As I made my way through the examination, a single thought dominated my mind.

Easy.

This, all of this, was too easy. How was this meant to prepare us for the World Titan?

The first room of the exam had constituted nothing but a deep, wide pit with spikes at the bottom, separating the entrance side from the exit. It couldn’t have been more than fifty feet across.

I’d just jumped right over it. I hadn’t even needed to use Flash Step.

What was the point of something like that? Was the chasm intended to eliminate those who hadn’t already condensed their Grain? Moreover, how was it fair to those without Mover Blessings? I’d no idea, and so I’d simply forged onwards, befuddled.

The next room was equally straightforward, a smooth corridor whose walls shot arrows at one as they passed through it. I could have deflected them with Entropy, or simply let them hit me, Draconic Blood easily capable of healing my flesh even if they somehow managed to pierce my toughened skin. However, they moved so slowly that dodging alone was sufficient enough to make my way through.

And again, I was dumbstruck.

The receptionist’s speech had frightened me, driven my stomach to clench and tighten, made me feel as if I was in over my head. After all, I’d barely been a Blessed for more than two moons, and now I was pitted against those who’d had years, or perhaps decades, to hone and refine their skills. Learning of the Agoge’s astronomically high death rate had only set me further on edge.

But this was nothing. Nothing.

Were the tests too weak, or was I too strong? Maybe our village had gotten unlucky, and the Labyrinth wasn’t usually as crushing as the first floor we'd encountered? Again, I didn’t know, and so again, I’d pressed forward.

The third room, at least, had made me use something aside from my muscles. Like the others in the exam building, it was quite visually appealing. The walls and floors, much like the structure that enveloped them, were smooth and glossy, almost glassy, and decorated with aesthetically pleasing lines of sparkling azure Entropy. A far cry from those of cobblestone and dirt that had made up the Kobold caverns.

Appearance was the only thing that this third room shared with the first two, however.

This one had clearly been more meticulously designed. It was a small, circular space that forked into two narrow, long hallways similar in length to the one with the arrow traps. At the end of the right-hand hallway, I could just make out the exit door. At the end of the left-hand one, whose entrance appeared as if covered entirely by some manner of shimmering force field, I saw what looked like a large basin filled with water, and a bucket lying beside it.

At the starting end, where I was currently located, stood a statue of a blindfolded, marble angel.

Between her hands she held a small bowl, and upon her chest were engraved the words;

What will you sacrifice? Time, flesh, or riches?

Pressing down on the bowl experimentally caused the exit door, at the end of the rightmost corridor some forty feet away, to slide open. However, unlike the one in the Dungeon, when I lightened the pressure on this bowl even a touch, the exit instantly snapped shut.

Humming, I turned to the left.

I didn’t need to be a Thinker to divine the intended challenge of this room, but the how of it yet eluded me. After all, it wouldn’t take that much time to retrieve the water from the basin, and fill the angel’s bowl.

Tilting my head as a thought occurred to me, I stuck my right hand, the one bearing the Entropic bracelet, through the greenish force field and watched the timer upon it closely.

Immediately, the moment I’d done so, the fifty-eight minutes I had remaining began ticking down as quickly as seconds, and I yanked my hand back. Interesting. This trial seemed much more open-ended than the previous ones. It was probably possible to retrieve the water from the basin before the timer ran out, but only just.

On the other hand, one could, as the angel’s words suggested, cut off some amount of their own flesh if they carried with them healing items.

Then again, any belonging could likely be sacrificed by the contestant in lieu of flesh or water, but I supposed they’d be unlikely to ever get it back. I, in particular, had multiple options. I could use Flash Step to get to the basin and back very quickly. For that matter, it might even be possible for me to depress the angel’s bowl manually, wait for the door to open, and then Flash Step to the other side before it closed. Alternatively, I could place Fang in the bowl, walk through the door, and then re-summon my Soulbound Weapon to my side.

However, all of those options would potentially out me as more than just a Brute, and I’d no idea if I was being watched or not right now.

And besides, none of them were necessary.

Grimacing slightly, in one swift motion, I sliced off my arm at the elbow and plopped it into the bowl. Without delay, the door slid open as my bloodied stump bulged and rippled and a new limb burst forth from it. Cringing, I flexed the freshly-grown hand.

The pain associated with grievous injury no longer bothered me much. I’d spent plenty of time maiming myself on my way to the city, in order to increase my Attunement with Draconic Blood, and each time I’d done so had seen the associated ache decrease. No, now my struggle was a mental one.

It disturbed me.

No matter what, there was something profoundly unsettling about suddenly having nerves and muscles, flesh and tissue where there had previously been none. The Blessing might have healed my body, but it didn’t rewire my brain accordingly and so, for a few dysmorphic moments, I thought I was missing an arm–even though I wasn’t. It was slowly becoming easier, but I doubted it would ever be pleasant.

In any case, if the third room had represented an interesting diversion, then the fourth was a return to form.

