A door that Yenx hadn’t noticed opened up, all of a sudden, and another Guilder entered the room.

The door itself had blended seamlessly with the painted stone around it, and it had opened by sliding up into the wall above it, giving those inside the Hall of Welcome no hinges to detect.

The woman who entered was another myrmidon, her intensity comparable to Zemp’s. She was a tall, fat human, whose Sigil hung low on her waist, pulled down by a heavy club that dangled from it.

“Uncle Arro,” she called out to the Autarch. “How kind of you to undertake the duty that I’d been assigned.”

He turned a genial smile to her.

“Lemekh,” he said, with no honorific, “I’d quite forgotten that you were supposed to welcome our newest Aspirants. Pray forgive me.”

She hopped up onto the platform alongside him.

“Aspirants,” she said, “I hope that you will engrave the words of the honored Uncle deep within the recesses of your minds. He grants his wisdom but rarely, and we must treasure such pearls of genius as he deigns to drop upon us.”

He gave a fond chuckle, which struck Yenx as probably the least sincere sound he’d heard in his entire, brief, life.

“I leave you,” he said, gesturing grandly with a hand, “In the, hmm, the, no… the adequate hands of Sister Lemekh of Wrathful Party. She might be fine.”

With that, the Autarch hopped down from his perch and marched towards a wall, where another hidden door opened up to receive him.

The Guilder watched in an attitude of aggrieved annoyance until he vanished, then turned back to the waiting Aspirants.

“What did the honored Uncle relate to you?” she asked.

Yenx glanced at the others, met similarly anxious looks.

“If nobody speaks…” began the myrmidon, menacingly.

“Honored Uncle Arro was merely relating the glorious history of the Big Strong Sect!” blurted out the human with the large nose, the one who’d almost spoke during the Autarch’s lecture.

Lemekh scowled a bit at that, then shrugged.

“The past is all very well,” she said, “And when you are graced with a fossil I suppose it is all you can learn. But never forget that Ywekru is only the daughter of Ykenka. The past should be spur and guide to you, but concentrate your thoughts always upon the present.”

She reached down and tapped a gem in her Sigil.

“Speaking of presents,” she said, “I hope that you’ve all done a bit of experimenting with yours. The Sigil of the Guild is a Treasure that many would give their lives for.”

Lemekh gave a mirthless smile.

“Indeed, our Blanked friends here, in a very real sense, did just that. So let’s talk about what you’ve gained, shall we?”

Several people in the crowd nodded eagerly, even the fear of a Guilder insufficient to quell the instinctive lust to learn about these items.

“These are one of the great secrets of the Sect’s might. They allow us to direct the course of our evolution as myrmidons. Once you’ve consumed enough Elixir you can use the Sigil to allocate this power to the attributes you want to strengthen, or the skills that you’ve learned. This will allow you to follow one of the Guild’s Paths, or to strike out and blaze your own. It is a dominant advantage over the wild myrmidons we contend with, although it is believed that the Empire has their own variants.”

Bajj raised a hand, and Lemekh pointed at her.

“Honored Elder Sister, when we bring up the Sigil’s information, we are also granted insight into the progression of others who wear them. Does this mean that they are all talking with one another somehow?”

Lemekh nodded.

“That’s correct, scaly, the Sigils have a variety of abilities when near one another. They will be unlocked as you earn your Glories, and thus the trust of the Sect.”

Bajj raised her hand again, but Lemekh shook her head this time.

“You’ll get more information on the Sigils as you need it, but for now it’s enough to know that it will tell you about yourself, and in a few days you’ll be able to use it to unlock your myrmidon potential. Never take them off, don’t frivolously spend your points and you’ll be fine.”

A female Beastman made a sound that was pretty clearly a dubious snort, but Lemekh disregarded it completely.

“What you all really want to know, I expect,” continued the Guilder, “Is what’s about to happen to you. No reason to preserve any mystery about that, so here we go.”

Lemekh clapped twice, and the door that she’d appeared out of slid back up into the roof, allowing a team of servants to file in, each carrying a goblet in both hands before them.

Yenx reflected that he hadn’t doubted for a second that they were servants. They didn’t have Sigils, and they were naturals. They were all human, however, and from what he’d gathered he’d have expected some of these ‘goblins’. Maybe those weren’t allowed into the fortress.

