Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 63: Bestowment

Toren Daen

I watched the vicars on the podium as young men and women lined up, anticipation and desperation in the air. The results of this ceremony could change lives. The people's future was balanced on the edge of a knife.

If they obtained a single rune, they were free of this place. Free of poverty and starvation; free of their oppression.

I was currently crouched on a nearby rooftop, observing the ritual from afar. From what I had been told by Renea Shorn's mages, I had been explicitly barred from receiving a rune from these men.

The vicar in charge, a man I didn't recognize, was wearing the voluminous bestowment robes and hefting a familiar staff. I knew how they worked, at least partially. Gideon would eventually decipher the interplay of mana and aether between the robes and staff that allowed the bestowal of spellforms.

An empty canal snaked behind the vicar's raised platform. It looked like it hadn't had running water through it in years. Rubble and refuse piled nearly to the rim, tarnishing one of Fiachra's architectural wonders.

I watched a family break down as their teenage daughter failed to awaken a rune. The vicar dismissed her immediately, poorly concealing a scoff as the girl sobbed into her parents' thin arms.

It was a strange thing to internalize. Every failed bestowal was a nail in the coffin for these people's futures. I just watched a girl's entire life be dictated by a small rod of wood and robes of cloth.

Back on Earth, the kind of things that determined futures in such a definitive way were usually traumatic incidents. I once knew a young man who was paralyzed from the neck down after a motor accident. He would never love, never work, and never find a career.

In Alacrya, not becoming a mage was just as definitive as a broken spine. The possibility of water was wiped away. These people would be just like the empty canal behind the vicar.

And it was so indiscriminate. A young boy managed to get a mark of a caster, but he was the only one for this entire section of East Fiachra. He would be elevated beyond his peers.

Did he work more than them? I asked myself distantly. Did that boy somehow deserve his spellform? Did he struggle any more than all of his friends?

And yet I knew the likely answer.

The rate of mages coming out of East Fiachra was far below one in five. I suspected it was closer to the one in a hundred of Dicathen. Agrona's system had managed to systematically funnel people with little magical potential into these communities, only granting those with mana the ability to improve their lives.

It may take thousands of years, but eventually, this continent would only have mages. The unads would burn away under their boots.

When the final child was called forth and failed to manifest a rune, I dropped from my perch, drawing my Rat's mask into my dimension ring. I weaved through the crowd, moving with a single-minded purpose toward the platform.

I was feeling a vague sense of disgust at this entire affair. The vicar was preaching about how Agrona may bless these lessers if they took his teachings into their hearts, and that they were the only ones to blame for this failure.

I knew it was a lie.

"--And so, give thanks to your Sovereigns!" the vicar said, hoisting his bestowal staff into the air. "For they have granted you the opportunity to receive their gifts! It is only you who can take it. Do not shun his teachings. Do not close your minds to his truth, else you will be left empty and abandoned, as so many today have been!"