The Storm King

Fifteen days passed quickly, and it was time for the Knight Academy’s enrollment test. Leon had given Charles some basic instruction in handling a sword and dodging attacks, and he was certain it would be more than enough to see the first-tier mage through to a passing score. Every day when they returned to the inn after training, Charles would meditate and perform breathing exercises for several hours, and his aura was significantly stabler than it had been when they’d met.

Leon’s training during this time gave him more mixed results, but he wasn’t surprised. He needed a lot more work than Charles did right now, and once Charles finished magically strengthening his lungs through breathing exercises, his progress would slow. His gains were mostly in slight refinements he was making to his fighting style resulting from having to explain and teach Charles.

When the two arrived at the mustering field where the test would take place, Charles wasn’t that confident, despite the advances he’d made. His body was bruised and sore, and he had barely slept the previous night. Leon was far more relaxed, he wasn’t even thinking about his score, only passing the tests. In that respect, at least, Leon was supremely confident.

The field was large, so large that despite the several thousand people present, it still seemed fairly deserted. Most people were here with friends, so they had spread out around the field for some last-minute practice and warming up, though the wooden platform in the very center was given a wide berth.

There was a fence of iron bars that ran around the field, broken only by a handful of buildings flanking the field. At the fence gate were several dozen administrators where Leon and Charles signed in and were handed a blank scorecard. After that, they stood at the fence and watched the crowds for a while, waiting for the test to start. Charles eventually sat down to meditate, to make sure he was topped off on magic and to settle his nerves, while Leon leaned against the fence and closed his eyes, insulating himself as much as he could from the noise of the crowds.

More and more people arrived over the next hour until there were over ten thousand on the field. A few hundred workers began setting up a hundred stations around the field, which Leon assumed was for the power test from the instructions he’d been given. There was a crystal on a wooden table, about the size of his fist, and every hopeful applicant would need to channel their magical power into it. The crystal would light up different colors for every tier the applicants had advanced through. This was the first test and would likely be where most of the applicants would wash out.

It was only when the stations were almost finished being set up that the nobles started arriving. There were a few lower nobles who showed up early, but since the test wasn’t scheduled to begin until midday, it seemed most of the nobles decided they wouldn’t waste their time showing until the last few minutes.

When they did arrive, few stopped at the desks. Some were accompanied by servants and attendants who did stop, but for the most part, the nobles walked right past. And Leon knew they were noble by their auras and their attire—a lot of gold and bright colors, and all were second-tier or stronger. In all, he watched as dozens of nobles entered the field and began gathering around the central platform.

One of them, a young man with golden hair, an athletic build, and brilliant crimson clothes, stood out to Leon. He was surrounded by half a dozen others who accompanied him onto the field, and these followers were more than a little rough as they pushed their way through the crowds toward the central platform, leaving a chorus of curses in their wake.

Once reaching their destination, however, they stopped as the young golden-haired man looked around at the other nobles who’d arrived before him. He nodded to several, but it seemed that he didn’t see the person he was looking for, for he quickly turned back to his followers.

Leon yawned and glanced away. Truth be told, he wasn’t that interested in diligently watching the other nobles, he only wanted to have a baseline idea of who he’d be spending the next year with. He didn’t consider these people captivating enough to keep his attention for long.

That changed when the golden-haired youth started leading his group back toward the entrance, with them rather roughly forcing their way through the crowds once more. Leon raised an eyebrow at this odd behavior, and with nothing better to do, settled in to watch.

When they reached the entrance, the golden-haired noble stopped and began to wait, casually chatting with some of his followers and greeting a few other nobles who arrived moments later. Given how the others treated him, and how several other young noblemen seemed to go out of their way to greet him on their way past the gate, Leon figured he was either someone important, or more likely, related to someone important.

He started to half-heartedly wish that he could hear what Golden-Hair was talking about with his people, if only to gather some information on potential rivals, but he was too far away and didn’t feel like drawing attention to himself by approaching them.

Still, Leon’s curiosity wasn’t unusual, for Golden-Hair’s posse was eye-catching given how well the boys were dressed and how relatively strong they were compared to everyone else who was there to try their hand at enrollment.

After just enough time passed for Leon’s attention to start to wander away from Golden-Hair, he finally saw what the noble was waiting for, a luxurious carriage being pulled by two of the most beautiful white horses he’d ever seen. The carriage had been painted sky blue, was trimmed with what looked like actual silver, so Leon figured whoever was in it had to be incredibly wealthy.