A goblet was pressed into his hands, the woman who’d given it to him a trembling thing, whose gaze never once left the floor. Her jaw and nose had recently been broken.

“The blood of your people,” said Lemekh, voice soft and reverent, “Yours in the only sense that truly matters, yours in that they belong to you, in that the world has raised you up and cast them down. Shed for you, though they knew it not, enriched by their long lives or their short ones. Drink of it now, take their strength for your own.”

Some part of Yenx imagined that someone might resist, perhaps one of the Aspirants who still had their pasts. He pictured them pushing aside the Guild’s tainted grail, demanding answers and changes.

Stolen novel; please report.

He pictured Lemekh smashing them without batting an eyebrow, saw anew Zemp’s contemptuous speed. No one would refuse. No natural could disobey the Guild.

As soon as the elixir touched his lips, he realized that his imagination had been ridiculous, preposterous. Even if the Guild were not a factor, there was no way he could stop himself from draining every last drop.

He’d expected the salty taste of blood, after Lemekh’s little speech, but this was indescribable, so much more than any taste could ever be. The elixir was life itself, decades passing into him with every swallow. It was every pleasure, every pain, passing in seconds and lingering for centuries.

As soon as he drained the last drop he felt a deep longing settle into his bones, and he knew that whatever he’d just become, whatever composite creature resided now within his skin, he would taste the elixir again.

The Beastman who’d snorted before actually choked on hers, coughing and spluttering, and she dropped unhesitatingly to the ground to lick up the splatter from the stones of the floor.

Yenx felt no disdain. If she hadn’t done that he thought he might have. What would have been shameful would have been to let it lie there, to let the fear of licking stone keep you from imbibing more sweet, sweet life.

Lemekh clapped twice more, and the servants collected the goblets before filing back out that same door.

“You’ll get the Elixir once a day, here in this hall,” she said. “After your first classes. I expect there’s no need to remind everyone to be here. That’s also when we’ll be doing any official business that we need everyone to here, for obvious reasons.”

“Classes, Honored Elder Sister?” asked the hook nosed man.

“Indeed, Junior Brother Sool,” she answered, “Heir of the Tripleking or not, you will attend to a Guilder’s instruction every morning, for the next fifteen days. You may elect to learn in the Hall of the Body, the Hall of the Mind, or right here in the Hall of Welcome, as your Path inspires you. After the lesson, you will return here, and receive your Elixir.”

Bajj, seemingly inspired by Sool’s ability to ask questions without raising his hand, dared one of her own.

“What do we do afterwards, Honored Elder Sister?” she asked. “Are there more lessons for us?”

“Perhaps,” said Lemekh, “If you explore the labyrinth, you may find a few more Guilders have decided to drop pearls of insight for you to glean. But you should also use that time to socialize with one another, to bond with your brothers and sisters.”

She clapped twice more, and the servants emerged again.

“The Guild has learned, to our great cost, that individual strength is not enough. The champion on the hill, the Tripleking on his throne, these are not our way. The myrmidons of the Guild live our lives as members of a Party. Four as one, taking on the challenges of the world together. It is these Parties which make up our Sect, and it is as a Party that you will pass through your Paths, or not at all.”

This time the servants were lugging tables with them, while others brought forth sizzling trays of meat, fresh from the fire.

Yenx hadn’t realized that he’d been hungry, knew the sensation only in the most abstract possible way, but the first smell of cooked flesh had him salivating. The elixir had apparently left him ravenous, and he was among the first to set down at one of the tables, making certain to take a seat facing where the Guilder was standing.

“You number forty four in all!”, Lemekh called out. “Blank and sponsored, human and lizardman, all will have the same chances. You will all be taught the same lessons, treated equally, for fifteen days. At the end of that time, we will take seven Parties to the next phase of your training. The others, those who didn’t work hard enough, will become goons, and serve the Guild in that capacity.”

“Thank you, Honored Elder Sister!” said Sool, “Do you have any additional words of guidance for us to engrave within our souls?”

She smirked a bit at the shameless flattery.

“In the Hall of the Body you will learn battle, in the Hall of the Mind, you will learn war, and in the Hall of Welcome you will learn politics. Become familiar with all three, and you will be a myrmidon that none can shun.”

