The Aspirants fell into essentially two camps, after the meal was over. There were those who socialized, and those who explored.

Both were tempting paths, but Yenx chose a third. He observed.

His body was telling him, after a meal like the one that he’d had, that there was no need to move. He got the feeling that, so long as there was water, he could sustain himself almost indefinitely, squatting right here up against a wall, and wait for prey to present itself.

Instincts aside, Yenx was developing a strong habit of prudence. Zemp’s warning about the Guild’s perfidy was a contributing factor but it was also that there were enough Aspirants around that he felt like he could let them make some mistakes for him. Rushing seemed like a losing strategy, and he didn’t want information about their surroundings nearly as much as he wanted it about his new brethren, who were also to be his competitors.

Forty Four Aspirants. Nineteen blanks, the rest sponsored.

The humans first, of course.

Humans made up twenty four of the Aspirants, and were divided into 19 men and 5 women. There were just 4 blanks in their number, all the rest were sponsored. Even if the judging was fair, you’d expect them to end up the biggest slice of those entering the Guild proper.

The ursin were the next most numerous, with a grand total of thirteen, about half the human’s numbers. There were eight females and five males in their number, and they had 8 blanks.

Lastly there were his fellow saurin. There was Yenx, three more males and three females. Every one of them were blanks.

Yenx used his Sigil to scan the other Aspirants, and found that the ones who were not blanks had, unsurprisingly, classes that were not ‘blank’. They were all first level, however.

The humans had five people with ‘noble’ as their class, four with ‘retainer’, four with ‘athlete’ and a series of singletons, ‘champion’, ‘warrior’, ‘prisoner’, ‘merchant’, ‘damsel’, ‘gambler’ and ‘frame pilot’. The ursin had two with ‘hostage’, two with ‘retainer’ and one with ‘guide’.

Yenx’s guess was that the Aspirants who weren’t blanks had skills registered with their Sigils, and it used those to pick what classes to put them into. The label of ‘blank’ probably didn’t mean someone who’d had the blanking art used on them, so much as it did someone who didn’t have any skills that the Sigil knew about.

Watching everyone told him more than just numbers, however. He was also able to help fill in some of the general knowledge that had been left over from his past self.

Humans were the smallest race, standing fix to six feet tall, with two legs and no tail. They had no claws on their hands, and their mouths were small. They had short hair that grew from the top of their heads and/or their faces, except for a few who’d let their hair get long and wore it down their backs.

The humans’ most obvious defining trait was their constant activity. Yenx felt like he might get tired just looking at them. They were constantly wandering around and talking to people, poking at things, and playing with their Sigils. Some of them even just paced back and forth. At least four of them had come up to him, asked him his name, made a few desultory attempts at conversation and then wandered away. Since there was nothing to differentiate himself from the other blanks, he was forced to conclude that they’d decided to learn the names of everyone in the entire hall.

Even when a human sat still, they didn’t really sit still. Their heads were constantly moving around, they’d randomly start talking to other nearby resting people, or they’d abandon the effort and go investigate somewhere else. Yenx actually saw one of them, sound asleep, roll over without waking up. They even wasted energy while they were unconscious!

Ursin, on the other hand, were the biggest race. They had a long, quadrupedal body with a short whippy hair tail, and then where you might expect an animal’s head to be, they had a torso coming up out of the front. They had extremely long arms, probably because of how high up off the ground they were, and their faces had protruding muzzles and huge fangs. They were maybe nine feet fall, and about six feet long.

Ursin had an atmosphere of ponderous size and strength about them. They moved only with deliberation, and spent a lot of time sitting down, with their four legs folded up under them, so that they were just about as tall as the humans and could more easily converse with them.

Finally there were the saurin, Yenx’s own people. They were a bit taller than the humans, seven or so feet, but also more slender. They were reptilian, of course, with sensible scales instead of exposed skin. He expected their weight was probably just a bit more than that of humans of similar heights. They had great heavy tails, like a third leg, and it kept them hunched forward, while the other races stood straight upright.

