Derek stood there for a moment, listening to the noise his clansmen were making, then smiled to his grandmother and turned to the Patriarch, “Can I go down now?"

The Patriarch looked at the boy. “Yes, yes, you can go.”

At this point Jacob’s voice from the crowd spoke out, “Patriarch, this seems off. We should have another person test this. Derek is, after all, Rebekah’s grandson. She could be deliberately manipulating the trial.”

Neither Derek nor Rebekah were too surprised by this. Jacob had never missed an opportunity before to act contrary to them, why would he do so now. Some other Elders spoke up too, it simply made sense to get a second viewing as these attributes were somewhat unbelievable. The Patriarch took a long look at Jacob, letting him see how displeased with him he was before standing up and saying, “Fine Elder Jacob, since you don’t trust the test administrator we all agreed upon, I will also cast a Status on this boy. But I warn you now, the next person that makes any fuss like this will be punished severely. I am getting tired of this petty infighting.”

Jacob’s face slowly turned a bright crimson color, he was not used to being corrected in front of the clan. He felt that his accomplishments for the clan had placed him in an unimpeachable position. In the last sixteen years he had doubled the clan’s cash flows, what had the Patriarch done? Clearly Elder Jacob should not be spoken to in this way.

The Patriarch walked over and personally cast a Status on Derek. This status wasn’t as robust as Rebekah’s but it confirmed that her casting was correct. The Patriarch once more looked towards Jacob, “Are you satisfied now? I trust you don’t believe I would obfuscate the results of a Status in this event.”

Jacob could only bite back his anger. He knew that in this case he was wrong and that he had overstepped his place. He also knew that he had damaged his image in front of a good portion of the clan. He simply glared at Rebekah, and thought to himself, just you wait whore, this day isn’t over yet.

The Patriarch returned to his seat and Derek descended from the dais. The Patriarch looked up from his seat, waiting for the crowd to settle down and his anger to subside before announcing, “The first trial is done. All five of the children have passed. We will now commence the second trial. In this trial all five of you will cast your Holy smite spell. You will not use swords. You will merely cast it into the measuring device that will tell exactly how powerful the spell you cast is. Derek, you went up last for the first trial, you will go up first for this one.”

Derek walked back up to the dais as some clansmen placed a target with an obsidian face onto the dais in full sight of everyone there. He calmed himself for a moment, thinking about the more powerful formula for smite that he had recently learned, before drawing the mana for it from his essentia pool, shaping it by the formula, and casting it onto the obsidian target. After he cast it, the obsidian showed four and a half lines in the middle of it.

He heard the clansmen mutter their approval, though this outcome didn’t surprise them as much as his Status had, the spell being level four in strength was to be expected with his status. In fact anyone could have calculated that as the base for his power level. Only the Patriarch, Richard, Belany, and Hector seemed confused by this, while Jacob, Elton, and Feros had smug looks on their faces. When Derek and Rebekah saw this, they knew something was wrong.

They couldn’t do anything about it then so Derek just returned to stand next to Hector as Belany walked up to the dais. She cast her smite upon the target and though the formula appeared simpler she also achieved four and a half lines. Except her half line was closer to two thirds than half. She had clearly scored higher than Derek.

Hector also went up and had the same result as his sister. When the two returned to stand next to Derek they had troubled looks on their faces. After they went, Elton went up and scored slightly below Hector and Belany. At this point Derek knew that something was going on.

Belany and Hector casting a spell at a stronger level than he was to be expected as they were full mages. He was merely what is considered a magic warrior, a warrior who supplements their fighting with magical enhancement. If comparing a mage and a magic warrior of similar strengths a mage should generally surpass the magic warrior in terms of pure spell casting, and that was exactly what they were doing here. Belany and Hector could easily have learned some arcane trick to boost their spell power slightly. Elton, however, was also a magic warrior, and not just a magic warrior, but one with stats quite deficient in comparison to Derek’s.

As Feros walked up, Derek knew that if Feros also outscored him, then he would not be participating in the third trial, and that either Feros or Elton would be in charge during the fourth trial. If that happened, it is possible that they could prevent him from accomplishing the trial, or even worse, they could get him killed.

Feros cast his smite and the target showed a result of four full lines with the fifth at fifty two percent. When they saw the result, Hector cursed under his breath and Belany leaned over to Derek, “Why didn’t you drink the Unicorn tears the clan purchased for you?”

