Before she knew it, the night had passed and it was the morning of the written exam. Cassandra took extra care to eat breakfast to make sure that an empty stomach would not be the reason she failed. Not that she had any intention to fail. The castle provided a luxurious list of choices in the three banquet halls dedicated to the Scholar Wing.

Cassandra thought that the name didn’t quite fit the purpose of the wing. Perhaps it had been named before it housed the prospective students of Nobility. Sure, Nobility was a school, but the strict selection system meant that the majority of them were doomed to fail. It was unlikely many scholars would even stay there. Herself, of course, included. She wished to be a queen, not a scholar.

The banquet hall she chose was full of hundreds of unfamiliar faces in a similar situation to herself. Many were nervous seeing the endless sea of competition. Some stress ate, while others picked at their breakfast.

The diversity in this hall alone was also amazing. Cassandra saw the long pointed ears of elves, the glimmering wings of fae, and all variety of fur and feathers of the beastkin. There were likely dwarves as well, but they were harder to tell apart when they were young. Come to think of it, the king himself was a lion beastkin.

Before she could continue down that line of thoughts, Cassandra was bumped from behind by a fae she could only describe as a particularly sparkly boy. The shimmering wings only enhanced that image. He appeared to have been trying to avoid a beastkin about to run into those very wings.

“Sorry,” he told her, “These wings are not made for crowded places.”

“It’s no problem,” she assured him, “Perhaps it would be easier if you used magic to hover above our heads?” If she remembered correctly, fae had inherent anti-gravity magic that allowed them to float without actually flying.

The boy clearly hadn’t thought of that. “Thanks,” he told her with a glittering smile, “Let’s do our best in the test and meet on the other side.”

“Sure,” Cassandra agreed. There was no reason to refuse well wishes, but she had an odd feeling of unease as she replied.

After her hearty meal, Cassandra grabbed herself some comfort cookies. She had once heard that sugar helped people think. Even if it was a myth, a few cookies before the test wouldn’t hurt. The chocolate chip cookies were still warm, and the gooey chips left chocolate smudges on her hand. Nothing a handkerchief couldn’t fix, and well worth it.

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Then she got the details for the written exam. Since there was only one room for testing, no matter how large, the test was taken in shifts by room number. Cassandra had to wait until after lunchtime. It was a bit anticlimactic and she felt that her early morning rush for breakfast had been for nothing. It did give her a few more hours to study, though.

When her turn to take the test came, she made sure to come early. Cassandra couldn’t risk coming late, and clearly the majority of the others felt the same with varying levels of earliness. They were each sat at a desk with dividers and soundproofing magic to prevent cheating and distractions. The test itself was many pages, but they were luckily not double sided.

Before they began, the rules were explained. “The first four pages of the test are required. If you fail any of these questions you will be disqualified. However, every five bonus questions answered correctly will count towards one of the required questions. Good luck.”

Cassandra looked over her first sheet of questions. Math. She had never liked math, but this test was not as bad as she expected. There were no letters in the equations, nor several layers of complex symbols. There weren’t even decimals or fractions. Large number multiplication wasn’t that bad in comparison. Perhaps her memories from her past life gave her an unfair advantage in situations like these.

The second page of the test was history. There went her advantage. Still, she had been studying all morning so she was still confident. Cassandra did decide to tackle those bonus questions just in case. Even if she answered them wrong, it couldn’t hurt. Luckily, most of the history questions were centered around Tethia’s origins and magic which were her favorite things in this new world.

The third page was language. This was probably the hardest page as it involved both written and spoken language for various situations. Vocabulary, level of required etiquette, and the proper ways to write letters were all covered. Luckily, Cassandra had practiced for these things extensively from the moment she had decided she would become the queen.

The fourth page was science. These questions covered gravity, weather, the stages of water, and other simple facts. Cassandra found this to be the easiest of the tests since most of these had been common sense in her past life. There were also a couple of questions about how forces of nature changed by the effects of magic, but magic was her favorite subject.

Now it was finally time to take a look at those bonus questions. Cassandra couldn’t help but stare as she took in the new questions. The level of difficulty had doubled, if not tripled for these. It almost seemed unreasonable that five of these were only worth one of the required. She quickly gave up on the idea of finishing all of them and chose to answer those from subjects she was confident it. Economics wasn’t too bad. She was able to answer some in politics. She finished the full three page section on magic as well.

To make grading simpler, they were requested to only turn in the bonus questions they had actually answered, so she set the blank pages aside before walking up to one of the many grading podiums. Apparently the mages there used a convenient magic to grade the tests almost instantaneously so she wouldn’t have to wait for her result.

The few seconds it took for the magic to work were torture, but the mage smiled. “You passed, congratulations,” he told her, “And with points to spare. This might be the highest score this year.”

She passed! And the bonus points had paid off! Hopefully she hadn’t actually needed any of them. Cassandra relaxed, flooded with relief. That is when she started to notice there were a lot of people with luggage heading out of the castle. Anyone who failed the test was packing up to go home already. There were so many of them who had already failed the first test. Maybe it had been harder than she thought.

Hopefully that wasn’t an omen for the tests to come.