If only I hadn’t gone shopping.

If only I had the coin to pay the broker.

If only I hadn’t slept, and looked for answers sooner.

If only, if only, if only.

A woman from Earth was dead.

Oliver was shaking uncontrollably, still surrounded by the crowd.

A public beheading. Cheering spectators.

“IN THE NAME OF THE EMPIRE!”

Everyone pumped their fists and cheered.

Oliver looked down at his feet… he was wearing… sneakers…

Oliver started hyperventilating, the colourful blue and yellow banners blurred in his vision.

Yesterday, he had felt real danger.

Today, he felt dread. It was sickening.

He stumbled out of the crowd, shell-shocked.

Don’t cry, keep moving.

Nobody can know.

Careless, so careless.

It’s my fault. It happened again.

I failed, I lost.

Don’t cry, get out of sight.

Someone bumped into Oliver, he barely noticed.

He started down one alley, down the next, further and further into darker and darker parts of the city. He fell to his hands and knees and vomited. He scraped at the ground, rubbing the dirt on his shoes. He didn’t want to stay still, he couldn’t.

—

Some time later, Oliver stumbled into a bar.

Fell into a seat, “A drink, please.”

“You look terrible, boy. What are you looking for?”

“Something strong.”

“That’ll set you back 9 copper.”

Oliver reached for his money pouch, and found only air. He attempted to absently feel around for about five seconds, then looked down. “Oh.”

“Sorry, boy, no coin, no drink.”

“Can I just… Sit here a while.”

Now I’m really screwed…

Oliver replayed the execution in his head. His knuckles were white.

He started getting angry. Not at himself, not at the guardsman. He was distracting himself.

He thought about his coin pouch. Someone took my fucking money.

The barkeeper noticed Oliver’s increasingly violent expression, “Boy, that’s time enough, I have a business, move along.”

Oliver’s eyes were quivering with intensity as he looked into the barkeeper’s. The barkeeper was not impressed, “Move along.”

Oliver did as he was told, and as he opened the door-

“-eed to get to the ministry now. The entrance test starts in an hour.”

A young man, lanky, dressed in some of the cleaner robes Oliver had seen around the city. One of those expensive looking bags. I would know about bags.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it, you’ve been talking about it for the last seven days. Calm down, you studied properly.”

The two were sitting in one of the booths near the back of the establishment.

“It won’t matter if I'm late. The finance ministry only accepts the best of the best.”

The best of the best.

Oliver’s mind was numb.

—

Oliver shadowed the lanky young man, who was too preoccupied with being late to notice, all the way to the inner part of the city.

The whole way, the execution practically flashed across Oliver’s vision. He wasn’t safe in this city, he had been careless. I am nobody here. That needs to change.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The applicant was right to be stressed, it took 45 minutes to get there through the bustle of citizenry.

There had to be as many as a hundred other people in front of the imposing stone building facade, ‘Finance Ministry’ carved simply above each of its numerous entryways.

The crowd was an array of all demographics, tall, small, young, old. If there was any difference to the rest of the population meandering the streets or going about their work, many wore formal looking clothes, like they were dressing up for a medieval interview– which they were.

A fanciful voice spoke over the crowd, quieting the mass. Sporting a tailored blue coat, a middle aged fellow with a long face, spindly body, and handlebar moustache made his appearance.

“Applicants, the time has come again for some of you to be inducted into the prestigious Finance Ministry. I know many of you have waited for this day, but be reminded, we can only accept one of you into our ranks. For a government position such as this, we will not accept anything less than the utmost of you. If you would please organise yourselves in front of the officials holding signs.”

Out of the open doors, adjusting their navy waistcoats and peaked caps, ten men and women of the finance ministry made an appearance, each holding a written number up on paper signs.

The paper seemed exceptionally high quality for what Oliver might have expected of the equivalent time period. That seemed to be the case for quite a few things in this city.

“Please line up behind the official holding the number you were given when you submitted your application.”

Oliver hesitated, “Mmmm.” The mass of bodies started shuffling forwards.

There were ten Officials with signs. Oliver had come here with the scent of opportunity. Opportunity was another word for safety, safety in stability, safety in power. Each Official had something like ten to fifteen people gathering around them.

One of them had marginally less, there was nothing else for it.

He lined up behind number seven, the smell of ink and paper accompanied the other eleven people doing the same. Each with a bag not dissimilar to his.

Oliver hadn’t made preparations, given he didn’t even know what this was - he wasn’t even sure he was able to take this test anyway.

The tidy young woman with long dark hair spoke. “I am Official Emilia” Her eyes swept across the group.

