Chương 133: Chapter 130: Those Without

Gifts. The innate power that so many in this new world possessed. Not everyone had a Gift, but some people were certainly expected to. I had read much about them since coming to this world. Mages at the great institute of Zephar estimated that about one in every five commoners had some kind of Gift. Most of these Gifts were small and petty things. Elemental manipulation was by far the most common, followed closely by Gifts tied to weapons. That ratio changed the 'purer' a person's blood became.

The bastards of noble Lords had Gifts three times out of five. Pure-blooded sons and daughters of nobles always had Gifts. Always, to the point where it was considered remarkable when one didn't. That was likely some of the reason Anias had been so sure I'd had a Gift so long ago. Perhaps the research was not as extensive as the mages believed, but one thing held true all the same: a Princess, of all people, was supposed to have a Gift. None of the others had studied what I had, but everyone knew the gist of it.

That was why the room had fallen quiet. That was why Sere had dropped her pencil. Why Damian had dipped his head. Why Violet's mouth hung open. Why even Estovan looked uncomfortable. The silence stretched for several seconds, and through all of it, the Princess's smile did not so much as flicker. Then she grinned and put a finger to her lips.

"Of course, it's a secret!" she said.

"If any of you go and tell anyone else, my father might not take very kindly to it." Violet was the first to break out of her stupor. She rose, and then she pointed.

"WHAT? How the hell does that make sense? I know your brother apparently has a cool Gift, so how-""Ow!" the Princess said, covering her ears. She looked across at her First Sword, then back at Violet. She shrugged.

"Hey, don't ask me. Maybe the Gods just forgot mine?"

"Huh," Violet said, and sat back down in her seat. Katarina looked around the room, at the rest of us who still said nothing. Her gaze settled on me, and her smile never wavered.

"Come on! Don't be so lame!" She reached forward and scooped up our papers.

"We're here for a registration, remember?!" Then she was up and moving for the door. I didn't have the heart to take those forms away from her. The Princess pushed the door open and stepped outside. Aziah slid smoothly after her. The First Sword stopped at the threshold and looked back at us.

"What the Princess has shared with you," she said, "make sure it does not leave this room." Aziah Storm's tone did not change. She used no mana, and made no threats. I felt it all the same.

"We will not tell a soul," I said, and meant it. Whatever this revelation meant, it was clearly far too big for us. The First Sword nodded once, and the door closed behind her. The silence held for a second longer. Sere slid her notepad out to where I could see it. No Gift is…bad? How was I to explain that to her?

"It's not bad, exactly," I said softly.

"It just…it would be better to have one." Sere nodded slowly, as if I had explained everything.

"I think I like her even more now," Violet said. And for some reason, she was looking at me. A Princess without a Gift, in a world that ran on them. I did not need Katarina to explain the consequences for me to understand them. And yet she was still smiling, so brightly I did not see it flicker at all.

"I think I do too," I agreed, reluctantly. Estovan spoke next.

"The capital -Crownspire- is many things," he said slowly.

"It is a great wonder of a city. One of the most beautiful places on the Continent, not just in this Kingdom. It is also," and his voice dropped lower, "known as the Kingdom's finest den of vipers." He looked around the room at each of us.

"I believe it would be prudent to do exactly as Aziah has asked." We all nodded seriously at that. Even Violet, who was truly the only risk among us. The secret itself did not bother me, not truly. What bothered me was that the Princess had trusted complete strangers with a secret we had never asked for. Why? Nobles were strange. I supposed royalty had to be stranger still. The door opened and we all turned. Aziah Storm poked her head in.

"They are calling for us." They had called for us. I had thought that meant it was our turn. They only meant that our turns were near. The examiner had only bowed his head and murmured an apology when I had pointed this out. It was fine. It wasn't like I was above seeing these examinations from up close. The ring had drawn more of a crowd than when we had first stepped into this place. Just about every eye was drawn towards it. Well, save for the eyes that were drawn towards me instead.

And with those eyes came the whispers, a great many of them. I could have turned my hearing down. One click, and all of it would have faded into a pleasant hum. I left it alone, and did my best to pretend the whispers were about somebody else. If I was going to be who I was, then ignoring whispers was the least of what I had to learn to do. In the ring, a tall girl with short black hair was squaring off against the examiner. The girl was taller than me by at least a full head, and she looked well muscled besides.

If she was being examined, it meant she was in the junior division, though I was finding that very hard to believe the more I looked at her. She held a longsword in one hand, and she was grinning at the examiner. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The examiner stood at the center of the ring with his arms folded. A second examiner stood off at the ring's edge. That one had a ledger tucked under one arm. He raised his hand and dropped it.

"Begin!" The tall girl crossed the ring in three long strides. Her longsword moved in an arc towards the examiner. The blade fell, and all the examiner did was lift one finger. Steel met skin, and against every law of the world, the steel stopped in place. There wasn't even a sound, though I supposed steel against flesh wasn't supposed to make a sound. The girl stared at her blade, sitting flat against the man's fingertip.

"First of three strikes," the man said.

"You have two more." She hopped back a step, and her grin came back wider this time.

"Ha! Alright, alright. Didn't think it'd be that easy!" I felt something from her then. The air around her picked up, and she raised her sword above herself. Between one blink and the next, the sword in her hand was twice its length. The girl still held it easily enough. She rushed in again. I had seen many Gifts in this world, and this girl's was an especially strange one. A power that made one's sword… longer? How was that supposed to work?

