Isaac whistled above me, causing me to look up from my branded arm at him. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen that before.”

  Panic rising in my chest, I said, “Never seen what before? The Codex harming someone?”

  Isaac pointed at the brand on my arm. “No, I’ve seen the Codex do all sorts of awful things to people before. I’m referring to that mark. Your Codex Mark.”

  Codex Mark … “That’s what this is?”

  Isaac nodded. “Sure. Isn’t it obvious? I’m pretty sure Codex Marks were on the written test you had to take before the trial.”

  They very much weren’t, but I didn’t say that aloud. Isaac’s drinking was probably just messing with his memory.

  But I did remember Miriam showing me her Codex Mark after completing her trial four years ago. Hers had been on the back of her left elbow, however, looking like a rune from an ancient language mixed with reading glasses.

  She had not, however, mentioned how much it hurt to get your first Codex Mark.

  The pain had faded; I barely felt anything now. If I weren’t looking at my Codex Mark, I wouldn’t have even known I had it.

  Rising to my feet while rubbing my arm, I couldn’t keep my eyes off my Codex Mark. “So this lets people know I am a Codexer?”

  Isaac grabbed my sleeve and pulled it over my arm. I looked up at him, but he was staring at me with an unusually stern expression.

  “Only if you are foolish enough to show it to the whole world,” said Isaac. He tapped the side of his head. “As the Arcane Codex says, knowledge is power. And the more people who know about your Discipline, the more power they have over you.”

  I resisted the urge to pull my sleeve up again to look at my Codex Mark once more. “How does knowing my Discipline give someone power over me?”

  Isaac folded his arms in front of his chest, the light from the glowing stones in the walls casting strange shadows over his face. “Because it’s easy to look up a Discipline via its Codex Mark in pretty much any Node. If someone who might want to hurt you sees your Discipline, not only can they look it up in the Codex, but they can also use that knowledge against you. “By keeping your Discipline to yourself—sharing it only with a select few—you remain a wild card.”

  I nodded and looked at the private Node again. “But if I’m registered with the SNA, doesn’t that mean my information is public?”

  “Only your name, associated Node, and Chapter,” said Isaac. “Disciplines are considered highly private information for the reasons I just outlined, so even though the SNA has information on your Discipline, it’s not something anyone can access using a public Node. Every Discipline has exploitable weaknesses, and there’s no way to view someone’s Discipline unless they share it with you—or you hack their portable.”

  Isaac then leaned toward me with an expectant expression. “But you have to tell me, your Keeper, your Discipline, so I can log it for the SNA.”

  I frowned. “But isn’t it already logged with the SNA if I am a registered Codexer now?”

  Isaac rolled his eyes. “Welcome to the Shinar Node Authority, where even the paperwork needs paperwork and rural Codex Keepers like yours truly are permanently underfunded and understaffed.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I pulled up my Inscriptionist Discipline again and found the settings in my Node that would let me share it with Isaac. It just required touching my portable to his portable, with a soft ping indicating that the transfer was successful.

  “Thanks,” said Isaac as he tapped his wrist-mounted portable, his eyes slightly glazing over as he looked at my Discipline. “Let’s see what you got …”

  Before Isaac could read about my Discipline, I asked him, “Where is your Codex Mark?”

  Isaac frowned at me. “On my butt, obviously. Want to see it now?”

  I shook my head rapidly. I felt embarrassed for asking, though now that I thought about it, I really didn’t need to see his Codex Mark. I already knew his Discipline, Codex Keeper, so seeing his Codex Mark would be useless. It sounded like I could look up his Discipline via the Arcane Codex anytime I wanted, anyway.

  Isaac had returned to looking at my Discipline. His smile faded to a concerned frown. “Now I see why I didn’t recognize your Codex Mark. In all my years working as a Codex Keeper, I’ve never heard of an ‘Inscriptionist’ before. And that ability to use Words as both experience and as a casting resource—”

  “Wordcasting,” I said without thinking. “It’s called Wordcasting.”

  Isaac blinked and looked at me, his eyes no longer glazed over now that he was not reading my Discipline notification anymore. “Wordcasting, eh? Where did you hear that term?”

  I hesitated. I had encountered it during my trial when I’d been forced to team up with a talking rabbit named Nimbus to destroy a malformed Codex Spell Entry that threatened to destroy the Node Network, but I was still not sure I should tell Isaac all of that just yet. “Er, it’s in the description of my Discipline.”

  Isaac nodded and returned his attention to my Discipline description. “I see. You’re right. Wordcasting … strange idea. Sounds like something from the pre-Collapse era, if I’m going to be honest.”

  I nodded. “That’s what the description indicates, but what does this mean?”

  Isaac shrugged and tapped his portable before looking back at me. “Who knows? I was expecting you would get a Combat Discipline, because that is what the North Forest Node usually assigns new Codexers, but a Systemic Discipline like this one isn’t entirely unheard of. I’m still hung up on the whole Wordcasting deal. How are you supposed to advance in the Chapter System if you have to use Words to cast spells?”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I bit my lower lip. I wish I had an answer for Isaac, but as it was, I didn’t understand the idea any better than he did. It sounded like a downer Discipline, though. Maybe the Arcane Codex really did hate me and wanted me to fail. That would explain … a lot, though not everything.

