Eighty-nine days on the road. The seven copper coins were gone by the second week—a greedy roadside innkeeper took them for a piece of rancid lard and a leaky flask. After that, it was starving survival. The road from Asgard to the Center had nothing to do with the elegant lines on the lords' maps. It was an endless intestine of frozen mud. Kain walked, sleeping in ravines and burying himself in rotting leaves so as not to be covered in deathly white frost by morning. He chewed bitter roots. His stomach had long since twisted into a tight, painful knot, and the soles of the stolen boots fell off in pieces somewhere on the border with Valois. He had to wrap his blood-blistered feet in dirty rags. There was no scent of nobility on the tract. Only one primal rule operated here: whoever is weaker is meat.
On the thirty-fifth day of the journey, three men emerged from a copse. Deserters. Thin, with manic eyes inflamed by hunger. One held a trembling rusty spear, while the other two had woodcutters' axes. They saw the lone vagabond and decided he was easy prey.
"Hey, boy, get over here!" the deserter with the spear shouted hoarsely.
Kain was not timid. In harsh Asgard, fights happened constantly among both the nobility and the rabble—exchanging blows there was tantamount to a simple greeting. But now, looking at the gleam of the axes, he tensed: this was no tavern brawl, but a matter of survival.
"Well, I don't get it, scum, why are you standing there, you hunched cur? I said come here!" the vagrant barked.
The deserter with the spear lunged first, letting out a hoarse yell. Kain didn't try to dodge or take a stance. He scooped up a handful of runny road mud and forcefully hurled it right into the attacker's face, plastering his eyes. In the same second, the northerner snatched his heavy sword, reforged from a pile of scrap metal, from behind his back. Gathering the remnants of his strength, he rushed forward. The deserter, desperately wiping his eyes, tried to block with the shaft. But the youth's ugly sword broke the spear with a crunch and bit deep into the man's flesh. Hot blood gushed out, and the man wheezed horribly.
Kain planted his boot on the twitching body, yanked the blade out with a squelching sound, and glared at the remaining two from under his brows. In his gray eyes, there was neither burning rage nor fear. Only the animal exhaustion and primal hunger of a man ready to kill for a piece of bread. The deserters backed away. Throwing their axes straight into the mud, they turned and bolted back into the thicket, loudly snapping dry branches.
Kain exhaled heavily and wiped his bloody blade on the dead man's clothes. He pulled the boots off the cooling corpse. They turned out to be two sizes too big, but he simply stuffed the toes tightly with dry grass and kept walking. After walking a little further, he slumped heavily to the ground. His dirty hands trembled treacherously—he had taken a human life for the first time. The adrenaline was receding, leaving behind a nauseating emptiness. But Kain understood there weren't many options. This world simply chews up the weak and spits out their bones. Wiping his smeared face, he struggled to his feet and stubbornly marched on.
Avalon hit his nostrils long before it appeared on the horizon. On the ninetieth day, the air grew noticeably heavier. His throat tickled from a caustic, poisonous mixture of burnt coal, molten metal, and the sour stench of thousands of unwashed bodies. Kain crested a bare hill, and his pace involuntarily slowed.
Below, sprawling along both banks of a leaden-gray river, lay the monster city. The Capital of the Empire. A thick shroud of yellowish smog replaced the sky here. The giant brick chimneys of countless manufactories continuously spewed black smoke, through which the sharp spires of Gothic cathedrals pierced the heights like needles. Massive stone bridges pulling the banks together looked like the swollen veins of this stone leviathan. And everywhere, on every fortress tower, blood-red banners bearing the Dragon crest fluttered menacingly through the poisonous haze.
Kain clenched his jaws until the enamel squeaked. He descended the hill and joined a river of creaking wagons, snorting horses, and exhausted people slowly flowing toward the Northern Gates.
The checkpoint. Two cyclopean towers of black stone, between which hung a heavy forged portcullis. Guards in shining steel cuirasses and scarlet tabards disgustedly collected tolls, roughly wielding the shafts of their halberds like shepherds.
"Two coppers per wheel! One per snout!" monotonically barked a mustachioed officer, tossing coins into an iron-bound chest without looking. "No passage for beggars, lepers, and vagabonds! Get lost while your ribs are still intact!"
The line spat Kain out right in front of him—stinking of the forest, in pitiful rags, with an ugly piece of iron on his back. The officer grimaced, instinctively placing his hand on the hilt of his longsword.
"Are you deaf? Penniless scum have no business in the capital. Get out," the guard hissed.
