The wait was making Casimir’s gut twist itself into knots. The others staring at him while he was the only one sitting did not help either. They looked at him like he was a leper, too freakish to ignore but too contagious to get close. No one spoke, barely breathing in like that risked contracting whatever sickness Casimir exhaled.
His hands shook so he put them in his lap.
The Cult of the Delving Wyrm had taught Casimir that fear was a warning, not a reality. That warning existed for the simple reason of preventing injury. It was the body’s way of protecting itself, but the body was only meat and bone. It did not reason, it reacted. He felt fear because his body was responding to stress, to the eyes on him in the room and the scenarios he imagined, but the message had been received. The sensation had no more purpose, but it kept hijacking his focus.
Casimir had a choice now. He could leave the fear to its own devices, allow it to paralyze his muscles and whip his heart into a brutal pace, or he could face it. Master himself. If stress was embraced, the resulting fears could be transmuted into exhilaration. Nervousness made into a friend that would sharpen his mind and body. Matter was not the only thing that could be warped, and the Transmute Skill was one step on the way to the only Skill Casimir really wanted from the System.
For now, the alchemy of Casimir’s own mind was all that he could alter. Just his determination to control his own actions. The first step to control was to admit what was frightening so that it could be recognized.
I am afraid because I cannot escape my age and my failures. I am a year older than most others and I’ve played the Academy’s games three times before, and this will make four. If I go home with nothing, my family falls apart. If I quit, I am everything my mother said I was. My fear is that this will bring me nothing but suffering for the same results.
The next step in the Radicalist cult’s process was to abandon the certainty of the future and the shame of the past. The second had always been hard for him. Salvaging this would require him to accomplish that though. The teachings said that to fixate on one dark timeline was to be blind to victories in all others.
I can’t know for sure what might happen, but if I had done nothing I would not have passed. There’s no way to back out of this now that Kaczmarek sent out a student assistant to fetch the priest, and there’s no punishment that will hurt more than what’s already lost. If I can get something out of this I win, and if I can make the Academy lose in any way then I have won more than I would have. Casimir thought.
The final piece was to define a purpose and let it consume you. Casimir did not need to think hard about that one. All of his previous attempts he had blamed himself. This time was too far.
I’ve tried playing along, but if my first time here damned me, I might as well make my farewell to this vile place a spectacle. Casimir decided.
As Casimir looked at the boys and girls drawn into a warped crescent around him now, he did not feel like dying man or an animal in a zoo anymore. His daring was a magnet that pushed and pulled their attention. Power that commanded. No one that the other candidates had ever seen in these examinations had been willing to challenge the proctors. There was always too much at stake and just enough hope allowed to exist. For the first time, the Academy was on the back foot. Not just the institution, Luka Kaczmarek was off balance.
He watched the male proctor pace. Whatever internal war Casimir had just won; Luka was losing one of his own. The proctor’s veins stood out and he was gnashing his teeth together while walking back and forth in the classroom’s front. Whenever Kaczmarek broke out of his frenzy to look at Casimir, the proctor’s stare flipped between seething and emptiness. It was like he was not even seeing the boy, just picturing whatever vengeance would be unleashed. The tenseness of the man’s jaw and the redness of his cheeks twisted his face into ugly absurdity. A gargoyle more than a man.
Casimir resisted the urge to laugh. Old Luka looks like he modeled for half of the clay abominations we made today.
When Kaczmarek happened to make eye contact again, the laugh slipped out.
“I should bash your skull in now. I really should.” Kaczmarek said, rushing to Casimir’s desk and seizing it with as tight a grip as he had with the speaker’s podium.
“Go on then. I just wish I could be there for when the priest arrives to find me dead and the blood on your hands after you summoned him all the way here from the Spire.” Casimir said.
The proctor lifted the desk up and then slammed it down, but turned and went back to the front. Beaten. Held off for now. The teenagers in the room stared at Casimir like he was the first person to discover fire. The focus was refreshing. It felt like he was a man dying of thirst and the first drop of water had fallen from his canteen onto his tongue. Seizing the moment made him feel alive for the first time in forever. Rising from a deep sleep. If this was what being truly awake was like, he never wanted to dream again.
A knock came from the door.
“Let him in, let him in, Eleni.” Kaczmarek ordered the other proctor.