Leon watched as Golden-Hair gave himself a quick inspection, straightened his clothes, and stepped forward, seemingly eager to be the first person to greet whoever stepped out of the carriage.

The tension in the air only built even more as the carriage driver pulled up next to the gate, bypassing the lines that stretched out into the street, and opened the door. Leon felt himself almost holding his breath as he watched the first person step out of the carriage door.

She was a dark-haired woman with bronze skin and warm brown eyes, clearly a descendant of the people from the desert kingdom to the south of the Bull Kingdom, past the Gulf of Discord. She wore loose yellow clothing which, though relatively plain, was made of the finest silks and studded with diamonds. Despite how loose her clothes were, they were held in place with a red sash around her waist, and her pants were tied to her ankles at the hem.

This young woman smiled and cheerfully waved at Golden-Hair and his small group of followers, then lightly hopped down from the carriage. Upon landing, she spun around and laughed, waving at everyone distracted by the spectacle that she and her companions were making with almost childlike glee.

The next woman who stepped out was the near opposite of the first. She had dazzling silver hair tied into a loose braid, and eyes like two sparkling sapphires. She was dressed all in tight blue training clothes, that lacked much of the ostentatious stitching and decoration that the clothes of many of the other nobles had. Her face was stoic and completely neutral, her blue eyes wandering around as if all of this fuss was completely normal for her.

Leon’s heart fluttered as he saw the practiced, elegant movements she made as she stepped down from the carriage. This woman was a fighter, and one that he could tell was incredibly skilled if such movements had even made their way into the way she walked. For the first time since he began keeping an eye on the gate, he felt his blood begin to race with anticipation of crossing blades with someone.

But then, when the third woman appeared, Leon’s attention was completely stolen, as if he’d forgotten that the other two ladies were even there. He recognized that lustrous red hair, those piercing green eyes, the aura of control with a hint of seduction that she projected, but he didn’t expect her to appear here of all places.

Elise smiled radiantly as she gracefully stepped out of the carriage, dressed in a tight black dress that, while revealing very little skin, seemed designed to hug her body and show off her relatively tall, hourglass figure. It was a blend of eroticism and elegance that had Leon’s eyes stuck to her, and from the crowds at the gate went silent, his weren’t alone.

‘Why is she here? Is she taking the enrollment test?!’ Leon found himself wondering as she nodded toward Golden-Hair and began to exchange a few words with the other two ladies in her company. He found a light smile playing at the corners of his lips as he contemplated spending the year-long training period in the Knight Academy in the same group with her.

In his distraction, he didn’t notice Elise subtly glancing around her, her eyes searching the crowds, looking for someone. It was only when her eyes finally landed upon him hundreds of feet away and on the other side of the fence that he came back to reality as he inadvertently made eye contact with her.

She smiled, and he lost himself in that singular expression. For a brief moment that seemed to paradoxically stretch on for eternity, yet go by faster than he could appreciate, the two of them unflinchingly stared at each other.

And then Elise turned away, spoke a few more words to her companions, and lightly stepped back into the carriage. Just as she was about to close the carriage door, however, she glanced back over her shoulder one last time and smiled, and to Leon, it seemed as if all the rest of the world briefly ceased to exist. All he could see was her.

He didn’t notice the other two ladies walking in through the gate with Golden-Hair at their side. He could only stare in disappointment as the blue carriage turned around and drove away from the gate, soon vanishing into the depths of the city.

Soon enough, it was about time for the tests to begin. The rest of the nobles arrived, and though none made much of an impact, Leon found it fairly trivial to identify who was important or not based on who the rest of the nobles would go out of their way to greet. There were a few who even Golden-Hair sought out to exchange words with.

By the time a knight in fancy military garb ascended the platform, Leon counted three dozen third-tier mages among the thousands of hopeful applicants, including himself. Given their power and ostentatious attire, Leon knew that none of them could be commoners.

There were also about three hundred second-tier mages, and the remainder of the thousands of people on the field were first-tier mages or below.

When the knight arrived at the center of the wooden platform, he waved his hand and an iron rod appeared from his soul realm. At the top of the rod was a diamond-shaped iron plate, with a fingernail-sized opal set into the center and gently glowing runes along the outside edge. Thanks to this iron rod, when the man spoke, his voice was heard from one end of the field to the other.

