The nurses looked nervously at the doctor, who in turn looked anxiously between Ishigara and me. He clearly didn’t want anyone to disturb me. Even more clearly, the doctor did not want to interfere with these assessments.
Or, maybe, he just didn’t want to cross Ishigara. I couldn’t blame the guy. She had a wicked gleam in her eye and a nasty bite to back up her bark.
“Very well.” The doctor sighed and backed out of the room with the nurses and staff members scurrying after him. “Please be considerate of the patient’s injuries during the testing. He needs his sacred energy to recover.”
My itching burns and the bruises that still covered my body despite the intrachannel jinsei infusions the medical staff had pumped into me were proof of the doctor’s words. I was glad my friends had recovered, but really wished I could get out of the infirmary, too. Before I could ask how much longer I’d be cooped up there, Ishigara dragged a chair up next to my bed and pushed the tips of her fingers against my chest.
“Relax, Jace,” she said. “This is one of the easier parts of the assessment.”
“That’s good.” I let out a frustrated sigh. I’d planned to spend the day thinking of new ways to fix my core. “Let’s get this over with. I’ve got more important things to do.”
“Is that so?” Ishigara peered at me over the top of her glasses. Had she always had one gray eye and one hazel eye? “You do understand that this assessment will dictate the classes you take next year?”
Panic seized my throat and made it impossible for me to speak for a few seconds. Surely no one got booted out of the School over these tests. Empyreal society spent good money to train students here. It wouldn’t make any sense to eject students after their third year.
They couldn’t do that.
“Could I be expelled if I fail the assessment?” Putting my fear into words made my stomach clench and my throat tighten again.
“No, no.” Ishigara rolled her eyes at the question. “But you could be assigned to a temple or requisitioned by one of the explorer camps in the Far Horizon.”
“I want to stay here.” Going anywhere else would be a disaster. The elders of my clan needed me here. I needed to be here to help them find my mother. If I was sent away, all my plans would collapse in an instant.
“What we want isn’t always what the Grand Design has in store for us, Jace.” The professor reached past my head and snapped her fingers. When she pulled her arm back, an intricate metal device rested in her palm. “This is the Wheel of the Flame.”
“Wait, how did you do that?” I desperately wanted to know what technique Ishigara had just performed. Being able to summon items from thin air would be enormously useful, and this might be my only opportunity to squeeze an explanation out of the professor.
“That’s not a technique.” Ishigara made a small tsking noise. “You haven’t been paying attention in class. That was a complex spatial graft. Something you should be able to master before the end of the year. Assuming, of course—”
“That I survive.” There was no point in beating around the bush. The second challenge had torn my team up, and we hadn’t even been up against our competitors. If the dragons had been in the mix, there was no guarantee any of us would have walked, or been carried, out of there.
“Yes.” Ishigara ran her finger around the edge of the circular mechanism, and it unfolded like an origami fan. Metallic slats jutted from its sides, then rotated until their long edges were flush against one another. Ishigara tilted the device toward me so I could see what she’d created.
It looked like a roulette wheel, though there were only seven wedges, and they were all either shiny bare metal or flat black. Each edge bore a single word down its length: Citizen, Counselor, Scholar, Guardian, Seer, Militant, Noble. A glowing sphere pulsed at the heart of the wheel.
“I’m supposed to spin the wheel to see what my role in Empyreal society will be?” I couldn’t believe the Flame would be so capricious. It did make a certain amount of sense, though. If the Grand Design could be trusted, then even chance could play into it. For a true believer, a toss of the dice was simply another expression of the Empyrean Flame’s will.
I, however, was not a true believer.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ishigara tapped the wheel’s side and a pair of small handles popped out from just beneath the wheel’s surface. “This isn’t a game of chance. It’s a device to measure the distinct qualities of your jinsei.”
“That can’t be true.” Everything I’d been taught by Hahen and my other instructors at the academy said that all sacred energy was the same sacred energy. It was an indivisible force that could be temporarily contained within an individual or object. It wasn’t specific or unique to any one person or creature, though. “You mean it measures my aspects?”
That, at least, would make sense. Every person absorbed and held aspects in their aura in different ways. Other practitioners, those without hollow or Eclipse cores, even had unique aspects that went into binding their fusion blade or otherwise identifying them.
“No.” Ishigara gestured for me to hold on to the wheel’s handle. “The jinsei that passes through you is connected to the Grand Design. When you hold the wheel, that same jinsei will help identify your location within the Flame’s plan and foresee probable futures that contain your distinct imprint.”
“And no one can refuse the test, I suppose.” The wheel seemed sinister to me, now. The idea that a device would determine how to assign me to some slot in the Empyreal hierarchy didn’t