It, too, was a long corridor. But unlike the others, this one stretched upwards, many tens of feet into the air. I assumed the way forward was located at the top, but there were no handholds with which one might ascend. Instead, poking out from various locations and intervals across the height of the cylindrical corridor were tiny flamethrowers, little black nozzles built into the walls themselves. Fire spewed forth from them in clean, straight gouts, making the room sweltering and producing thin, wavy ripples of heat that distorted the air.

Frowning, I considered my options. Again, I could likely use Flash Step to make it to the top of the room, or simply levitate myself with Entropy, but I wasn’t eager to reveal those capabilities. I could always scale the cylinder using the nozzles, but doing so would reveal my ability to shape Fire…

Or would it?

Plenty of Blessed Brutes were simply invulnerable to many types of damage, or resistant enough that the difference mattered little. Was it truly so outrageous for me to possess both durability and regenerative capabilities? I shrugged.

Oh, well.

It wasn’t like I had much of a choice, anyways. There didn’t seem to be any other way to reach the room’s summit. Crouching, tensing my muscles and empowering them with Draconic Blood, I leapt for the first nozzle. I grappled it with a single palm, easily holding my whole body aloft. The fire suffused me, coating me from top to bottom, but felt more like a warm, soothing breeze than anything else.

With little difficulty, I swung from hold to hold, spout to spout, levering myself swiftly upwards and finally flipping smoothly over the edge. By the time I’d reached the top, barely five minutes had passed in the exam overall. Was I almost finished? Had I barely begun? I’d no idea, nor was I aware of how fast my pace was relative to others’.

As I walked through the door and entered the fifth room, a somewhat nostalgic sight greeted me; a vast, circular arena. It spread out before me, similar in size to the one in which I’d faced the Kobold Champion, but that was where the resemblances between the two ended. Unlike its sibling in the Labyrinth, the ground of this ring was smooth, polished steel and it sported no throne at the other end.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Instead, in the very center of the arena, stood a golem.

It was clearly Entropic in nature, as metallic as the arena which it inhabited, glittering cobalt circuitry covering its silver skin, little flecks of gold winking from various strategically placed cracks and crevices in its steely flesh and thick cables running like muscle fibers up and down its limbs. It was humanoid at least, tall and skinny, almost twice my height. It bore no discernable weaponry, though that did little to ease my nerves.

A soulless adversary, inanimate until I stepped forward to challenge it. The familiarity to the mimic knight of so long ago was not lost on me.

Exhaling slowly, I took a moment to crack my neck, once on each side. I circulated the song within me, Entropy ready and waiting just below the surface. Draconic Blood belched angrily, erupting in vigor and strength, filling me with warmth and life. Flash Step attended patiently, a coiled spring, taut and tight, ever ready to strike. Fang growled eagerly, pacing ferociously within my soul, hungry for battle. I was calm. I was focused. I was ready.

This would not be a repeat of the Dungeon.

I stepped into the arena, and the golem awoke.

Crackling blue incandescence suffused its form, Entropic light sparking from its every nook and cranny. Twin holes on its head blared blue, inhuman eyes that alighted upon me to stare unnervingly. Antlers of pure energy rose nobly from its helm, forming an arcane crown. Its fists glowed so brightly that they almost blinded me, surging with power. It took a single step towards me, and shook the ground beneath our feet.

But I didn’t care.

My eyes were wide, staring right at its center. Beneath the steel and cables, beneath the glowing cobalt light, I could see…no, hear…something. It beat steadily, throbbing and palpitating like a magical heart, pushing Entropy from within its depths out towards the golem’s extremities.

It…it was calling me?

Wordlessly, I reached forth with the song, my hand drifting forward, fingers splayed out towards the approaching enemy, and grasped on to something unknown. Somehow, despite the distance between us, I felt its heart pulse beneath my fingers.

In a smooth motion, palm still closed around it, I yanked my hand back.

A tide of pure, unattuned Entropy fled the golem and rushed into my own sea, making me gasp, filling what little reserves I’d spent during the exam and then some. It was too much to contain, some of it flowing out of my reservoir, venting in crackles of pure azure lightning across the breadth of the room.

The golem collapsed bonelessly to the ground, all animation extinguished.

I goggled, rapidly glancing between it and my own guilty palm, still bewildered by what I’d just done. Fang howled in anguish, made despondent by the prospect of yet another fight cruelly ripped away from him.

Before I had time to consider the consequences of my actions, a solitary figure flashed into existence next to the deadened golem, now more statue than servant.

He was dressed entirely in a grey, chrome suit, so reflective it almost appeared metallic. He crouched down beside the drained construct, tapping its metal carapace considerately, before standing once more. He turned to regard me with a visored visage, and as he did, his song met my ears.

It was like nothing I’d ever heard before.

