "You are a new person now. An extension of the Order of the Waves. We don't expect you to behave as if you were a stuck up child of Zeus with Athena's spear stuck in your ass, but some discipline and character will be expected of you."

"Did the previous Sentinels ever run off to meet their families or see their loved ones again?" asked the curious soul.

"Normally, all Sentinels go through a very hard and demanding training program. This training lasts over 10 years. Even the lucky quick learners take atleast 10 years to get all the skills needed to be a perfect Sentinel," said Selene.

"This time period ensures that they learn to live without their family and friends. Some did try to run away when they thought I was asleep, but they always returned back. Nobody felt like leaving the life of a Sentinel to go back to their family or friends, the Sentience's choice never made that choice. These visits were mostly allowed until the first three years. After that, I would erect wards around the perimeter that would stop them. They couldn't be allowed to keep visiting their family, after all, it could hamper their training."

"What if someone got past your wards?"

Selene laughed at this, "My dear Misty, if one of the initiates were good enough with warding in their fourth year to break past MY wards, and come back without me finding out, then they deserve to see their old family, cause I couldn't be happier with their progress." She took a sip from her Ever-Full glass, something that Misty was going to try and get her hands on. "A few did get past them. A very select few, who deserved to. But they weren't by any chance fourth years. None were below seven. With only one getting out in her eighth year." Her eyes shimmered slightly at the mention of this Sentinel. "Rune was gifted a wardstone by Hecate herself when during her 20th year of duty, she broke into Hecate's temple to recover an ingredient for me. Hecate never found out. And when I sent her an apology note for the informal borrowing of the petals, she came here and gave her wardstone set to Rune." Selene looked at the stars shining above them via the skylight. "She was one of my best pupils."

'Did you ever try to run out?' Misty asked her mind-mate.

'Once...' Mystery replied, 'Not to see my family though. I was an orphan and my only connection in the human world was a boy your age. He was two years younger than me, but when I went to visit him in my second year, he got to experience something that you haven't yet.'

'Shut Up!' Screamed Misty into her mind. 'I don't need to be grossed out by you sexcapdes.'

"You said normally earlier," remarked Misty. "What is going to happen in my case? And what's different about me?"

"Only everything, dearest," replied Selene. "The reason new Sentinels are asked to train for ten years is that they need to find the field that suits them the best and then train in it, along with some compulsory combat training, till they are the best in it."

"No Sentinel till date has been bad in whatever way they chose to fight. That's the result of training under me for ten years," beamed Selene. "You, however, have Mystery with you–"

'You are the luckiest person on this planet to have me in you,' commented Mystery again.

'IF I am the luckiest person on the Earth, I will definitely find some books in the library that will teach me to shut that loose mouth of yours,' replied Misty.

"–and her memories and skills are already in your system, ready to be used by you. No training required. Except for any area you need to specialise in that hasn't been covered by Mystery."

"I don't feel any different apart from a heavier chest... and the absence of a certain body part which I don't wanna think about," said Misty. "Are you sure that Mystery knew anything about combat at all?"

'I HEARD THAT!'

'And here I was thinking the only thing going inside your body were underage boys and not words,' joked Misty, feeling comfortable enough to make Mystery uncomfortable now.

"Your training will specifically cover that. Right now, all the knowledge is sitting inside your mind, untapped by your consciousness." She raised a hand and an ice spike shot out of it.

And before she knew it, Misty was on the chair, balanced on one arm with her legs in the air, while the knife kept there to cut up the fruits was pointed at Selene's throat.

"See," Selene said smugly, not at all bothered by the fruit knife pointed at her, "your reflexes kicked in at the first sign of danger. However, you need to know how to call upon those skills at your will. Your enemy will not always be so blunt. The next two months will pass trying to teach you how to master Mystery's powers. And
while you're at it, you can check out the other fields and see if you have a particular knack for anything else," she said. "If I were you, I would check the potions lab first," whispered Selene conspiratorially.