She held up a finger, as though to emphasize that she wasn’t finished.

“But master just one, and you will be a myrmidon that others will seek out. Specialization is the path to power. Walk it well.”

She sat down and picked up a skewer of meat.

Yenx ate in silence for a few moments, letting others take the risk of being the first to speak.

The humans chewed their food, while the Beastmen gnashed and tore at it with bladed teeth. His own instincts drove him to simply place it in his mouth and swallow it whole.

“Hey, big guy,” hissed the human at his elbow, after a few moments had gone by, and the quiet murmurs of their surroundings had become conspicuous enough that Yenx couldn’t keep track of how many people were talking.

He grunted back.

“You gotta be a blank, yeah? No way any Guilder would sponsor a lizardman, yeah?”

Something about the way the man made statements into questions by adding ‘yeah’ to the end of them bothered Yenx, but he contented himself with another grunt.

“So maybe you don’t know what the numbers on the Sigil mean. Maybe you want to ask me about them?”

Yenx looked down at the man, an older fellow with weathered skin. He had a tooth missing in the front of his mouth, which gave him a distinct, crooked grin.

He tried another grunt.

The man made as though to go back to his meal, but his eyes never left Yenx’s.

“Alright, tell me,” he grated out.

“Was that so hard?” he asked. “I’m Ectar Nukla, and you are?”

“Yenx, apparently,” he said.

“Right, yeah,” said Ectar, “Just one name from the Guild. Act like the letters are gonna run out, don’t they?”

Yenx narrowed his eyes.

“At least it kind of rolls off the tongue, right? Yenx… Yenx, doesn’t rhyme with much though.”

“The Treasure,” prodded Yenx, realizing that the little man was highly resistant to non-vocal cues.

“Oh, this Sigil, right!” he said, “So you know how there are numbers by your attributes, yeah? Well, the way it works is that ten is human average, right? Every number away from ten is harder than the next, so a nine or an eleven are a little strange, but a twelve or an eight is further from the nine or eleven than they are from the ten. Get it?”

Yenx wasn’t sure if Ectar had been trying to confuse him by rattling off all those numbers so quickly, but he certainly hadn’t had any trouble following him.

“I get it. How does it work for Beastmen or my kind?”

“I don’t know, don’t think anyone knows, about the lizard folk. My family had no idea that there’d be any of you in this class. But as far as the Beastmen goes, they’ve just got different values as average, yeah?”

“So a Beastman with an 11 is high for a human, but not necessarily for one of his own race? Or does the Sigil know who is wearing it and put the standard at ten for everyone?”

“The first one,” said the Beastman across the table. She was the same one who’d licked her elixir up off the floor.

Yenx gave her a quizzical look.

“I’m weak for my kind,” she said, “No way I’m a fifteen if ten is the midpoint.”

Yenx wasn’t exactly surprised to hear that the Sigils thought that even a weak Beastman was stronger than he was, but it still hurt a bit. He couldn’t exactly be surprised, however. Beastmen were simply enormous, with four limbs on the floor and their bellies about where a humans head would be. It was actually kind of surprising to think that he was almost as strong as one of the behemoths.

“And your name is?” asked Ectar.

“Wemma Plonx,” she said. “My family is treaty pledged with the Sect, I’m the chosen sacrifice for this generation.”

“Sacrifice?” asked Ectar, “Surely such an opportunity-“

He was interrupted by claps from Lemekh’s table, as the Honored Elder Sister summoned the servants to bear the food away.

“One last thing,” she said, “Between now and tomorrow’s classes we aren’t going to be supervising you. Get used to it, nobody has any time to hold your hands. But don’t get clever.”

The world seemed to distort around her, her ordinary myrmidon aura suddenly emphasized and made threatening. It had to be an Art.

“Aspirants who kill one another, or cripple one another, or steal Sigils, don’t get picked, alright? You’ll end up a goon, spend your life in service to the exact same group you tried to bully. As ironic, horrific fates go, it is certainly one.”

Yenx stood as the naturals gathered up the table and started hauling it towards the door that Lemekh had originally come from.

He hadn’t been planning on killing any of his competition, certainly, but he found himself a bit worried that he hadn’t even considered that any of them might have been planning on killing him.

Judging from the scowls on the faces of those around him, he’d been virtually alone in that innocence.