Half-finished plates lay untouched on the tables. None of the children had ever heard this version of the story. The fairy tales they grew up with had said the Eternal One was a person who lived before time. No one person actually knew the Eternal One in those stories. Now they had two versions of the story, and they all had to ask themselves, who was telling the truth? Haze's story had been interesting, but he was a stranger, was his claim to the truth better than their families? Low murmurs went throughout the hall.
"Alright now, in just a moment we will get you all to your new rooms. Finish up, clean up, and line up by the far door." Haze said. He walked out. The remaining soldiers watched and directed the children. Together they all left the hall and passed through a long bending hallway. There they approached a set of reinforced double dark doors. A guard unlocked the set and ushered everyone through.
Lined-up children milled through the lengthy room. Glass skylights dotted the ceiling like a coral rock. Yellow light leaked in from a far source above the windows. Bunks lined the room, twenty-five on each side. The kids were released to claim a bed.
A rush of movement ensued. Kids were laughing and fighting. Friends bunched up. Other children who were alone argued over top and bottom. Some footlockers that sat under the beds were popped open and things stuffed inside. Others discovered a change of sheets and clean wool clothes inside.
The soldiers attempted to instruct the room on how to ask to go to the bathroom, where to bathe, and when eating was. All things were to be monitored by a soldier, almost any action was scheduled or required permission. Some kids groaned at this, while others with stricter parents took it in stride.
Cutlery for her part was still enraptured in the story from earlier. She might actually like General Haze if he told good stories like that. One of the corner top bunks hadn't been taken yet at the far end of the room. The fighting for bunks was slowly getting pushed toward the back of the room near her target.
Like her, many of the smaller kids had moved to the back looking for peace. On the bottom of the corner bunk the half-elf girl, that had ignored being spat at, sat at the end of the bunk. Shoulder-length hair wooshed under a brush that was deftly wielded. Cutlery could tell she was a half-elf due to the mix of many straight. The word 'kinda' came to mind. Kinda pointy ears. Kinda dark, but kinda pale for dark skin. Kinda blonde straight kinda curly hair. The girl was half something alright.
Only a small bag sat next to the half-elf. As Cutlery moved in closer she smiled. Relief washed through a returned smile. Likely because some huge bully from her imagination wasn't going to be her bunkmate anymore. The half-elf set down the brush and stood up quickly. Her hands raised to help Cutlery but hesitated as she saw no bag.
"Hi, there! I remember you from the walk! Do you want the top bunk here, I prefer the bottom one, I have to pee a lot and this is easier to get out from. Here let me help you with your stuff. Oh no stuff? Oh, it's under your, uh, shirts? The top bunks can feel safer so you should enjoy them. And look from this angle you can see the side of the tower through those overhead windows!." The Half-elf breathlessly spoke. Bottled conversation bursting forth in one torrent flow from her.
"I'm Cutlery." Cutlery said.
"Oh yes, names! I'm Rega Flewkgup" Rega said. Cutlery's very mind couldn't understand how Rega's mouth had moved to say the last word. They stared for a second. Cutlery breaking eye contact moved to open the footlocker.
"You pronounce it Flew-Uh-Gup," Rega said.
"Fluke." Cutlery said back.
"Flewkgup." Rega said.
"Fluwkgep." Cutlery said.
"Not quite. Flewkgup." Rega corrected.
"Flewkgep." Cutlery said.
"Almost. Flewkgup." Rega said with a pleasant smile. Patience wafted from her.
"Fart guppy." Cutlery said. Regas's smile paused. It fell away. "Flewkgup." Cutlery said. Rega paused, thinking about the sound.
"That's right!" Rega announced with glee. She bent to open her footlocker and moved things from her pockets into it. "What do you think we're gonna be doing here? Becoming servants, soldiers, scholars, maybe we're gonna be trained into commanders to fight the swarm of unknowable alien insects and their queen!" Rega said.
"Probably the last one." Cutlery said. A shadow fell over the two of them.
"We're gonna need these bunks, go take some random middle ones." Said the source of the shadow. Cutlery turned around. At least a dozen kids looked back at her. All of them stood close together.
"What is this, a gang?" Cutlery said.
"Something like that." They said. Cutlery realized no one's mouth was moving. The voice was being projected into her head somehow. A psychic must be near, weren't those only in stories? "Now move dork." The voice said in her head again.
Then the whole group descended on them.