"Fine then," Misty huffed. She got down from her acrobatic pose on the chair, lest she loses control and fall, and sat down on the chair again, fixing her hospital garb in the process. She grabbed another apple and said, "Looks like Mystery can do more than speak innuendo."

Selene turned sharply to Misty, the wine glass in her hand splashing some on the floor because of the jerky movement, "You mean she's still a pervert!"

"Oh yes she is... quite a big one at that."

"Well, I am sorry about that... I believed that the ritual would remove those perversions of hers," Selene said, her left eye twitching wildly, "She is the reason I regret not making the Sentinels be eternal virgins. If only I had another clause in that vow, I would not have to think thrice before speaking every fucking sentence in front of her. What she must be doing to you... I have been the victim of that and much more for over 70 years. Gaia knows how a 15-year-old girl turned out to be so dirty minded in my base."

"You mean she's always been a pervert?" asked Misty.

"Very much so... before she was selected by the Sentience, she used to use her female charms to help her gang of orphans survive on the streets. A roadside inn isolated from civilization on all sides. The perfect place for rapists to commit crimes that would never reach the city. People would get drawn in by her, hoping to get more than normal hospitality, and when they pounced on her to rape her, she would kill them all."

"That's... concerning," was all Misty said.

"Yes, it was. What shocked me was the fact that in her 5 years of using her body as a steak, she had never once missed a mark. She was a perfect assassin. What little skill she had with the knife was almost perfect. She is one of the few who had their specialisation chosen before the third year ended." Selene took a long drink of her wine, longer than Misty thought necessary, and said, "Unfortunetly for me, all those years of baiting had given the girl a tongue that couldn't be washed clean with the water of the Lethe. Believe me, I was a single push away from trying it."

'Tongues like mine are too slimy to be washed with normal white water anyways. It needs the thicker white water,' said Mystery bawdily.

'How many sailors did you kill before getting that tongue!' mind-screamed Misty.

'Not sure, but somewhere around 69.'

The smirk that followed was mental. The face-palm was not.

"Please teach me some meditative techniques to block her out," begged Misty to Selene. "I used to be a boy, but none of my friends were half as creative with their words. But since none of my friends were of the crude variety, I can't blame them for it."

"Are normal boys who catcall girls this brash?" asked Misty. "Don't answer that. If you do, then you'll only highlight my introversion."

"I will, you were, I don't know, I won't. In that order," replied Selene.

Misty nodded and threw her second apple core into the dustbin. The hearth was not used this time since Mystery did not like it the last time. She moved her hand to pick another fruit, a banana from the angle of her hand, and stopped.

"Where the fuck is all this food going!" asked Misty, "I have never eaten more than a single apple in my life and now I'm wanting more even after eating two apples and an orange. Where the hell is all this food going to?"

"Your new body," said Selene, "remember that? Horrible ritual? Changed you completely?"

"Okaayyyy... What else changed?"

"You can discover those during your training sessions. I prefer using practical methods for that."

"Okay... Will I be able to do everything Mystery does then?" questioned Misty.

"Yes."

"Can I punch through walls?"

"I guess so. Mystery did that."

"How about a double backflip?"

"Uhh... I think so?"

"Can I go invisible? Hear a butterfly's wing flap? See light in the darkest caves? Feel the universe expanding around me?"

"All right Focus!" interjected Selene before Misty went further. "We'll learn what you can do soon enough. That's what the training room is for. No hyperventilating till then."

"Okay, I won't. But I still have a question," said Misty.

"You don't have a train to catch anytime soon, so you might as well ask me whatever you want to."

"How did you bring Mystery back from death? I thought the underworld was Hades' domain," asked Misty.

"Right you are about that. And following that same thought line, I couldn't call back Marina, who clearly knows more about our current threat than you, me or
Mystery," Selene said. "What you forget, however, is the past. Back when the Sentinels were the golden heroes of Olympus, we had a lot of push. A lot of it." The glass from which Selene drunk refilled again, how many times it had happened in the last hour, Misty did not remember. "The gods, all of them, granted us favours for taking their champions within our ranks. There were many more Sentiences to go around and grant the same protections to other demigods and mortals, and having actual demigods with a god's blessings was something that would have boosted our powers by a lot. So, of course, being the smart celestial that I was, I did what I had to. I struck a bargain."

