Chapter Two: Dead on Arrival
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Everyone quieted and looked to the front of the hall, where at the top of the two descending staircases stood Administrator Caelus peering out over the small balcony onto the floor with a narrow, expressionless gaze.
Like all the guild administrators Bly had come to know, Caelus was perfectly hairless, abnormally tall, and bore an unusual shade of gray skin. Only the simplest stripe of a black tattoo gave depth to his androgynous face, which could be seen stretching around from his left ear and across his temple, encapsulating his left eye to a point on the upper bridge of his noise. He was dressed in fine robes, white in coloration with cerulean-blue sashes, which had denoted him as the leader of the guildhall in Darskaart holding for as long as Bly could remember.
Caelus seemed to pause for a long time thereafter, as silence began to grow into anxiousness among the crowd. Before long, however, he finally said, “Another season has come to pass, and thus the divine graces of the Heavenly Principle come to pass over you this autumntide as well; here to welcome our youth into the fold of its many colors. Today will no doubt be a special day… for all of you. For today, we cast the shackles of a dark world—a cruel world—aside. Today, you assume your rightful place in a world that seeks only harmony and balance.”
As the last of his words climbed into the stifling air, the door behind Caelus opened, and three more administrators entered the chamber. They wore black robes with emerald-green sashes—the colors of the attributors—and they moved with crooked, eerily inhuman gaits. Their heavy footsteps brought them down the stairs with unnatural haste, until they stopped in front of the crowd, assuming stationary positions of utmost attention.
“Those youths approved for selection will now form three lines, one before each of my attributors. Begin.” Caelus instructed with a single clap, and immediately the entire hall rose to a flustered state of excitement.
“Come on!” Bly insisted, hardly intent or able to wait around for his friends.
Squeezing his way into the leftmost line as quickly as he could, Bly managed to score a spot only three places off the front. Glancing behind him, he noticed Annie was two spots back from him, immediately followed-up by an irritated looking Irvin, who really did seem as if he’d just had his heels stepped on. Bly nodded expectantly, a simple gesture of enthusiasm and good luck for each of his friends, before turning back to face the front.
“Bookbinder.”
“Shoemaker.”
“Woodcutter.”
One by one, the monotone voices of the attributors lifted through the guildhall, as a slew of generic classes were called out. Bly could feel his heart beating faster in his chest the closer it came to being his turn, and a cold sweat began to form on the edges of his forehead. He could hardly believe that the day had finally come, and he was beyond ready—so much so that he was certain an ugly smile was permanently plastered to his face.
“Step forward.” The attributor finally said to him, and Bly’s heart nearly skipped a beat.
All the administrators stood to well over six feet tall, but somehow the one talking to him directly only seemed to loom even larger than that, as Bly took several steps towards them.
“Hold out your right arm.”
Blychert did as he was told.
Without a single pause, the attributor grabbed his forearm with their cold, prolonged fingers.
“Please… sorcerer. Please, anything with advanced magic.” Bly muttered under his breath, pleading to the Divine, to Administrator Caelus, to nature itself—hell, to whomever would listen to him and make his dreams manifest right here and now.
Bly steadied himself and glanced up at the attributor, and he swore he could see the dark, inky blood pumping through the veins in their hand, as they closed it tightly around his arm. Then, with their other hand, they extended a single finger and held it up to his forehead. He watched their cloudy-colored eyes for any signs of what was to come, but they were lifeless. A cool finger pressed down into the skin of Bly’s brow, and suddenly the tattoo on the attributor’s face—the same one as Administrator Caelus—rose to a soft, pale glow.
Any second now, Bly would finally have his class!
But then, something unexpected happened.
The attributor gawked slightly, and strange noises, much like gargling sounds, escaped their mouth. Their jaw contorted slightly thereafter, before they went completely slack.
Something was visibly wrong, and even the others in line behind Bly murmured something similar. However, the attributor’s tattoo suddenly shifted to a deep, crimson color, before they opened their mouth again and shouted at a thunderous volume.
“Error! Error! Error!”
They repeated themselves. Over, and over, and over again.
Everyone inside the guildhall went dead silent almost immediately, and Bly stood there practically trembling, not a clue in the world as to what was happening. Furthermore, he couldn’t get out of the attributor’s grip, their hand was still locked around his forearm to the point where it was starting to go numb.
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“W—what’s going on?” Bly asked nervously, “What’s happening? Administrator?”
He didn’t get his answer.
In fact, there wasn’t a single sound in the hall besides the attributor continuing to shout “Error!” on repeat. Bly’s gaze shifted with wild confusion between the attributor, the crowd of people around him, and the other administrators. And then finally, his eyes settled on Caelus.
For his part, the Administrator seemed unnervingly calm.
After several long moments, he shifted his weight somewhat, leaning over the balcony in an almost exaggerated manner to get a better look at the situation, or perhaps at Bly more specifically. Turning towards the attributor, Administrator muttered something completely unintelligible at first—just noises and gibberish, as far as Bly could tell—then said in an alarmingly tranquil of voice, “What is the nature of the error?”
“Err—” The attributor stopped talking halfway through its next proclamation, and their head nearly snapped one-hundred-eighty degrees around as it glanced up at the Administrator. Then replying at twice the speed of their normal speaking voice, they said, “Pi-seven—subset-five—zero-zero-zero-two—incongruous world article detected. The specimen is vacant of actionable class synthesis.”