When the priest arrived, Casimir knew this man was special for two reasons. First, the moment the newcomer entered the room Kaczmarek’s face fell. Second, something unnatural flooded inside when the priest stepped in. Unseen energy that caused a tingling sensation to dance in the skin. Pins and needles, like when an arm fell asleep after being still for too long or having the circulation cut off. Even physically, the priest was unusual to Casimir. He was dark-skinned despite living in a sunless world, and golden tattoos of cuneiform splashed across his face and hands. For clothing, the priest wore a brown robe. It was thick enough to guard off the cavern mists, but too rough to be comfortable, leaving no room for vanity.
“I have been summoned.” The priest said.
Kaczmarek looked dismayed at who exactly had answered the call. Gathering his nerve, the proctor opened his mouth anyways to speak a thousand venomous accusations. Perhaps the proud examiner found his tongue with too much weight to move, because someone else spoke first.
“Yes, I called for you.” Casimir said, forcing himself to keep looking straight into the priest’s gaze and not at the sweating, reddened mess nearby.
“What?” The proctor said.
“Did you?”
“Yes.” Casimir answered his savior. “I did.”
“No, he did not. This brat is attempting to make a fool out of our sacred institutions! He’s lying right to your face! Talentless scum unfitting of even your scorn, Barasa.” Kaczmarek said.
‘Of even your scorn?’ Not ‘unfitting even a moment of your scorn?’
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It was an odd way to phrase it. An insulting one.
“If he is unfitting for my scorn, perhaps you shouldn’t have called for my judgment, Kaczmarek.” Barasa replied, picking up on the same disrespect that Casimir had.
The proctor gaped wide like Casimir’s first attempt at a bowl.
“I called for you, holy one.” Casimir said.
“Are you lying to me, boy?” Barasa the priest said.
“Yes! Yes, he is.” Proctor Kaczmarek shouted.
“No.” Casimir said.
“Explain this contradiction to me then.” Barasa said.
“Proctor Kaczmarek was the one to suggest it, sir, but I was the one that told him to do it and the last to speak on the matter. He intended to frighten me into submission by using your holy office as an idle threat. A bludgeon in our argument.” Casimir said, amazed even as he spoke.
“You little-”
“Silence, Kaczmarek, or I will have you wait outside while I question this boy. Now then, what argument was this?”
“The exact nature of my work as an offering to those Above.” Casimir said, presenting his clay figures.
The priest bent his back to examine them and then straightened to glance around at the other desks. It felt performative to Casimir, like he already knew the rules and yet was making a show of figuring out what was required.
“I see you’re the only child here with four complete objects.” Barasa was starting to look less friendly.
Kaczmarek stepped in again. “He pretends to care about holiness, if you do not punish the boy, his sin will corrupt us all.”
The priest’s expression tightened with annoyance at the sound of the ravings.
“Out.” He said to the proctor without even looking at the other man.
“I have a right to be here under the Academy’s treaty with the Ascendancy, and you cannot remove me without a formal Writ of Dismissal handed down by your higher ups, Barasa.” Kaczmarek retorted.
“Alright then, Luka, we can play this game if you want. However, you may not enjoy the outcome.” Barasa said.
Casimir’s green eyes narrowed. Do these two know each other personally? How can I use that further for my gain?
The priest refocused on him. “What is your name, my child?”
“Casimir.” He said, leaving out the rest of his full name. It might cause trouble.
“Observe.” The priest paused, his woven hair shifting as he tilted his head. He seemed to be listening to something no one else could.
“Well, Casimir Maksimovich Shuisky, against my normal inclination I will allow you a chance to prove to me this is more than a desperate child’s muddy shambles.” Barasa said. The Skill he had just used had given him Casimir’s full name, and probably much more.
“It is all deception and lies from him! You can’t be this blind, Barasa.” Spittle flew from the proctor’s lips.
Casimir could have hugged Luka, every word from the instructor’s fat mouth made the priest more willing to let someone else win. Even if he shouldn’t have.
“The task was rigged against us from the start with shortened times than we were told and a task we weren’t trained for.” Casimir began, starting a sympathetic background before diving deeper.
Barasa shrugged. “So you were being examined for your ability to undergo pressure.”
“Exactly! Just as I designed it.” Kaczmarek said, as loud and boastful as ever.
The priest gave an odd half smile at that.
“No.” Casimir said.
“No? You would say that you know the intention of the design better than its own maker?” Barasa asked.
“Not better than its maker. I’d love to meet them someday to discuss it.” Casimir said.
We both know that Kaczmarek didn’t write the plans for this. Spilled synth-caff all over them, maybe. Casimir thought.
It was clear that the priest thought the same because he moved onwards, paying no more heed to the proctor.
“What then, is the purpose?” Barasa said, rubbing at his curly beard.
