Through the double doors, left at the first hallway, third door on the right.
Mira’s directions to the screening hall made it easy to find. The same limestone walls as outside framed a large hall that was more of a classroom than an auditorium. Curved wooden tables and benches on tiered flooring let every student see the stage no matter where they sat.
Kael had not really been invited, so he made a statement by standing against the back wall, where nobody could miss him coming in or going out. Especially the proctors administering the screening. He smirked at the students glaring at him as they passed on their way to their seats.
That ring. I couldn't stop staring at it. It looked identical. Should I ask her about it? Maybe she's from the same village and they know each other. I can't believe she called me a pervert. I'd be offended if I hadn't been enjoying the view.
The hall’s vaulted ceiling made the room feel airy and less stuffy than he expected. At the front of the room was a stage, with a long wooden table and three chairs on the left and a lectern with a voice stone set into it on the right. These kids did not realize how good they had it. In his first memories of attending school, they had used a stick for a quill and mud for parchment.
The same four banners from the pillars outside hung two on each side of the stage, red and white on the left, purple and green on the right. Morning light came through the tall windows along the left wall in clean bars and lay across rows of benches full of students still in their own clothes. No one was officially accepted into the Academy without completing the screening first. Rich or poor. Orc or human. The Guild did not care. Only your power and results mattered here.
My kind of place.
The hall smelled of old books, beeswax and nervous people, and under that was a faint sharp smell that Kael knew better than anyone in the room. It was the smell that chaos magic, Menos, left behind after it was cast.
Everything would have been so much different if I hadn’t been the only one who could smell it. If only I had kept my mouth shut that day.
In the middle of the stage, a strange device sat on a pedestal. A brass base with curved prongs meeting at the top, so that it almost looked like a large lantern. Between the prongs, floating in midair, was a flawlessly clear crystal. A gauge with a long needle was set into the base. Kael heard one of the other students explaining it to someone.
“That is how they measure your power.”
All the other hopefuls were filing in. Kael saw the same black-cloaked figure from the courtyard slip into the room, trying to go unnoticed. The green fellow from before had followed her in and bellowed after her.
“Hey Nyx, let’s sit over here.”
Half the hall turned to look. She froze with her hood still up. Twice now he had watched her try to slip into the crowd without being seen. Instead of shrinking away from the unwanted attention, she glared back at those looking at her, her golden eyes giving off an intensity that caused them to look away quickly.
Beastfolk. That is rare, even here in Nexus. Most of them are in Vendaris, the free trade city.
Kael met her stare and gave her a wink. Her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in suspicion, as she walked over to take the seat next to her friend.
The three proctors were already seated at the table on the stage. Mira, the student clerk, was also sitting at the table with the enrollment ledger open in front of her and a quill in her hand.
Proctor Maelen had not looked at the back wall once since he came in, and that was how he knew she was aware of his presence.
The man beside her looked up at him right then. Human, middle-aged, with close-cropped fair hair going gray at the temples. He wore the white and pale gold vestments of a bishop of the Church of Aethelos, heavy with embroidery at the collar and cuffs, over a shirt of light chainmail kept bright, and at his throat hung the Church’s golden sun on a cord. His hands were folded on the table and he sat very straight. He gave Kael a long, deliberate, cold stare, then turned the same stare on Maelen. The meaning was plain enough. She had put her neck out for him, and the bishop could not wait to see her fall.
Boy, was he going to be disappointed.
"That's the one from the desk?" the bishop asked Maelen.
The third proctor glanced up at him as well.
He was human too, older, with iron-gray hair cut short and a weathered face. He wore an eye patch over his left eye that only partly hid the claw scars running down that side of his face. His clothes looked uncomfortable on him: a deep green tunic with gold at the seams, gold-trimmed leather pauldrons and vambraces, a wide belt with a gold buckle. The longbow and a quiver hanging on the back of his chair looked more in his comfort zone.
“He isn’t on the roll?”
“He is not,” Maelen said. “He is also standing in the hall.”
That was the end of that. The gray man grunted, which might have been agreement. The bishop's mouth thinned, but he said nothing else. Kael guessed that traditions mattered to the bishop and neither man would object as long as he didn’t completely fail his screening.
