Chương 6: The Entrance Trials

Alderman Gressil had been reviewing candidate lists for forty-one years, and he fully intended to die doing it. He sat at his desk in the faculty chamber overlooking the eastern approach, a cup of tea going cold at his elbow, his spectacles balanced on the tip of a nose that had been broken twice in his youth and had never quite forgiven him for it.

The list for this year's intake was spread across the desk in front of him, three pages of names written in the Registrar's careful hand, and he was reading through them for the fourth time because he was ninety-four years old and his memory, while still sharp on matters of policy and history, had started doing unhelpful things with proper nouns. The horn had just sounded.

He could hear it still, the last note hanging in the air outside the chamber windows, and beyond it, the low rumble of voices and boots on stone that meant the candidates were assembling on the approach road. He had perhaps twenty minutes before he'd need to be standing on the balcony with his robes in order and his voice ready, which was plenty of time to finish his tea if he remembered to drink it.

"How many this year?" asked Veyra Tull, the academy's Master of Assessment, who was standing by the window with her arms folded, watching the procession below. She was seventy-three, had been at Sartheon for nineteen years, and had a talent for asking questions she already knew the answer to.

"Hundred and twelve," Gressil said, turning to the second page.

"Down from last year. Up from the year before."

"Quality? I expect this year's batch to be strong."

"The usual spread from the lesser houses. A few surprises from the provinces. Three Draeven children, which is more than they usually send." He adjusted his spectacles.

"A Solenne, naturally. Two Kaelith, which will make the assessment period interesting, given that we'll never be entirely sure what they're actually doing. One Vashren."

"And?" Gressil looked up. Veyra was still facing the window, but her reflection in the glass was watching him, and there was a particular quality to her patience that told him she wasn't interested in the rest of the list.

"Howl Aridis," he said. She turned from the window. Alderman Bryce, who had been organizing examination materials on the long table by the far wall and pretending he wasn't listening, stopped pretending.

"So it's true, then," Bryce said. He was younger than both of them, early sixties, with a round face and a tendency to state the obvious.

"The Axiom is actually here."

"He's on the list," Gressil said.

"Whether he's actually what they say he is remains to be seen. The Aridis have been making extraordinary claims about their children since before I was born, and I've been alive long enough to see most of those claims age poorly."

"This one might be different," Veyra said. She crossed the room and pulled a chair out from the table, sitting down across from him.

"The reports from the eastern provinces have been consistent. Multiple sources, multiple years. A child born with the Axiom mark, borderline inexhaustible mana reserves, functional proficiency across every major school of magic. The Aridis pulled him from the family entirely. Sealed wing, private instructors, no contact with anyone outside the household. They've been building him like a weapon since he could walk."

"Every great house builds their children like weapons," Gressil said.

"Not like this. The Aridis hired Bellos." That got Bryce's attention.

"The Copy Mage?"

"As the boy's personal combat instructor. For six years." Gressil removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Bellos was a First Seal, one of perhaps thirty in the entire kingdom, and the idea that someone of his calibre had been spending the last six years training a single child in a sealed wing was quite surprising, to say the least.

"What Seal do we expect him to test at?" Bryce asked.

"We do not need to expect," Veyra said.

"The academy assessed him at the Aridis estate last year. He is Sixth Seal. Confirmed." Bryce set down the examination booklet he had been holding.

"Sixth Seal at sixteen, already?."

"Yes." The room went quiet for a moment as Gressil removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He could not fault the silence. The boy's growth rate gave even seasoned faculty reason to pause. The Seal structure measured a mage's control over mana, from the Twelfth, where a student first learned to shape it into something usable, down through the narrowing grades to the First, where mastery became total. No waste, no slippage, no gap between intent and result.

There were perhaps thirty First Seals alive in the kingdom at any given time, and most of them had not reached that ceiling until their thirties or forties. This boy was Sixth at sixteen. If the trajectory held, he would reach First Seal before he was thirty. Possibly well before. And after First Seal, there was only one place left to go. Beyond the ceiling was the Quasar, a completely different category of existence.

Where a First Seal mage had perfected the relationship between self and mana, a Quasar had dissolved it. The mana was something they were, and when that dissolution turned outward, it produced what practitioners called an Expression: the Quasar's inner world imposed on the physical world, absolute within its range. Inside a complete Expression, reality belonged to the Quasar. Anyone caught within it was subject to their will, fully and without recourse.

The only known counter was a stronger Expression, which meant the only people who could contest a Quasar were other Quasars, and there were three of them on the entire continent. The sole mercy was the cost; for even the strongest could only hold one for minutes and across a limited range before the mana drain forced them to close it. But an Axiom was not just the strongest.

