I suppose I should be thankful that this will be out of the way soon.

As tall as the king was, he was shorter than me. Yet as he stood before me, dark eyes burrowing into my very soul, he felt much larger. It probably didn’t hurt that at either of his sides were his guards, both dressed in their full assortment, one carrying a sword so large it felt like he was overcompensating.

“Greetings, Your Majesty,” I said with a bow. When I came up I didn’t look him directly in the eyes, instead my eyes settled on a chin hidden behind a goatee. Anthony was a heavy presence in my mind in my presentation – with my back slightly bent as if it wanted to bow again. “Greetings, good knights.”

“My daughter and son seem to have some faith in your ability,” said King Orpheus.

“I am honoured by their faith, Your Majesty.”

“You should not be honoured by what they believe,” he said. “Stories from past Champions tell us that their lands often did not have kings, was the same true for you?”

I frowned. “It’s complicated, Your Majesty.” I said, wincing as his lips pursed because I knew I’d committed a misstep.

“Do you think me a dullard?” he said, as loud as he could get without shouting. “That I could not comprehend the functions of lands ruled by the likes of you?”

I swallowed, my heart starting to pound. “Apologies, Your Majesty, I was unclear,” I said, surprised that my voice sounded so calm albeit resigned. “I only meant that I don’t know enough to feel comfortable adequately giving you an explanation for how things work. There might be things that I might get wrong or don’t remember.”

He sniffed and stood straighter. As much as Odysseus’ lessons grated, I was thankful he’d forced me through them. I didn’t think I would be on the ball without them.

“All the same, explain,” he ordered.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” I said with another bow. “Our officials are democratically elected, but there are kings in some clans and chiefs in others. There’s a measure of power in alliances with a king or chief that can help a person getting into power, but the elected officials are the ones who rule.”

“Things are different here,” he said. “I stand above all save the gods, and it is my favour you should seek, and me whose faith you should gain.”

“I shall endeavour to do so, Your Majesty,” I said with a small bow, keeping my face placid even as my mind raged.

As much as he sat at the top, his position was precarious, and right now I was one of the tools he was using to retain power; as big a game as he talked, it could all crumble before his eyes.

But that doesn’t exactly make him less powerful in the here and now, I thought.

“You will not have too long to wait,” he said. “Grand Healer Ethelinda has arrived and a few important figures are set to arrive soon for the verification. Sir Eleus will escort you when it is time; try to not be a disappointment.”

And with that he turned, cape flourishing as strode away, leaving the knight with the giant sword strapped on his back.

I can see where Odysseus and Allycea get their general attitude.

Sir Eleus Mandaron of Belfry, one of Odysseus’ cousins, remained. I hadn’t seen him up close since appearing on this world and I could see some family resemblance, though it was closer to his uncle than his cousins: a heavy brow, square jaw and curly brown hair, darker than the king’s; his eyes were dark and they made his expression hard as he stared at me.

“Can I ask about the sword?” I said, testing the waters. All things considered, it was getting easier to talk to people I didn’t know, even though I was always terrified that I might get something wrong.

“His Majesty told you to get ready,” he said, his voice not as deep as the king’s but with the same hard edge.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m gonna do that. Just…” I shrugged. “We don’t have swords like that back home. The hilt would break or something, just curious about it. Does it have gravity gems or something?”

He unclasped his sword and levelled it. The weapon was wide and had a thick blade, with gems set along its length, getting thinner near its cutting edge; like most other magical artefacts, it was engraved with diagrams that connected the different types of gems. There were gravity gems as part of the ensemble but there were also temporal, spatial and earth gems.

It reminded me a lot of a sword I’d seen on a blond kid in video games.

“What does it do?” I asked.

“It better equips me to serve His Majesty,” he said. The sword dropped and bit loudly into the floor, a swirl of light darted forward and wrapped me in its embrace. I felt light-footed, almost drifting in the air, and then I was shoved towards my room by a force I couldn’t fight against.

I landed with a stumble as the effect disappeared.

With a sigh I went to my study and sent a message to Dedrick. He and two others arrived moments later so we could pick out some clothes. My anxiety levels started to rise but I meditated on the impressions of people, building them up and shifting them around.

Today was a cape day, heavy and a dark navy, with a furry trim that was largely white with black dots; the shirt was blue, but lighter than the cape, not a blouse but a little roomier than I liked my clothes to be; and over my pants my gun was holstered.