Looks like she pulled one over on them.
Maelen rose and walked to the lectern. The hall settled as she began.
“Good morning. I am Proctor Maelen. I hold the Magus chair at this Academy, and I will be evaluating those of you who answer to Menos, which I am told is a great many of you this year.”
“On the right is Proctor Vance, the Divinus chair, and a bishop of the Church of Aethelos. He will determine the worthiness of those of you who answer to Ordis.”
Maelen continued, “On the left is Proctor Dorn, the Virtus chair. Before he agreed to teach at the Academy, he spent more time in pocket realities than most of you have been alive. If you answer to Vitra, you will find him harder to impress than either of us.”
Dorn sat with his arms crossed and grumbled, "Agreed? Forced is more like it," drawing laughs from the students.
“Most of you already feel your affinity. However, only a small percentage are born able to answer it.”
Every child in Atheria knew that much. There were three main magical energies.
Menos was often called chaos magic, since it was the raw and dangerous one. It was also the most destructive, but in the right hands it could be bent into almost anything.
Ordis was divine magic, order-based and the opposite of chaos. The Church had long since adopted it as its own, with Paladins and Clerics channeling healing and protection through prayer or holy relics.
Vitra was the magic of life itself, found inside nature and all living things. Warriors and Rangers learned to harness it by training mind and body together to enhance their physical abilities.
“Elemental magic comes later, once your class designation has been made. Today we confirm which of the three branches answers to you and estimate your magical potential. When your name is called, step onto the stage and place your hands on the metal handles on either side of the crystal. Then open yourself to the energy that calls you and let it flow into the device. The device will stop on its own. The proctor of your affinity will announce your power level and has the final say on your inclusion in this year’s class. If you are not chosen, you may leave immediately. Otherwise, sit down until the screening has been completed.”
The first name was called. Tessa. A girl stood up from the second row, human, with her black hair tied back. She wore the white robes of a cleric novice. She walked to the stage and put her hands on the brass fittings.
She was the one with the girl who said I was handsome.
“Affinity?” asked Proctor Vance.
“Ordis.”
She closed her eyes. A white-gold glow rose around her and settled into a soft radiance, and the clear crystal lit with the same light. The needle rose, trembled, and held. Then the crystal dimmed and the glow faded.
“Ordis confirmed,” said Vance, reading the gauge. “Fourteen.” He said it with satisfaction and a nod of approval. The Church favored those with strong Ordis. Mira wrote it down.
The second name was called. Torin. It was the green guy with the red sash from the courtyard. Kael straightened against the wall to get a better look.
Proctor Dorn asked, “Half-orc?”
Torin nodded.
He had broad shoulders and thick arms, but he was not much taller than Kael. His steel breastplate was worn, a sign it wasn’t for show. He stood with his hands at his sides, feet planted and eyes closed. The device sat in front of him and did not move.
“Hey dummy! You have to grab the handles first!”
Bram yelled from the third row, the tall boy Solena had walked through in the courtyard. Nexus might be a hub for every kingdom, but the old hatreds between the races had come to the Academy with the students.
Then a glowing green light started to illuminate his skin, coming from inside him rather than gathering around him. Only then did he grab the handles, and the crystal shone bright green.
“Vitra. Eleven, and he’s holding back,” announced Dorn.
“Again, properly,” he snapped in the voice of a battlefield commander.
A murmur ran through the students.
An eleven for a fighter class was high, and he was holding back?
The half-orc grimaced and then hesitated.
A human in cleric robes with short brown hair and pretty boy looks was sitting in the front row next to Solena. He smiled and gave Torin an encouraging nod.
Now that is strange. A human from the Church encouraging someone of another race and faction.
That seemed to settle Torin’s nerves. As he filled himself with Vitra again, the needle climbed higher. Dorn nodded once and said something to Mira too quietly to carry. She wrote it down. The number was never announced.
I knew the green guy was strong!
A third student was called. Edric. This one carried a staff in both hands, oak with a dark band of metal wound down it in a spiral. His father must have paid a great deal for it, from how gingerly he held it.
