Today, Angelika was an experimental test chicken. Or at least that was how Dimitry described her role in an exam. What kind of exam? She didn’t know, and judging by the inquisitive sideways glances of the others waiting in the cathedral’s second-floor prayer room, neither did anyone else.

To Angelika’s left, Emilia slumped back into a defaced pew, twisting strands of her shaggy brown hair around an outstretched finger. To her right, Leona sat up straight and looked ahead with alert orange eyes. Neither of her sisters spoke. They remained quiet, as did everyone else. One could only hear the rustling of fabric and people accidentally kicking those weird slate sheets under their seats.

The reason for the silence was obvious.

They were here.

Sitting on the front-most pew was Her Royal Highness, and if royalty wasn’t enough, to her left stood a yellow-robed court sorceress—Leandra. Assuming the stories were true, she earned Her Royal Majesty’s highest honor in the Gestalt Wars by charging into enemy front lines and dispatching an entire artillery channeling squadron. That meant Leandra killed five sorceresses. Alone and surrounded. What a fucking badass.

Squirming in her seat, Angelika debated approaching the legend herself. Just for a moment’s conversation. To ask for advice or to compare vol efficiency. Maybe some of Leandra’s genius would rub off on her.

Nah. Definitely not. Angelika might have been a sorceress, but her only experience in battle was against heathens, gargoyles, and bandits. Nothing like an opposing army. Besides, Leandra belonged to the nobility—a world far beyond Angelika’s grasp. She could never speak as her equal, let alone match her outstanding military honors. Angelika simply wasn’t born that way.

And she’d probably just make herself look like an idiot in front of the returned princess. Again. A mistake she couldn’t afford to repeat. If Angelika didn’t cringe at her scuffed promotion ceremony at least five times on any given day, then it hadn’t been lunch yet. How Dimitry could ask for casual favors from people so distinguished surpassed her imagination. Maybe he used some spooky magic to control them.

Her eyes widened.

Who was to say Dimitry didn’t cast his brainwashing magic on Angelika as well?

The slamming of a granite door evicted Angelika from her thoughts.

“Sorry for the wait,” said an apostle whose chin overgrew with brown-blond stubble. He strode to an aged altar and dropped a parchment stack onto the lectern that held gospels for sermons over a decade ago. “Took all night coming up with these.”

“You are forgiven,” Her Royal Highness announced. “An arbiter is as patient as she is wise.”

Emilia nodded with furious agreement, and Leona glanced over as if for a clue.

Arbiter? The fuck were they talking about? Knowing well the futility of decoding what must have been more Dimitry-speak, Angelika answered her big sister’s confused gesture with a shrug. Leona shrugged back.

Two pews ahead, a barrel of a man with knife scars stretching from his neck down to his collar watched on with his usual murderous glare. No one ever knew what Milk was thinking since he never talked, but after meeting his gaze, Dimitry rushed to explain. “As many of you already know, every refugee that has volunteered to join the western expansion of Malten will undergo a battery of exams tomorrow. Each exam tests for proficiency in a different skill. Although they will all end up as soldiers in my army, their exact role will depend on their performance.”

Angelika’s face scrunched up. While peasants made up the bulk of most armies, fighting with longbows and spears or whatever other garbage they had lying around the house, an army without a tactician was just a mob. Commoners needed a knight or bishop or something to lead them. Did Dimitry really expect to find a trained general amongst a bunch of refugees?

“I see some confused faces,” Dimitry said. “If anyone has questions, raise your hand.”

The hand of a perfume goblin who smelled of citrus and wasted far too much time trimming her cuticles rose into the air.

“Yes, Leona?” Dimitry said.

“Your Holiness, are we here to sample your battery of examinations?”

“Close. You will only take one exam today. Since this exam tests for something that no exam on Remora ever had, I need to collect data on its efficacy before putting it into use.”

Emilia raised her hand next. “Does it have something to do with those puzzles you brought to last night’s conference?”

He chuckled. “That’s exactly right.”

“What do they test?”

“Intelligence.”

“Intelligence?” Angelika muttered to herself.

“Yes, Angelika. Intelligence.”

Leandra glanced back at Angelika and smirked.

Did Angelika say something wrong? Did her ignorance make Leandra think she was an idiot? She sunk back into her seat, lamenting not keeping her stupid questions to her stupid self.

“intelligence is a talent anyone can have,” Dimitry said. “Whether they’re a peasant, a king, or a baron, anyone might be the revolutionary genius this kingdom desperately needs. My goal is to find as many as I can and give them the opportunity to excel.”