“How do I look?” I asked Sir Eleus. He was wearing a blue and white cape in the Mandaron colours, with a giant insignia of his family though the crown at the top looked different than the one I’d seen on Allycea, smaller. “Capes aren’t usually my thing, but Dedrick’s usually got an eye for these things.”

Eleus didn’t answer, hard eyes taking me in.

I shrugged even though nervous energy radiated through my body, making me want to pace and wring my hands. Doing that would be bad, however. How I acted was just as important as anything I said and if I looked nervous there was less room to impress them.

Which is something that still doesn’t make sense, I thought and no matter how much I tried to push the thoughts aside it didn’t work. The game was rigged in the worst way, both because of how I looked and what was expected of me. I didn’t think I could say anything to impress these people, not when some of them had a vested interest in seeing me fail.

“Should we go?” I asked Eleus.

“Will your hair remain that way?” he asked.

I ran my hand through it. Not dry, because Dedrick had been kind enough to give me oils, but not combed either, which meant it had locked into small, scruffy balls. There might have been more work I could have put into my hair — shaving it being one of the options — but the people here likely had no point of reference for what a good haircut was, and I wasn’t about to put in that work when hair wasn’t something I cared too much about.

“Yeah,” I said.

He looked like he wanted to say something but bit his tongue. “Come,” he said instead and he turned towards the door. Clipped on his back his sword was only just shorter than him, its metal polished and glinting in the light.

We went down instead of up, and it felt like a long way down before the doors opened into an atrium lined with gold. There was a painting on the quarter circle ceiling, an army fighting against a single person who made the sky ripple like water, a downpour of swords beginning to form.

More guards stood at points around the room, not just the royal guard, but men dressed in black, with circular helmets, each of them carrying swords that looked like katanas; men with earth strengthened armour, wearing violently purple capes and swords holstered at their sides; and finally men wearing armour painted in blues and greens, wearing helmets with spiralling horns, carrying circular shields and large axes.

“Heads up on who these people are?” I whispered. The atrium was so quiet my whisper was moot; not that any of the guards shifted in any way.

“The horned men are the warriors of Susserton,” said Eleus. “The purple knights serve King Maybelle, the northward king of Connelly; and the men in black guard the emissaries of the central province of the Sunward Empire.”

Susserton was the northern neighbour of Althor, the kingdom bordered to its north by the Great Barrier Ridge, a mountain line that protected them and Washerton from the worst of the Blighted Lands; the kingdom had better relations with Washerton than Althor, but with how much things had changed because of Rowan, previous allegiances were somewhat nebulous — or they’re here on Rowan’s behalf to check out if I’m a threat.

Connelly was to the south and it was the land of four kings, which wasn’t something too out of the ordinary because the Sunward Empire had three kings for its three provinces, all of them below the emperor — from the history I’d read, it was a relatively new thing, brought forward by an emperor whose name I couldn’t remember; he’d promoted a few of the royal princes to kingship after some strife between the Sunward Empire and Althor.

I followed Eleus past the guards and through a large set of doors made of stone; they became suffused with wisps of white, pink and purple light as we got closer, before they opened on their own. The room beyond wasn’t too large, but that didn’t make it any less grand. Much like the outside, the styling was gold and white anywhere the designer could get away with it; though this time they’d made sure to use real gold instead of paint. Most of the designs were swoops that were vine-like and stylised leaves; on the floor, in the middle of the room, was a massive diagram, at the centre of which was a tall temporal column.

Sixteen people stood within the diagram, their collective attention turned my way, all of them wearing clothes so fine I knew without a doubt they were important. Beyond the diagram was a spread of guards, all bearing weapons in one form or another, faces either left bare or hidden by helmets.

My heart skipped a beat and my legs wanted to follow suit. There was just too much pressure, and I was all too aware of how out of my depths I was. What could I do that would impress these people? What could I say when they had other allegiances, other plans or they had biases that saw me as less than the Champions before me?

Distract yourself, I thought. Can you put names to faces?

King Orpheus was easy. He stood with his back straight and his expression unreadable; his attention was fully on me and how I moved, his lips sometimes quirking in what I assumed was an attempt to keep a frown at bay. The next easiest was Duke Surefoot who was the shortest in the room, dressed as he usually was with a threaded earring in one ear. Beside him would be Duke Quickwit who was long-legged and lithe, with black and yellow fur; he had a longer and thinner snout than Surefoot, and his tail wasn’t as bushy.

