For a long moment, nobody in the hall made a sound.
The image hung above the stage, vast and silent. Black water rolled under foreign stars. Mav kept searching for a coastline.
There was none.
Every new World started small: 100 km2 (38 mi2) of raw matter, hanging in the dark somewhere far from Earth. After that, it grew only if its owner could make it grow.
What that matter was made all the difference. A forest could feed you. A mountain range could hide you. Even a desert gave you sand to stand on.
Mav’s World was water.
Pale letters began to form in the light above the stone, one line at a time. This was the part everyone waited for. The Officiant read them aloud in the same flat voice he had used all morning:
"World: submerged."
"Potential... E."
A murmur rolled through the hall.
Every World started at rank F, the lowest letter. The potential was the highest rank it could ever reach. It was set on the first day, and almost nothing could change it.
Most people here had hoped for a C World. An A or a B was something a commoner’s family would talk about for years. The burning mountains belonged to Cassian Pyrecrest, heir to one of the ten Imperial Houses that ruled Earth, and they had come with an S. That was why the Officiant had dropped his pen.
An E meant that Mav’s World would grow exactly once. Then it would stop, forever, one step above where it had started.
Only F was lower, and people with an F potential rarely lived long.
’So it isn’t the worst possible result. It’s just the worst one you can survive.’
He almost laughed. Then the third line appeared, and he didn’t.
The Officiant looked at it for a while. He opened his mouth, closed it, and read the letters again.
"Species..."
He cleared his throat.
"Seaweed."
Then someone in the back rows laughed.
It spread fast. Soon half the hall was laughing, and a boy near the front kept repeating the word in a high, breathless voice. But not everyone joined in. Some students stared at their shoes, and a few parents in the gallery frowned at their own children.
Mav stood with his hand on the stone and let it wash over him, while his cheeks burned with shame.
Along the wall, a few teachers were smiling. The Officiant kept his eyes on his list, as if none of this concerned him.
’Laugh. I’m used to it. I was really hoping for a decent starting species.’
A World was nothing without something to live on it. Along with his World, every Awakened received a species, and 10 creatures of that species to start with. They were called Subjects, and they were everything. They hunted for you, built for you, fought for you. As they grew stronger, so did your World, and so did you.
Today, people had been given wolves, goblins and a swarm of iron wasps. Cassian had been given fire drakes, small ones, each already the size of a hunting dog.
Mav had been given a plant.
It could not move. It could not fight. It could not build so much as a fence, and the moment it left the water, it would dry out and die. As far as he knew, no one had ever received anything weaker.
’10 of them, though. I get 10.’
Somehow, that didn’t help.
"Hey, traitor!"
The voice came from the bench of the Awakened. Dorian Ashgrove had risen to his feet, with all the arrogance of a noble’s son, so that the whole hall could enjoy him. He was a tall, handsome boy with gray hair and the easy grin of someone who had never been told no, and his own Bestowal had given him an A potential and a pack of ash hounds.
"What’s the plan? Are you going to tangle your enemies to death?"
A few people laughed again.
Dorian glanced sideways, very quickly, toward the far end of the bench, as if he wanted to check that someone there had heard him.
"That’s enough, Ashgrove," a teacher said from the wall. "Sit down." Dorian sat, still smiling. The teacher didn’t look at Mav. He had only said it to keep order.
Mav said nothing. He was angry, but he was used to swallowing it.
Then he looked where Dorian had looked, toward the far end of the bench.
Cassian Pyrecrest had not seen anything.
He sat with his back straight and his hands resting on his knees, looking at nothing in particular. His long red hair gave him an air of elegance and superiority. He had not turned his head when Mav’s name was called. He had not looked at the water, or at the letters, or at the boy standing under them. The loudest laughter of the day broke around him like waves around a rock, and he simply was not interested.
Mav could have lived with hatred. Hatred would have meant that the name Silkborn still weighed something to a Pyrecrest. Of all the families on Earth, theirs had the most reason to remember it.
But Cassian did not hate him. Cassian had been shown the son of a man his imperial house had helped to bury, and had found nothing there worth a second of his attention.
’And he’s right.’
Next to an S potential and a nest of drakes, an E potential and a clump of weeds weren’t worth a look, and it hurt to admit it.
"You may remove your hand."
The Officiant’s voice was quieter than before. It took Mav a moment to realize that the man was speaking to him, and another to notice that his fingers had gone white against the stone.
He let go.
The image of the dark water folded in on itself and vanished. The light drained out of the slab. In a few seconds, it was only a black rock again, waiting for the next palm.
"Take a seat with the others. Next!"
That should have been the end of it.
But as Mav turned toward the steps, something flickered at the edge of his vision. He stopped.
A line of pale letters hung in the air in front of him. They were the same letters the stone had shown, only smaller, and much closer. They followed his eyes when he moved them.
He looked at the Officiant. The man was squinting at his list. He looked at the front row. People were still wiping tears of laughter from their eyes.
Nobody was reading anything. Nobody else could see it.
That was normal. The stone showed a World, a potential and a species to everyone in the hall. The fourth gift was shown only to the new Awakened.
Every Awakened received a talent, and nobody could see anyone else’s, so people lied about theirs all the time.
A good talent could change everything. It could make a C world worth more than a B.
Mav’s heart was beating fast. He had learned not to hope for much, but he couldn’t help it now.
He read the line.
It was a single word.
[Talent: Host]