I was quickly ushered through the gate with strong guards on either side of me and Osner. I was brought through a thick wooden door. The ceilings shot upward as I walked into a vaulted hall. Rich mahogany and subdued tans, reds, and blues filled the hall with an air of quiet beauty.

I was directed to sit at a leather couch. A mosaic of stained glass in the form of a blue and white river sat behind a man. As his face came into focus I could tell that he was darkly brooding. Heck, if brooding could become a person, this would be him. His stare was cold and hard like the edge of a dagger. I think I preferred the gruffness of the short captain in the forest, and that hadn’t exactly been enjoyable.

“I will ask you only once.”

The man had long, silver hair and clearly regarded me with disdain as he interrogated me. He wore long, cobalt blue robes that were trimmed at the ends and collar with white. He noticed Osner for the first time and addressed him.

“You may leave.”

Osner stiffened, hesitating. His usual calm was shredded in this man’s presence.

“Milord…about the request…”

“Leave! Come back tomorrow!”

Osner bowed stiffly and hastily left the room, causing the candles in the darker corners of the room to sputter. The man in silver hair trained his gaze on me.

“Do you claim to be Alaster?”

There was that blasted question again. The frustration of not knowing why everyone wanted to know drove me crazy. Still, if this was some kind of test, I needed to be honest.

“I am Alaster!” I felt my frustration flare. I was louder than I wanted to be.

Just then a woman in greying curls tumbled through a side door. She looked as if she only had a few drops of life left in her body. She wore a dress of dark blue silk. She had been listening on the other side. The man’s gaze instantly softened as she approached. She weakly stepped towards the man and slumped against his frame, weeping as she spoke.

“Kalculus, is it true? Please, tell me. Have you been hiding this from me?”

“No…” the man spoke. The man looked as though his chair had been pulled from under him. Like he was lost in a void.

But then he turned to look at me. His pain turned to seething rage as tears poked at his eyes. His hands balled into fists.

“No! Enough! You would kindle a fire to destroy my home, to erode the reputation of our honorable name with your filthy lies?”

“I’m not..” I tried to cut in. Tried to find answers. But his voice drowned out my own in a keen of sheer rage.

“Guard!”

The same men that brought me in rushed into the room, wrists turned up in front of them in what I guessed was a salute.

“Take this insolent liar to the lower courts. He will face trial in the court of kin.”

I spun around. Both of the guards were on me in a heartbeat, binding me with rope that seemed to come from nowhere. They tied a bitter oily rag to my mouth when I tried to scream. I was carried away with the force of the Mantrapper.

***

I was hauled down several flights of stairs. The noise escalated as we bolted down the steps to the lowest terrace of the city. The bottom of the bowl, so to speak. It reminded me of what the Roman Colosseum must have looked like in its prime. Hundreds of rows of jeering spectators sat to watch what was happening on the floor of the arena. Mirrors lined the halls at regular intervals all the way around its circumference, reflecting the reddening light of the sun.

I was confused. My name held some kind of power in this place, but none of it was my own. I felt caught up in the current, and now it was threatening to swallow me alive.

I was dragged to the lowest part of the arena. We were stopped at a large wooden gate that opened up to the arena floor. I saw through the gaps in the lattice a slumped figure in one of those medieval stocks that kept your head and hands from moving. The spectators, most of whom wore the pale grays and yellows of the working class, were throwing spiky green fruit at the man. I could see him wince and cry out through his gag as some of the fruits found their mark. They stuck to his face and the backs of his legs.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

After a few minutes of the incessant barrage, someone in long black and white robes held up a hand, and everyone stopped, some with fruit still in their hands. This figure appeared to hold some kind of prominence, like a magistrate or judge.

He began to speak in a deeply formal tone, his face tilting into a sneer.

“For feigning relation to a noble house, in accordance with the law of King Extravagus II, you are sentenced to immediate exile from Vivien. Be grateful your gracious king has seen fit to spare your life this day by his merciful rule.”

Was this like those tv shows where some messed up family waited for DNA results, to hear “YOU ARE NOT THE FATHER”?

Something cold ran down my spine. The reaction to my name. The rage Kalculus felt towards me. The pleading devastation of the woman I assumed was his wife. Being bound, gagged and dragged to something called the ‘court of kin’. The sentence against the person in the stock in front of me. I finally understood.

I was no hero, no ‘Chosen One’. I didn’t belong in a fancy mansion or carry the hopes of the people. It was just a cruel coincidence. Alaster was my name, but was also the name of a powerful noble house in this world. To them, I was a pretender, someone trying to cheat the system by claiming nobility. Suddenly I remembered Osner’s concern, and it made sense. He was trying to give me a way out of this charade, to give me a chance to come clean before it was too late.