It was probably because he was like them, but he had trouble finding anything distinctive about their behavior. They mostly loafed around, conserving energy in case they needed to do anything, which was the right and reasonable course of action. Only Bajj was trying to keep up with the humans, she’d stuck herself at the hip to one of the human girls and was trotting along with her.

“Yenx,” said Ectar, who had come up alongside him.

He grunted in response, turning a single eye upon the little man.

“Yenx, Yenx Yenx,” he repeated, insistently at his side. That’s right, grunting didn’t work on this one.

“What do you want?” asked Yenx, his voice a surly growl.

“The scouts have found the other two halls. I want to go see them, figure out where we are going to go tomorrow.”

“So?”

Ectar took ahold of one of Yenx’s talons in two of his fingers, pulled lightly at it.

“So come with us! Nobody will mess with such a great team, and maybe you’ll see something I won’t. Like the top of a high shelf!”

Yenx turned his head round to face Ectar.

“Who else is on this ‘great team’?” he demanded.

“Well, there’s you, and then there’s me…”

“And?”

“And whoever joins up when they see two such strapping specimens getting along so well. We’ll be an example to all of the other brothers and sisters, with how mightily close we’ll grow. Pure fellowship!”

Yenx heaved himself up to his feet, glowering down at Ectar.

“Now, list-“

But the human had already bounded off towards one of the doors, cheekily beckoning behind himself.

Yenx swayed for a moment before lumbering after him. If he sank back down into his crouch the man would only come back and pester him again. Besides, it wasn’t the worst idea to scout out the other areas of the Sect’s fortress a bit.

The first door that Ectar led them through went to another hallway, but Yenx stayed behind a minute to examine the door itself. It was flush with the wall, with no hinges or other contrivances, simply a slab of wood that rose when approached. He peered above, but could see no ropes or other contrivances.

“Ah, Beloved Sister!” called Ectar, sidling up alongside a taller human woman with startlingly red hair.

The woman, one of the ‘nobles’ in the eyes of the Sigil, glanced briefly at him and then rolled her eyes and sighed.

“In the much bemoaned absence of the scion of the Merrippa, I offer my own, deeply inferior company as the slightest possible compensation. To see a woman so regal, so striking, and let her pass the time alone would drive my ancestors from their graves in disappointment.”

It was amazing the way so many words could pour out of Ectar’s mouth. Yenx felt like if he tipped him over they would spill out all across the floor.

“Shove off, Nukla,” she said, shortly, and another human stepped to her side to loom threateningly down at Ectar.

Yenx found himself walking up alongside them, staring down in turn at the ‘retainer’, who seemed unused to this kind of treatment.

“No need for violence, Daro,” said Ectar to the man. “I can tell that this isn’t the time for our my partnership with your mistress to blossom.”

He hurried on ahead before they could respond to that, and Yenx slouched after him, only taking his gaze off of Daro when he’d passed well out of the man’s reach.

“What was that?” he demanded of Ectar, when he caught up to him. They were approaching the other door at the far end of the hall, passing a young lady who was moving slowly down the hall, knocking on the wall every few paces.

“Politics,” said the man, already moving towards the door.

Yenx reached out and hooked a claw onto the back of his shirt collar, drawing him up short with a jerk.

Ectar looked up into Yenx’s face, gave a smile of beatific innocence.

Yenx just stood there.

“Fine, fine,” said the weathered little man, “It was Nincenji politics. My family wants me to toady up to Megha’s family. Perfect world, we end up in the same Party and marry our Paths. Daro is one of her family’s minions, he’ll do what she wants.”

Yenx had known that the sponsored Aspirants had histories, of course, but he hadn’t realized the degree to which they could draw on those legacies even inside the Sect.

“What was all that about the Merippa family?” he asked.

“That’s the royal family, the Tripleking’s line. Sool, the fellow with the nose, is joining the Guild, and one day he’ll rule the nation. So naturally, all the noble ladies are sniffing around him.”

“Which one is most likely to match up with him?”

Ectar reached up and gently unhooked Yenx’s talon from his collar.

“That’s the question, of course, and before I got here I’d have expected him to be with Megha.”

“And now?”

