The horde of Bronzes were directed a distance away from the Governor’s Palace and divided into twenty-five entrances leading even further downwards. I quickly guesstimated that there were roughly forty other candidates walking with me down the sixteenth entrance. The descent was steep, if it was not for the roughened concrete beneath us the paths would be like a slide. Our combined footsteps thundered in the confined space, echoing and amplifying themselves against the walls. The passage was narrow, only three of us at a time could walk next to each other. I had gotten near the front by luck of the draw in how the massive mob of candidates had been divvied up between the tunnel openings, and my friends were somewhere behind me.

We entered a hall that contained fifty metal coffins, their lids were open on a swivel hinge and the inside was glasslike. At each coffin there was a Medicus beside the contraption, identifiable by their orange eyes, lab coats, and cold, professional air about them. Each of them was a Gold Medicus, immediately making all of us aware that these were the best specialists in their fields and likely masters of any number of disciplines from biology to psychology to surgery to dermatology. Only the best for us Bronze candidates. It was probably overkill, a lesser member of the Doctor subspecies could probably conduct and diagnose these examinations perfectly sufficiently. Then again, the Governor had said that no flaw or strength would be left unexamined. Perhaps the organizers had their heads screwed on right and knew far better than me.

There was a Bronze Imperator man in front of the technologically advanced coffin stations. He was far older than us, appearing middle aged though with our Imperator longevity I couldn’t guess his age. He wore a black uniform with yellow accents. Our group of forty-some came to an abrupt stop in front of him. I found my way to the front.

“Welcome, candidates. My name is Brutas Antion. Allow me to explain how this will work. You will be subjected to a battery of physiological and cognitive tests today. The system has a theoretical ideal candidate’s generated results from genetic purity to athletic capability to mental and emotional potency, the minimum for entry to the Scholarium. You will be given points as you approach, meet or exceed our simulated ideal candidate’s results. At the end of this process, all one thousand and thirty-one of you will have your data measured up against each other and a ranking will be assigned to you. The top three hundred will be picked and the rest of you will have to return to your homes. Any questions?” Brutas asked the crowd of us.

A boy raised his hand. “What if you get the same score as someone else? Who gets to be before the other and what if those two are the 300th and 301st candidates? Of those two, who gets to go to the Scholarium?”

“You won’t get the same score.” Brutas said bluntly. “No one is exactly alike, not even identical twins will get the exact duplicated results. Even if it appeared that such an unlikely and improbable thing had occurred, our equipment is so sensitive that we could keep calculating into dozens upon dozens of decimals if needed. If the unimaginable happened and you were mathematically carbon-copies of another candidate and were fighting over the last spot on the roster, the Governor would interview both of you and make an informed, subjective decision based on his observations of your character. That clarification enough, candidate?”

“Yes, sir.” The boy replied.

“Excellent. Find your way to a body scanner and the Medicus at your station will assist and direct you from there.” Brutas Antion said.

So that’s what the coffins were, body scanners.

I made my way to one of the scanners.

“Hello,” I said politely to my Medicus.

She ignored my greeting which I would have been slightly offended at if I did not get the impression that she was simply too focused on her job to engage in niceties.

“Strip.” She ordered me. I looked around to see the others were being told this as well. I avoided looking too long in case anyone thought I was staring at them.

“Okay,” I muttered. I pulled off my shirt, then my pants and underwear, and then my shoes and socks.

She handed me a bag to put them in and I stuffed them in.

“Your wrist communicator as well,” The female Doctor commanded.

I loosened the strap and then tossed it in with the rest. She hit a button on her tablet and the bag’s drawstrings zipped the opening closed on their own. The Medicus attached a little black key fob-like device with a midnight dark screen.

“Please press your thumbprint against the fingerprint scanner.” She told me. When she saw the slight confusion in my face as I was doing so, she elaborated for my benefit. “It’s so your property gets back to you. The Scholarium’s system has your fingerprint logged and that will identify this bag as uniquely yours amongst the over a thousand Imperator youths present.”

“Thank you for explaining.” I said and handed her the bag back.

She gave me a patient’s gown to wear. I wondered what the utility of it all was that I couldn’t wear my own clothes. I supposed there was the possibility that they wanted to avoid cheating via smuggled in items and substances.

“Put this on your right wrist,” the Doctor said as she handed me something very similar to the wrist communicator. I put it on.

“What’s this?” I asked her.

“It is what will be recording your results from other machines as well as monitoring your vitals constantly, everything from oxygen level to heartrate to blood sugar to hormones and more. It syncs with each stage of the examinations and is watched at all times by the Evaluation Committee. Please bring it to your eye so it can do a retinal scan and identify you.” She said.

