I was in cloud nine, floating around as my feet walked me outside the classroom. I am in! I’m an Inker! I was dying to jump and celebrate, but I knew it had to wait. Right after being accepted, they told me to visit the same counter where I was given the admission token. I had to complete my registration and obtain the plate that accredited me as an Inker.

My eyes were lost on the multitude as I entered the building once again. “So?” Spare’s familiar voice scared me; it was coming right from my side, and I had no clue how it had got there.

My round eyes looked at him with martyrdom, primarily because of the scare but also to punish him. “You knew they would interview me, right?” The feeling had been nagging me for a while. If you did something so wrong, why bother talking with you? It was as easy as failing him and be done with it.

“So you passed!” His hand punched the air with fury while he exclaimed with joy. “What was it?”

“It?” I repeated, not sure what he was referring to. “Oh, the practical exam?” What else could it be? I explained every detail, taking a long time while describing the crystal dagger and the feelings I got from it. He repeatedly nodded as I explained the bloodthirst of that dagger. Then laughed when I told him how nervous I was when my name got called.

“If I had told you that the interview was the last step for admission, you might have been too relaxed. It was crucial that you defended your drawing.” He admitted, with some guilt visible on his face. I had to give it to him, it was not that far-fetched, and it made me be focused.

Still, I didn’t want to give in so easily. I sternly stared at him, only to burst into laughter a few seconds later. “I did it!” I jumped, still too in shock to get mad for a triviality like this. Some heads turned, showing their astonishment; how can a kid become an Inker? I’m sure all of them thought. Not only a kid, someone clearly of low status.

Spare laughed with me for a while, and then the both of us queued for the counter. There was barely anyone waiting, and in a few minutes, we were speaking to the same ginger lady I did before.

“Yo-You passed?” Her head, once again poking above the counter, looked at me full of surprise. Like everybody else, I guessed.

“I did,” I coldly said while nodding with my head. I was tired of all those stupefied or condescending looks. Choosing to keep quiet, I handed her the admission token.

She went somewhere further inside the room and shortly returned with a matte-polished plate hanging from a metal string. She spoke to me like I was a kid, which filled me with hostility. Maybe I looked the age, but my mind was far beyond it; hell, I had just passed the admission exam! I refuse to cite her words, so instead, I’ll sum up what she said. The plate was inscribed with my name and my rank, which at the moment was Ga’darar. It was a token of my current ability and limited the jobs I could opt for.

For instance, Ga’darar could only carve simple objects, and rarely would it be on actual skin. Starting at Ga’sarar, one stopped being considered a novice and entered the apprentice level. You would have to demonstrate the ability to alter the object. Fixing defects, removing scratches, adding a few details, nothing too extraordinary. Most of them I could already do.

Ga’lar and above required expertise with multiple tools and absolute control over your mind. The first job I witnessed Spare do would be considered of this rank. Then we had Ga’far, strong knowledge of glyphs and sigils. Only if you could imbue new properties to an object through those strange symbols would you obtain this rank.

And finally, Ga’ar, Spare’s rank, I deduced. Only Inkers who mastered the use of formations and were capable of representing abstract concepts would reach this rank. According to Ovile, the ginger at the desk, only a few have ever managed to ascend so far. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at Spare while saying that. It seems my teacher is an icon in this community. Of course she read that letter multiple times, I remembered. She must have been stunned by its author’s name.

“What do they mean?” I asked, finding it strange the names were so closely similar to my Drak’gath.

Ovile shrugged her shoulders; she didn’t have any clue what the names meant. But Spare anxiously moved his feet, tapping the ground a few times. It took him a while to decide what those taps meant. Maybe he was meditating on whether he should keep the information secret.

“He who starts. He who thinks. He who draws. He who speaks. He who shapes reality.” His monotone voice listed the ranks one by one, devoid of emotion. Just like you would read the shopping list to your kid. But he didn’t offer any more information, just the outright meaning followed by unbreakable silence.

Advancing a rank had two requirements, explained Ovile after recovering from the shock. First, you had to complete enough jobs of your current rank to prove you had contributed to the association. Evidently, it couldn’t be another way; the association took a cut of every job. Then, you would have to pass another exam to demonstrate you fulfilled the requirements.

“He would like to take some jobs,” Spare said when she ended the explanation.

“Of course,” she replied while taking a ring binder from under the desk. “All but Ga’ar jobs are here.” He handed the binder to Spare. “Up to the first separator, you can take a maximum of three requests at once.” Spare was holding the binder at my height, making it easier for me to follow. I opened it on the first page and started reading.

Inscribe my cat’s plate, 4 drops of graphite black.

Fix the sign on Yural’s Inn, 5 drops of porpoise black.

Copy an exemplar of Imbuing Ink, 1 shot of fossil black.

Most works provided their own Ink, aside from the reward, but one had to be careful. You never know what desperate people might want to pull off. Also, most works on the Ga’darar rank were tedious. It was a necessary evil, of course, but they were so banal that spending a few weeks doing them could very well suck the life out of me.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Spare...” I timidly said, “How much is a drop? And a shot?” It was hard to admit, but my knowledge about currency measures was only theoretical, I had no idea what that translated to in real life.

“Mmh,” he meditated for a brief moment. “Ovile, could you lend us a measuring cup?”

She came back a few seconds later with a cup not taller than my hand, entirely made of glass and with several markings along its side. The first ten marks were a hair’s width apart. A bold line next to the tenth tick read ‘1 shot’. I counted 15 of those bolder lines until I reached the ‘1 small flask’ mark. In other words, anything less than 1 shot was a meaningless quantity.

I sighed, too aware of how badly paid all those jobs were; not only was the quantity ridiculous, the quality was of the lowest grade. I kept reading, occasionally going back, while Ovile attended other people.

