I stood in the center of an empty field, the scorched and poisoned corpses of a dozen dead rats strewn around me. Where there had once been a rickety, dusty house there was now just the dust, an empty plot cleared entirely of life and architecture.

“It really was that easy…” Alex muttered.

I hadn’t really done all that much. The building had been a shit piece of work already, its load-bearing beams almost ready to fall over itself. After I’d taken out a wall or two, it had fallen in on me, my shield protecting me from the debris. From there, it’d just been a matter of slinging spells at the debris for twenty minutes while the others kept the rats from getting to me. The Altered had been around the size of a large child, frothing at the mouth and throwing themselves at me with no plan of attack, so that had taken little effort.

“So the problem with this job is that it won’t provide much,” Lukas said, almost apologetically. “Only eight MC points, and two moons apiece.”

“That’s fine,” Jasmine said. “That puts me and Lily at one, maybe two jobs from finishing up the first membership level.”

“We’re not going to be able to run a mission in the next bit,” I said. “Primordial screws things up for us. They’re trying to encourage people to join the fight, I think, since it offers a whole lot of points and guarantees a position in the guild for a few months, so jobs won’t be available for a few days.”

“It’s alright,” Jasmine said. She took a moment to tuck a loose strand of flaxen hair behind her ear before speaking again. “We still have plenty of time.”

“Speaking of time, we have a good deal of that now,” Alex said. “It is surprising that half of our time on this quest is going to be spent walking back. I usually expect less out of peas— villagers. You did good, Lily.”

I glanced over at him, noticing how Lukas hadn’t quite succeeded at hiding the pointed nudge towards his noble. Alex had changed his tone halfway through his sentence. I sighed, not bothering to hide my annoyance. Nobles. Every last one of them had that sense of superiority drilled into them from birth that they never wanted to shake off.

At least Lukas seemed to understand.

“Thanks,” I said, not wanting to raise an issue. As much as I hated nobles, I still wanted to restore the name that had been my birthright, which wasn’t something that I could accomplish by pissing off everyone I disliked. “I appreciate your support.”

“I didn’t hit you with anything?” Alex said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I trained with my House as much as I could, but I’m still new to my oath.”

“You were fine,” I said, voice flat.

“Oh, speaking of which,” Jasmine said, much more animated than me, “How did you come into a Voci oath before you managed a Nacea or Ditas one? Your family practically only produces those.”

“That’s a long story,” Alex said. “But I suppose we have nothing but time, for now.”

“Furthermore, you already know how I got my Igni oath,” Jasmine said. “So with this all is equitable.”

“I hate that phrase,” Alex said. “Mother loves it.”

“Apologies,” Jasmine said, adopting an irritatingly familiar formal tone, schooling her face to be carefully neutral. “Your concerns have been noted.”

She kept it up for a second before bursting out in laughter. “I don’t know how you all manage to speak like that.”

“Courtspeak is a skill,” Alex said. “Just because you lack it doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

“Seems pretty damned useless to me,” Jasmine said. “Anyway, we’re getting off track. Tell us how you became the Varga’s black sheep.”

“Don’t put it like that,” Lukas admonished.

“It’s a fair evaluation,” Alex sighed. “Anyway, the plan for me was to become a Nacea oathholder. Now, my House isn’t a combat-oriented one, and while I was passably decent at nonmagical healing I wasn’t brilliant enough to be allowed to operate on actual patients from other Houses.”

“With you so far,” Jasmine said.

I had an inkling of where this was going, stories told years ago over the dinner table of the Byron great hall resurfacing in my mind.

“Mother and Father are both Ditas oathholders, as you know. They wanted me to be a healer because the number of Nacea oathholders in the Varga family were getting low, but it was not an oath I could easily make, especially when I did not have easy access to patients.

“As a result, Mother decided that the appropriate thing to do was to find one of our servants and stab her in the throat.”

Fucking nobles, I thought. Does a propensity to mess with your children’s lives come with that title?

When I spoke this time, I meant my words. “I’m sorry.”

“Gods above,” Jasmine said, visibly taken aback. “Was the girl okay?”

“I saved her life,” Alex said, “But when I formed the connection to Nacea in that instant I realized that I didn’t want to follow what my parents wanted me to do if that meant nearly killing good, innocent people.”

I felt those words in my soul, more than I wanted to admit. Your mother would have fit right in at House Byron.

“This is why you sought a Voci oath?” Jasmine asked, a hint of horror still in her voice. “Nobody should need to do this at your age.”