Samuel, Earl of the Black Pasture sat in a hovering wheelchair wrought in gold and wood; he had tanned skin, hair that was either brown or blond, dishevelled in a way that didn’t seem intentional. He was a bulky guy, well dressed, with a silk blanket over his legs, an insignia of coal surrounded by a circle of wheat embroidered on it. At either of his sides were two men with heavy brows, skin that trended towards tanned, both with square jaws and bulky bodies. Probably the Earls of Ashfield and the Green Pasture.

Duke Owain the Senior looked a lot like his son, except his expression was tighter and more pinched, his eyes keen as they took me in. There were twins beside him, both wearing yellow-orange robes that were near identical; both the guys had long, grey hair that fell to their shoulders — they would be priests to the church of the Fates, and because of convoluted religious stuff, they were seen as one person split in twain.

Them being here reminded me of the similarly convoluted past of the Elemental Line, and how it had started as three separate duchies which had then been united into one because of loopholes.

There was also the woman, but after everything with Surefoot I made sure that my eyes passed over her. It wouldn’t do to be caught staring.

My mind stuttered as Eleus turned and stood at attention, placing himself at an empty position between two guards. In moments I would be in the diagram and I would have to interact with hierarchies that still didn’t make complete sense to me, down to the greeting that would be expected of me in this environment. Who was the most important here and who deserved the most praise? Which person was in which position?

I stepped into the diagram and before I could speak King Orpheus snapped his fingers; the column glowed with pale blue light, a swirl falling off and travelling through the lines until it had completely surrounded us. I turned to look behind me and saw that the guards had been slowed to a crawl; or the opposite, we’d been sped up so they wouldn’t be able to understand us — a lot like a hyperbolic time chamber.

I swallowed, getting an idea. “Greetings majesties, high lords, healer and grand priests,” I said without taking a breath. My eyes didn’t find any one person and I bent low in a bow, staying there for a few seconds before I rose again.

None of their expressions had shifted to show anything that might be upset, so I had to take that as a good sign.

“You’re the supposed Champion?” a man asked, big and pale, wearing a coat bearing the insignia of a goat with too large horns standing on a thin spire, a mountain behind it. He would be from Susserton, I was sure of it, but I wasn’t sure if he was a king or some lord.

“Yes, lord,” I said and bowed. “Which is why I beg forgiveness from each of you if I am uncouth; this world’s customs are still new to me, and even with instruction, there is much that still eludes me.”

“Expected,” said a tanned man with dark hair tied in a topknot, wearing a hat made of a sheer, black material, with little wings at the back. He wore black robes with a large, silver circular embroidery at the front depicting a resting lizard, its tail wrapping around it to match the circle. Beside him stood another man dressed similarly, but his embroidery was gold instead of silver. “Our history tells of similar extensions being granted to past Champions, to many it was an adjustment.”

The man beside him nodded.

“Shall we introduce ourselves, then?” a woman in a thick, purple coat asked, a darker shade than the knights outside, its trim made of a shimmering gold. She was probably King Maybelle of Connelly. “To better aid our as yet unverified Champion?”

“Will it be needed?” asked the lord from Susserton. “There’s only one thing of importance about this meeting and it has nothing to do with decorum. The sooner we are done, the better.”

“To do away with decorum is unseemly,” the man in black and gold said.

“And yet it would be fair to our Champion, is this not true?” Surefoot asked. “If I am not mistaken, Minister, the first words Goddess Mara spoke near humanity were in chiding of her kin who disparaged humans for not having yet learnt to work fire.”

“Judge not those who do not have the talents you were born with,” said the Minister with silver embroidery. “They are not yours but gifts from the gods, it is your duty to share them.”

“Would we not be teaching the Champion, then, if we expected him to follow the social niceties?” asked the Minister with gold.

“This quorum is not to teach,” the lord from Susserton insisted.

“And indeed our Lady Healer no doubt has other business she would like to attend today,” said King Orpheus, more sedate than I’d ever heard him.

The woman was the tallest person in the room, and they were the thinnest; she had alabaster skin that seemed to glow, and hair so thin it looked rendered as it moved — too fluid in a way hair shouldn’t be, bouncing with too much vigour. The woman should have been beautiful, but the only feeling that reverberated through me as I looked at her was uncanny. Her limbs were long in all the wrong ways, her hands were too small and wrists too long, her face was too narrow and her neck stretching more than it should.

