Toren Daen

I watched the vicars on the podium as young men and women lined up, anticipation and desperation in the air. The results of this ceremony could change lives. The people’s future was balanced on the edge of a knife.

If they obtained a single rune, they were free of this place. Free of poverty and starvation; free of their oppression.

I was currently crouched on a nearby rooftop, observing the ritual from afar. From what I had been told by Renea Shorn’s mages, I had been explicitly barred from receiving a rune from these men.

The vicar in charge, a man I didn’t recognize, was wearing the voluminous bestowment robes and hefting a familiar staff. I knew how they worked, at least partially. Gideon would eventually decipher the interplay of mana and aether between the robes and staff that allowed the bestowal of spellforms.

An empty canal snaked behind the vicar’s raised platform. It looked like it hadn’t had running water through it in years. Rubble and refuse piled nearly to the rim, tarnishing one of Fiachra’s architectural wonders.

I watched a family break down as their teenage daughter failed to awaken a rune. The vicar dismissed her immediately, poorly concealing a scoff as the girl sobbed into her parents’ thin arms.

It was a strange thing to internalize. Every failed bestowal was a nail in the coffin for these people’s futures. I just watched a girl’s entire life be dictated by a small rod of wood and robes of cloth.

Back on Earth, the kind of things that determined futures in such a definitive way were usually traumatic incidents. I once knew a young man who was paralyzed from the neck down after a motor accident. He would never love, never work, and never find a career.

In Alacrya, not becoming a mage was just as definitive as a broken spine. The possibility of water was wiped away. These people would be just like the empty canal behind the vicar.

And it was so indiscriminate. A young boy managed to get a mark of a caster, but he was the only one for this entire section of East Fiachra. He would be elevated beyond his peers.

Did he work more than them? I asked myself distantly. Did that boy somehow deserve his spellform? Did he struggle any more than all of his friends?

And yet I knew the likely answer.

The rate of mages coming out of East Fiachra was far below one in five. I suspected it was closer to the one in a hundred of Dicathen. Agrona’s system had managed to systematically funnel people with little magical potential into these communities, only granting those with mana the ability to improve their lives.

It may take thousands of years, but eventually, this continent would only have mages. The unads would burn away under their boots.

When the final child was called forth and failed to manifest a rune, I dropped from my perch, drawing my Rat’s mask into my dimension ring. I weaved through the crowd, moving with a single-minded purpose toward the platform.

I was feeling a vague sense of disgust at this entire affair. The vicar was preaching about how Agrona may bless these lessers if they took his teachings into their hearts, and that they were the only ones to blame for this failure.

I knew it was a lie.

“--And so, give thanks to your Sovereigns!” the vicar said, hoisting his bestowal staff into the air. “For they have granted you the opportunity to receive their gifts! It is only you who can take it. Do not shun his teachings. Do not close your minds to his truth, else you will be left empty and abandoned, as so many today have been!”

“And how do you know the High Sovereign’s will so well?” I asked with barely concealed contempt from the crowd. “You’re just as mortal as the rest of us.”

The vicar’s movements paused as he scanned the crowd with angry eyes, finally finding my defiant stare. “Ah, and I suppose you failed to awaken a rune yourself, boy?” the vicar said with a faux sympathetic air. “You should worry for yourself. If you continue to question the Sovereigns’ chosen, you will never enter the path of magic.”

In other words, I thought with gritted teeth, Shut up and obey us, or we won’t give you magic.

I had been deliberately muffling my mana presence. From what I could sense of the vicar, my core was of a higher purity than his, which made it exceptionally difficult for him to sense my mana at all. He thought I was an unad.

I flared my mana, making the man miss a step as he tried to continue his speech. The men and women milling around me lurched away like I was a beast with its hackles raised. “You didn’t answer my question, vicar,” I said. These priests irritated me on a fundamental level: their holier-than-thou airs, their stranglehold on the people of East Fiachra, and their casual dismissal of people’s futures. “How do you know the High Sovereign’s will?”