I raised my arm and brought my wrist close to my right eye.

Bing! The device emitted.

“Candidate verified: Adrias Lucion.” It said.

She tapped some buttons on her tablet. “Good, it is successfully linked to the body scanner. Context based proximity sensing, you see. Lay down if you will.”

I climbed into the large coffin, sized even bigger than the standard Imperator height of seven feet. Gods above, what kind of monsters did they expect to receive that they had built this as the stock model? The coffin lid shut on its own and for a moment I laid waiting for something to happen. The parts of my back that were back pressed against the glass material of the inside of the coffin. Then a red light came on and the whole body scanner started to vibrate and I heard clicks like the sound of a camera. My eyes watered and my skin tingled. The air was starting to feel like static and there was a metallic smell about the interior.

Maybe a good three minutes of that went by before the red light dimmed and the camera clicking shut off. The coffin lid of the scanner cracked open and fresh air hissed in. The lid opened all the way up and I climbed out.

“Task successfully completed.” The wristwatch said. “Major organ function, muscle and bone density, nervous system formation, and blood quality are all satisfactory.”

“Only satisfactory?” I said, disappointed in myself.

The Medicus noticed my displeasure, “A general scan like this can miss many things. So much of the Paths’ functions are spiritual rather than merely physical, and flesh that appears ordinary can hide dramatic power. If this was all that we needed to evaluate you, we wouldn’t have all the other physical tests. And that doesn’t even account for the mental ones that could boost you right up.” She assured me.

“Thank you,” I said to her, grateful for her snapping me out of a negative mindset. In the rest of the tests I would be more than satisfactory, I would be downright exceptional. I swore it by Heaven’s Peak.

“Continue to the other side of the room and go through one of the hallways, your monitor will assist you from there.”

I thanked her again and set off. As I wandered through on of the adjacent halls, I saw there were doors on both sides of the passage with numbers on them.

“Vacancy detected: please proceed to Room Five for temperature resiliency test.” The monitor told me.

Temperature resiliency? I walked to the door with a five marked on it and the door retracted downwards into the floor. I stepped into Room Five and looked around. The walls, floor and ceiling were all covered with a white fabric like material. The floor depressed slightly under the pressure of my feet. When I turned to look back at the sound of the door closing, I saw that the interior side of the door was protected by the same rough white textile.

“Candidate Lucion, are you ready to proceed? Verbal acknowledgement is required.”

“I’m good to go.” I said firmly. “Let’s do this.”

“In the first portion of the temperature resiliency test you will be exposed to high heat that escalates further and further until this monitoring unit detects unconsciousness, risk of fatality, or the candidate requests for the portion to end. You will then be given a fifteen-minute break to recuperate and regenerate. If you are not able to continue by the end of the intermission, the temperature resiliency test will consider the second half failed. After the intermission if you are able and willing, the second half will begin. The second is a reversal of the first, you will be exposed to extreme freezing until this monitoring unit detects unconsciousness, risk of fatality, or the candidate requests for the second half to end early. Understood, Candidate Lucion?” The monitor said.

“Yes.” I said firmly.

“Very well. Heat resiliency examination beginning now.” It said

There was a whirring noise, and I was hit with a wave of blistering heat from all directions. This temperature would boil the blood and char the skin of a Silver Servus and prolonged time in this chamber would give a Golden Servus heatstroke. A Copper Imperator would do better, could spend hours in it, but would eventually become dehydrated and find their healing factor slowing down. A Bronze though? Our durability, regeneration, and ability to function on low hydration and through hypernatremia meant we could go weeks in this heat like it was a short trip to the sauna.

“Come on, bring it on. No sense in pretending this is going to knock me off my feet.” I said aloud.

The heat heightened, like the room had heard what I had said about it and it didn’t like my attitude. Perhaps it really had heard me, or rather my monitor had, and it moved on based on my words.

Tempted, I tried to see if I could manipulate the testing system.

“I bet you won’t turn up the heat again.” I said loudly, enunciating my words. “You just want to waste everybody’s time with this kiddie stuff, like we don’t all have places to be.”

The room and my monitor either weren’t listening to me taunting them or they were smart enough to ignore my attempts at manipulating them.

I stretched, spreading my wingspan, the warmth soothing like a warm shower. I idly considered what this would do to other Ranks and Paths.

“Silver Servus would charcoal, Gold Servus would be steaming like a boiling pot, Copper Imperator would be getting heatstroke, and us Bronzes? We’d still be cool as ice.” I smiled, this was going to be a fun one for me.