Kain stayed silent, slipping his roughened hand inside his jacket. At that moment, the officer shoved him roughly in the chest.
"I told you, get away, you filth!" he barked at the guy with a raised voice.
The youth staggered, almost falling into the mud, but kept his footing. His fingers pulled out a crumpled piece of parchment with a cracked wax Dragon seal—the copy given to his village elder. The decree.
"The Great Conscription... I have come for the conscription," the northerner's voice, unaccustomed to long conversations, sounded hollow, like stone grinding against stone. "Aetheria."
The officer faltered. He snatched the paper with two fingers, disdainfully inspecting the royal seal. The silence lasted exactly one second. And then the guard threw his head back and burst out laughing. The halberdiers standing around joined in the guffaws.
"Just look at this! A swineherd fancies himself a knight of Avalon!" the officer crumpled the parchment into a ball and threw it straight into a muddy puddle at Kain's boots. "Go. The Royal Tract, past the Clock Tower. Walk, scum. You'll save us time when the Magisters scrape your meat off the paving stones. Let him through!"
Kain bent down slowly. Picked up the dirty decree. And silently stepped beneath the gloomy vaults of Avalon.
The city struck at his bare nerves. The relentless clatter of forged wheels on wet cobblestones, the shrill neighing of horses. Varnished closed carriages with golden crests on their doors rushed past, splashing the crowd huddled against the walls with dirty water. The scent of incredibly expensive perfume wafting from the carriage windows wildly mixed with the suffocating stench of open gutters. Here, absolute, blinding luxury devoured rotting poverty alive.
The street widened abruptly, spilling Kain onto a colossal square paved with black granite. The Academy of Aetheria. Two gigantic arches of solid obsidian were oppressive just by their inhuman appearance. Blind stone statues of past Magisters stared indifferently at the human anthill swarming below. The square was buzzing. Thousands of newly arrived youths. Haughty aristocrats in polished plate armor bearing the crests of Valois and Eisenwald, stern mercenaries in studded leather, and enormous retinues of servants.
Right at the base of the black arches sat the registrars. Kain silently joined the longest, "dirtiest" line for the lowborn. After two agonizing hours, he found himself in front of a table. A pale old man with watery, tired eyes dipped a quill pen into an inkwell.
Without raising his head, he dryly snapped: "Name. Origin. Letter of recommendation." "Kain Alseif. Village of Oxen, Asgard. No letter. Only the decree."
The scratching of the pen stopped. The registrar slowly looked up. Inspected the stinking rags. The worn-out boots. The rusty sword guard.
In the adjacent line, surrounded by a retinue of servants, stood a tall blond man in blue enameled half-plate armor—the Golden Falcon of Valois. He theatrically pressed a perfumed handkerchief to his nose. "Aetheria is rapidly turning into a flophouse. It stinks of pig manure," the lord hissed loudly. His entourage snickered obsequiously.
The registrar curled his thin lips in disgust. "The Crown's Academy is not a workhouse for runaway peasants," he said. "The decree allows everyone to come, but you must understand the cruel reality. Coming here with your background, you will die faster than you will achieve anything."
The old man leaned back in his chair and, with a slight wave of his hand, beckoned the duty mage. "Look here, boy. Now our mage will check your life channels. I won't explain at length, you wouldn't understand yet anyway. Here, we are divided into groups by ranks. The first rank is the Aura Knights, the elite of the elite. The second rank is ordinary knights. The third rank is esquires. Here, both lower nobility and commoners with a spark of the gift settle. And the fourth and fifth ranks are regular soldiers. Cannon fodder without a drop of hope to rise higher."
The mage who approached differed strikingly from the capital officials. His dark skin, dark eyes, and silk clothes unmistakably marked him as a native of the southern Kingdom of Osmantis.
"Give me your hand," the mage said imperiously.
Kain held out his calloused palm. The mage intercepted it, and with the fingers of his other hand began to quickly draw glowing runes on the youth's dirty skin, chanting a spell in an ancient tongue. Kain simply closed his eyes. He inhaled the sulfur-soaked capital smog and turned inward. There, somewhere near his heart, pulsed a white-hot, aching ember. Years of torment in the night forest. Thousands of strikes with a crowbar. Pain elevated to an absolute. He felt this primal energy tearing outward, reacting to the stranger's magic.
The air around the youth trembled with a hollow hum. The temperature spiked sharply. The drizzling capital rain turned into thick steam with a loud hiss before reaching Kain's shoulders. Wild, uncontrollable energy burst from his body. This was no even, noble glow of the aristocrats. This was a predator broken off its chain. The granite beneath his boots spiderwebbed with fine cracks.