Ectar moved up to the door, which slid up into the ceiling, revealing a brightly lit chamber beyond.

“You are kidding me!” he said, even as he shaded his eyes with a hand and stepped into the room.

Yenx followed after, doing likewise. It really was startlingly bright.

This hall had the same kind of illumination as the Hall of Welcome, the same double row of torches burning endlessly all along the walls, but instead of those walls being black painted stone, they’d been painted a blazing white.

The floor was also loosely packed sand, which shifted under Yenx’s talons as soon as he stepped inside.

“What am I kidding you about?” he demanded of Ectar, well aware that the merchant’s attention would instantly vanish onto another subject if he let it.

Ectar looked back up to him, as though trying to make out whether he was doing some more joking.

“The junior sister in the hall of welcome, the one with the golden hair?”

“The ‘damsel’?”

Ectar nodded.

“She’s prettier than the sun coming up. Soon as she lit out exploring the Young Master was after her, left all three of his official suitors in the lurch.”

Yenx thought back. He’d noticed the woman, of course, she was the only one with that hair color. But she’d looked pretty much like all the other humans to him.

He looked out over the hall.

“Which one do you think this is?” he asked.

“It’s got to be either Body or Mind,” said Ectar, “Looks like it is precisely the same size as the Hall of Welcome. I feel like they wouldn’t have any random old room be as big as something with a special name like that.”

Yenx looked around the room. They weren’t the only ones who’d come down the hall, a pair of beastmen and a human were inspecting something on the ground in the center.

“Looks like there are circles draw in the sand,” he said after a moment. “So probably the hall of the Body, then, and our lessons are going to be fights inside of circles.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Ectar.

The human walked over to them, looking up at Yenx, mostly.

“You think Body too?” he asked. He had a deep, resonant voice. It sounded like it came from a much bigger guy.

“Probably,” agreed Yenx.

“I’m Ectar Nukla, and this big fellow is Yenx. What’s your name?”

The man considered for a second.

“The Guild calls me Offi,” he said, “I don’t remember what it was before.”

“Well, Offi,” said Ectar, “Would you like to come along with us? I think the place will have a certain symmetry, so we should get to the last Hall by going through the door on the other side of the Hall of Welcome.”

Offi gave a shrug.

“Sure,” he said, “But don’t make more out of it than that. I’m not joining any Parties here.”

“Fine,” said Yenx.

They trooped back down the hall, where Megha and Daro were talking to a beastman, and then back into the Hall of Welcome.

Nurr was just coming out of the door opposite, with another saurin following on his heels.

They passed one another in the middle of the hall. Yenx considered saying something, but remembering Zemp’s words he felt like it was best to avoid associating with the other saurins as much as possible.

The opposite hall was a mirror of the first, and they passed down it unhindered. There wasn’t anyone tapping on the walls here, Yenx figured that those minded on scouting the halls had probably moved onto the doors that weren’t located in the exact sides of the hall.

The door at the end of the hall rumbled on up into its frame, and there was, as predicted, another hall located beyond it. It was about the same size as the first two, but the walls here were painted a cheeky gold color, which left its brightness somewhere in between the other two.

The floor was wood paneling, and the hall was filled with tables, around each of which there were four chairs.

“The Hall of the Mind,” said Offi, as though there wasn’t a doubt in his mind.

Yenx tended to agree. He could maybe come up with a way where the other one was Mind, maybe pushing figures around in the sand circles or something, but there was no way that this could be the Hall of the Body.

“It might be the Hall of the Body,” suggested Ectar, “Maybe we are cutting people up on the tables to see how bodies work?”

They both glared at him together, and he gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Just saying,” he said.

Yenx looked around a bit more, unsurprised to see an ink spill or two near the seats in a lot of the desks. He grimaced.

The Art that had stolen his memory hadn’t destroyed his ability to read, he’d just have to hope that, if he ended up in this hall, he’d still have the ability to write.

“Well,” he said, “I guess we’ve seen all the halls now.”

Offi looked up to him, as though expecting something more.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, then turned and tramped back down the hallway towards the Hall of Welcome.”