The heretical words made Angelika shoot up. Leona’s eyes widened, Clewin the apothecary dropped his wife’s hand, and even Milk, who always looked pissed, now looked pissed and perplexed.

“Your Holiness,” Leandra said, stepping away from Her Royal Highness’s side. “Are you implying that a marquis is no smarter than a serf?”

“No. A marquis will almost always be smarter than a serf, but that’s because he had the luxury of a sheltered upbringing and tutors. My point is, if you educate a serf and feed them throughout childhood, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference. Titles mean nothing in regards to intelligence.”

“Not once in my life have I seen a serf outwit their liege.”

“That’s because you deny them even a passing glance,” a defiant voice said.

Leandra knelt beside the princess. “Your Highness, I beg you to consider your words. You represent the throne.”

Saphiria stood up. “If any woman has the potential to be as wise as a queen or any man as sharp as a king, would we all not benefit? Imagine how prosperous such a nation would be. Any royal who deems her subjects fools to justify her exalted status is the greatest fool of all.”

Dimitry folded his hands over his chest and smiled like a proud father. Leandra closed her eyes and lowered her head.

Angelika looked left and right, hoping to see faces just as disbelieving as her own. What the hell was going on? Did Her Royal Highness and the apostle both forget that Zera blessed nobles and the clergy with physical and mental superiority? Almost all the smartest people were Church scholars. Hell, they invented seals and remain the only people who could make seal inscription fluid.

“How about this?” Dimitry shot Emilia a glance. “If neither a noble, a royal, or one of my divine employees scores highest on this exam, we’ll put this matter to rest.”

“Did you share the contents with anyone?” Leandra asked.

“That’d be impossible since I came up with the questions overnight. Besides, this exam only works on people who’ve never seen it before. Or at least it does in theory. There’s still lots of work to be done, and even then l doubt it’ll measure intelligence perfectly.”

“Though I came as Her Royal Highness’s guard, I would appreciate the opportunity to defend my family’s dignity.”

“You want to participate?”

“If I may,” Leandra said.

“The more people the better.” Dimitry picked up the top parchment from his stack. “Everyone, take a blackboard from under your seat and come closer. I didn’t have time to draw more than one copy of the exam so we’ll have to share.”

Angelika glanced under her pew to find the collapsed stack of slate sheets she had been kicking with her heels since she got here. Were those the so-called blackboards? In all fairness, they were black, and they were also boards, but how the hell did they measure intelligence? Maybe it’d be like one of those tavern drinking games where pissed drunk gamblers wagered money over who could balance the most plates on their heads without falling on their ass.

She took the ‘blackboard’ and, huddling behind her sisters to avoid eye contact with Leandra, approached the front. Everyone squished together on the pews closest to Dimitry, leaving excessive space for the princess.

Dimitry held up the parchment. “Can everyone see?”

Peeking out from behind Milk’s massive shoulders, Emilia shook her head.

“Allow me.” Leandra reached into her yellow robes, and an image of the parchment superimposed onto the granite wall behind Dimitry.

He paused, then cautiously poked at the strange hand-drawn diagrams. “What spell was that?”

“A perfect miragia!” Angelika blurted. An amused grunt from Leandra followed, and Angelika’s cheeks burned red. Damn her and her big mouth! Now the court sorceress thought she was like one of Valter's clingy fans!

“It’s all pictures,” Clewin said.

“That’s the point,” Dimitry said, half-recovered from his intrigued trance. “The typical serf can’t read, write, or handle numbers, so I designed the exam to work without text. Every question can be answered at a glance.”

Angelika examined a three-by-three grid of images, each slightly different except for a blank one on the bottom right. To the right were six other near-identical images. She stared for a moment, and then something clicked in her head. “It’s a pattern! We’re supposed to guess what fits in the blank!”

“Correct,” Dimitry said.

Emilia held up her hand. “Can we move onto the next page?”

“You’re finished already?”

She nodded.

Angelika barely suppressed the urge to glare her baby sister into submission. Damn genius solved every question before anyone else could figure out how the damn thing worked. Was that why Dimitry gave her that knowing glance earlier? Did he think she would score higher than the princess? Nah. Emilia was a clever little braggart, but she wasn’t that clever.

Dimitry held out a small leather bag. “Everyone take a piece of chalk. You’ll be using it to record your answers.”

Gripping a milky jagged stone, Angelika glanced down at the slate sheet on her lap. Ohhh! She easily solved the first question and copied the symbol next to her answer onto the blackboard. This thing was fucking awesome! Too bad writing with chalk made her hands all chalky. Guess that was why they called it chalk. Or was it the other way around?