The clerk gasped in surprise and pressed himself against the back of his chair. The bronze inkwell rattled and tipped over, flooding the lists with black blots. The laughter of the blond from Valois cut off—the aristocrat instinctively recoiled, physically sensing a dense, aggressive wave of scorching flame.
Kain opened his eyes. His gray irises dimly flickered with red light. The muscles of his chest cramped brutally. He gritted his teeth until they cracked. In that very second, the mage forcefully covered the youth's palm with his hand, severing the runic connection, and the wild aura dissipated with a hiss. The air cooled instantly. A dead silence hung over the table.
Kain leaned forward, leaning heavily with dirty fists on the tabletop. "What was that?" he asked hollowly, trying to rein in the echoes of heat pulsing in his veins.
The old registrar looked in astonishment at the mage. The latter, wiping sweat from his forehead, gave a short nod to the official.
"Third rank," the Osmantian said firmly.
"Alseif... you said. Interesting. A northerner, yet an Avalonian first name, and a clearly southern surname," the registrar wheezed, hurriedly writing the name into a clean ledger. He grabbed a wooden tag, dripped sealing wax. Slapped a seal on it. And pushed it across the table. "Congratulations. You're placed in the esquires' group." He averted his gaze. "The Minor Courtyard. Beyond the Gates. And pray to your northern gods, or whoever you believe in... With such lousy control, you'll break your own spine in the very first Trials."
Kain grabbed the rough wooden tag. Turned around, paying not the slightest attention to the frightened whispers of the lords behind his back, and stepped straight into the dark, overwhelming gap of the obsidian Gates.
The Minor Courtyard met him with blind fortress walls. No gold. No stained glass windows. Bare, trampled gray stone, looking more like an execution ground. About a thousand recruits had been herded here. The nobility instinctively huddled in a tight cluster in the center, gleaming with polished steel and looking around warily. Commoners and mercenaries squeezed uncomfortably along the edges. Kain dropped his bag by the wall. He thrust his sword right into a joint between the flagstones and leaned heavily on the crossguard, waiting out the dull, aching pain in his chest from the energy release.
Suddenly, a hollow, vibrating strike of a gong painfully hit their ears. The crowd froze instantly. A man walked onto the stone balcony overhanging the parade ground. Worn black leather armor without a single crest. A bald skull. His harsh face was crossed by a rough scar that hideously pulled his left eye. He moved deceptively slowly. With weight.
"Quiet," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it lashed across the huge square like a whip. "I am Magister Rorch. To you, 'Master'." "You came here for glory. For the titles of knights. For a cozy spot," he walked over to the stone railing and spat contemptuously down, right onto the cobblestones. "You will get jack shit. Aetheria forges weapons. A weapon doesn't ask to eat and doesn't whine. It kills and breaks." "Now we'll see who here is steel and who is shit. We will divide you into groups according to your ranks."
Hundreds of cadets whispered nervously, and aristocrats exchanged indignant glances, but under the Magister's cold gaze, the murmurs quickly drowned in animal fear. The oppressive atmosphere of the parade ground forced even the most audacious to bite their tongues.
"Also, besides military training," Rorch continued, stamping out his words, "the rabble will learn to read and write. Because it will be useful on the front lines. Even a pathetic soldier must know how to read orders. As for the rest, your mentors will show you everything and guide you."
Rorch was about to retreat into the shadows of the balcony, but he stopped and slowly turned back. "Almost forgot. If any of you suckers decide to start a fight outside of a duel or a sparring match... I will cripple you personally. And that applies to everyone without exception."
Immediately after these words, the monstrous pressure of the Magister's Aura crashed down upon the parade ground. It lasted only a moment, forcing a thousand youths to synchronously bend in half from the invisible weight, but it quickly vanished, and the Magister left silently.
Mentors and instructors descended to the stunned cadets. They carried lists and stacks of wooden tags in their hands. One of them approached Kain. Measured him with a dismissive glance. Checked a paper. And tossed a black mark, burnt at the edges, with a roughly carved number "13" at his feet.
"Thirteenth Expeditionary," the instructor smirked crookedly. "Tomorrow at dawn you will receive steel from the armory. And further instructions."
Kain was left standing alone. He slowly bent down and picked up the dirty mark. Thirteen. The youth clenched it in his fist. He had walked for three long months. Eaten roots. Broken his own and others' bones to break out of the northern shit. And he had finally made it. His training would begin soon.
Kain looked up at the gray sky of Avalon, obscured by acrid coal smoke.