“Welcome to the Knight Academy of His Majesty, King Julius Septimius Taurus! I have confidence that you all know why you’re here, so I won’t waste time with a long-winded speech! Along the perimeter of this training field, you will see one hundred stations, each with a magic measurement crystal! If it’s found that you’re not solidly of the first-tier, you will be denied entry to the Academy! Next to each station is a sign with a number on it, the same number as should be in the top right corner of your scorecard. You will line up in single file in front of the same station as is on your scorecard! In. Single. File! When it is your turn, you will present your examiner with your card, and they will give further instructions as needed! Now get moving!”

Everyone began moving, but with thousands of people on the field, things got hectic quickly. Leon and Charles stayed near the edge of the field and waited for everything to settle down a little. While they waited, Leon and Charles looked at their cards and found that they weren’t in the same testing group.

“Hey…” said Leon, “If one of us finished before the other, let’s meet up at the burger place from the other day.” Charles felt like he might throw up from anxiety if he opened his mouth, so he simply nodded in response, and the two young men walked to their respective stations.

Leon’s station was on the other side of the field, and he took the walk over there as an opportunity to observe the other stations. He noticed that they weren’t divided by tier, or at least, not completely. The first four stations were given over to the nobles, and all the commoners sharing the rest. The first station only had the thirty-five third-tier nobles gathering around it, with the next three divided amongst the second-tier nobles. All the other stations had at least a hundred first or second-tier commoners each lined up in front of them.

The stations themselves were identical, and the examiners were all of the third-tier. The sole exception was the first station, whose examiner Leon guessed was a fourth-tier mage from what little he could glean of the man’s aura.

Leon’s station was not the first, where the rest of the third-tier mages were taking their tests. He couldn’t decide if he was insulted by that or relieved that he wouldn’t draw much attention this way. He eventually settled on a slightly indignant indifference as he arrived at the back of the line for his station.

When he arrived, he found that those in front of him were all only first-tier mages, and the few that turned around to size him up immediately turned back around with ashen faces as they realized they couldn’t see through his aura.

Leon was a little put-off by that reaction. He wasn’t looking to make friends here, but those few examinees who acknowledged his presence immediately turned away. It had only been a few minutes and already he’d found enough minor insults that a more prideful man might’ve just abandoned the whole endeavor entirely. But Leon wasn’t a prideful man, and he still believed that the best way to gain the power he needed in the Kingdom was to go through the Knight Academy, so he put these—admittedly small and probably not malicious—things out of his mind and turned back to watching the tests of the stations around him.

He quickly picked up on the procedure. The examinee would approach the stations’ measurement crystal and press their hands against it. After channeling their magic power into the crystal, it would light up. If the crystal glowed at least solid red, then the examinee had the requisite power and would move on to the next test. If the crystal did not glow brightly enough, or if the color didn’t suffuse the entire crystal, then the examinee would fail and have to leave.

As Leon watched, he was surprised to see just how many people didn’t make the cut. Rarely did the clear glass-like crystal glow fully red. Some of the examinees weren’t too happy with their results, but the Legion examiners allowed none of them to stay longer than they were supposed. Leon even saw a few examinees literally thrown away from the stations when they refused to accept their results, though these people were, thankfully, in the minority.

After a little while, Leon’s attention began to waver, and he found his eyes drawn toward the rest of the third-tiers. They hadn’t lined up but rather had formed a large group around their station and began egging each other on, treating this test as more of a game amongst themselves and a chance to show off than anything. Leon was too far away to hear what they were saying, but they seemed to be having a great time given the indistinguishable noise they were making and the way they’d clap as each of their fellows took the test.

Despite being stronger than them, the examiner didn’t disturb them, allowing the young nobles to undergo the test at their own pace. Consequently, they’d only gone through maybe ten or so people in the time it took the other stations to test thirty or forty examinees.

Leon watched as Golden-Hair decided that it was his turn to go through and stepped forward to the cheers of his peers. When he touched the crystal, almost immediately it glowed red, then orange, only stopping when the entire core of the crystal had turned bright yellow. Even from his distance, Leon could see a hint of orange that clung to the edges of the crystal, indicating that, while Golden-Hair was a third-tier mage, his power wasn’t quite stable yet.

Golden-Hair’s response seemed a bit subdued, though the rest of his fellows cheered him as he joined the ranks of those who had finished the test, and one man in particular, a tall and lean man, slapped him on the back in congratulations. Golden-Hair smiled in response, but he didn’t seem to be happy about his performance.

The nobles stopped cheering and went back into spectator mode as the woman in blue stepped forward. Again, Leon couldn’t help but marvel at the grace with which she moved, gliding across the grass almost as if it were smooth marble.

