A race I lost when the construct exploded.
Fire aspects rushed out from its aura in all directions. My serpents plucked them from the air and absorbed them. Fire surrounded me, and smoke filled the air above me in a column hundreds of yards high. I took it all in, absorbing every ounce of sacred energy in the same instant. I pushed the overflow into my channels, then threw my head back and screamed to unleash a blast of pure power from deep within me. It tore through the smoke and carried the force of the explosion high into the sky.
I sagged to my knees before the ruins of the construct. The air around me burned without touching me.
Voices shouted, sirens wailed.
At the heart of chaos, I was alone.
The Assessment
SANRIN AND HIRANI DEMANDED to be with me during the last phase of my assessment. They frankly didn’t trust Ishigara, and I didn’t blame them. The reports she’d assembled on me so far were inconclusive. To anyone who didn’t know the truth, it looked like she’d lied about the results. Because those tests, which had been used tens of thousands of times to determine where other Empyreals fit within the social order, simply couldn’t categorize me.
I’d also demanded my friends be with me for the last test. Just because I felt like tweaking Ishigara’s nose.
“Maybe you’ll get something more exciting than Guardian duty,” Eric groused. “I was supposed to start training for a prizefight this summer, and now I have to spend that time in basic. I’m not a soldier, I’m a brawler.”
He said the last word with pride, and the rest of us chuckled. The idea of getting punched in the face for a living didn’t seem all that attractive to me, but Eric took great pride in his future plans.
“It’s two months out of your life,” I said. “Heck, you might even learn something useful.”
“At least you don’t have to spend your summer in a government office in the middle of nowhere,” Clem grumbled. She’d been assigned noble status, and would be the guest of another Empyreal family who’d show her the ropes of government work and politics. I didn’t know what Clem really wanted to do with her future, but this clearly wasn’t it.
“The Design has a place for all of us,” Abi said, “and we should be happy with what it determines.”
I winced at my friend’s words. Abi’s father was a preacher, and my friend had spent his whole life learning about the Grand Design and how it governed us all. I wasn’t sure how he’d handle the truth when I finally told him what had really happened.
“This is simply her revenge for what happened to Grayson,” Hirani said. “Ishigara wants to punish Jace. If he isn’t categorized, then he won’t receive any specialized training, and he won’t be eligible for advanced classes at the School.”
“That doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me,” I said. I eased back into the overstuffed chair in Cruzal’s office. She’d wanted to see the final test, too, though I wasn’t sure why.
“Professor Ishigara is not nursing a vendetta for anyone,” the headmistress said. “Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
Sanrin nodded as if those were the wisest words he’d heard all day. The elder had been strangely quiet since the raid on the heretics’ base. He was angry that he’d missed the trap, and angrier still that I’d risked my life to stop it. Everyone told me that I was lucky. Maybe I was. On the other hand, maybe I understood my limits better than most. The bomb had been dangerous, sure, and it had taken me a couple of days to recover from processing so much jinsei and absorbing so many aspects into my aura. But I’d come out the other side no worse for wear, and even the analysis of my core had revealed no damage. I was in perfect health, spiritually and physically.
Mentally, though, I had to admit I was a little frazzled. My mom was still out there somewhere. Despite the fact that that was the only thing I’d asked from the Empyrean Flame, it hadn’t bothered to give me any details about her location before it had walked away from the world it had created.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Ishigara said as she pushed through the door and strode toward me. She gestured toward the seat that Hagar was sitting in, and my clanmate grumbled.
“Sure, I’ll stand, you take the seat,” Hagar said. “Don’t mind me, I’ll be over here in the corner minding my own business.”
“Again, my apologies for my tardiness, Jace,” Ishigara said. “I was consulting with some experts about how to approach this next phase, given that we had no information of use from the first two tests. It’s a bit of a shot in the dark, but I’ll do my best.”
Ishigara opened her case and withdrew a simple brass base with a pendulum attached to it. She set the object on the table, and the pendulum dangled over the center of the base. Symbols I didn’t recognize ran around the outside of the circle. “Each of these is associated with a role in Empyreal society. Normally, we would have narrowed the choices down to a handful of likely roles, but in your case, that wasn’t possible. All I need you to do is to channel jinsei into this device and wait for the pendulum to move toward one of the roles.”
“Seems simple enough,” I said. Without hesitation, I pushed a thread of jinsei into the device and let it do its thing.
Which, it turned out, was a whole lot of nothing.
The pendulum remained motionless.
“More jinsei please,” Ishigara said.
I did as she asked and glanced around the room at my friends and the elders. They all seemed