“I didn’t seek a Voci oath,” Alex said, shaking his head. “I started talking. First to Lukas, since I’ve known him since I was a child, then to others. To other bodyguards, to our other servants, even my own siblings. A few months went by and it was common knowledge that my parents were willing to kill their own people, and maybe even their own blood, if it meant that they got the power they wanted.

“In the midst of all that, with the story I’d told spreading far and wide throughout the House, I felt a new connection and grasped it, and then there I was with the god of plague itself. An idea, a thought, the conviction to spread it— that is what Voci searches for, boiled down to its simplest form, and I accidentally lucked into it.”

“So you took it,” Jasmine surmised. “How did that go over with the House?”

“Not well,” Alex said, wincing. “My family stopped the spread of the rumors about them before they could tarnish their reputation publicly, and when they realized I had developed an oath to the god who is the antithesis of Nacea, they beat me so badly I couldn’t walk for the next few days.”

“I’m sorry,” Jasmine said.

“Don’t be,” Alex replied. “That’s just how these things are, sometimes. Besides, it didn’t all turn out bad. They wanted me out of the House, but exiling the scion would have been a stain on the name, so they just sent me here with some money and someone to watch over me. After all, I haven’t actually done anything to them, and they still think that there is yet some use they can extract from me.”

“Your parents sound awful,” I said. “Nobody deserves to go through that.”

“Well, I’m here now, and I’m doing alright,” Alex said, throwing an arm around Lukas and kissing him lightly on the cheek. “And I have the best partner anyone could ask for.”

Lukas laughed a little at that, returning the gesture.

“Anyway,” Alex said. “Sorry for bringing down the mood.”

“It’s alright,” Jasmine said. “We did ask.”

And we received an answer, I thought. While I still didn’t want to extend the same level of trust to Alex as I had Jasmine, there was a part of me that couldn’t deny that I empathized with his past.

“Hey, there’s one more person here that hasn’t shared their story yet,” Lukas said. “Lily, how did you end up here? And how did you end up with that god?”

The question caught me off-guard for a second, but I was ready to answer in a matter of moments. It wasn’t like I’d never anticipated my hazy background being a problem.

“I was born in Syashan,” I lied.

“I was a bastard child, unwanted by my father and mother both.” Another lie.

“I was raised by them until I was nine years old, at which point they cast me out.” A grain of truth, this time.

“They left Syashan, and at that point I developed an oath. I don’t know how, and I don’t know who it was to.” More truthful, this time.

“I spent years living off of odd jobs and the good graces of the townspeople.” Truth.

“Over time, I developed my magic skill, though I never had a real opportunity to increase my class until after I left the village.” I was at the point where most everything I said would be true, now.

“Since not many others could do magic in the village, learned how to shape magic with the Church. I got decently good at it, enough that most people in the village knew about me. Time went on, and eventually I applied to the Yaguan Mage University.”

There were holes in my story, a lack of explanation as to how I’d gained a thorough education on combat, on the nature of oathholding, and a number of other things, but I had slightly more comprehensive answers prepared for those if the other party members pushed on them. Mercifully, they did not.

“You must have exceptional fundamentals, if you were able to enter YMU from a village without connections,” Lukas said. “Congratulations to you.”

“I’m strong with unstructured magic,” I said. “Still working on spells.”

“Your unstructured magic is terrifyingly strong, from what I’ve seen,” Alex said. “You enchanted a crossbow bolt with it, right?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “It wasn’t good for the crossbow, though.”

“Every time I’ve seen people enchant weapons even for minor effects, it has taken them at least an hour, and that’s with the usage of spells specifically for that purpose,” Alex said. “You took under a minute, and it decimated your target.”

“I just passed unstructured magic into it,” I said. “I’m pretty sure Jasmine’s done the same.”

“No, I haven’t,” Jasmine said. “I’ve cast spells with my weapons as a component in them before, but never just by passing unstructured magic into them. I thought you were doing the same and just lying about not knowing spells.”

“Why would I lie about something that obvious?” I asked.

“I don’t know, modesty?” Jasmine said, ducking her head. “Masking your power? Obfuscating hidden knowledge?”

Well, the latter had been correct to some extent, but that wasn’t relevant. “Nope, I’ve just been using unstructured magic for the most part.”

“Wow,” she said. “That’s… do you know how rare that is?”

I blinked. “What, to have strong unstructured magic? The Church said that any oathholder who trains hard and follows the path of their god could do it. Surely that isn’t that rare.”

“It is,” Alex supplied. “Very few oathholders known to history are able to coast off solely their unstructured magic, let alone a— a student from the villages.”

“Well, it feels pretty natural to me,” I said. “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.”

“It is,” Alex repeated. “Do you know who tended to be skilled at raw magic?”

