Caen had consulted several memory crystals, and not a single one had prepared him for the intensity of the seventh zone. The effects of the suppression field were certainly getting worse.

  He solved gates one after the other: Flora, Spirit-healing, Body-enhancement, Dream-guarding, Blood-healing, Fire, Vibration, and Gleam.

  He made his way to his ninth gate in the zone, heaving and sweating profusely beneath his armor. He'd slowed his movements to a light jog due to the strain. His reserves were well below a third and plummeting still.

  He Mimicked the affinity of a Kinesis practician on the platform beside him. The Kinesis magic gate began to count down as Caen hurried to reconfigure the puzzle.

  The Kinesis practician he was Mimicking stepped through their own gate, ending their connection and causing Caen's affinity to revert. He slowed the reversion but couldn't completely halt it. He was almost done with the puzzle.

  “Three, two, one,” the disembodied voice said. “Failed.”

  Caen was abruptly shoved off the platform. There weren't many people here, and it was barely fifteen minutes into the trial.

  He stepped back onto the platform, and the timer began anew. None of the other Kinesis magic gates was occupied. He Mimicked the Kinesis affinity of a nearby participant at a Fire magic gate. It was very low, but Caen's own affinity was worse. He wouldn't be able to reconfigure the puzzle quickly enough in his abjection, to say nothing of his workings collapsing.

  “Three, two, o—solved.”

  Caen jogged over to the final gate he intended to solve in this zone: Lightning.

  He let Stormsong clatter to the floor; he stopped channeling mana into it, but continued Mimicking its Lightning affinity.

  “So slow. What a disgrace. You call this Lightning magic?”

  Caen had already gotten used to the sword’s taunts and treated it now like background chatter.

  He solved the puzzle with only a few seconds to spare and went through to the eighth and final zone.

  ***

  Dilino sat with his faction members in the crowded waiting hall as they watched the first batch of the trial. A little over two hundred people had already been eliminated.

  Weaklings.

  It always shocked him when participants bowed out at the first sign of trouble. People were too soft, too unused to suffering and hardship.

  The Patronage trials were a proving ground, and only those who knew their worth would not be found wanting. Dilino was ready to amaze the island this year. A hundred points in the first round. That was his goal. This had been done before, of course, but nowhere near as quickly as he intended to run the zones.

  Lance of the Morning sat across his lap; a legacy spear of superb quality. It had been passed down to him by his father, who had completed the trials, as had his own father before him. Four uninterrupted generations of sons had used this weapon and seized victory for themselves. Dilino would join their ranks.

  He would have the assistance of his teammates from the Spirit Dominions faction to handle any other participants that dared stand in his way. They all understood what was on the line.

  Honor. Glory. Power.

  “Look, it's that idiot with Stormsong,” said a teammate of his, pointing at one of several projections on the wall.

  Herb Mask. Another fool with a big ego. Wielding Stormsong was historically a guaranteed loss. Of the dozens of participants who had ever been unfortunate enough to take up that weapon, only three had managed to unsheath it, and one of them had died soon after. Death in the trials was rare, but it did happen.

  Herb Mask hadn't solved a single gate yet. He was currently running through a tunnel.

  “Did he forget the requirements for passing the trial?” someone nearby mocked. The surrounding participants laughed at that.

  “Maybe he's trying to set a record.”

  Those types were common.

  Dilino sneered. “Running from one end of the arena to the other without earning any points is an easy record to break.”

  More people laughed and kept calling out jokes.

  They stopped laughing when Herb Mask solved three gates in the fourth zone. That wasn't unique and had been done before. The jokes continued, but only tentatively now.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  When Herb Mask solved eight gates in the fifth zone, the waiting hall fell silent. Thousands of people were watching something impossible happen. Dilino’s jaw was hanging open in shock.

  “He's done for,” someone said. “Mana expenditure is no joke. H-he won't make it the rest of the way.”

  He made it the rest of the way.

  Nine gates in the next zone. Then ten gates in the seventh zone.

  Ten. Dilino's gaze crawled towards a projection with the current rankings. One hundred and fifty points.

  That was close to the minimum requirement to pass the entire Patronage trials. Many participants usually surpassed this by the third trial, but so few had earned that many points in the first trial.

  In fact, one hundred and sixty-five points was the current record for the highest number of points earned in the first trial.