Derek looked at Belany with a dumbfounded look on his face. Unicorn tears was a potion that could be consumed and have the permanent effect of increasing the power of light based spells by a full level. For Holy casters like the Thorne clan, they could drink this potion and then modify their Holy spells to have a slightly higher percentage of light magic in them to allow them to cast at a stronger level than they naturally could. It all made sense now. The four of them had received Unicorn tear potions to boost their spellcasting and Derek had not.

He sighed sadly, “Belany, I never received any Unicorn tears. I didn’t even know that the rest of you had received them.”

Richard and Hector overheard this and looked over. Richard said, “Are you sure that you never received any? The Patriarch ordered Elder Jacob to acquire five bottles, one for each of you. You should have received yours a month ago.”

Derek just shook his head, “Uncle you have seen the way Elder Jacob treats my grandmother and I. On a bad month he makes it so that we don’t even receive enough food from the clan to eat all month. Do you honestly think he sent us such a valuable potion?”

As they were talking Feros returned to his place by his father. Elder Jacob glowered at Rebekah who was dumbfounded as to how even Feros had managed to score higher than Derek. He whispered to his sons, “When you go into the mountains for this trial, you must make sure Derek does not return.”

At this time, the Patriarch stood up and glanced around with a troubled look on his face. He had some idea that foul play had occurred here but knew that he had no proof of it. He gazed at Derek for quite a while before announcing, “The results of this trial are complete. Derek, you scored the lowest on this trial so you will not be participating in the third trial during the winter solstice. I expect all four of you who will be participating to practice hard and give this competition your all, so that the best of the four of you will be the leader for the fourth trial.”

Derek turned to Belany and Hector with a crooked smile on his face, “Congratulations. Now you have to fight those two meatheads. You are only allowed to use Holy spells and spells that you have created yourself for this fight, which means you are going to have a tremendous disadvantage against magic warriors who can simply rely on their swords to beat you. If you want you can come train with me for the next few weeks. I have a few ideas for how you can beat them.”

The two of them glanced over at Elton and Feros, who were both still gloating over their victory and giving evil looks to Derek and Rebekah.

“Sure,” Belany said, “I would love to put those two in their place.”

Derek said goodbye to Belany and Hector and went over to where his grandmother was in a heated discussion with Richard and the Patriarch. As he walked up he heard the Patriarch say, “Yes, that is very likely, but this is a very serious charge and Jacob is very sly. We need solid proof that Jacob disobeyed my order intentionally to set this situation up if we are to bring this before the other Elders. All Jacob has to say is that some servant simply failed to follow his instructions and he will be off the hook.”

Rebekah looked at the Patriarch with a hurt expression on her face, “You know what he has done over the years to hurt me and my family. You know why he has done it and yet you let it continue. This is wrong and the Unicorn tears are only the latest instance of it. How long will you let him keep this up? Until he has driven me and my family from the clan?”

The Patriarch looked at her and shook his head. He knew how troublesome this was and he knew he couldn’t do anything for Rebekah now. He looked at Derek and said, “I am sorry Derek, I do not know why you haven’t received the Unicorn tears I ordered Elder Jacob to provide for you, but I assure you I will look into it. The rules are as they are though. Your spell level was lower than the others’ so now you will not participate in the next trial. But, you will still have a chance in the fourth trial. So take that for what it’s worth.”

Derek looked at his grandmother, she couldn’t hide her disappointment, “Grandmother, it’s fine. I did not want to participate in the third trial anyways. I am uncertain I could prevent myself from significantly injuring either Elton or Feros and I am certain that even if I won they wouldn’t follow my orders during the fourth trial anyways. This gives me an opportunity to train for the next month without having to worry about the competition.”

Rebekah looked over her grandson and smiled. She ruffled his hair before saying, “OK, if that’s how you feel, let’s leave it as it is and go home for some lunch. We have a busy night ahead of us.”

The two of them took their leave of the clan Patriarch and walked back to the cottages with Eona, Ovid, and Alicia. They didn’t speak much until they got to the house when Derek told Rebekah about the Wyvern’s blood Ander had given him. They discussed how best for Eona to consume it to cure her ailment while eating lunch and afterwards Derek went out to the training yard with Ovid to train for a few hours before coming back to get ready for the dedication to the god of the forge. This was a special event for him, one that Ander said would have great impact on him for the rest of his life. He could not help but be excited.