I slumped with overwhelming dread, feeling nauseous. The guard hoisted me up, rope cutting into my wrists. One of them hissed.

“No tricks now. Too late to run.”

Too late.

I stared hopelessly as the magistrate walked towards what looked like a woodburning stove. He removed something like an iron poker, with a blazing symbol at the end that I didn’t recognize. The man in the stock began to scream, sharp trills piercing through the cloth tied around his mouth. I looked away as the magistrate lunged forward, pressing the glowing iron to the man’s forehead. Bile rose in my throat. The accused wailed in pain as the symbol burned into his skin. In a few moments he was taken away, muffled sobs leaking through his rag.

I was pushed forward through the open gate. As I looked up every eye around the stadium was now directed at me. I tried scanning the faces for Osner, for at least one friendly or sympathetic face. No. People were greedily palming more of the green ammunition, sneering down at me. The giant stained glass orb which looked to be a mile above me looked like an eye, powerful and oppressive.

How could I have been so stupid?

“What name does the accused claim?” The magistrate looked my direction with a fading smugness. Seeing as though no one was rushing to remove my gag, it was obvious someone else would be answering for me.

“The honorable name of the noble House Alaster.” said the guard to my left.

The spectators gasped all around, then shifted into a wave of fresh jeering. Even the magistrate’s eyes were bulging, his mouth a half-smile.

“An illegitimate heir of House Alaster would make history indeed” the man in white and black said.

I protested through my sickly gag, but he couldn’t hear me. The yells and screams of the crowd were pressing in from every side.

This is the worst kind of surround sound. What a stupid thought at a time like this.

The magistrate continued: “There is no need for us to delay the inevitable, honorable citizens of Vivenheim. Bring out the orb!”

Several guards carried a bronze pedestal on poles. On the pedestal sat a sphere so big I could comfortably fit inside of it. The guards wore tabards with a gold shield and silver sword over their breastplates. They brought the orb to rest in between me and the magistrate.

A small man with clean, faint patches of white hair on his face approached the orb. He was wearing burgundy robes that held an insignia of a scepter holding an eye. If I had to guess, this was some kind of magic user.

He confirmed my suspicions when he started chanting. A brilliant ball of electricity appeared in the middle of the orb, arcs like flailing tentacles reaching the wall of the inner sphere.

I jumped back in surprise, but the guards pushed me forward. It reminded me of those plasma spheres you could get at Chuck E. Cheese for 1500 tickets, except this one was humming ominously.

“Will the honorable Lord Alaster please step forward to defend the name of your house?” The magistrate pointed to the side of me, and I could see Kalculus’s grizzled face behind his sharp silver hair. He approached the orb without even looking at me, and placed his hand on it.

All of the tendrils converged into a brilliant beam, appearing to connect to his hand.

“The accused shall do the same.” The magistrate looked at me.

If I tried to run now, I’d probably just get speared down. The crowd hungrily looked at me like a bunch of vultures waiting for a corpse. My options seemed to be die or face debilitating pain and permanent exile from the safety of the city, into the waiting clutches of a world full of monstrous beasts. Ice filled me as I placed my hand on the orb, the arcs splitting between Kalculus and me.

The magic felt like a river flowing through my mind, my memories floating past like driftwood downstream. I saw my mom and my dad holding hands. I saw DeAnna pushing me on my bike. The hospital room with a blanket hiding the face.

As quickly as it came, it left. I reached a hand up to touch my cheek and it felt wet. My eyes were puffy as if I’d been crying for years.

I knew what was coming next. The stinging fruit. The stock. The devastating pain on my forehead. But I just felt hollow. Like all the things I ever felt vanished from my existence.

But the magistrate was staring at the man in burgundy robes, who was staring at the man with silver hair and then at me.

“In all my years…” the magic user mumbled, thin white eyebrows threatening to shoot off into space.

“What, what is it?” cried Kalculus.

“I’ve never seen this before” the man in burgundy robes said. He swallowed as if his throat only held dust. He continued. “There is a connection, but as if…from far away. It is strange to me. The bond is faint…but it is there.”

“What does this mean?” the composed Kalculus slumped to his knees with his head in his hands. There was no hatred or fight in him now.

The magistrate snapped from his own musings. His robes trembled like salt and pepper shakers. “Well, uh..” he began “this has never happened before so…in light of the evidence..” The crowd was silent, hanging on his every word. “

“This young man is to be the ward of House Alaster, from this day forth.”