If the only saving grace from a Quasar's might was their powerful but still limited mana pool, an Axiom, who by default carried a mana pool with no practical ceiling, could sustain their Expression for as long as they wished, across whatever range they wished and… that range was, if the histories were to be believed, and Gressil felt his skin prickle simply thinking about it, the whole world.

"You should also know," Veyra broke the silence, picking up one of the examination booklets from the stack Bryce had been sorting, flipping through it without reading it, "that the Axiom's existence has had effects beyond House Aridis. Every great house and most of the mid-tier families have been aware of him since he was born. The Vashren restructured their youth training programme thirteen years ago. The Solenne brought in outside instructors for their current generation for the first time in centuries.

The Draeven, who historically couldn't care less about who sends what to Sartheon, are sending three candidates this year. Three." This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. She set the booklet down.

"This generation trained harder because of him. Every house in the kingdom looked at the Axiom and decided their own children needed to be better, or they'd be left behind. So when I say this year's batch is strong, I mean it, and a good part of the reason it's strong is currently standing on our approach road." Gressil put his spectacles back on and looked at the list again.

Under normal circumstances, he would have been irritated by the amount of attention being given to a single candidate out of a hundred and twelve. He'd seen great house heirs walk through these gates with their chins raised and their families' expectations strapped to their backs, and most of them turned out to be exactly as talented as any other well-trained child with good tutors and expensive equipment. The title didn't make the mage. The work did.

But this was House Aridis, which made it a different conversation. The Aridis were old. Older than most of the houses on this list. They kept to themselves in that fortress of theirs in the east and they rarely involved themselves in the affairs of the wider world, and because of that, people tended to forget about them, the way one could forget about a mountain range that's been on the horizon for ever. It was always there. You just stopped looking at it.

Until an Axiom was born, and then everyone remembered very quickly why the mountain was there. House Aridis was the only bloodline to carry the Axiom. It wasn't a title granted or a rank earned, but more of a dormant spark in their marrow that refused to wake for anyone else. In all of recorded history, the blood had only stirred four times, and every single time, there had been major changes in the world order that defined the rules for the next millenia.

The last Axiom had risen one thousand three hundred and forty-two years ago, and that particular young woman had gone on to reshape the political map of the world so thoroughly that the kingdom they were all currently sitting inside of existed because of her. So no, Gressil could not in good conscience treat this as ordinary. He would, however, maintain his dignity about it, as he was ninety-four years old and proud enough to not fawn over a child he hadn't even met yet.

"Well," he said, "let's see if he's worth the trouble." He stood slowly, straightened his robes and rolled the list into a neat scroll. Veyra was already at the door while Bryce had gathered the last of the examination materials into a leather case and was tucking it under his arm. The doors of the faculty chamber opened onto a wide stone balcony that jutted out from the face of the main hall, thirty feet above the approach road, and the morning light hit Gressil full in the face as he stepped through.

He squinted, adjusted his spectacles, and looked down. They were all there, arranged in loose rows on the stone road below, their Shadows standing a pace behind each of them. Some were fidgeting. Some were whispering to each other. Some were standing very still with their hands at their sides and their faces carefully blank, which usually meant they were the most terrified of all. Gressil rested his hands on the balcony railing and took a breath.

Forty-one years of this, and he still felt a small, stubborn flicker of something in his chest when he looked down at a new batch of candidates, all of them nervous and convinced that the next few hours would determine the rest of their lives, which, to be fair, they would.

We moved with the crowd. There was no instruction on where to go or how to arrange ourselves, but the road funnelled naturally toward a wide stone plaza at the base of the main hall, and everyone seemed to understand that this was where you stopped. Candidates filled in from the front, row by row, and those who had Shadows fell back a pace behind them in a second line, and within a few minutes the whole plaza had organized itself into something that resembled order without anyone having to be told.

A door opened on the balcony above us and an old man stepped out into the morning light. He was very old. Thin, slightly stooped, with a white beard that hung nearly to his waist and caught the breeze in a way that made me irrationally jealous, because I had always wanted a beard and could not yet grow one, which was one of the genuine injustices of being sixteen. One day.

One day I would have a beard like that, and I would let it grow long, and nobody would be able to tell me what to do with it because it would be mine. The old man wore dark academic robes with golden trim at the sleeves, and his spectacles glinted when he tilted his head to look down at us. Two others followed him out, a tall woman with sharp features and a shorter man carrying a leather case under his arm, and the three of them stood at the railing while the plaza went quiet on its own.