She gently pressed her hand against the crystal, and it lit up once again. The spectating nobles cheered again as it lit up bright yellow. It might’ve just been a trick of the light or the distance between him and it, but Leon thought he again saw just a hint of orange still hanging on to the edges of the crystal.

The blue woman didn’t so much as twitch, though, remaining stoic and showing neither joy nor disappointment in her results. If Leon had to guess, he’d say she probably had a firmer idea of her power than Golden-Hair had of his, but he had no proof of it.

Next came the woman in yellow, and the crystal was made to match her clothes in short order. For a third time Leon saw that the crystal still wasn’t completely yellow, but this time it was a little more obvious than it had been for the previous two.

Still, it was a passing performance, and the nobles celebrated her power, though she made an exaggerated show of grimacing and reeling back from the crystal in disappointment, before bursting out laughing.

That was enough for the woman in blue to crack a shallow smile, and the woman in yellow joined the rest of the nobles who’d already passed.

Things continued like that for a while, and Leon soon lost interest in the nobles’ theatrical display of their power. His station’s line was rapidly progressing, and it was almost time for him to take his own test rather than watch everyone else take theirs.

As with all the other examiners taking care of the commoners, the one running Leon’s station was a very humorless man who was only concerned with keeping the line moving in an orderly fashion. He would hurry the applicants forward by almost yelling ‘Next!’ and glaring at anyone who took more than a microsecond to respond. Perhaps it was because he was so unnerving that out of the hundred or so applicants who went before Leon, only nine had passed.

When it was Leon’s turn, the examiner was about to do the same as he had with all the other applicants, but as soon as his eyes met Leon’s, he caught himself. He was a third-tier mage, too, and he could sense that this test was barely even a formality for Leon. So, he gave Leon a quick nod, which Leon returned a moment later.

Leon walked up to the crystal and casually placed his hand upon it. It immediately flashed red, and seconds later to orange. The examiner watched in near awe as the orange gave way to yellow, which filled the entire crystal.

“Out of curiosity, how high can these crystals measure?” Leon asked the examiner, his curiosity piqued as he tried to see what, if any, enchantments powered it.

“They can reliably measure up to the fifth-tier. Sixth-tier and up would likely make it explode.” responded the examiner. After a few more seconds to verify that Leon was, in fact, responsible for the crystal lighting up, he said, “Alright, you passed.”

He wrote ‘100’ down on Leon’s scorecard and passed it back him, then pointed him towards one of the buildings that flanked the field. Leon thanked him and began making his way over.

As he walked, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that about a dozen of the third-tier nobles still had to go through the test, though most of the commoners were done and the field was starting to clear as people left or moved on. He was tempted to stick around for a little bit longer to watch the rest of the third-tiers, but he decided to just move on instead. If he could finish his tests before they showed up, he’d feel a lot better about showing off what he could do.

When he entered the building he’d been pointed to, the slightly surprised administrator took his card, then showed into an indoor training room just beyond the atrium.

It was quite a spacious room, with no less than eight sparring platforms all surrounding a more traditional sandpit. The walls were lined with weapons of all shapes made of a strange, silvery metal. Most of them were conventional weapons—various flavors of spear and straight sword, halberds, and axes—but there were also more exotic weapons, too, like long curved sabers, rapiers, and at least a dozen different kinds of polearm. When Leon went to examine one of the swords, he found the blade was dulled, likely to be used for training purposes, but the metal had also been enchanted.

Unfortunately, Leon could barely see through the enchantment, finding himself unable to identify any of the tiny runes inscribed along the blade and guard other than several of the most basic elemental runes, the most frequent of which were light runes, though there were a few water and darkness runes, too.

His curiosity soon got the better of him, and he took the sword off the wall to examine it further. It was a fairly well-made one-handed arming sword, possessing a decent balance, an efficient design that lacked adornment, and a relatively comfortable handle. Along with its light weight of less than two pounds, Leon knew that he could swing it for hours before getting tired.

So engrossed was he in examining the weapon that it wasn’t until the doors opened again and the third-tier nobles spilled out into the room that Leon realized the company he was about to have. He froze for a moment as he shot them a quick glance, then hurriedly replaced the sword on the wall.

Some of the nobles gave him strange looks, but it was only the woman in yellow who greeted him in any way, and even then, it amounted only to an enthusiastic wave as she and the woman in blue walked past.

Leon felt a little embarrassed, feeling for a few seconds like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. However, as the minutes passed, he began to calm down. He put some distance between himself and the nobles and sat down on the edge of one of the training platforms to meditate and wait for the next stage of the test to begin.