Divine System: Land of the Abominations-Chapter 327: The Trials Begin (8).

He did not sleep well.

This was not unusual — he had not slept particularly well since Gor, and had long since stopped expecting to — but the rain had kept on through the night and by the time the pre-dawn bell rang through the Red House he was already sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed, watching the grey light come in through the window and settle across the floor.

He picked up the practice spear from against the wall, turned it over once in his hands, and set it back down.

Today he would use Gungnir.

He retrieved it from the Mark — the familiar weight arriving in his palm, that constant slow shifting of balance along the shaft that he had spent months learning to read rather than resist. The pale arm that held it caught what little light existed in the room. He flexed the fingers. They worked, as they always did.

He wrapped the spear in cloth and tucked it under his arm, and went to find Arthur and Jacob.

---

They assembled in the Red House’s main courtyard at first light along with every other candidate from the Liedenstorm garrison — eleven of them in total from Nero’s cohort, plus candidates from the other cohorts he had seen around the building but never formally encountered. The full garrison pool came to perhaps forty, and they stood in the cold courtyard in various states of readiness while the morning arranged itself around them.

The candidates from the other garrisons arrived over the following hour. They came in groups, escorted by their own instructors, and the courtyard filled steadily until Nero could no longer see the gate from where he was standing. Two hundred candidates, Arthur had said. Looking at the mass of bodies and equipment in the courtyard, with more still filtering in from the eastern entrance, that number felt accurate and also somehow abstract, the way large numbers were always slightly unreal until you were standing inside one.

Jacob appeared at his shoulder. "There are a lot of them."

"Yes," Nero said.

"More nobles than I expected." Jacob was scanning the crowd with the practiced efficiency of someone mentally sorting everything he saw. "See those four near the well? House Cresten colors. And the group by the armory entrance — those are Valen men, I’d recognise the waraxes anywhere." He paused. "Three of them. The brothers Arthur mentioned."

Nero looked. Three young men, broadly built, standing close together with the ease of people who had trained alongside each other their entire lives and moved with a shared weight.

"Arthur?" Nero said.

"His father kept him last night. He’ll be here." Jacob took a drink from the flask he had produced from somewhere and capped it. "He’s always here when it matters."

Commander Strut emerged from the Red House’s main entrance at a few minutes past the second bell, accompanied by two Church officials Nero did not recognise — one in the white of a senior Chronicler, one in deep red that was not Crimson Crucible red but the darker, more deliberate shade of a Church administrator with authority over multiple Orders. They positioned themselves on the steps above the courtyard and the noise of two hundred candidates resolving itself into silence happened quickly and without instruction, the way silence always arrived when the person at the front of a room had that specific quality of weight.

Strut looked at the courtyard for a moment.

"The Assessment begins in one hour," he said. "You will be escorted to the examination hall in groups of twenty. Non-combatant candidates have been separately briefed. If you have not been separately briefed, you are a combatant candidate and the Assessment is a written examination." He paused. "Candidates who cannot read will be given an oral examination. I would advise those candidates not to announce this fact before entering the hall."

A ripple through the crowd at that. Not laughter exactly — something more complicated.

"Points from the Assessment feed into your cumulative total. Your cumulative total determines everything that follows. I would suggest treating this examination as seriously as any stage that involves something trying to kill you, because the consequences of performing poorly here will follow you into the stages that do." He looked over the courtyard one more time. "That is all I have for you. Do not be late."

He went back inside. The crowd broke into noise again, quieter and more purposeful than before.

Arthur materialised at Nero’s left side as though he had always been there. His coat was slightly damp from the morning air and his expression had the particular quality of a man who had been awake for some time already and had decided this was fine.

"Assessment first," he said, by way of greeting.

"We know," Jacob said.

"Good." Arthur looked at the crowd with the measured assessment he applied to most things, his eyes moving through it with the systematic quality of someone cataloguing rather than observing. "The Valen brothers are here."

"We saw," Nero said.

"All three, which means House Valen is committing seriously this cycle." Arthur’s jaw shifted slightly. "Their father made Captain before the injury that retired him. They’ll have been training for this specifically for years." He paused. "Don’t let them rattle you in the Gauntlet. That’s what they’ll try."

"You’re getting ahead of yourself," Jacob said. "We haven’t sat the Assessment yet."

"I know," Arthur said. "I’m thinking ahead." He glanced at Nero, specifically at the cloth-wrapped shape under his arm. Something in his expression registered it and did not comment on it, which was its own form of comment. "How are you feeling?" 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Nero thought about the rain against the window and the ceiling and Orpheus and the practice spear he had set back down this morning for the last time.

"Ready," he said.

Arthur nodded once, and they stood in the crowded courtyard while the morning continued to arrange itself, and the bell rang again for the first group to be escorted in.