The next morning, Dev was woken before dawn by Will shouting., “Wake up, everyone! Time is wasting away!”

Dev groaned and crawled out of the tent he’d been given, finding that it was still dark outside, just like Will had suggested after dinner. As he took a moment to let his eyes adjust, he saw that the fire pit was already lit and caught the smell of roasting meat, June having seemingly gotten up early to prepare breakfast.

Stretching, he grabbed a portion and wolfed it down. He could see why Will had complained about it. It didn’t taste bad exactly, but it was fully unseasoned, leaving a bland aftertaste in his mouth.

“Okay, everyone ready? Let’s move out!”

Everyone grouped together, and they set off in the direction the group had come from the previous night.

As they walked, Dev listened in on the conversations of the group members, trying to get a feel for what was coming.

“Today, I’m definitely going to earn the aiming technique. I got nine out of ten shots yesterday.”

“No chance. That was the purest of luck.”

“Hey! Your arrows didn’t hit many targets, either, asshole.”

Dev tuned into a different conversation, as that one devolved into roasts and insults.

“—hoping to get one of the healing techniques. It would be really valuable out here.”

Hearin this, Dev interjected, saying “There are healing techniques available?”

The girl looked surprised to be addressed, then answered, “Yeah. It has a bunch of Apollo’s domains. It’s all fire related techniques, but there are supplementary techniques for healing, music, and archery. And, of course, there’s some basic meridian maps available.”

Dev frowned. That was an odd omission by Will, to say that it was just fire techniques.

“Are the meridian maps free?”

“No, you need to pass tests to get them. A bunch of trials without using techniques. But you can’t use techniques hardly at all without meridians, so you should just take whatever you get.”

Dev fell into thought. He might take the meridian formation map, but he would almost certainly not be using it. He only had a low affinity for fire, and it wasn’t likely such a technique would be useful to him. He’d be much better off just remembering it as a reference when he found an anima technique in the future.

------

It was still dark when they stopped. Dev looked around, but there was nothing around them but more sand. He nudged a nearby boy on the elbow, asking him, “Why did we stop?”

“We have to wait for the inheritance to appear,” the boy said.

“Appear?”

“It’s the sun god's inheritance. It’s only available during sunlight. We just like to hike here while it’s still cool outside.”

Oh. That made sense. Dev remembered that Warren had told them that some inheritances were only opened some of the time. It seemed he’d found one.

He waited, and as the eastern sky turned red, the ground began to shake. He looked around and, seeing nobody else panicking, waited for things to settle.

Out of the sands rose a large temple complex, not thirty feet in from of them. The entire thing was made of white marble and clearly constructed with an eye towards asthetics, as the top of the temple caught the first rays of sunlight as the sun peeked over the horizon.

In front was a fifteen foot high statue, presumably of Apollo, standing half nude and with a bow at full draw, the arrow aimed at the sun.

As soon as the complex came to a halt, everyone split up, different groups going into different temples. The place was huge, over a dozen times the size of the Temple of the Dreaming Prince.

As Dev tried to figure out where to go, Will walked up to him and gave him direction. “Just go into the middle temple for now. It has everything you need to get started.”

“Thanks,” Dev said, relieved.

Alone, he made his way to the great archway that formed the entrance to the main temple. It was embossed with gold and silver, and tall enough that the statue out front could walk through with ease.

As he entered the building, he was greeted by a great hall full of greenery, far more than he could have anticipated based on the area outside. There was a clear path down the center, with a desk embedded in the wall at the end.

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As he walked the path, he saw various offshoot paths that wound around and led out of sight. Focusing on his essence sight, he felt a stab of pain as it showed him the twists and turns leading to clear spaces, and also saw that despite how they looked, only the smaller plants were real, all of the apparent trees being instead filled with stone essence.

He reached the desk at the end, and called out, “Hello?”

He immediately felt foolish. This was an inheritance, not a doctor’s office. Nobody was going to answer him. Instead, he looked around, finding what looked like a half submerged, deep purple orb in the desk. Looking at it’s essence, it held a nearly unfathomable amount of runic essence inside, so he figured it must do something.

He touched it. Immediately, a cool, feminine voice sounded out in his mind. ‘Please state your first and last name’.

“Dev Cantor,” he intoned.

‘Dev Cantor, recorded. Age?’

“Seventeen.”

The voice continued to run him through a list of questions, then, ‘Please place both hands on the Nexus Core.’