Once others got the hang of it, Dimitry put an hourglass on the lectern. The sand drained swiftly. “From now on, I will time every page. Finish as many questions as you can. Don’t worry if you miss a few. I doubt anyone will get them all.”

Angelika smirked. Now that she knew what to do, she couldn’t lose. A rare opportunity to impress Leandra.

The first page of puzzles was easier than beating up Emilia, and the next only slightly harder. By the fourth page, Angelika bounced her leg, uneasy about her answers. With the fifth came a profound sense of stupidity, existential dread on the sixth, and on the seventh, all hope was gone.

Or had it?

True intelligence lay not in those who racked their brains, but in those who let others rack their brains for them. Why should Angelika waste her mental energy? She needed it for more important things, like… stuff. Acting as actual geniuses did, she glanced at Emilia, who patiently waited for Leandra to project the next page.

“Yo,” Angelika whispered. “Answers.”

But Emilia did not provide answers. In a brutal act of betrayal, she covered her blackboard instead.

Angelika covertly kicked her sister’s boot. “An. Swers!”

“Stop, sis.”

“Leave her alone,” Leona hissed.

Surrounded by traitors on both sides, Angelika resorted to desperate measures. She locked Emilia’s arm into an elbow grip, giving her full access to those treasures—symbols that would prove her mental acuity.

Two overly manicured hands twisted Angelika’s head forward. “You idiot,” Leona said. “Look.”

Dimitry palmed his face and shook his head. Her Royal Highness wore a reprimanding frown. Next to her, a court sorceress held her sides, laughing her ass off.

Leandra was laughing at her.

Bottom lip quivering, Angelika thought she would cry. The last thing she should do was cry. Maybe she was already crying.

“Alright,” Dimitry said, his tone full of pity. “Guess we’re done here. Barring all cheaters, everyone pass up your blackboards.”

In the end, Emilia turned out to be an actual genius, Leandra struggled to accept that Her Royal Highness came in second, and Angelika, well, she couldn’t wait to go home and sob into her pillow.

For the first time in his life, no one treated Pauel like an outcast. Hope shinin’ warmly in his chest and icy winds slamming into his face, he ran beside lotsa other Sacred Hospitaller recruits, none the wiser to who he was. Onlooking mothers didn’t pull their kids away at the sight of him. Ladies didn’t turn the other cheek. Instead, the people of Malten were cheering him.

An aproned man leaned out from his second-floor butchery and clapped. Two cute girls ate mutton pastys with one hand and waved with the other. The entire city watched the newly formed Sacred Order of the Hospital of Archbishop Dimitry with the promise of safety gleaming in their eyes.

And Pauel beamed back, his first taste of prestige brightening the yearning of his heart. One day, he would become someone people admired—someone who helped the weak and purified the corrupt. But first, he would impress everyone with his speed. The apostle was doing some kinda running exam, and Pauel couldn’t let this chance to prove himself slip away.

He ran even faster.

“Slow down!” heaved Jost. The former lawyer mighta been tall, but he was so skinny that a stray gust of wind could knock him on his ass. Guess his old life of writing contracts at some fancy desk didn’t make him a better sprinter.

“He’s… showing off,” Sigmund muttered between winded breaths, proving that top-heavy silversmiths didn’t fare much better. “Trying… to make the rest of us… look bad.”

Pauel glanced back. He met Jost and Sigmund when the three of ‘em were refugees livin’ on the streets. Back then, muggings were common, so they grouped up to stay safe and avoid nighttime thefts. Though life had reduced his buddies to squatters like himself, Pauel admired them. Envied them. One used to practice law and the other owned a smithy and home in Einheart before its collapse. They experienced the joys of having money. An honorable trade. Self-respect.

And at long last, Pauel would too. “Ya slowpokes gotta hurry if the apostle’s gonna take you in!”

“You ass,” Jost said, holding his sides as he lagged further behind.

Sigmund grunted. “I thought… we were… friends!”

“We still are! I’m just the fastest one!” Leaving them behind, Pauel completed his second lap around the city and returned to the monastery’s front gate. A lady with dark-blue hair asked for his name and scribbled some stuff on a slate slab. Try as he might, Pauel couldn’t read what she wrote. The few letters and numbers he learned from Malten’s store signs didn’t help.

Eventually Sigmund caught up, so tired that his feet flopped across the carved stone ground. He punched Pauel’s shoulder. “What happened to… becoming brothers in arms… together?”

“Heh, sorry.”

Jost arrived soon after, but he was too busy massaging his shins to complain.

A loud clap cut across the murmurs of exhausted recruits. Standin’ on a podium was the cute sorceress that protected the market square on the Night of Repentance! She reached into her crimson robes. “Loudia.”