A hush fell over the crowd, all eyes watching my confrontation with fearful attention. The air was taught as a bowstring; the only requirement for an arrow to be loosed was a slip of the finger.

“He has given us his words,” the vicar sneered, trying to take back control of the situation. “His absolute will has been handed down to the Doctrination for nearly two millennia. And so it is, and so it ever shall be. And questioning us, you impudent boy, is akin to questioning the Sovereigns themselves,” he snarled, trying to loom higher from his platform.

The man was thicker around the waist; not powerfully built like Darrin or a wall of a man like Jared. He was unimpressive.

I shook my head. “I think I am owed a single bestowment today,” I said. “I am a resident of East Fiachra, after all.”

The vicar’s eyes trailed me up and down, resting particularly long on the signet ring on my finger. “The church does not owe you anything, mage,” he said, a vindictive light in his eyes. “In fact, let this be a lesson to you. You shall have no bestowment for daring to question our Sovereign’s will.”

At his words, though, a few nearby vicars began to move through the crowds toward me. They parted like a sea, allowing a straight path.

“And one of his Doctrines is that the strong rule the weak, isn’t it?” I asked, feeling my mana thrum in my veins. Lady Dawn shared in my anger. Hers was of a different quality; for a different reason than I could discern. But our shared anger cemented my own emotions.

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“That is inviolable truth,” the vicar on the platform sneered. “One that none can escape from.”

The vicars reached me. One laid his hand on my shoulder, some sort of spell primed on his palm. Lightning skittered over my telekinetic shroud, each tendril trying to worm its way through my protections like a snake.

But the spell was ineffective. My barrier shrugged off the attack as if it didn’t exist.

The vicar only had time to let out a grunt of surprise before I swung my fist backward, my knuckles cracking against his nose. He collapsed without another sound, knocked out cold. One of the other vicars tried to swing a heavy club at me, a crude thing designed to crack bone.

I caught it with my bare palm, then yanked it from the shocked vicar’s grip with a pull of telekinesis. The cudgel, now under my telekinetic control, swung low against the vicar’s thighs, impacting with a meaty thud.

He screamed as he fell, clutching his leg. The last vicar tried to throw a shard of ice at me, but a quick flare of telekinesis smashed it midair, scattering shards of glittering ice into the snow. Another quick punch from my mind made the vicar crumple.

The fat priest on the platform scrambled backward as I cleared the distance with a single bound, peering at him as a dog does food. A pull on his leg with telekinesis hauled him in front of me. “And what does it mean if I am stronger than you?” I asked. “Does that invalidate the High Sovereign’s favor in you? Would I receive it instead?”

“I am a vicar of the Doctrination!” the man screeched in terror. “You will unhand me at once!”

I dropped him, but his head cracked off the hardwood platform. “Tell Mardeth that he made a mistake making me his enemy,” I hissed. “And remember this day, priest. Remember what it is like to be weak.”

I dropped from the platform, the rest of the common folk parting for me as if I were Noah and they were the sea.

—

I stared at the Relictombs portal. I had signed on for a solo ascent, much to the nervous receptionist's adamant requests that I reconsider. I had told the Rats I would be gone on a longer ascent, but not that I planned on going alone.

The events of earlier in the day still weighed heavily on my mind. It seemed Renea Shorn’s mages weren’t wrong. From how the vicar recognized my signet ring and immediately made an excuse to deny me a bestowal, I was sure I wouldn’t be allowed to receive a rune anyway.

I wasn’t sure how much of an effect that would have on my growth. My spellcasting method was unique and versatile, but runes had undeniable advantages. But for some reason, after mages reached their eighteenth year of age, the likelihood of receiving a rune during a bestowal dropped exponentially. The only sure way to receive a rune afterward was through Agrona’s Obsidian Vault.

I sighed, pushing those thoughts from my mind.

I was heavily stocked on provisions, just as last time. Darrin had wired me my cut of the accolades, which was actually a sizable increase to my bank account. I’d used that money to buy myself some dark mana beast leather armor to protect my torso and arms.