The old man rested his hands on the stone and surveyed us for a few seconds.

"Candidates," he said, while his voice carried across the plaza with a clarity that surprised me, given his age. Some form of amplification enchantment, probably.

"I am Alderman Gressil. I have served as Sartheon Academy's Master of Proceedings for forty-one years, and it is my duty and my privilege to welcome you to the Entrance Trials." He paused for a bit.

"Behind me stand Veyra Tull, Master of Assessment, and Alderman Bryce, Master of Examination. You will come to know them well over the course of today." He gestured briefly to each, and neither of them smiled.

"Before we begin, you will understand what is being asked of you and what is at stake." He unrolled a scroll from somewhere inside his robes.

"The Entrance Trials consist of three assessments. The first is a written examination, covering theoretical knowledge across all recognized schools of magic, the history of the kingdom's magical institutions, and applied mana theory. This examination accounts for thirty of your total score." I could do that. Instructor Varren had drilled theory into me since I was six. I'd probably been doing exams harder than this one for breakfast.

"The second is a practical assessment, conducted individually under the supervision of Master Tull and her evaluators. You will be asked to demonstrate proficiency in your house's discipline, as well as foundational competencies in mana control, glyph construction, and combat application. This accounts for forty of your total score." Forty… so the practical was worth more than the written. That made sense, I supposed. Sartheon didn't produce scholars. It produced mages.

"The third assessment is unspecified." A murmur suddenly rippled through the crowd, and Gressil patiently waited for it to die.

"It accounts for the remaining thirty of your total score. Its nature, its timing, and its criteria will not be disclosed to you. You may have already begun it. You may not. That is all I will say on the matter." I felt my stomach tighten. Thirty points from an exam I couldn't study for, couldn't prepare for, and wouldn't even know was happening. That was a bit.. cruel.

"To qualify for admission, you must achieve a minimum total score of eighty. Sartheon offers two paths to its students. The Shield Path trains mages for military service, border defence, spirit-wild expeditions, and tactical operations in service of the crown and the great houses. The Crown Path trains mages for command, council work, advanced research, and direct service to the throne. Both paths are equal in standing and equal in honour, and the kingdom could not function without either of them.

Every candidate who passes the trials will choose their own path freely." He let that sit for a moment, his eyes moving across the rows.

"There is, however, one further distinction. Candidates who score ninety or above will receive a reward at the conclusion of the practical examination. The nature of that reward will not be disclosed in advance. I will say only that it is rare, that it is meaningful, and that it has been part of the Entrance Trials of this academy for longer than any of you have been alive." I could feel the weight of those words move through the crowd.

The girl with red hair a few rows ahead of me straightened her back, while the broad-shouldered Draeven boy to my left adjusted his cuffs. Oooh, this was fun.

"Candidates who fail to reach eighty will not be admitted," Gressil said, which was less fun.

"You may reattempt the Entrance Trials the following year, and the year after that, for a maximum of three consecutive attempts. After a third failure, you will be permanently barred from examination." Somewhere to my right, a boy let out a long, shaky exhale.

I didn't look at him, but I heard it clearly, and I understood it, because three chances sounded generous until you thought about going home to your family and telling them you'd failed at the thing they'd spent your whole life preparing you for, and then doing it again, and then doing it one more time, and then never being allowed to try again.

"The written examination will begin in one hour," Gressil said, rolling the scroll back up.

"You will be escorted to the examination hall shortly. Use the time you have been given wisely." He looked out over us one last time, and I could have sworn his gaze lingered in my direction for a moment, though that might have been my imagination.

"Good luck to you all," he said.

"Sartheon remembers those who walk through its gates. Make sure it remembers you well." He turned and walked back through the door. The two others followed, and the door closed. It did not take long for the plaza to erupt into noise, and the golden text suddenly flickered into my vision before said noise had even settled. [Quest Issued] Objective: Pass the Sartheon Entrance Trials with a score of 90 or higher. Reward: Spirit Contract (Class A) Failure: Eternal shame upon House Aridis. I stared at it.

A class A spirit contract? My skin prickled and my mind was already racing through every spirit I'd seen on the road here, wondering which kind I'd get, what it would look like, whether it would stay with me or come and go, whether I could talk to it or not. Then I read the failure condition, and the goosebumps turned cold. Eternal shame upon House Aridis. Right. So I just wouldn't fail, then. I dismissed the text with a blink and looked around.

The plaza was buzzing with nervous energy, and I had one hour before the written examination. Perhaps I could make some friends? Where was that boy from earlier anyway?