"The strategist insignia, and of such clarity."
"What do you mean?" Kaia cried out, perturbed by the god sphere's remark.
"Look at the design, young hero."
The grimoire's glow had ceased at this point, its shape a more cohesive rectangular prism.
The grimoire's spine stuck out to contrast the hard covers, the protrusion revealing an accumulation of vines or ivy that extended from one end to the other.
Almost as if the ivy were clinging onto the cover's claws with all its strength—the powerless struggle evidenced through a conglomerate of ivy where the spine and cover met—they came together to form a green, humanoid yet whimsical figure.
It stood on its own two legs, hands stretched out to hold what looked like black ink splattered onto the page.
Beyond the weird design, what most stuck out was how much aura was oozing from the grimoire, its presence so dense that it was almost an ooze like trekking through muddy waters.
"That insignia, young heroes, represents a strategist," the god sphere continued, its deep growl tinged with amusement. "It's been generations since such an insignia has graced this chamber."
"Strategist? What exactly does that mean for Lucien?" Elias asked, stepping forward cautiously as he glanced down at the unconscious Lucien, who was just now beginning to awaken.
"It means," the sphere's pulsing voice reverberated throughout the throne room, "that your friend is viewed by the gods as exemplifying the strategist archetype, whether that be planning, adapting, and exerting influence over battlefields and situations alike. It is an incredibly rare insignia indicative of his innate talents."
Lucien groaned, the muscles along his arms visibly spasming as he rolled over onto his back, slowly regaining consciousness. His eyes wriggled open, pupils dilating as he looked up at the grimoire floating serenely just above him.
"Is... is that mine?" Lucien muttered weakly, his voice strained from lingering pain.
"Indeed, strategist," Viral interjected with a reassuring smile. "Your grimoire will help you harness your unique resonance with the Ways, guiding you as you learn to wield your gifts."
"What about us?" Kaia blurted impatiently, stepping forward with arms crossed tightly, clearly uncomfortable with the suspense.
"Patience, fiery one," the god sphere's mocking tone returned. "Your turn is soon, though whether your insignia—if you receive one—will match your... temperament remains to be seen."
Kaia scoffed, rolling her eyes while quietly muttering something undoubtedly crude under her breath. Liora placed a calming hand on Kaia's shoulder, offering a gentle squeeze.
As Lucien shakily rose to his feet, he reached out towards the floating grimoire. With cautious reverence, his fingers wrapped around its edges, immediately jolting his entire body upright. The pages flashed open, their empty surfaces rapidly filling with intricate symbols, diagrams, and inscriptions that were barely visible from where Rowan stood, ones that seemed oddly familiar.
"Whoa!" Lucien gasped, staggering back slightly from the sheer influx of information now surging into his mind. "This... it's incredible!"
A switch flipped in Lucien, his face neutral yet his stance strong. As if Lucien had been born able to tap into the Way, a large tendril of dark mass shot out from his open palm, the force of such an outburst creating enough disturbance in the air to knock Rowan off balance just a little.
The others looked on, their eyes wide with envy and wonder, realizing for the first time the true weight and potential of these grimoires.
"Good," the god sphere growled with evident satisfaction. "Now that the first hero has received his grimoire, who shall be next?"
With a sharp breath and determined eyes, Kaia stepped forward, her fiery aura reigniting as she met the god sphere's challenge head-on.
"Alright," she declared boldly, thrusting her palm forward as the tether of light began to form, "let's get this over with."
When the tether's thrums indicated its own completeness, the god sphere lit up, a second source of light whirring in the air adjacent to Kaia's shoulder.
"Ah, the beast insignia. Fitting for one as... overzealous as yourself," the god sphere mused, its flashes of light lighter and its tone airy.
Kaia looked on at the still-bright grimoire with wide-eyed astonishment, her expression a steeled tenacity as she gripped the grimoire along its spine, surely tearing it at the seams with brute force had its material not been otherworldly.
The design was rather simple, a fiery red bull etched on its front cover almost as if it were branded, the line work singed into ash and the disposition revealing an all-encompassing red.
Kaia's grimoire ripped open, the same inscriptions dashing through the air as they imprinted into the pages. However, Kaia's impatience seemed to run thin as she instantly got to work, pointing her finger forward.
"You work at my pace, grimoire!"
The flames that jetted through the throne room at atom-splitting speed matched Kaia's fiery red hair, bristles of hell-incarnate flying off as superheated sparks that burnt through the surrounding material.
Stray tinges were enough to evaporate ends of Rowan's hair and incinerate patches of his clothes, intrusive thoughts of himself being at the end of her full attack almost drawing a fight-or-flight response within him.
Swoosh!
Something flashed through the air faster than Rowan could personally track, its left-behind after-image more visible than it was in real time.
Like the roaring of thunder, air whipped back to lash Rowan's torso seconds after he'd already taken his leave, putting himself between the flame and the wall, a glowing bright blue blade in his right hand.
With a single fell swoop, the fireball was reduced to striating heat waves in the air, its leftover heat still choking out the remaining oxygen in Rowan's lungs.
Coughing his guts out, Rowan's eyes drifted again to the now stationary man, his stony-faced expression wringing out the humor in the otherwise hilarious oversight Kaia had made.
"Hero Kaia, while I understand that exact rush you're feeling: one where your limbs are exuberant, almost unable to sit still. But you need to learn that to survive in this world and protect those you love, you must exercise absolute caution, especially when you possess power as destructive as yours."