“Affinity?”
“Menos.”
“Conduit?”
“Staff.”
Only Menos students got the second question. Kael knew exactly why.
Ordis did not hurt the one who channeled it, and Vitra was already the body’s own source. Menos on the other hand was chaos, and chaos unfiltered burned the one who touched it. Conduits buffered the raw energy, letting through only as much as the caster could safely handle. That was why every Mage carried a staff or a wand and the Nightblades forged special daggers.
The crystal at the tip of his staff lit first, a steady violet, and the light ran down the shaft into his hands. Only a faint glow reached the boy himself. He grabbed the brass handles, careful not to drop his staff.
Maelen read the gauge. “Menos. Twenty.”
A murmur went across the rows. The boy beamed.
Kael watched, unimpressed.
Twenty? Wait, that is not right. I can smell it. It’s too high.
“Generous.”
One flat word, from the back wall, and every student and proctor turned to face him.
Did I say that out loud?
Maelen looked at him curiously.
“Something to add?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“You disputed my reading.”
“I did not.”
“You were about to.”
She got me. Well, this is going to be awkward.
“It just seemed like an inflated reading. At best he is a twelve. The rest was the Menos bouncing back into the device on its own.”
Proctor Vance scoffed. “So you know better than a device made by the founding members and the top dwarven engineers? Who created the portal, the resonance keys and the Heartstone Forge?”
Kael looked the Divinus bishop dead in the eye and said one word.
“Yes.”
The room erupted. Ridicule and curses flew at him from every direction, personal attacks, slurs against dark elves and worse. There was satisfaction in Vance’s eyes, as if he had stirred it up on purpose, his disdain for a lesser race plain.
Kael soaked in all their insults and hatred, consciously turning it into fuel. He made himself appear unfazed and smiled. It was more of a smirk. The smile of someone playing with a bug before squashing it. It was unsettling and the taunts quickly stopped.
They were still just kids. Coddled babies. They had no idea what the real world was like, how cruel it was and how it crushed the weak. They didn’t even know how to react to him.
His smirk grew bigger, and Solena looked him in the eyes and shook her head before turning back to the stage.
At least she did not join in with the other students.
Actually, quite a few of the students did not jump in with others. He noted who they were. Proctor Maelen was quiet. She looked at him down the length of the hall a moment longer, and then she lifted two fingers off the table and gestured him down the aisle.
“Then come and be measured. Let’s see if you have any standing to make those claims.”
Kael walked down the aisle as instructed. As he passed the front row, in the center of it, with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap over the white tabard, sat the ambassador’s daughter in her white and gold, and she did not even glance up as he passed. Her eyes were on the device and nothing else.
Maybe she’s still mad about earlier this morning.
He had already heard other students using the Ice Princess nickname in the courtyard. Nothing like a bad nickname sticking on the first day of school.
He climbed the stairs to the stage.
“Affinity?” Maelen asked.
“Menos.”
“Conduit?”
“Don’t have one.”
Not every student could afford a conduit. Maelen pointed at a rack of Academy staves along the side wall, a dozen of them in various sizes and wood.
“Then borrow one for the screening.”
Kael smiled. He did not look at the wall rack. Instead, he put his hands directly on the device. The brass was cold and faintly greasy from the hands that had been on it before his, and under the cold was a hum he felt in the bones of his palms more than heard.
“I don’t need one. I promised to show you and Mira something amazing.”
Hah. That probably has the student clerk turning bright red.
Maelen became extremely serious and quiet, “If Menos answers you today, you will be taking it unfiltered. This is how you end up with the Sisters.”
The hall was very quiet. Everyone had grown up with the stories. Parents used the Sisters to frighten children into doing their chores or to listen properly. What the Sisters actually did was collect those who channeled chaos without a conduit. Warlocks, the most despised class of adventurer there was. He felt the glares on his back.
I wonder if she is looking at me. Focus.
Kael looked over at the bishop.
“Watch closely Vance, this is what real power looks like.”