Elves in movies were usually white people but prettified, at least those I had seen. The woman looked nothing like those elves — she didn’t have pointed ears for one — but she fit what I thought authors had been trying to communicate. She wasn’t ugly, but she also didn’t fit my idea of beauty.

She was other.

“Greetings, Champion,” the woman said, and her motions were careful as she swept an arm and bowed.

“Well met, Healer,” I said, returning the bow.

“With your permission, I will verify that you are indeed a Champion,” she said, her voice a whisper.

I nodded and stepped forward. She matched me but she had longer strides; she covered more distance and reached me.

“Hand extended, please,” she said. I did and she touched it. A shiver ran through me because of how cold her hands were; white mist escaped from her to envelope me. “The man who stands before us is within the variance of celestial suffusion befitting one who has been in the world for a few months; he’s on the higher end, but I can confidently say the man who stands before us is indeed a Champion.”

“On the higher end?” Duke Owain the Senior asked. “Why is that, Healer?”

“It could be a great many variables, either individually or in combination,” she said. “The Champion body might burn through energy faster, thus requiring more food, or they might train in combat regularly, which has caused them to drink above average amounts of water; his body might also have a natural tendency to absorb celestial waters more effectively and efficiently; and finally, he might be using magic regularly in some form, or at least working with an artefact whose celestial flows would have to move through his body.”

Again my heart skipped a beat, I did my best to keep my eyes from widening; looking up towards the woman whose veins I could see beneath her skin. This close I could see that her eyes shifted every time she moved, from blue to grey and sometimes brown — healing magic, or something like Allycea’s glass eye?

“Magic?” Duke Owain asked, pulling me a bit away from my attempt to distract myself.

“It is important for all to remember that I was only listing variables,” said the Healer. It struck me that I’d heard her name, but now it completely escaped me. “I would be able to learn which of these variables is true in this instance but that would require more time, and neutrality oaths made by the kingdom of Kent and the Healer’s Guild would be broken.”

“Have you been learning magic, Champion?” Duke Owain asked me.

I swallowed and shook my head. “No,” I said, making sure not to look at Surefoot or Quickwit. My eyes were on the Healer. Even though I didn’t know the limits of healing magic, I had the strong inkling that she could sense the lie. Would she tell them? Or was my lie covered in neutrality oaths? “Most of what I’ve been doing is using my gun and other forms of training.”

“That feels like a lie,” said the lord from Susserton.

Panic seized me and I did my best not to let it show on my face; but I had to say something so I didn’t look suspicious. I didn’t think, and instead let my mouth run.

“Are you calling me a liar, my lord?” the words had no confidence, they were trembling around the edges but I managed to push them through.

“I don’t know you, boy,” he said. “What’s to say that your word means shit?”

The words had been nonsense really, just drawing from something Jaslynn had done while on the hunt with Leonard. But there was a lot of social rapport there that I didn’t have which made it useless.

Another approach, then.

“Only that it wouldn’t serve me to lie,” I said, the first thing that came to mind. Quickly after that my mind built up the justification. “If I was learning magic there would be no need to lie. It would be a point of pride, after all, a sign that I would bolster Althor’s strength much sooner.”

“He has a point,” said King Maybelle.

I continued, “Healer,” I asked. Please work. “How likely is it that my metabolism is so fast that it alone can account for the celestial infusion rate?”

“Suffusion,” she corrected, “and it is highly unlikely,” she said, tone and expression unreadable.

“My people have something called Occam’s Razor,” I said.

“This is known to us as well,” King Maybelle interrupted. “Brought forth by the four Champions who settled in Connelly.”

I nodded, not allowing myself to be side-tracked. “The simpler explanation here,” I said, “and one that is hardest to refute, is that my body is just better at absorbing celestial waters.”

“How can this be when you are not of this world?” asked King Maybelle.

“Gods often work in mysterious ways,” I said.

Never more had I been happy to be part of a religious crowd than in the silence that followed. The twin priests nodded, still silent. King Orpheus, though, was paying keen attention to them, and a tension in his shoulders eased.

“Althor has its Champion,” said Surefoot. “This is now an undeniable fact, is there more that this gathering was set to accomplish?”

“Perhaps we could learn more about the Champion,” Duke Owain cut in. King Orpheus deflated, no doubt he had been moments away from calling the gathering to an end. “Such as why he would use the weapon of a thief.”

I swallowed and then shrugged. “It’s the easiest weapon to learn in the shortest amount of time possible,” I said, “and it’s the one weapon I’m the most used to. Combat of swords and shields fell out of favour thousands of years in our past.”