The source of the voice was King Viral, his face profuse with sweat and the tips of his fingers broiling with bubbles of air that rose from within his muscle and popped out through his skin.
Yet, despite the grotesqueness of his injury, he maintained his composure, his expression as still as an undisturbed pond.
"I... I'm sorry," Kaia murmured, her face riddled with guilt.
The world could've tipped over with how many times Kaia leaned into a bow, her torso perpendicular to her legs.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Kaia continued to yell, water welling at the corners of her eyes as her frown kept falling further and further with each passing bow.
"It's alright, really," uttered the king, free-minded fulfillment indicating his lack of contempt for the harm Kaia had inflicted unto him.
However, Kaia's apologies did not cease. Instead, Viral's forgiveness almost incited her to bow both deeper and faster, her face now marked with full trails of tears.
"How could I possibly atone for needlessly harming you?" blurted Kaia, the intensity in sound of her voice going and leaving as it pleased like a game of whack-a-mole, a result of her attempt to speak through her constant bowing.
"No, truly—I actually mean it," Viral retorted, his hands now raised in front of him.
The previously closed eyes that had adorned Kaia's obvious grief were now half opened, refractive yet reddened with tears. Her lashes waved in response to the sudden shuttering of her eyelids, pupils dilated and mouth wide open.
With almost impossible haste, the tears in her eyes had burned away, sizzling into the atmosphere as she witnessed the actualization of the king's words.
A reminiscent green cocooned the tips of the king's fingers that had been burned by her flames, the mangled and malformed remains beginning to twitch.
At first, nothing seemed to happen, his cells bearing none of the typical symptoms of vitalization, but I soon realized that that description would be far too incongruent to the nature of the king's arcana.
Instead, the skin that his fingers had lost was stitching itself back on, little specks in the air hardly visible by the naked eye coalescing to form individual patches of peachy white.
There were even some small bits of red that nudged themselves right back into his fingers, resemblant of muscle tissue.
"See, I can heal just fine," the king assured, smiling away the sorrow that Kaia had been afflicted with.
Kaia was now surprised, her shoulders locked in place while her head reeled, words struggling to leave her mouth.
"How?" Lucien questioned, his brows furrowed to reveal an expression more serious than Kaia's.
"What is that? It's not simple healing arcana."
The king's temple shrunk back to raise his eyebrows, a smirk peeking through his otherwise blank face.
"Ah, yes, it seems I can't get anything past you heroes," the king teased, raising his fully healed finger up just past his own height.
"You will all learn in due time, but that was an arcanic technique that utilized two arts of the Way."
"What?" all five of us heroes blurted out, stepping forward ever so slightly from the sheer shock of such a revelation.
"Yes, although I can only use it because—"
"May we get on with the initiation ceremony? I'm getting bored here," the god sphere interjected, the reverberations from its thrumming light more volatile than it was before.
Everybody in the throne room stiffened, turning back towards the god sphere.
"Ah, sorry, I hadn't meant to hold up your—"
"Yeah, yeah, you can hold your tongue, can we just get on with it?" the god sphere interjected again, disconnecting the king's train of thought as he stared on in silent frustration.
"Yes," mused Elias, stepping forward just past where the king stood.
Raising his hand forward, the same tether formed between himself and the sphere, a white grimoire materializing beside him in all the same fashion.
Nothing of unique value occurred, although what most struck me as peculiar was how boring Elias' design was, a sole golem imprinted on the cover.
The grimoire itself was plain black, the texture smooth like polished bone.
Elias looked onward as the inscriptions scribbled into his pages, his mouth drawn into a thin line, his hand flexing once as if testing an invisible weight.
"The arbiter insignia," hummed the god sphere, its thrumming slowing to a lazier, more observant pitch. "One who balances strength and sentence."
Without hesitation, Elias raised his free hand.
A dense wall of shimmering energy, rectangular and translucent, tore out from his palm with the blast of a jet engine. The sheer displacement of air pushed back the trailing ends of our cloaks, the ground beneath the wall cracking in a spiderweb formation.
It was a shield—but not passive. The wall's edges buzzed, vibrating so rapidly that when a stray piece of debris floated close, it was cleaved clean in half with a sharp hiss.
Elias cracked a half-smile, his grimoire flashing once before the shield folded back into the air like a pocket collapsing on itself.
"Efficient," muttered Lucien under his breath.
"You then," the god sphere thrummed.
Liora was next.
She stepped forward, her gait slow but not hesitant, the tether forming as a muted navy thread, its light dim and steady, almost as if it didn't want to draw attention.
Her grimoire materialized above her open hands, falling softly downward like a feather.
It was deep ocean blue, with the texture of roughened cloth. At the center of the cover was a single open eye, thin and slanted, cradled by two crescent-shaped wings that stretched out wide. Every detail of the eye was etched in fine silver, glinting softly even in the weak light.
"The oracle insignia," breathed the god sphere, its tone quiet, almost reverent.
Liora barely touched the book before a pulse rolled off her skin, a ripple in the air that sent a sharp prickle across my body.
In the space before her, dozens of faint, translucent shapes blinked into existence—like ghostly afterimages of herself stepping in different directions, pausing mid-turn, mid-fall, mid-strike.
Then, without warning, one of the afterimages lunged forward at mock-speed, slashing an invisible line through the air.
The floor cracked along the path of the afterimage's movement, a perfect seam that carved the stone like butter.
The images vanished a second later, leaving Liora standing still, her eyes wide and unfocused as if she were watching something far beyond the room.
The air around her crackled softly before dying down.
"And finally, you, effeminate one."