If Flange had been a puddle, and the Marble stage librarian a softly coursing stream, then this man was a flood. A deluge. A torrential downpour. My own Entropy reservoir appeared as an ocean, but his was one. A horrifyingly large, absolutely endless sea of energy and power. Unlike the others I’d encountered, though, his song was tightly controlled, finely contorted and packed into his soul, a monstrosity on a short leash.

Still, it made my brain hurt.

His song was…it was all wrong. It glitched, seized, overlapped endlessly upon itself. Its melody was incomprehensible, its aesthetics horribly warped and mutated, as if it had been drawn from a corrupted source. I would never be able to copy something like this. It was the grotesque actuality of one thousand different sentient beings brutally shoved into the same point in space and time. It shouldn’t have existed. It was an affront to reality itself.

All the same, I heard it.

~~~

Pylon, the Manifold Paradox

Attunement: Replicant 19

Grain: Decentralization

Marble: Spatial Exchange

Core: Temporary Superposition

~~~

Oh, fuck.

“Now, that,” the Immortal Blessed, the second in command of the Coterie, said, shaking a grey-gloved digit at me, “That, young man, was a new one. I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that before.”

I struggled to maintain my composure as I dealt with the man, no, the Demigod, knowing full well he could have killed me in a heartbeat. His Attunement was higher than any I’d encountered before.

His voice, strangely, didn’t come across at all metallic. Rather, his timbre was that of a young man, perhaps in his early thirties. Even more bizarrely, his words didn’t seem to emanate from the helmet itself, but from the air all around me. They greeted my ears equally on all sides, as if there were a legion of this one Blessed encircling me, all speaking in synchrony.

The exact opposite of his song.

“I mean, what exactly did you do?” Pylon murmured, musing, seemingly oblivious to my distress. “That wasn’t Interdiction, or Suppression, or any variant of the two. Did you drain its Entropy stores? Entirely? Without even touching it? How exactly does one manage that?”

He glanced once more at me, but I just stared dumbly in response. I had zero confidence I could smooth-talk this likely centuries-old Godkin as I had the librarian, despite the fact that he didn’t appear to be a Thinker. Having no other options, I defaulted to the advice Hadrid had given me, making my face as blank as possible and saying nothing at all.

After only a few awkward moments, the man whom I knew to be the Hand of the Coterie nodded at me once, chuckling lightly.

“Of course, of course. You needn’t share your secrets. Forgive an old man his curiosity, will you? It’s just–I always think that I’ve seen it all, that no power could possibly surprise me, and then along comes someone like you and…” he clapped sharply, producing a loud crack, making me jump.

“…you know?” he asked, nodding at me companionably. I returned the gesture despite being entirely lost, commiserating dishonestly with the dangerous Immortal.

Pylon nodded once more and, with a flourish, produced a bracelet similar to the one I currently wore. This new bauble, though, was black and gold, and looked far more durable.

“WELL!” he said in a thunderous voice, clapping his two palms together in a noise like a gunshot, making me jump.

“Congratulations, contestant! You are one of the lucky few to pass the examination, and as such, are officially accepted to the 131st round of the AGOGE!” With the last word, his voice changed, becoming deep and booming, echoing powerfully throughout the large arena.

“Your prize…,” he continued in a normal voice, tossing the onyx wristband my way.

“Leave your current timepiece with reception, and be here no later than eight hours past dawn tomorrow. I suggest, young man, that you get what rest you can. You’ve got a big day ahead of you, a big day indeed…,” Pylon paused in the middle of his address, glancing sideways at me.

“Unless, of course, you’d like to accept the monetary prize for passing? Two hundred thousand chits? Enough to live comfortably until next year’s trial, and then some…,” he offered, trailing off, almost seeming hopeful to my hearing.

But his words fell on deaf ears. Another year was time I didn’t have. I needed answers, I needed them as soon as possible, and I wasn’t going to get them just sitting around. I removed my current bracelet and swapped on the onyx one, bowing deeply to the Immortal demigod.

“My sincerest thanks, lord Hand, but I choose to compete,” I replied. He stared at me for a moment, stock-still, saying nothing.

His expression was invisible from beneath his grey visor. He could easily deny me. He could have denounced me as false, question my Aristocratic status, and I’d have no recourse. Even mild interrogation at his hands would likely cause my facade to crumble.

As the silence mounted, my worry grew, but at last he spoke.

“Hero,” he said, softly.

“Your Blessing named you Hero,” Pylon mumbled, tilting his head at me. “How… how about that?”

“Echoes of the past,” he continued, muttering, “I wonder…” He trailed off, looking off and about the room, attention drifting away from me. I swallowed nervously.

Then, all at once, he returned to the present.

“No thanks necessary, lord Hero,” the Godkin assured me, his normal tone and volume recapitulated, as if his moment of reverie had never occurred.

“None at all, none at all,” Pylon said, nodding in my direction one final time.

“May the Troupemaster guide you in the wars to come.”

With that, he vanished, and the room was empty once more. The exit door swung open, and I walked through it.