The lord of Susserton snorted. “Your home is a land of thieves and miscreants, then?” he said.

“My world is the very same one past Champions come from,” I said. “If my people are miscreants, then perhaps the same is true for Champion…Zeus, Champion Botan, or the many other Champions whose blood runs through many of the nobility in the Commonality and the Sky Courts. Going by what you’re saying, of course.”

Duke Quickwit sneezed in something resembling a snort. His expression was of amusement as I glanced his way.

Am I doing good or am I messing things up royally?

It felt like the insult had been too direct and everyone here knew what I was doing, no plausible deniability to speak of. I couldn’t change what I’d said, better to keep moving forward.

“Easier, perhaps, to work, but it would need to be in the hands of a braver soul,” said Duke Owain. I didn’t panic because I’d expected this. Baron Owain stood to gain a lot in tumultuous terrain, and my being here worked against that.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace, but I don’t know what you mean.”

“He’s calling you a coward,” said the lord from Susserton. He was more direct than the others and while I usually appreciated that on some level, that wasn’t so now. There was the possibility that Duke Owain wouldn’t have said those words outright and even if I didn’t know exactly why that felt like a good outcome.

“Are you, Your Grace?” I asked the Duke.

“I am,” he said without hesitation.

“How can you call me that when this is the first time we’ve met?”

“It might be the first time we’ve met, but you went on a hunt and you were seen in combat,” said Duke Owain. “There are some who say you showed your cowardice during the hunt with the princess, and that is why you were not invited to her engagement.”

Owain the Younger or Leonard the Mage would have said that.

“Whoever told you that might have been mistaken,” I said and swallowed. A new idea had bloomed. It had the chance of making Duke Owain hate me, but it was better than the people here thinking I was a coward.

Even if it’s true? a part of me thought. I pushed the thought aside.

“My son and heir called you a coward,” he said, the words low and brooking no argument. “Would you call someone of noble birth a liar?”

My eyes went to the lord of Susserton and I thought of saying what he’d said. The man, as if reading my mind, grinned, his eyes glittering with anticipation.

No, he could get away with it, but I didn’t think I’d be afforded the same. My heart felt seconds away from jumping out of my body through my throat, and sweat lined my brow.

“I wouldn’t.”

“Good—”

“But I continue to call him mistaken,” I continued, speaking over him. Breath in and then out, pushing past the parts of me that told me to shut up and say nothing. “Baron Owain the Younger spent most of the hunt trying to impress Princess Allycea in an attempt at courtship. Twice he was in such dire straits that he would have died were it not for the aid of Leonard the Mage. I would not blame him for being distracted and thus mistaken in his judgement of my valour.”

My body vibrated with nervous energy as I stared down Duke Owain. The talk with Odysseus last night had helped a lot in framing my thoughts even if things still felt scatter-brained; I’d known going in that Duke Owain would be an enemy, and I’d come up with a handy excuse for my running.

“Champion,” said Duke Quickwit. I turned to him. “The castle’s gossip says that when you came upon an alabaster lizard, you fled. Are these rumours true?”

Memories of the encounter came to the fore — unbelievable terror, trying my best to stay and fight, and finally deciding fuck it and running, only to be clipped by a wall of water. I wanted to lie but that would mean Surefoot and Quickwit were no longer allies, however much that bought me.

“Ask Lady Ellora and she’ll tell you,” I said, carefully. “I was clipped by a wall of water formed by the mage, Leonard.”

“Representatives of the sun court have learnt all they can from this meeting,” said the guy with gold on his robes.

The guy in silver nodded. “And so has the moon court,” he said. “We have only the Emperor’s gift to give before we return to our homeland.”

“I think our meeting with the Champion should be called to an end,” said King Orpheus. “He will be in his quarters where all those with gifts for him will meet. I would ask that we call another meeting into session while all of us are gathered, a matter that impacts us all, perhaps more than Rowan’s incursion. Healer, will you stand for Kent?”

“I will be impartial as is needed for one in my position,” she said, “but the message will be delivered to the king of Kent.”

“That will be enough,” said King Orpheus. “Champion, we will speak again. You may leave.”

He snapped his fingers and the temporal effect died. As soon as I was out of the diagram, it restarted, with them moving so fast that their words were imperceptible.

No one had pulled a sword out on me, which I had fully expected to happen, and I had been better on the ball than I’d expected. I had to hope that had been enough.