“The most striking feature of it is the lack of tools or proper materials. Combined with a lack of expertise and short time, no one here is making anything that has technical merit. The only way to say anything of value with the clay is by disregarding surface assumptions.” Casimir said.
“And you chose to create value by involving the gods in a university application?” Barasa asked.
“They’re representations of mortal life. I chose to frame them by the relationships between them, divinity just took its natural place above it all. The god here is not a mere additive, it is elevated by the human stand-in’s subservience. The ugliness of the man heightens his ruler’s majesty, and the god redefines the rest.”
“Clever and creative, but not enough.” Barasa said.
What? Casimir’s heart froze.
“Had this been a normal investigation into civilian matters, some overzealous potter or kindly grandmother taken to sculpting, I would have allowed it to be taken to a minor shrine to be housed…” Barasa trailed off.
“But?” Casimir said, the high of the moment plummeting to a new low.
“But this in an official call on Academy matters. Lenience now would buy you worse punishment later, and my interference would inevitably be questioned. Unfortunately, there is more to the holy possession of idols than an artist’s vision.” Barasa said.
Proctor Kaczmarek looked the happiest that Casimir had ever seen the sour jerk.
“My Perception stat would be enough to see if there was something sacred in your work without even bothering to Observe it. With that, I have to recommend a failing grade and a symbolic barring from ever attending the Academy. Your age makes it pointless, but it may cool some hot heads enough that I can drop the charges of blasphemy.” The priest said.
“Justice.” Kacmarek said with glee, rubbing his sweaty palms together.
The priest stared at him for a long moment. The tension seemed almost on the verge of a fistfight.
Why do they hate each other so much? I mean, I get why you would dislike Old Luka after two minutes of being around him, but these are supposed to be disciplined professionals. Casimir wondered.
“Incidentally…” Barasa said, trailing off. “This would make you a free agent beholden to no one’s claim...”
“What are you doing?” Kaczmarek said. His gray eyes bulged. “Wasting the gift on this one?”
“It’s not a gift or an award or an apprenticeship. Not in the Ascendancy. It is, as always, an investment that will pay dividends and interest back later.”
“You really are as much of a fool as ever, no different than when you failed out of the Academy.” Luka said.
That sealed the priest’s decision. “On your knees.”
“What?” Casimir replied, confused.
“You are before an [Authority]. Kneel.” The words came from the priest’s mouth, but his lips did not line up with the sound and the inhumanity of the voice was unsettling. Casimir moved through the aisles and then knelt before the priest. Barasa rolled up his right sleeve to reveal letters and numbers that glowed with the same shade of blue that Casimir imagined the sky must have been long ago. The numbers were too bright to make out, but he could see the letters. And what a sight they were.
STR. VIT. CHA. PER. FOR. DEX.
Casimir could have stared into them forever, even if it would blind him.
The feeling of liquid pouring down his face brought him back to his senses, returning to reality to find that blood was pouring from his nose. Had Casimir been hit? No. Being this close to the System’s markers was just too much for a human to handle. And now someone was speaking to him.
“Sir?” Casimir said, still caught in the haze, wiping away the blood with an unsteady hand.
“Do you swear to serve the Ascendancy, the loyal servants of the Anunnaki and the stewards of sinful mankind?” Barasa asked him.
Who knew what responsibilities that might bring? What acts the Ascendancy might require?
It’s for Ekaterina. Do it for her.
“Yes.” Casimir said.
Barasa’s tattooed hand pressed against Casimir’s forehead. He wondered if it was an accident that the two of them mirrored the pottery scene that Casimir had crafted.
“Then know your true worth through Numeralization.” The priest’s brown eyes flashed with an inner glow and something electric threaded from the Barasa’s heart and through his arm. A spark of infinity. That seed of potential set fire to Casimir’s soul, burning away the protective blinders of sanity. He did not look up towards the cavern’s heights to glimpse the unseen sky or down into the roots of the world. Instead, Casimir looked beyond it all. Beyond space, time, rationality.
A glimpse of the limitless void was all that would fit into mortal neurons, but it was enough to perceive a presence. An entity. Something that noticed him before turning its attention away to more important matters, something that saw Casimir like the boy would perceive an ant crawling along the ground. In six places, the skin on Casimir’s inner arm split open to let sky-blue radiation free. The blaze of Dreadshine.
//////
Casimir Maksimovich Shuisky
Stats: (Unallocated)
-STR:0
-VIT:0
-CHA:0
-PER:0
-FOR:0
-DEX:0
Skills: Unlocked
Traits: Shuisky Heir, Inverted Human
Allegiances: Shuisky Family, Cult of the Delving Wyrm, The Ascendancy