I wondered what kind of effect ascending alone would have on the Relictombs. With people, there had been a noticeable change. Would that be more pronounced without ascending partners?

“Get a move on!” a man said with irritation from behind me. It seemed I had held up the line with my contemplation.

I coughed, then stepped through the shimmering portal.

I was glad that the zone I stepped into was not sweltering like my first. It was colder than the second floor of the Relictombs, but not freezing as Fiachra was this time of year.

The sky above me was a cloudy gray, creating an overcast shadow over the land. Stark-white trees armed with a dozen grasping branches stretched toward the sky with gnarled limbs. The grass under my feet was dead, adding to the eerie ambiance.

And I could not hear a single sound, even with my enhanced ears. The wind did not blow. The birds did not chirp. And there were no leaves in the trees to rustle.

I turned in a slow circle, inspecting my surroundings further. I spotted no beasts, and I felt no presence watching me.

I frowned. There was a thin dirt path leading north, snaking up and out of sight.

What do I think the odds are that that is the path to the portal? I asked myself. I sighed, then began to walk along the path.

But as much as I planned to grow through completing these trials, I had another objective in particular for this ascent. First, however, I needed to ascertain a better grasp of my surroundings before I dove straight into it.

I followed the path for a few minutes, keeping a wary eye on my surroundings. Where at first felt no presence watching me, as I ventured further from the portal location, the more I got the uncomfortable feeling I was being spied on.

But no matter where I looked, all I saw were the spindly white trees.

I narrowed my eyes. Were their branches pointing toward me?

The Relictombs were dangerous. They sought to kill you with every method they could, the zones themselves primed to convey their insight in the most brutal ways possible. This created an expectation in ascenders. You stepped into a zone and braced for an attack. Your life was in danger, and so you would fight.

But the lack of an obvious threat in this zone caused my tension to ratchet up. If I couldn’t see the threat, that meant the threat had seen me first. There had to be a danger here, whether that be a puzzle or an enemy to fight. But being uncertain and unaware only served to make me more paranoid.

After a while of walking without result, however, I gingerly sat myself down on the side of the road. I steered clear of the endless, empty trees, instead pulling out some of my rations. I gagged internally as I forced myself to slurp down the protein paste that was so common for ascenders to carry.

It had an absurd amount of calories packed into such a tiny tube. It had to: after all, the target consumer might fight for literal hours on end, expelling and burning energy. Apparently, function took priority over form.

I was thinking about the zone when Lady Dawn appeared looking at me sternly. “Contractor,” she said. “You must remain more wary. Look down.”

I blinked, confused, then did as my bond suggested.

The grass, which I previously thought was dead, was growing slowly toward me, inching at a slow but inevitable pace.

I jumped back to the dirt road, instinctively sending a small fireball at the dry brown grass.

It caught immediately, and the grass screamed.

I clutched my ears, the sound piercing straight through my enhanced eardrums. I snarled as the burning foliage’s screams echoed through the empty zone.

When my head cleared, a small, scorched patch marked where the grass had tried to slither toward me. But the real difference was in the trees.

The branches of the forest were all pointed toward me. Each spindly, wiry limb of white wood was directed at me like the accusing fingers of a judge, condemning me for some unspoken sin.

I took a step back, my eyes widening. The entire, endless forest around me seemed to have jointly singled me out, judging me in silent whispers and looming authority.

I shuffled along the path once more, my protein paste forgotten. The trees became more and more dense as my path continued, and the brown grass had a new ominous tinge. The trees were old, gnarled men, hunched over from age but still dangerous.

Whenever I looked at the sky or took a glance at the ground in front of me, the trees' slender branches were pointing at my new location, somehow having shifted without making a single sound. They felt outright malevolent as I peered around, my hand clutching the hilts of Oath and Promise in white-knuckled grips.

Lady Dawn, I thought with a hint of anxiety, I think I need to move up my timetable.

The phoenix appeared before me with a raised brow. “And what do your plans involve, Contractor?”

I licked my lips, sparing one more glance at the static trees. “I need to learn to harness my Phoenix Will.”