Pauel’s mouth dropped. Magic! Real, genuine magic! Back when he lived in Malten’s northern forests, people were lucky to see a sorceress once a year. The only ‘mages’ that lingered were those traveling swindlers who pretended to cast healing spells for coin. One even stole Pauel’s hard-earned silvers after promising to straighten his bent wrist.

“Congratulations on not dying during your endurance exam,” the sorceress said, her amplified voice echoing across paved stone streets. “His Holiness is very impressed by your basic capacity to run, and even if you somehow messed up, you can still proceed to the main testing chamber. Just tell Claricia by the doors what jobs you used to do before applying to the Sacred Hospitaller so we can get this over with and I can go home.” Back hunched and chest deflated, the curly-haired sorceress exited the public eye with a depressed sigh.

Though she had left, the sorceress’s words rang in Pauel’s ears. Why did she wanna know what jobs he used to do? Wasn’t this supposed to be his fresh start?

Sigmund dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Something up?”

“For someone who was bragging a while ago,” Jost said, “you don’t seem so full of yourself anymore.”

“It’s nothing.” Pauel faked a laugh. “Just feelin’ bad about how you guys are gonna get left behind. It’ll be lonely at the top, ya know?”

Pushing up his cracked green-tinted glasses, Jost smirked. “Don’t worry about me. The apostle said that even a peasant has value, and if that’s the case, I’m irreplaceable. I’ll be helping him settle tithe agreements with the nobility.”

“As if,” Sigmund said. “You’ll be slogging through disputes with serfs at best.”

“You’ll see.”

“Want to bet?”

“How much?”

“Still got this copper from the other day.”

Arguing, his buddies went ahead. They proudly told the Claricia lady their professions and entered the monastery. Pauel waited until all the other recruits went ahead so no one could hear him.

Claricia glanced up from her slate board. “You’re Pauel—the one who came in fourth, right? Past jobs and skills?”

“N-none, mad’m.”

“None at all?”

He shook his head.

Claricia looked down at Pauel’s wrist, which remained bent and sore ever since he hurt himself while diving away from a falling tree trunk. “Even if it’s menial labor, His Holiness will put your skills to good use. And if you can’t do physical labor, your experience will decide your new role. You’ll also get opportunities to advance with hard work and effort. Do you have anything that His Holiness can work off of?”

Her words seemed considerate, but once the apostle found out the stigma Pauel bore, he might not even be allowed to join. “Nothin’. Sorry.”

Eyes full of concern, Claricia stepped aside.

Pauel lowered his head and walked past her, yet his downcast posture didn’t last. A warm blast of air washed away his shame as he stumbled through the monastery’s arched entrance. His gaze traveled up and beyond the red-glowing door frame.

Pillars of dark granite contrasted with their marble flutings as they protruded down from a ceiling taller than a mature evergreen and half as sprawling as the city block the monastery occupied. Holy paintings of the three matriarchs fighting a giant, mysterious heathen decorated the walls. Depictions of priestesses and knights marching by the coast carved themselves into the floor. Statues of Celeste towered over all, and not one ball of dust sullied the glistenin’ floor. Only silver trims close to the ground, where a squatter might have reached ‘em, showed signs of wear.

Pride welled within Pauel. This was the first time he stepped into such a beautiful place. The Zeran Knights never allowed people like him inside, and for the past few months, gangs made the monastery their hideout. No one with a head on their shoulders would have ever gone inside. It was too dangerous.

But soon… soon Pauel would join a holy order that operated from this very building! His grin stretched wider than his face.

Jost chuckled and pushed his glasses to his face. “Let me guess, first time?”

“As if you’ve been inside a monastery before.” Sigmund sighed. “You don’t always have to pretend you’ve already done everything before everyone else.”

“I don’t pretend.”

“Alright, then tell me. When was your last visit to a monastery, oh great man of the law?”

“I don’t indulge in the past either.” Jost marched ahead. “Come on, let’s join the others. I feel like we’re being left behind.”

“You always change the topic when you’re full of it,” Pauel joked. He and Sigmund teased Jost as they followed him to the central podium.

There, other recruits from the block swarmed around a lady who pointed to various rooms on the monastery’s ground floor. “Each chamber contains an exam that measures competency in a single skill. As proctors will administer each exam only twice, and since all exams start at the same time, you can only take two such exams. It is advised that you take exams you’ll excel in. There will also be a third exam at the end that everyone must complete.” She began listing the different exams and guiding people toward them.

Pauel listened carefully, hoping to hear about an exam with a subject he could do good at. Or one he could do. Maybe even something he could pretend to know by mimicking others.