“What do you think about this one?” I asked Spare, while pointing to the open file.

“Carve a hammer on my torso, 2 shots,” he read back. “The pay is lacking, but you need the experience.” He nodded.

I picked one more, writing some pamphlets for the local church for 8 drops. Spare handed back the binder and the two files I had chosen, and we left. The garden was mostly empty at this point, and only those inside the building waiting for their turn reminded. My eyes crossed with my aggressor’s eyes, and Spared seemed to notice it.

“He tried to force me out of the association…” I whispered, low enough so that only him heard. “Someone stopped him, but he was about to kick my ribs after pushing me to the floor.” It was hard to say; the voice ran aground on my throat.

“You shouldn’t worry about him. Those kinds of enemies are easily fended off.” I was caught off-guard by his reply; my head turned to strangely stare at him. “You should be worried about the bright ones, the nobles that plot behind your back. You are powerless against them, and unlike that moronic kid, they won’t leave a trail of evidence behind.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I rushedly said, almost cutting him before he finished.

“Yes, hide in the sewers!” He bitterly laughed at his own misfortune.

We made our way to the inn, chatting about the exam’s questions and gossiping about its attendees. Once we got there, I decided to do nothing and take the rest of the day off. I had a few errands to run, but they weren’t by any means urgent. The pamphlets had to be written by tomorrow night, so I still had a whole day, and the tattoo could wait for three more days. I didn’t intend to put it off until the last moment, but I was truly exhausted from the exam’s mental pressure.

Writing pamphlets felt like a child's game, something that should be done by an apprentice who just started, and not a just-graduated Ga’darar. I was urging to prove myself, to Spare but also to myself, to show my worth and all I was capable of.

“There are two kinds of jobs,” Spare said in his usual teacher tone, “those you do for Ink”, he pointed to the pamphlets, “and those you don't.”

It might have been one of those weird occasions where he felt like talking, or perhaps the nervous tick on my right eye from trying to understand him, but he continued. “You are in desperate need of practice! You have all this knowledge inside you, most of which you have only practiced in paper, and you don't want to practice on your skin!” The next part he barely managed to get out in-between sudden bursts of laughter. “You've got willing test subjects! Willing! Can you imagine paying a Ga’darar to massacre your skin? Unbelievable!”

Some part of me felt like getting offended, yet most of me couldn't help but agree with him. Was I good for my age and rank? Probably. Could the same be said of every Ga’darar that left the exam room? Hell no!

Being honest with myself, I did need the practice. Drawing on your own skin worked only up to a certain extent. That whole out-of-body experience helped, but you could still feel the tickling on the skin, which might help you get the drawing right. Sadly, you don't get to sense that from someone else's skin. Thus, it was definitely a must to tattoo other people, and if they paid you on top of it? All the better.

So, my mindset was set in stone for the next and every coming job. I was not a professional carrying out a job, a was in the practice sessions for my private academy. My tutor, Spare, wouldn't be there to supervise me, which made it even more important to memorize every detail of each job.

For the hammer, I could immediately see somewhere I had failed, even before my hand touched the fountain pen. I went in there with a preconceived image of the hammer, the typical one straight-faced tool, around an arm's length. Far from that, the requester presented me a two-faced beast, each of them as wide and large as my open palm. I had to immediately re-evaluate how the drawing would proceed, and make extra sure that I didn't let my imagination run wild.

That said, that was the worst of it. The drawing itself went smoothly, and the client was more than satisfied. I had to hold myself from fixing minor scratches here and there, and mending some rustiness that had taken its toll to one of the faces, but nothing I couldn't manage. I did use my fountain pen, though, as the handle had some marking on the wood that I was afraid I could not faithfully reproduce with the Drak’gath.

Spare did say willing subjects, and to this day I must say that's only true under a very ill-defined concept of willing. My next experiences proved so in multiple ways. Some people were so desperately out of money that a Ga’darar was almost out of their range. Others could afford more experienced Inkers, but they just wouldn't go for it. That didn't stop them from having disgusting remarks about my age, experience, lack of knowledge, unsteady pulse, and I don’t now how many more things. You can find pricks in any social standing, and there was from time to time those that felt entitled to pay me less,most of the times because I was too young to need Ink.

“Ovile!” I came in all smiles the very same day after completing both jobs.

There had been s bit of queue to get in the association, and a bit more to get through to Ovile, but I had decided that I wanted to demonstrate her that I could do it.

“Oh? Isn't that you, Tarar?” I momentarily blinked when she called my name, genuinely surprised that she had remembered it. “What brings you here? Do you need some help?”

“Not at all!” I took my sweet time to announce what I came for, studying her seemingly worried help. “Actually,” I placed to papers on the counter, “I just came to hand in both jobs!”

“That's wonderful!” Her face lit up like a fire in the middle of a dark forest. “But already! Aren't you pushing yourself too hard?”

Now I know that, for a Ga’darar, completing one actual work on skin is not trivial. Back then, I didn't know, so I mistook it for her kindness for contempt.

“I'm not a child!” I failed to control myself as her motherly look momentarily reminded me of my own mother. I coughed into my fist, and then extended it in the universal gesture that signifies give me my Ink.

I'm not proud of that interaction, and going by her round eyes, millimetres away from popping out of their sockets, she wasn't either. The interchange went on quickly, I could see that she had something to say, but I didn't wait to hear it. Not because I wanted to dismiss her, nor because I wanted to be rude—which I most certainly were—but because my face was reddening at a frightening pace.

With nothing else to do for the day, and with a proudness unique to someone who has been paid for their first job ever, I went to sleep with the widest smile you could ever see on a child. Probably, my biggest smile ever.