  “T-there’s… there’s…” a participant stuttered, standing to his feet. “There’s no way he… surely he couldn't possibly—”

  “Kid, we're watching history being made,” said a weathered participant with graying hair and a toothpick in his mouth. He was wearing gaudy metal armor and looked to be in his fifties. “So shut your mouth and sit down.”

  ***

  In the final zone, Caen solved his eighth gate—Gleam. With each exhale, steam poured out of the holes in his mask. The bandages beneath his helmet were so drenched that his breathing was further hindered.

  At the Kinesis gate, Caen found himself without any Kinesis practicians to Mimic, so he made do with someone else’s Kinesis affinity.

  The gate ejected him several times. After yet another failed attempt, he abandoned it and jogged to the Lightning gate, which he solved using Stormsong’s affinity once again. Then he Mimicked the awakened weapon's Wind affinity and solved a Wind gate.

  He resisted the temptation to move through it, to put an end to his soul–deep weariness. Instead, he jogged to a Kinesis gate.

  Then something happened. Caen’s soul changed just as it had many times in the past few months.

  The next step he took launched him several feet farther than he'd intended. His body felt lighter, almost as though he'd taken off the armor. His balance, his gait, drastically improved in that same second. He felt a keen awareness of the weight of his body and the objects in contact with it.

  Kinesis had risen out of abjection.

  Caen made an exhausted sound that was halfway between a surprised laugh and a sigh of relief.

  He stepped onto the Kinesis gate.

  “Fifteen, fourtee—solved.”

  ***

  While the wild cheers from the arena below resounded, Martos Ereshta'al, leader of the Zenith faction, slammed his fists on the granite table in front of him. It was made from sturdy enough materials to survive his wrath. Infuriatingly enough, so was everything else in this private viewing booth.

  “What do you mean ‘we don't quite know who he is?’” he roared at his subordinates.

  The three directors cowered under his gaze. They each handled the departments of Information, Talent Acquisition, and Relations. They were utterly useless!

  Kododa, the director of Information, cleared his throat. He was a short man with a nasal tinge to his voice. “Eshtr, sir, we found out some important details about him and are still investigating.”

  “What details?”

  The directors exchanged glances. Kododa cleared his throat again, and Martos felt the urge to hurl the table at the man.

  “For one, he possesses a Parthran fragment and selected Stormsong as his chosen weapon this—”

  “I know about the ancestors’ damned sword! I watched him haul it for fifteen whole minutes, you imbecile!”

  The directors all flinched backwards from his outburst, but the other two stepped away from Kododa.

  “H-he was also noted to have green bandages enwrapping his entire head, which implies a recent injury.”

  Martos’s anger abated a fraction. “Go on.”

  Kododa cleared his throat. “Last night, I put in an application to review the endorsements for the trials and learned that a certain Lobos endorsed Herb Mask.”

  “By Tahal, if I have to wrench out every sentence from your mouth, I'll be driven mad,” Martos growled.

  “Apologies, Eshtr. I spoke with Lobos. He is an elder in a commune on the northern edge of Spova. He quickly revealed that he was merely carrying out a favor for Horavainaris.”

  Martos's anger abated further, but his frown deepened.

  Horavai? The man was an enigma, but last Martos had heard, he didn't involve himself in island politics.

  “We are still trying to determine if he intends to form his own faction,” Kododa continued. “He hasn't done anything unusual of late, beyond naming a young man as his primary aide.”

  Martos eyed Kododa dangerously, and the director hurried to continue.

  “Ar’Caen Ereshta’al.”

  That name rang a bell. “Wait. The abject from the Faithful Decent faction?”

  “Yes, Eshtr.”

  Martos huffed. “A charity case, then? That leads us nowhere.”

  The abject child had been Elder Gev’s project for years, and nothing had come of it. Fortunately or unfortunately, the boy was a cripple. But still… he might know something.

  Martos tapped his fingers on the granite table. “Keep an eye on Horavai’s residence. I want to know who visits him and when. Same also for the abject.”

  “Yes, Eshtr. Do we put scryers on Horavainaris’s Astral domain as well?”

  Martos shook his head. “That would be a waste of resources.”

  Other factions had tried to do so in the past and failed woefully.

  Martos returned his attention to a light projection on the glass where the scoreboard ranked Herb Mask in first place. The frenzy in the arena seats below had not dwindled.

  Two hundred and five points in a little over fifteen minutes. This was not so much making history as breaking it.