Assassin from Abyss

Chapter 7: The Awakening Ceremony Part 2

Pavel left the Council Building with his head down, and the nobles hollered after him, throwing their taunts down at him and at the commoner Rakshasa seated on the lower floors.

" Room three. Nessa, of the nobility. "

The ceremony went on, floor over floor, through the cheers of the nobles and the sighs of the commoners.

" Room seventy-five. Markus, of the commoners. "

Markus stepped onto the dais and came into the audience’s view — five foot eight, lean, his skin a night-black jade. A canine showed at his lip. He put out the claws of his hands and his feet and drew them back, showing them to the crowd.

The commoner floors erupted. One of theirs had passed. They carried it high, the hope that one day a commoner among them might rise to High Priest and lift the whole of their station with him.

Then a disturbance broke out on the fortieth floor, among the nobles seated there. A Council guard marked it and reached the fortieth in a single long leap up from the ground, caught the noble at the center of it, heard him out, and carried him — another long leap — up to the ninety-ninth.

The noble was sent back to his seat. And Lymic’s voice went out over the hall.

" Everyone — congratulate Markus on the waking of his bloodline. A proud day for the commoners, truly. " A pause. " But the bloodline Markus has awakened is not his family’s. He was not born of his commoner father’s seed. " fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm

Lymic’s hand turned, pointing to a certain man in the commoner section. Markus’s father.

" Markus is the illegitimate son of the Third Duke of the noble House of Tsakani — got on his mother in an affair. So I give Markus a choice. He may go on with this ascension as a commoner — in which case his mother is put to death for her debauchery. Or he may take a place of nobility in his true father’s house, cutting every tie to his commoner family, and so spare their lives. "

An uproar went through the hall. The commoners sat with their faces burning under the slander the nobles poured down on them.

Markus chose to save his mother.

And the ceremony went on without another snag, room after room, until only the last door remained.

" Room one hundred. Kaiser, of — " Lymic stopped. " Well. Here is an interesting one. This one seems to be neither of the nobility nor of the commoners. Guards — bring his soulgem. "

A soulgem was a small thing that read an individual by prying shallowly into the soul — recording their background, their birthplace, the identity of their parents. An identity card, of a kind. Each candidate set their own information into one before the ritual.

Lymic read Kaiser’s, and chuckled.

" Oh my. Who could have known what today held for us. " His voice lifted so all of them caught it. " Our next participant, Kaiser, is neither noble nor commoner — for he was seeded by a lowly human. "

The hall rose in a roar, nobles and commoners alike. However far apart their stations set them, on the matter of humans the two held one mind.

" Silence. " Lymic let it fall. " Yes. This spawn was fathered by a lowly human. But he was born a Rakshasa — tsk, tsk — and so, by our law, he was permitted the ritual. "

He read on, down to the part where the sentence Kaiser’s maternal elders had set for him was written out, and something in his face settled.

" Guards. Begin preparing the next part of the ceremony. I doubt this human-spawn will take much of our time — and he has little time left in this world besides. " He looked up, and his mouth curved. " Room one hundred. Kaiser of the damned. Guard — bring him in. "

Lymic chuckled at his own naming of it.

And the audience, on every floor, laughed with him — delighted at the name laid on the boy, eager already for the last candidate to fail, so they might belittle him and drink their pleasure from his despair.

It was in the blood of the Rakshasa, that particular joy. The pleasure taken in another’s ruin.