“Smithing and carpentry for me,” Sigmund said.

“And carpentry?” Pauel muttered.

Smiling proudly, Sigmund slammed his fist into his chest. “Yup! Built my own shop and house. Couldn’t afford to hire anyone to do it for me back then. Funny how I can’t now either.”

“I’m doing literature and mathematics,” said Jost. “I can’t wait to see His Holiness’s face when he hears my Rostlen pronunciation.”

Pauel’s eyes widened. “Ya know how to read Rostlen?”

“Read Rostlen?” Jost chuckled. “I can write it.”

The lady finished calling out the different exam subjects, and Pauel found himself heartbroken and in awe. His buddies were exceptional, multi-talented, and smart. But he had nothing. Nothing to compete with. Nothing to brag about. Even if the apostle had a test for his old trade, his broken arm wouldn’t let him work. That was how he became a refugee.

Jost glanced at Pauel. “How about you? What are you going—”

Sigmund elbowed him.

“What was that for?”

“You know what.” Sigmund placed a hand on Pauel’s shoulder. “If you’d like, I can help you out on the smithing exam.”

“Ah…” Jost looked away. “I’ll feed you answers for the math exam. Should be enough to impress His Holiness.”

Though Pauel never mentioned his past, his friends found out that it wasn’t nothing fancy. Probably from the way he spoke. But if their help meant he could do something with his life, then he would try. “Thanks.”

First, Pauel joined Sigmund for the smithing exam. The instructor asked twenty participants to make a drive hook with only a hammer, an anvil, and a wrought-iron coal forge in as few heats as possible. Most of the terms Pauel didn’t understand, and despite his attempts to mimic Sigmund, he blundered on the tapering, forging, and bending parts of the exam, ending up with a dented iron stick instead of a hook. The instructor asked him to leave the room.

Then came the math exam with Jost. They planned to sit together to share answers, but Pauel’s stomach dropped when the proctor separated everyone into small booths. Alone and panicking, his gaze shot down the page from number to number, which grew bigger and bigger. By the end, chalk coated his hands, and his blackboard had the desperate scribbles of a person trying to look competent.

Standing outside the exam room, under the outstretched arm of a Celeste statue, a farmer bragged about his weaving skills to his friend, and they went on and on about beer brewing. Everyone was celebrating their talents.

Everyone except Pauel. While he waited for his buddies to finish talking to their proctors, he strolled through the monastery with heavy shoulders and a void where his heart used to be. He had always tried to make do with his upbringing—a father who died in the Gestalt Wars and a mother who disappeared soon after. The prospects of a ten-year-old kid kicked out of his village for being a drain on resources during a famine weren’t great, yet Pauel never stopped believing that his life would get better.

Until today.

For the first time, Pauel had given up. He stood outside the final testing site, another disappointment no doubt awaiting him within.

Sigmund sighed. “Look, there’s still one more to go. Maybe this topic will be something you’re good at.”

“And even if it isn’t,” Jost said, “you ran faster than us. I’m sure that’s more important to an army than trade skills.”

“I guess,” Pauel mumbled.

The last exam resembled the math one. After handing out blackboards and chalk, proctors seated people onto spread-out chairs. A sorceress projected the image of a piece of parchment onto the wall. “Record the symbol next to the most fitting answer,” was all she said.

Pauel hesitated to look at the questions. His inadequacy hounded him to leave before he lost the remnants of his dignity.

Fortunately, he stayed.

The first four questions were simple. So were the ones on the next few pages. Though Pauel had extra time, by the sixth page, most people were gripping their heads or muttering under their breath. Jost stared at the wall as if willing an answer to come to mind. Sigmund looked down at his blackboard, leg bouncing madly.

Who knew a few patterns could agitate smart folks so much?

After the test concluded, proctors came around to check everyone’s blackboards. Most examinees were told to leave, others were instructed to stay in their seats, and four or five lined up in front of the room.

Claricia, the lady from before, reached Pauel. She smiled gently. “Hello again.”

Though her gesture seemed kind, Pauel sensed her pity. “… Hi.”

“If you don’t mind—“

“H-here!” He held out his blackboard to end the nervousness.

She giggled while looking over his answers. Her smile vanished, and an open-mouthed stare took its place.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Pauel asked.

“If you don’t mind me asking, have you ever attended university?”

Though Pauel hesitated to reveal his incompetence at first, he shook his head.

“So it works after all…” Claricia trailed off.

“What works, mad’m?”

“Oh, don’t mind me. Please join the others waiting in front of the room. His Holiness will meet with you.”

Pauel froze. Him? Meet the apostle?