-
Cutlery's ultra-witty response was cut off as she and Rega were grabbed. They were roughly dragged behind the bunk. Kids started kicking them without hesitation. Others kids went to their open footlockers and began tossing stuff out. Most of the other kids formed a wall and began yelling for help from the soldiers. The last few moved in as if to pull the fight apart. They pulled Rega and Cutlery up from the ground and stood them up. They fought to get out of the group's grip. Two of the kids kicking fell over and began to yell in pain.
The thunk of armor grew loud and the soldiers pushed into the group.
"What's going on here!" A soldier said.
"Get outta the way. You two, stop!" The soldier said. She pointed at Rega and Cutlery. Cutlery took in the situation. The huge group quickly created a stage-like situation.
Two kids lay on the ground and whimpered at their absence of wounds. The rest began yelling that Rega and Cutlery had attacked them over the bunk.
"Listen up punk! If someone beats the snot out of someone else, don't get in the way!" The soldier proclaimed.
"Oh, thank you... wait don't?" One of the kids on the ground said. WHAM
The soldier clocked the kid. The kid skated a good three feet before falling still on the ground.
"You punk. Thinking you can whine to us about a little fighting. Listen well, just don't injure or kill each other too much and you'll be straight with us. Give these two their bunks if they're throwing hands over it." The soldier explained.
The kid on the ground groaned and started crying.
"You might have hit them too hard. You are a fifth after all." The second guard said to the one who had hit the child.
"Whoops, forgot they aren't firsts yet." The first guard said. She rubbed her fist caringly. "Dismissed." She said. The huge group of kids seemed confused. Their elaborate plan to frame Cutlery and Rega had just been rocked by the shocking reality that the soldier who purchased them from their parents didn't care.
Cutlery was also caught off guard, but adults hitting kids wasn't new. Them telling her to keep it down while she stole was regular. Rega for her part had crawled under the bunk and was peaking out.
The soldiers waited for the group to disband before they too walked back to the front of the room to join their two pals. Cutlery had never seen anyone punch that hard before. Not the blacksmith when he beat the metal, or the butcher boy when he wanted her to give the dried meats back.
Perhaps that's the difference between people and soldiers, a lot of muscle. But despite what she wanted to think, normally humans couldn't pack such a punch, and that soldier woman wasn't even particularly large like many in town she had seen.
Cutlery looked to Rega who still cowered.
"Do elf women have big bodies?" Cutlery asked. Rega looked at her with wide eyes. Her tension seemed to slowly fade as the gears turned in her head.
"No, but the men are small as well. Elven society doesn't have much hard labor due to their innate magic." She said. Rega began to crawl from under the bed and the two of them picked up their things from the floor.
Most of the clothes now had footprints on them. A crystal Cutlery found was cracked. Rega seemed tense about that. Cutlery handed it back to Rega. Rega placed the crystal gently back in her footlocker.
This time they dug up their footlocker keys and latched them shut. Then they sat together on the bottom bed and watched the room slowly quiet down. The huge bully group had the front corner now. The rest of the children were in sets of four or five of the same species like elves, orcs, dwarves, and halflings, and the rarer species also found each other. Three avian creatures awkwardly sat together, a few furred ones watched with twitching ears and tails.
Cutlery picked out the true loners. An insect humanoid with three arms. They had a human-like pair of arms and then a smaller one below those. A demon of some kind with blue skin and stubby horns paced across from them in the other corner. The true exception was a goliath child. Already well over five feet tall, its pale skin had only a few thick spiky tattoos across its body, unlike adults of the species. The goliath had bunks to spare. Kids made space around the goliath more than anyone. Cutlery couldn't tell if the goliath was a man or woman, had no hair, had a bulky build that could go either way, and had chest and leg wrap, nothing really to go off of. Maybe it was different than humans for goliaths. Did goliaths have women or men? Cutlery absently rubbed a bruised rib until Rega spoke up.
"I wonder why we are here. Like for real." Rega said, her voice straining a little. While Cutlery had been people-watching, Rega had been spirling mentally downward. "They fed us, punched us, and give us beds. It looks like we will be here awhile. I hope those kids don't come back. I hope everyone can be friends when we are all so different. I hope they like me." Rega began rambling again. Cutlery held her hand and told her it would be alright, they could make shivs tonight.
"Alright, kids!" General Haze said as he threw open the doors. "Let's see if you're alright! Basic testing begins now, follow me, don't bring anything!" He declared. Rega swallowed. Cutlery was happy to have something to do besides watch for getting jumped. Haze for his part beamed like it was the week of the Temple itself.