And what exactly was this girl supposed to do when she didn't have a sword? Besides, just because a blade was twice as long didn't mean it was any more danger- The girl charged forward and slashed. The examiner held his one finger up with the same boredom as before. Blade met skin, and in the next moment, the man was skidding backwards across the ring. He blinked, and looked down at his finger. A single drop of blood trickled off it and onto the floor.

"Euphridia Rae, pass!" the examiner at the side called.

"Hell yeah!" the girl shouted, as her sword shrank back to its normal size. The examiner she'd cut sighed and walked back to the center of the ring. When he folded his arms again, I could see that his finger had already stopped bleeding, which was surely not normal. Perhaps the man had a Gift that made him well suited to all of this after all. A boy stepped in next, and the sight of him made me pause. Vaelin stirred in a corner of my mind, as if the Godblade were leaning forward. I recognized the boy.

It was hard not to, with those flowing white robes of his. His head was bowed, just as it had been the last time I saw him. How his turn had come up before ours, I couldn't say. My best guess was that he had filled out his form on one day, and come back for the testing on another.

"Doesn't look like much," Violet muttered somewhere to my side.

"Can't even look up? That's lame. Wouldn't last one second in a ring against me."

"Did nobody ever tell you not to judge books by their covers?" Damian said.

"He might just surprise you, y'know."

"How the hell else am I supposed to judge them?" Violet asked.

"Their size?" I commended Damian for not groaning. It seemed that Violet was far from the only one judging this particular book by its cover. All around us, fingers rose and pointed, and the smiles that came with them were not kind ones. It was hard to blame any of them. The boy wasn't just staring at the floor. He was small. Standing across from the examiner, he looked like a sapling that had decided to try ramming into an oak.

"-is this a joke-""-somebody's little brother wandered in-""-five coppers says he cries-" The examiner at the side consulted his ledger, and his voice rang out across the hall.

"Commencing the testing of Aaron Nox. You may begin!" The crowd was still laughing. Still pointing. The boy simply stood in place. Then his head finally rose, and his gaze swept through the crowd. For some reason, it settled on me. Vaelin stirred once more. My right hand twitched with an urge I stamped down in the next breath. What is it, Vaelin? I asked. The Godblade did not answer. Not that I had expected him to. The boy turned back to the examiner, and took a step forward. His arms hung at his sides.

His stride was even.

"Boy, if you have a weapon, you should draw it," the man said, arms still folded. The boy said nothing. He simply kept walking, until there were only a few feet left between him and the examiner.

"Boy, you have one chance," the man growled. His eyes flicked to the laughing crowd, and then back.

"Do not take this testing lightly." His face had gone red as he spoke. Even if his entire job was to stand there and take whatever came, I supposed this might feel like an insult. The boy put his hand on the man's waist. I felt no mana. No stirring. Nothing at all. I blinked, and in one moment the two of them were standing at the center of the ring, and in the next the man was shooting away, his back slamming into the ring's raised edge. The examiner grunted once, then fell to one knee.

He coughed, and there was blood. There were no laughs now. No pointed fingers. There was only silence. The boy's gaze found me in the crowd one more time. Then he turned, and walked out of the ring. Only when he had left did the man at the side remember his duty.

"A-Aaron Nox…pass," he said, and his murmur was more than loud enough to carry through a hall gone quiet.

"What the hell was that?" Violet was muttering to herself.

"I didn't even see anything."

"Aziah, is this…?" I heard the Princess whisper. The First Sword nodded, slowly. The silence did not last. It broke apart into a hundred small mutters, all of them running over one another.

"-did you see him move-""-never seen old Rockwick move like that-" The examiner picked himself up off the ring's edge. He rolled his shoulder once, spat to the side, and walked back to the center. To the man's credit, when he folded his arms again, his boredom looked almost convincing. The man with the ledger cleared his throat, and this time his voice came out remarkably steady.

"Sharon Nox. Step into the ring." The girl stepped in, and I recognized her too. The same flowing white robes, the same faint blue markings, hair cropped so short I had once mistaken her for bald. Where the boy had kept his eyes on the floor, she was looking anywhere and everywhere else. Her gaze moved across the crowd openly.

"So this is what passes for an examination?" she said, glancing around once more. I felt her gaze catch on me, just as the boy's had. She smirked, and then turned back to the examiner.

"Hey, old man. How about we make this more fun?"

"Old man?" The man scowled.

"Oh, your ears work at least. Great! Then how about we have a real examination?"

"Kid, don't be stupid," the man said.

"Just because you're from that place and have a chip on your-""That place?" The girl's smile died, and what replaced it was a look of complete blankness.

"You won't even say the name then, you pig? Fine. Let's hope you only cough out a little blood this time." I saw the First Sword stir. I saw her own left hand twitch. It was the same twitch that lived in my right hand. I moved closer to her. Sere moved with me.

"You know something about this," I said, quiet enough for her alone. The woman looked at me, then back at the ring. She slowly nodded.

"You felt something. The same as I did." Again, it was not a question. The woman was straightforward, and so I would be straightforward with her.

"I did," the First Sword confirmed. I waited. The Princess looked at me, then nudged the First Sword in the side.

"Come on, Aziah. You can tell her." Somewhere to the side, I heard the examiner call out.

"Begin!" The First Sword's face did not move for a long time. Then, finally, she sighed.

"What do you know of the North Bairam campaign?"