Then he opened himself to the chaos. The raw, unbridled Menos flooded into him. It gathered around his whole body at once, a field of pulsing violet energy, and he directed it into the crystal, which filled the room with a deep purple light. The air around him came alive with crackling energy.
“…thirty,” said Maelen.
Kael drew in more.
“…forty…” More.
The needle climbed.
“Forty-five—”
The crystal cracked.
“…fifty…”
“Oh, Aethelos! It has passed the last number and it’s still going!” Vance shouted over the hum of the device. Bolts of lightning formed and vanished all around Kael.
“Kael, that is enough. Stop! Vance, put up a barrier!” Maelen yelled.
Stop? Why would I do that? I’m just getting started.
Kael had lost himself in the current of power, ignoring the pain that came with it.
The crystal split with a sound like a dropped plate and then shattered.
The Menos it had been holding flooded back into Kael. The brass fittings were turning black as if they had been held in a fire. Sparks sprayed across the proctors’ table. Mira squealed as she grabbed the ledger to prevent her hard work from being destroyed. Vance came halfway out of his chair with both hands up in front reciting a prayer.
The field of chaos energy spread past the stage and toward the first rows, arcing and unstable, filling the whole front of the hall with purple lightning and sparks. The four banners were ripped from the wall. Dust came down off the vaults in the ceilings.
The students in the front of the class were out of their seats moving backward. A bench went over with a crack. Somebody screamed, and then they were running. Behind him a fracture ran up the limestone pillar.
Kael looked over and saw Maelen standing behind the wrecked table. She did not look impressed, she looked terrified.
Okay, that’s enough for now.
A purple lightning bolt landed near Vance interrupting his prayer. Whatever spell he was trying to cast fizzled out.
Kael took a deep breath and tried to reel in the Menos.
It did not work. It felt like the energy was trying to control him instead.
Even more Menos flooded into him.
“It’s not stopping…” Kael yelled.
I hope they don't think I'm doing this on purpose.
Dorn was also out of his chair with the bow in his hands. The arrow came out of his quiver and onto the string in one movement. He drew and aimed at Kael’s chest. Kael understood what it meant. If they had to kill him to stop him from hurting the others, they would.
He nodded to Dorn and saw respect grow in his eyes. To the Virtus, those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for others deserve the greatest honors. He clenched his jaw and pulled the bow string back tighter. He took a focused breath and hesitated.
Vance yelled at him, “Do it! Shoot him!”
Then the ambassador’s daughter was on her feet at the base of the stage with both hands raised. She had not run. Light bloomed out of her. White-gold, a wall of it, from the floor to the height of a man and from one side of the aisle to the other, between the stage and the hall. It came up out of her all at once, as it had out of Tessa. But where her light had been a candle, Solena’s was of a blazing furnace.
Order and Chaos collided. The two did not push against each other. They devoured each other. Along the entire line where the two energies touched, the purple and white-gold merged into cyan and disappeared. Within seconds they had completely nullified each other.
Their auras dropped at the same time. The room had grown completely silent. Solena and Kael were both breathing hard and looking at each other in shock.
Kael looked down at his hands. They were shaking slightly.
What was that? I’ve never seen anything like it. What did she just do?
Why was I not able to stop?
He looked back up at Solena. Her arms were still half raised. Her braids had come loose on one side and her tabard was torn. She lowered her hands.
“That was reckless. You could have killed someone or yourself.”
She turned and walked back to her bench, set it upright and sat down. The other students slowly followed her lead and drifted back into their seats. No one said a word.
They’ll all be scared of me now. They should be.
At the proctors’ table, Maelen held the ruined device in both hands. The crystal was in three pieces and one of them was still faintly warm, and she turned it over as if trying to figure out what to do next.
Dorn still had his bow in his hand, but the arrow was back in his quiver. Vance was staring at Kael as if he were the Destroyer himself.
Dorn asked, “What are you going to write for his power level?”
She set the device down and looked across the stage at the young dark elf. Her gray eyes were steady again. “Mira….”
“Yes, Proctor.”
“Record his name in the enrollment ledger: Kael the Dark Elf. Unmeasured.”
She turned to Kael, “Accepted.”