-
A breeze crept across a field of grass. The kids stood in the center of the tower. Above them no sky was visible, instead, a large orb of water gave off daylight in a liquid fashion. The rounded walls of the tower were hundreds of feet away. Cutlery wasn't sure how any of that worked.
Tables covered in a broad array of things formed a large circle in the grassy field. Some stagings had also been set up for General Haze and some other self-important-looking officers. They all idly chatted and drank a smooth pink liquid. They occasionally pointed at children and leaned toward each other to talk. A small group of soldiers moved toward the group of children.
"Alright, you five with me! To that table by the bushes! Put on those as fast and well as you can!" A soldier said. Five kids were herded toward a table of leather and metal armor. Other soldiers grabbed small groups of kids and herded them toward tables with different supplies on them. Wands and staffs on one, bows on another, lock picks and locks over there. Most tables Cutlery couldn't tell what or why certain things were on them. She was starting to get a feel for what the Eternal One might be doing with them.
Living in the castle, a general watching over them, testing them out in every discipline in the world, they were gonna be adventurers for the kingdom! But something seemed off, it was all too clinical. This was very systematic, like that school thing she had heard of before. Not enough exciting events were happening for her theory to be correct.
"You there, two pipsqueaks and the three boys, with me over here." A soldier said to them. This soldier wore loose robes and had a book at their hip. No armor in sight. Some kind of scholar or magician, Cutlery guessed.
Rega and Cutlery, the two aforementioned pipsqueaks, walked alongside the three boys. Rega grabbed Cutlery's arm. All three boys were part of the mega gang that had tried to beat them out of their bunks. Hopefully, they had a chance to fight them. Cutlery could show them a thing or two about a street brawl.
As she shot daggers out of her eyes with her thoughts, Cutlery followed the magician. A table covered in piles of dust sat before them. Peaking at the mage's hands and face Cutlery figured out they were orc. Orcs disproved her humanoid-women-not-buff theory. All the orcs she had ever seen were super buff. This orc walked around the table and motioned for them to line up on the other side.
"Here we have some various specks of dust that react to innate magical abilities. Please breathe on all of them in turn." The orc said.
Rega breathed on each one in turn. Many of the dust piles reacted by beginning to swirl, glow, or make patterns. The boys only got one or two to lightly react. Cutlery stepped forward. She began to blow on each pile in turn. The dust behaved like dust.
Cutlery looked up at the Orc who frowned. "Haven't seen that too often, you have some unique magic in you is all that means. We'll have to test more later. What's your name." The orc magigican said.
"Cutlery." Cutlery said. The orc nodded and wrote something down in her large book on her hip. Cutlery figured that was her way of saying Cutlery had no magic at all.
"Move onto the next table just over there. You'll be here all day so don't strain yourself." The orc said. They all moved to leave. The orc leaned over their table and began making new neat piles of dust. The three boys talked and conjectured about what their innate magic was, what little they had.
"Maybe I'm more elf than human!" Rega said to no one in particular.
"Maybe you ate a fairy when you were a baby." Cutlery purposed. Rega laughed at that, one of the boys overheard and smiled too. Perhaps if the guards threaten to beat them more, they'll switch to thinking I'm funny.
Cutlery moved through each table. She did well at the lockpicks, card tricks, some of the dexterous puzzles, and surprisingly with the small stabby weapons.
"Might make a thief out of you by tomorrow!" One soldier said as her lock broke open.
Rega for her part did well on the lie detector test, a lot of the magic tests, and even a scholarly quiz. Both of them failed at dawning heavy armor as well as the strength tests that the boys seemed to eat up. Cutlery thought it would be easier to grow muscles and match them than learn to pick a lock again. So she was better than them in the end.
Some of the odd tests included psychic probing, animal handling, and lastly a simple test. The test had you place your hand on the table and a spell was cast on you. Nothing happened to anyone after that. The soldiers seemed tense about it thought. Two guards were at the table who watched the test intensely. They never did anything but that.
"What's this one for." Cutlery asked. A super buff mage sat across from her, they wore a mask that danced, or shifted, somethinged.
"We're seeing if you have talked to the Temple before." The buff mage said.
"Huh?" Cutlery said. The buff mage finished her spell.
"Next!" The buff mage said. Cutlery had been ignored.
"So mysterious." Cutlery said sarcastically. She then slid from the chair and joined the group in the middle of the grass waiting for a few kids who got extra tests. Some of the extra testers were very good at things or needed an extra explanation of what to do. Also known as very dumb, or smart asses. Those two groups caused all the trouble Potestatem had.