“Enlighten me,” I said.

“The Ben-deren clan,” Alex said. “If you have not heard of them, they were the Yelian kingdom’s trump card during the continental wars.”

“I’m familiar with them,” I said. “They produced some of the most powerful duelists of all time, correct?”

“Not just duelists,” Alex said. “Igei and his ilk were the flashiest members of the clan, but any student of continental history can tell you that any of the Ben-derens were an army of one on the battlefield.”

“And they had a lot of people like me?” I asked, curious. I had learned about the continental wars, but had little in the way of details on specific families. History had never been House Byron’s strong suit.

“Almost every one of their one-man armies,” Alex said. “I hope you can understand why this is… notable.”

“Gods above,” Jasmine said. “The Church taught you to do this?”

“I learned some on my own, some from passing adventurers who were willing to spend some of their time educating a child with an oath, and some from the Church,” I lied easily. “I never learned spells, though, so I only ever focused on applications of my unstructured magic.”

“You must be a natural prodigy,” Lukas said, “Because as far as I’m aware most noble children start by practicing their unstructured shaping skills.”

“They do,” Jasmine confirmed. “Or at least, I did.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I said with a helpless shrug. “This is how I’ve practiced magic for most of the time I’ve had my oath.”

“How long ago did you get it?” Lukas asked. “Just curious.”

“Twelve years ago,” I answered honestly. “ I still don’t know how.”

“Twelve years?” Alex asked. “Not many people this age have it near that long, especially not villagers. Except for our mutual friend here, I suppose.”

“Thirteen years,” Jasmine said. “But you knew that already.”

She had told me that, a week back.

“We’re getting close to the Guild building,” Alex said. “These buildings are familiar.”

“I wonder if the draft for the primordial is out yet,” Lukas said. “I’m a little nervous about that. Our party is considered ML 2 because of me and Alex, so we're all eligible.”

“It’ll be fine,” Jasmine said. “If we fight, we fight. I talked to Professor Lasi a little, and he insisted on coming to join the fight if any of his students got selected for the draft.”

“That’s a reassurance,” I said. “What class is he again?”

“Eighteen,” Jasmine said without hesitation. “All of them to Igni.”

“Gods,” Alex said. “That reassures me some, actually.”

“It’s going to be alright,” Jasmine said.

OATHHOLDER STATUS Chris Taliz Not drafted Jasper Kysei Drafted Sophie Lansi Not drafted Karan Ochson Not drafted Sol Keys Drafted

I looked down the massive list, just as every single other adventurer in the lobby was currently craning their necks to do. The draft list had DRAFT — ML 2+ — 150 PERSONS SELECTED printed in huge blocky letters, but thousands of names were written below it in a series of columns. There was little rhyme or reason to it, save that the list held the names of every adventurer who’d passed through this area recently or were based out of the Yaguan branch. Those who were drafted were marked with a different color than those who weren’t, but it was wholly unsorted, or at least not sorted by a metric I was aware of. It must have come out on short notice.

As far as I understood, learning whether you were being drafted for a crisis event came either by looking at this list here or by way of mail delivered directly to your residence by a courier an hour or two after the list went public.

To be fair, it was also possible to determine if one was being called upon for the crisis event by simply asking a receptionist, but the lines for them were truly massive right now and I had to check to see if any students had been drafted for Professor Lasi.

Ashley Soren Drafted

The first student appeared early. I felt a hint of recognition at the name, but I couldn’t associate a face with it.

“I think it’s sorted by party,” Jasmine said after a minute. “That’s the only way it makes sense.”

That… would explain the seeming randomness of it, I supposed.

I kept scanning the lines, crossreferencing them with my list of student adventurers and taking notes as I went.

It took a painfully long time, looking at the lists and back, but I was making progress. The majority of the students had not been drafted, perhaps because their power was simply too low or because they were barely ML 2 and thus considered less heavily for the draft.

Grant Sunsbridge Drafted

Out of a dozen other adventuring students, only two had been selected. Apparently, they had all partied up before us, their names appearing far before ours.

I was actually feeling a little nervous now, the slow canvassing of the list of names having added stress to an event that by all means should have already been quite so. There was a hint of uncertainty making its way through my body, and I quelled it. Worrying about whether I’d be sent into the grinder wouldn’t change the results.

At length, I finally found the first member of our party.

Jasmine Rayes Not drafted

I breathed a sigh of relief at that, but it was cut off almost immediately as I saw the rest.

Alex Varga Not drafted Lukas Noben Drafted

“Fuck,” I said, a spike of fear stabbing into my gut.

Lily Syashan Drafted