B'Hala - Kings or Pawns

Posted on Sat Oct 3rd, 2026 @ 2:40am by Captain Rhenora Kaylen & Remal Kajun

1,463 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: B'Hala

A silence descended around the tent as the self proclaimed Architect decided how he was going to answer the question. It was a fair one, they had been summoned, and wanted to understand why, and to what end.

"You are the key to the future - The Four, and The Two. Together you shall keep the Wraith from bringing forth another Red Sun and destroying Bajor forever" He said as though explaining the plot line of a holo movie.

Remal looked toward Rhenora, uncertainty evident in his eyes as he considered the Architect's words. The key to the future. The Four, and The Two. The Wraith. Another Red Sun. There were enough pieces in those few sentences to suggest a picture, but nowhere near enough to understand what the picture actually was.

His gaze returned to the old man. "You keep talking about us as though we're pieces in something you've already seen." He paused, choosing his next words carefully. "So which is it? Are we here because we've been given a choice, or because someone has already decided what we're going to do?"

The Architect gawked at him for a moment.

Remal glanced briefly at the models scattered across the table, then back to the old man. It was clear they weren't being given a choice in the matter. "I suppose what I'm really asking is..." He took a slow breath. "Are we the ones making the moves, or are we simply being moved?"

"Sadly I have the feeling it's a little of column A and a little of column B" Rhenora retorted distastefully. She hated being a pawn of higher beings.

The Architect studied Remal as though the question itself had become another piece of the puzzle. Then his attention shifted toward the scattered models and scrolls covering the table. "Perhaps..." he murmured. He reached beneath the table and began pulling out rolled sheets of parchment, one after another. Some were large enough that they had to be carried with both hands, while others were little more than narrow strips covered in impossibly fine markings. He placed them across the table with the careful familiarity of someone who knew exactly where each belonged. "Perhaps I have been explaining this incorrectly."

Remal leaned closer, trying to make sense of it. Lines crossed one another in intricate patterns, branching and reconnecting in ways that had no obvious beginning or end. Small geometric shapes were drawn along some of the lines, while others disappeared beneath handwritten symbols that looked almost like a language of their own.

The Architect moved to another sheet. "And this..." he said, pointing to a section that appeared to Remal to be nothing more than a collection of circles and intersecting lines. "This connects here." he moved to a third. "And that belongs..." His finger stopped. "...there."

Remal looked from one parchment to another. Whatever the Architect saw in them was clearly obvious to him, but to Remal, they looked like fragments of different designs that were scattered across the same table.

The Architect frowned. "No. That isn't right." He reached for one of the parchments and rotated it ninety degrees. "Better." He smiled.

Remal glanced toward Rhenora, then back at the drawings. "You can actually understand all of that?"

The Architect gave him a mildly offended look. "Of course." Then he seemed to reconsider. "Well... Mostly."

He gathered several of the parchments together and laid them in front of Remal and Rhenora. "Here. You should see it this way." For a moment, nothing happened. Then one of the lines on the nearest sheet shifted. Remal blinked. Another moved.

The markings did not disappear so much as slide across the parchment, following paths that had not been there a moment before. A circle that had been tucked into the corner of one drawing slowly moved toward the center, while a series of intersecting lines stretched across several separate sheets, connecting them as though the parchment itself had suddenly forgotten that each piece was meant to be separate.

The Architect stared. He hadn't touched them. The blueprints continued to rearrange themselves. Shapes that had seemed meaningless began falling into alignment. The tiny symbols shifted into positions around the larger structures, and the scattered fragments of the Architect's designs began forming something far more recognizable. A picture, of sorts.

One that neither Remal nor Rhenora could yet fully understand, but one that was somehow more complete than anything the Architect had shown them before. "Better?"

Rhenora's jaw had dropped, something to attest to the magnitude of what they had witnessed. It was as though the. ancient city was reborn on the pages before them, ruins rebuilt but different, honouring the past and beckoning the future all at once. "You're rebuilding B'Hala," she breathed.

The Architect paused and considered his words carefully.

"No...you will rebuild B'Hala, The Four and The Two. A new age of peace and prosperity reborn from the ruins of old. The Capital will shine once more, a true leader at her helm. Yes, yes, this is how it will be."

Remal was flooded with a sudden and insurmountable uncertainty. "Figuratively?" he asked, looking toward Rhenora before turning back to the Architect. "Surely you mean figuratively, right?"

"Are you able to figuratively rebuild a city to it's former glory and reinstate it as the right worthy Capital on the planet? I have seen it, and if the Prophets are willing - you shall as well" The Architect nodded and rolled the maps up. "Now, shall I show you where we begin?"

With all of the symbolism behind the buildings representing people, and the maps and things, Remal had absolutely thought the Architect meant figuratively. Which, of course, left him feeling confused and slightly overwhelmed.

There was something else in the man's words, intentional or otherwise, that Remal caught. He spoke of the Prophets as though he was not one of them, but rather someone who had been given visions. And yet, there was something about the old man that felt ancient, old beyond reason. Remal couldn't quite reconcile the two.

Before he could protest, the Architect was already on the move again, heading toward the entrance and beckoning them to follow at a surprisingly spry pace.

"You are not of this place nor time, yet you speak as though you talk with the Prophets" Rhenora casually mentioned as they strolled to where the archeologists were unearthing another building from the earth.

"I am the Architect, I design things" he replied simply as they stood over the ruins, nothing more than a crumbling remnant of foundation.

"You design things...." she echoed with just a tad of skepticism.

"This, is where the great Temple shall be" he announced with a flourish. "Once the Red Sun is defeated, it will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes, a beacon for all of Bajor to rejoice."

Remal, Patina in tow, followed the Architect out into the light once more, still thoroughly skeptical. "If not figurative, surely metaphorically? We are only three Bajorans who know nothing about construction. We're building a family, not a city. Especially not a grand capital city like B'Hala, even if we could understand those things you call blueprints."

The Architect stopped so suddenly that Remal nearly walked into him. With a flourish of his whole body, the old man turned until he was standing face to face with Remal, looking up into his one foot taller eyeline. "Haven't you been listening? There are four of you, and there is time."

His gaze dropped toward Patina, studying her for a moment. "About sixteen years, give or take. B'Hala wasn't built in a day, you know. Not the first time, anyway."

He turned his attention back to Remal, his expression taking on that peculiar mixture of certainty and amusement that seemed to accompany almost everything he said. "Besides, I've seen it." The Architect leaned slightly closer. "Haven't you ever seen the path ahead so clearly and followed something so blindly that it was as if you had no choice in the matter?"

Remal stared back at him, practically straight on through him, the weight of the question settling somewhere far deeper than anyone could imagine.

The Architect studied his face for several seconds before nodding to himself. "Yep. There it is. The look of a man who has seen the path, walked the path, and come out standing tall on the other end."

He turned toward Rhenora. "Ah... and I can see the light that was worth the path you forged was clearly worth it, eh?"

Then, before either of them could make sense of that, he turned back toward the ruins of B'Hala. "This," he announced, gesturing toward the crumbling foundation before them, "is where we begin."

TBC

 

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