"Every Olympian that wanted to have their champion be a member of the Sentinel had to grant the Order of the Waves... special privileges. So in exchange of these special favours, I would perform some specific rituals that were draining on my powers", she said with an overly exaggerated swooning motion, "to configure the Sentiences. These new Sentiences would only choose a worthy champion from their patron Olympian's cream warriors. That did mean that I lost a considerable amount of Sentiences in political bargaining, but our force still got the new additions. A small price to pay for the luxury."

"This did mean that unless I spared a day to undo those modifications, I couldn't use those Sentiences again, but I reasoned that the favours were more valuable and the reverse ritual took only a day and I could basically cut them off from their best champions with this opportunity. One of these favours was from Hades. He might be an anti-social guy, but he was too smart to not take an opportunity when he was offered one. In exchange for having an inside to the planet's best guild, a separate section of the afterlife for dead Sentinels to live in was nothing. Convincing him to let them return to protect the Order in times of need was harder, but you can't win against the Moon. Not when I provided him with such a fine bargain."

"What did you give him?" asked Misty.

"Something that I can't tell you. I have sworn secrecy over the matter." Lady Moon smirked at the young Sentinel's expression and continued. "Regardless, the bargain had been struck and the Sentinels went to the Lunar Plane. A realm in the underworld made specifically for the dead souls of the past Sentinels. You can't access it normally. There are very few ways left to do it. A few lost even to me."

"In the ritual, I called back Mystery from the Lunar Realm to help me protect the Order. It was possible because Mystery served back when there was still a Sentinel wearing the Underworld's badge. Now though, there is none. There hasn't been one to serve with us for many centuries. And since the contract works on the basis of a Sentinel from Hades' rank serving under me, the Sentinels who die now no longer go to the Lunar Plane. They go to the Underworld as all normal spirits do. To be judged and criticised for their deeds."

"If the day arrives when our Order grows stronger again, I could possibly convince Hades to open the gates of the Lunar Plane again. But that would need us to be back to 100% strength again. Something that hasn't happened for many hundred years," said Selene. Taking in a deep breath, she took another sip of the wine. Misty was too socially anxious to ask her if she was addicted to fine wines, but even she could tell that Selene had drunk enough at this point to down fully grown men.

"You said that Sentinels used to have more members. Not like now where I am the only living member..." said Misty uncertainly, "What happened to the other Sentinels and their Sentiences?"

"Some were destroyed. By rituals I thought did not exist and which no longer do," said Lady Moon, with a fire in her usually silver eyes. "I never knew how they managed to find those rituals, but I made sure that they won't be using them again."

"Who?"

"Some of the other Sentiences were trapped," continued Lady Moon, ignoring the question put forth by the girl, "by ancient devices that still exist out there. But they ran out of space to capture more anyways. My work was great enough to defeat almost anything. The medallions that did get captured went down destroying the very same devices that trapped them. Some of my Sentinels tried looking for them to bring them back to me and have me rekindle their spark, but nobody found any. A few died trying."

"Even after all this happened, our Order still retained enough strength to hold the favour of most of the gods. All the Olympians were still on our side after all. We were still feared. Those who'd gone up against us had been dealt with brutally. Our reputation still held high and the Order still had some room for regaining its previous high. It all changed, however, when something bad happened. Something that neither I nor my Sentinels could prevent. Something that was so unthinkable and unexpected, that it caught us all off-guard and delivered the blow that turned out to be the downfall of this organisation."

"What was it?" asked a fixated Misty. 'I would brace myself if I were you,' warned Mystery.

"I died," Selene said.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: That's it. That's the chapter that took me two months. I know that fillers are boring and sometimes not much productive, but they are a necessary evil. Without them, you would have no foreshadowing or easter eggs to slap your head at. I will definitely try to update quicker now, along with longer updates. But don't blame me if I miss my schedule since 1) I don't have a schedule and 2) People who don't review have no power over my actions.

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