Administrator Caelus’s brow furrowed momentarily, as if the answer greatly confused him, before his eyes began to swell like balloons to nearly twice their normal size. His neck craned even further out from his shoulders—a good ten inches, at least—as he said, “Hm? My, what an unusual permutation… and would you please be so kind as to define the vacancy parameters?”
“The specimen is subject to the conditions of an article-three forbidden status.” The attributor continued, “Anchoring point is nonexistent. Designation value… classless.”
Classless? Bly thought confusedly, and other voices chimed in too.
“…Classless?”
“Did they say classes?”
“Not Blychert, surely? It can’t be…”
“How?”
“Wouldn’t the Guild have noticed sooner? Wouldn’t someone have?”
“Something’s not right…”
That word “Classless” echoed throughout the guildhall in hushed whispers, only seeming to grow louder and louder in Bly’s ears as it spread.
He’d heard that word before.
Master Bartolo had taught him about the classless once, but that was a long time ago. Anyway, it wasn’t something people talked about regularly, if at all, and for good reason. People without a class were like phantoms, as far as he knew, lurking in the shadows for their sins against the Heavenly Principle. They weren’t something you wanted to be associated with.
They weren’t something he wanted to be associated with.
“B-b—but how?” Bly stammered softly, unwilling to believe what he was hearing. His eyes searched around frantically for an answer. There had to be a mistake—had to be! He wasn’t classless. He wasn’t anything like that. He had the magic to prove it, and he gained pre-class experience too. He’d never heard about the classless doing anything like that.
He was just like everyone else. Right? He was here just like all of them for the same exact reason. Wasn’t he?
Desperately, Bly tried to get himself free from the attributor’s grip so he could explain himself, but it was impossible. So, he pleaded right there instead, “I have magic, experience, I… I’m supposed to be a sorcerer! I can’t— this can’t be happening, please—”
“There, there, do be silent.” Caelus interjected, as calmly and gently as one might speak to a child. His eyes were bloodshot, bulging sacks now as they seemed to inspect every inch of Bly’s body for malignant intent, “You’ve done remarkably well to evade my sight all these years, most curiously… But rest assured, we will get to the bottom of this transgression in due course.”
“No…” Bly mumbled.
“Compliant or not, you have leeched in secret off the bounty that our Divine has so graciously provided to humanity; a most heinous and unforgivable act.” The Administrator shook his head, “No, you are no sorcerer… you are a classless thief—vermin, in the eyes of our Divine. That makes you nothing; that makes you worth nothing, and worthy of nothing.”
Classless. Classless? He was classless!
It was utterly insane. To be classless meant… well, he couldn’t bear the thought. Everyone was afraid of those kinds of people, or maybe they were just afraid of becoming them? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care, but he was pretty sure it meant that he was as good as dead.
Bly looked out into the crowd of faces, all of them now slowly beginning to sour, before settling on those of his friends. He hardly recognized Annie and Irvin either. They both stared at him in shock and disbelief. Their hideous looks of utter betrayal writhed around their expressions as they seemingly searched for something good about him to hold on to.
But it seemed in vain.
“No, I’m not… please believe me.” Bly shook his head with a whimper, barely able to speak.
He tried desperately to tell them it wasn’t true, but he couldn’t get more than a few words in before the lump in his throat turned against him. In kind, Annie turned away, tears welling in her eyes as she disappeared into the crowd of people. Irvin simply shook his head, murmuring something under his breath that Bly couldn’t hear, before chasing after her.
“Please… don’t go.” Bly murmured, but it was too late. His friends were gone.
“Monster…” Someone in the crowd said, just loud enough for Bly to hear, before shouting, “He’s a damned monster!”
The crowd erupted into a state of frenzy.
“You have some nerve coming here kid!”
“He’s been hiding among us for all these years?”
“Someone ought to let Bartolo know.”
“To think we ever accepted him as one of our own—!”
“Kill him!”
Bly’s eyes widened with a flash of fear.
He couldn’t believe how quickly they’d turned against him. It spoke to the utter terror they must have felt at hearing the word ‘classless’ even though they’d known him for years. He felt that same fear too, but what was he supposed to do? He wasn’t what they said he was. He wasn’t classless, and he wasn’t a monster. He couldn’t be. Could he?
He had to do something.
He had to do anything to get himself out of this situation. But his whole body was frozen in a state of shock, and what basic magic he did have at his disposal only seemed to pale in comparison to the sheer authority of the administrators before him.
It was at that moment Bly felt completely helpless.
“Take heed, fair people.” Caelus held up his hands to quiet the masses, his form since returning to its usual appearance, “The classless pestilence is diminished, yes, but they still walk among you. Let us remember that they will not hesitate to hide in your homes, and in your halls, enjoying the spoils of your labors whilst leaving you with scraps. But do not worry, your voices are scarcely lost on the Divine. Let today be an example of the Great Truth That Flows. The Heavenly Principle shall always be upheld. As was the Breath of Unmaking present in the forging of this beautiful world, so shall it be here today. I hereby sentence this boy… to death.”
Before it had even begun, Bly’s life was already over.