Chapter 113: Assembly [2]

Four massive stone platforms towered on all sides, rising high above the sunken floor of the basin.

Atop each ledge sat a figure. Every single one was entirely still, shrouded in a heavy silence as four pairs of cold eyes looked down at the cadets gathered in the center below.

Alerion floated in the air above the arena, suspended without anything beneath him, as natural about it as breathing.

He raised his hand toward the first platform.

"The Veyne Assembly, led by Lord Aetherion Der Veyne."

Aetherion had white hair that fell past his shoulders like water. His face was ageless in the specific way that meant time had stopped applying to it before any of them were born. He had three pairs of arms, six arms total, each pair resting in a different natural position on his throne as though each set belonged to a different thought he was having simultaneously. His eyes were gold, but not simply gold. Inside each iris, rings of light rotated slowly in separate directions, like small planetary systems living inside a gaze.

He looked down at the cadets.

Alden felt that look reach him somewhere past his skin.

Alarion moved to the second platform.

"The Celestial Assembly, led by Lady Aurora Valdrake Celestial."

Aurora’s hair was silver-white and floated in the still air as though the air itself was deferring to it. Around her body, three spheres rotated in slow, perfect orbit. One burned like a sun condensed to the size of a fist. One glowed with the cool, precise light of a crescent moon. The third was pitch black, filled with something that moved inside it like a galaxy turning over in its sleep.

Her eyes were closed.

Alden felt her watching him anyway. Not with her eyes. With something else that the eyes were just a symbol for.

"The Empyreon Assembly, led by Lord Leonidas Empyreon."

Leonidas sat on something that was less a throne and more a block of iron-dark stone. He had no extra arms, no orbiting artifacts, none of the visual complexity of the others. What he had was presence, the way a mountain has presence. His skin carried lines of gold light running through it in patterns that looked like the cracks in something ancient that had broken and been reformed many times. His white mane fell over his shoulders, framing two swept golden horns rising from his temples. Behind his throne, a massive ring of heavy metal floated and spun with the slow, inevitable rotation of something that doesn’t stop.

He radiated the specific feeling of something that has never once in its existence needed to explain itself.

"And lastly. The Windsky Assembly, led by Lord Constantine Veydrath Windsky."

Constantine sat alone on his platform, separated slightly from the others. White hair, loosely bound, stray strands across a sharp face. His two visible eyes were shut. In the center of his forehead, a third eye sat closed as well, vertical and sealed.

The ring of compressed wind around his body moved constantly, distorting light and space near him in small, subtle ways, like reality was making room for him out of courtesy.

The third eye didn’t open. But Alden felt it register him. Something in him recognized it as a warning the way the body recognizes heat before the hand touches the flame.

These are the Four Assemblies.

Alden looked at them. All four. Taking them in slowly.

He had written their names in a notes document late at night, building the world out in broad strokes, giving them titles and brief concepts and the vague idea of what they represented. He had thought of them as architecture. Background structures that gave the world its shape.

Looking at them now was nothing like that.

They were real. They had weight. The difference between writing a word and standing in front of what the word describes turned out to be the distance between being safe and not being safe.

Along the upper gallery, the ten Spires stood in formal attire.

Isabella caught his eye and gave a small, composed wink. Theodore beside her offered a short, steady nod.

Alarion spoke.

"You are here to demonstrate the full extent of your abilities. Your strength, your skills, and your potential. Your objective is to capture the interest of one or more Assemblies. If multiple bid for you, you choose which house to join."

A standard selection framework, Alden thought.

Then Alarion’s expression changed. Something in it went quieter and more serious than it had been since they arrived.

"Before the trials begin, there is a truth you must understand. It concerns the war."

The room held its breath.

"We will not be able to help you."

Roselle’s hand came up to her mouth. Nicholas’s eyes went sharp. Leon opened his mouth, stopped, and then said: "What?"

Claire’s jaw tightened.

Alden kept his face still. He already knew this. He had written this rule. He had put it in the world because the story needed the humans to stand on their own. He had decided this from a keyboard, from safety.

Hearing it said out loud, in this room, with a war actually coming and people he actually knew standing around him, was different.

"The reason is this," Alarion continued. "Humans and Vampires both originate from the Primordial bloodline. You are, in the furthest sense, descendants of our kind. Humans found ways to exist within our laws and coexist with our world. Vampires did not. Their nature bred constant violence, and so they were removed from our grace. That removal became the root of the hatred they carry toward us to this day."

He raised one hand.

"Long ago, the Primordial Assembly made a vow. We would preserve the existence of both races but we would never choose sides in a war between them. This is not indifference. This is vow. The trial between your races is yours to settle."

Nicholas’s fists were closed at his sides. "But they want to exterminate us."

"I know," Alarion said.

"Then why—"

"Because there is a threat larger than your war that demands our entire existence."

The chamber went completely quiet.

"The Asuras."