“The test which you will be sitting involves advanced mathematics and logical deduction exercises. When we reach the assessment area for this grouping, and you are set up, I will begin announcing problems aloud. You are to solve these without the assistance of magical tools.”

A few of the assembled people murmured, but most didn’t seem surprised. Some people, caught off guard, one tried to hand theirs over. Oliver was taken aback that there were even magical tools for maths, the ones that he saw looked like little panels of sliding switches.

The Official looked at the visibly confused ones, noted something down, and waved the tool away, “Even if you have them, we will be testing in a magic suppression environment. If you have adverse reactions to that kind of thing, tell me now.”

She waited, “Alright… It seems like we have one extra, one of you has the wrong number.”

“Ma’am, I have something to point out in that respect.” The guy Oliver had followed spoke up. He pointed at Oliver, “This fellow tailed me here. I doubt he’s applied.”

I’m not as sneaky as I thought.

All gathered turned to Oliver. Not wanting the situation to get away from him, and partly absent minded due to the traumatic events of the day, he told the best kind of lie.

The truth. “Uh. Well, I think I’m quite good at maths, organisation, that sorta thing. I am new to the city- and, uh, overheard you at a bar. Assumed I might be a good fit.”

Official Emilia didn’t seem amused.

The young scholar scoffed at him, “I doubt you are more than a hobbyist playing addition and subtraction, please spare us your presence, the other groups are already moving.”

A… A challenge.

Oliver’s demeanour changed, previously withdrawn– there was now a sort of intensity.

Some of that… energy, “Try me, buddy.”

Was it an overreaction? Certainly. But Oliver was bottled up, and in need of distraction.

The Official narrowed her eyes. Some of the peanut gallery picked up on the change.

Not the young scholar, “Pfft, this will be amusing. Alright, here’s an easy one.” He spread his hands, “If a merchant with six gold pieces were to hire the services of an adventuring team for four nights, at eight silver and two copper a night, how much would the merchant be left with afterw-?”

It was by no means a difficult calculation, but Oliver felt the energy, the mana, helping him along, speeding up his thoughts. He answered it before the scholar finished speaking. “272 copper. Two gold, seven silver, and two copper.”

The young scholar paused. “... Correct.”

The last group other than theirs was departing down the street. Where? Isn’t this the Finance Ministry?

Official Emilia spoke after the short silence, “Come, then. We have wasted time, follow me.”

She led the group away from the Ministry, and as they went even further into the city, Oliver thought about what he had just done. He wasn’t usually capable of that. He knew other people were, after practice, but he hadn’t practised.

When he was being chased, when Olaric had done that magical exercise, and now this. It was mana, magical power… Cheating? No, Oliver felt a bit less sharp than before. He’d felt more tired than he maybe should have in the forest. There was a cost. Reminded, he checked his side, “Hmmm,” it was just a scab, didn’t look infected.

He got some funny looks for lifting his shirt, but he ignored them.

He looked up, and found their destination. Larger than that building Olaric had taken him to by multiple magnitudes, or the ministry, a large domed building sat at the crossroads of the city’s main arteries. It was like some kind of roman structure, at least in its foundation. It may have been symmetrical in the past, but now it was a patchwork of extensions and different building materials.

It had various entrances, some more official looking than others. They passed through one of the bigger ones. The smooth wooden hallway was intermittently lit with warm ceiling lights, which was natural to Oliver, so it took him a few seconds to single them out.

He looked at them, then at the people walking with him, one of them was smiling. They probably thought Oliver was some country schmuck, little did they know.

Occasionally letting some robed people squeeze past, they navigated further into the structure, passing doors and offshoot hallways which had little regularity or pattern. A confusing building.

The group came to a particular door, they had lost sight of the other groups by this point, but Official Emilia directed everyone into the room. Oliver glanced around, benches stretched from end to end, split down the middle by a simple walkway. Pretty simple as classrooms went. It was also artificially lit, although more by the glow of circuit-like engravings on the walls.

The sensation of magic surprised Oliver, like the test Olaric had done, it was like being smothered by imaginary carpet. The Official handed everyone a piece of paper as they passed.

“Everybody, please spread yourselves among the desks evenly. Trust that even if you do manage to cheat your way into the ministry, you will not survive long, I suggest against it.” She smiled.

Oliver slid into a seat near the back of the room, remembered he had nothing to write with, and turned to ask the person next to him.

It was the young scholar.

Oliver turned back and searched his belongings. He did have a ballpoint pen, but as he looked around, everyone else was holding some manner of quill.

The execution replayed itself in his head. He tensed.

My pants are passable, and nobody has noticed my shoes…

“It looks like everyone is prepared, let’s begin.”

Nobody’s supposed to look at my work anyway.

Oliver hunched over his paper, trying to hide his modern pen.

The test began.