Assuming the voice was talking about the orb he was already touching, he placed both hands fully on it, at which point he felt a jolt that reminded him of the affinity tests he had undergone.

Sure enough, he was right about what it was, as the voice sounded out. ‘High Anima affinity, recorded. Medium Fire affinity, recorded. Medium Life affinity, recorded. Medium Rune affinity, recorded. Please follow the highlighted path to the first testing area.’

Dev frowned. High affinity? I’m pretty sure that it was perfect before. And my other affinities went up. What changed?

“Can affinities go down?” he vocalized.

‘Please follow the highlighted path to the first testing area.’

Looking around, Dev saw that the fake trees along oneside of the path had begun glowing. Following them, they led into a room that contained an archery range, complete with a bow siting on a table in the center, and a series of bronze, sun shaped targets. The lines led along the walls to a small glowing circle on the wall, looking like a smaller version of the orb in the first desk.

Touching it, a voice sounded out in his mind once again. ‘Dev Cantor, would you like to attempt the archery challenge?’

“Yes.”

‘Please pick up the provided bow and proceed to the highlighted starting position. Do not begin shooting until the targets are raised.’

Dev walked up to the table in the center of the room, and picked up the elaborate golden bow. To his surprise, it weighed next to nothing. He looked around for some arrows, but there was nothing. Moving to the lit-up circle, he waited.

The targets lit up, and Dev sighed in relief when a full quiver of arrows appeared before him at the same time. Drawing one out and looking at it with essence sight, the arrow looked like it was made purely from force essence, rather than being a physical object.

Remembering that he was supposed to be shooting, he quickly nocked the arrow and drew the bow back like he’d seen in movies, before loosing it.

Clang.

The good news was he’d clipped a target. The bad news was, it wasn’t the one he was aiming for. Quickly, he tried nocking the arrow again, fumbling it before getting the arrow on.

When the lights powered off to signal the end of the exercise, he’d only hit six of the twenty targets, using thirteen arrows. Walking back to the orb in the wall, he touched it and received his result.

‘Archery challenge completed. Score: 6/13/20. Evaluation: Poor. Please proceed to the next test, or state your intention to retry this test.’

Dev had no interest in retrying the test. With this first brush with archery, he could already tell that it wasn’t for him. Hopefully, the other tests would go better. Looking to the floor, he once more followed the lines, now leading out of the room and into the room across the hallway.

Entering the room, Dev saw that all that was in the much smaller room was a large bronze orb floating in the center.

Following the lines, he found another small orb embedded in the wall. Touching it, he received his instructions.

‘Dev Cantor, would you like to begin the thermoreception challenge?’

“Yes.”

‘When the bronze sun lights up, you must determine its temperature. After each response, the orb’s temperature will change. You will have ten chances. Prediction is set to a single degree. Would you like to increase precision?’

“No,” Dev said. He wasn’t even sure how he would get one degree of precision, never mind fractional degrees.

The sun lit up, and he quickly blitzed through the test, barely pausing to assess each new state. At the end, he was given another low assessment.

Dev proceeded through another dozen assessments, only scoring above a low in two areas, basic triage and pitch matching, both of which gave him a medium.

After he completed all the tests, he followed the lights back to the original desk. Placing his hands on the Nexus Core, it provided a message that almost seemed disappointed in him.

‘Initial aptitude test completed. Assessment: low suitability. Would you like to receive a meridian blueprint suitable to your aptitude?’

With a sigh, Dev asssented. He’d take the free stuff, but he was definitely not going to be sticking around. Not only was he not any good at any of the options, he wasn’t interested in learning, either.

He felt a large jolt come through his hand, then his head was filled with a crystal-clear image of a set of meridians. Even with Dev’s extremely limited knowledge, he could tell that they were the lowest of the low as far as meridians went. The diagram looked almost nothing like the ones he had been shown in Ms Tanner’s class. The only good thing was that the diagram came with instructions on the twists of essence required to turn free-floating essence into a meridian.

-----

That night, after dinner, Dev took Will aside.

“Hey man, what do you need?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Will’s face fell. “You doing okay? Nobody in the group is causing issues, are they?”

“No, I’m fine,” Dev reassured him. “But this inheritance isn’t a good fit for me. I think I’ll spend some time wandering the isles. Hopefully find something that fits me.

“Good luck to you, then.”

“Thanks.” Dev hesitated, then bit the bullet and asked, “Do you mind if I take the tent?”

“Go ahead. We have more than we need.”

Dev chose not to comment on the oddity of that answer. Much better just to mind his own suspicious business.