  “Anyway, at least you have a Discipline now,” said Isaac, stroking his beard. “And a unique one, at that, though it reminds me of the Structurist Discipline, another Systemic Discipline. But that one is more common in the Second Kingdom than here, so this is obviously not the same thing.”

  I looked down at my portable, thinking back to my trial. “You mean you aren’t interested in the part that says I can create or modify Codex Entries?”

  Isaac looked at me again as if he’d forgotten I was there. “What? Oh, yeah. That’s also interesting, but it doesn’t seem very useful if you have to waste all your Words just to cast those spells. I swear, the more I think about it, the worse your Discipline gets.” He grinned. “Maybe the Codex really does hate you.”

  “Let’s move on,” I said. “What else do I need to do next?”

  Isaac tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I guess the next thing would be to open your user interface, or UI, and look at your Codex sheet.”

  I frowned. “Do I have to? I want to go and practice my Discipline.”

  “Do I have to?” Isaac repeated in a high-pitched, mocking tone that definitely didn’t sound anything like my voice. “Kid, your UI is one of the most important benefits of being a Codexer. It lets you track your progress through the Chapter System, see what spells you own, track the various Codex Quests that the Arcane Codex has assigned to you … it’s huge.”

  I scratched the back of my head. “Fine. I’ll look at it. But don’t expect me to look at it all the time.”

  “I won’t,” said Isaac. “Truth be told, as important as your Codex sheet is, you should really only look at it as you need to. Now pull it up.”

  Still frowning, I focused on my portable and sent a mental command to bring up my UI. Like a spell, my UI flickered into existence in my view. Here’s what it showed:

  Name: Aaron Thorn

  Age: 18

  Guild: Unaligned

  Chapter: Chapter 1

  Discipline: Inscriptionist (Unique)

  Page: 1

  Words Earned (This Page): 35/250

  Casting Pool: 15/150

  Banked Progress: 35/250

  Codex Node: North Forest Node

  Health: 25/25

  Intelligence: 20

  Constitution: 15

  Insight: 20

  Stamina: 20/20

  Strength: 10

  Defense: 11

  Dexterity: 18

  “What do you see?” asked Isaac.

  I tilted my head to the side. “Just my basic information, like my name, age, Discipline, and Chapter, including the Page I am on. Though I also see weird things like my Casting Pool and Banked Progress, which I assume have something to do with my Inscriptionist Discipline. But I don’t see anything listed under Spells or Equipment yet. I do have some Words now, at least.”

  What I left unspoken was the fact that I still didn’t understand the entire Wordcasting mechanic. It looked like I had 15 Words available for spellcasting, but another 35 banked toward my total progress. It was really strange. What happened if I ran out of Words? Would they regenerate like normal mana or not?

  That was how mana worked for most Codexers. Even if you depleted your mana reserves entirely, over time (and with help from a mana potion or two), your reserves would gradually regenerate. This regeneration rate would increase as you progressed through the Chapter System, or so one of the books I studied for the written test had indicated.

  Maybe Words used for Wordcasting would also regenerate. That would be nice.

  Isaac sighed. “Look underneath your main information. At the very bottom, there should be tabs, such as Spells, Equipment, and so on.”

  I looked where Isaac indicated, scrolling past something labeled ‘Skills,’ which appeared to be separate from the Chapter System, and saw five tabs.

  One had my name on it, which was the tab I was currently on, followed by Spells, Equipment, Codex Beasts, and one labeled ‘Reclamation Protocol.’ That last one caught my interest, so I clicked on it mentally, only for my head to spike with pain and a warning message in glowing red letters to flash in my vision:

  WARNING: Only Chapter 1, Page 5 Inscriptionists can access this tab.

  “Ouch,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. “That was rude.”

  Isaac tilted his head to the side. “What happened?”

  I gestured at my Codex sheet before remembering that Isaac couldn’t see it. “I was looking at my Codex sheet like you said and saw this tab labeled Reclamation Protocol. But when I tried to click on it, I got a headache and a notification warning me that I can’t access it until I become a Chapter One, Page Five Inscriptionist.”

  Isaac shook his head. “I have no idea what a ‘Reclamation Protocol’ is, but it might be a unique feature of your Discipline. Some Disciplines will add new features to a Codexer’s Codex sheet that aren’t available in other Disciplines. Though I’ve never heard of a locked tab before. Interesting.”

  I wasn’t happy about Isaac not knowing anything about my Discipline, even though, as my Codex Keeper, he should be the expert here, not me. Either all that alcohol was messing with his memory, or he didn’t know nearly as much as I thought he did.

  Regardless, I decided not to worry about the Reclamation Protocol for now. It didn’t seem to affect anything at the moment, so might as well focus on what was relevant.

  Looking at my Spells and Equipment tabs, I saw that I had the five spells from my trial—Arcane Light, Shadow Web, Trace Glyph, Ink Ward, and Minor Shield—and still had my Codex-issued Fangblade under my Equipment. When I clicked on Codex Beasts, however, I got another error message informing me that because I wasn’t currently synced to a Codex Beast, I couldn’t access the tab. That was annoying, but it made sense. Until I synced with a Codex Beast, that tab was pretty useless.

  But it did remind me of Nimbus the cloud rabbit, a Codex Beast whom I had run into during my trial. Nimbus and I had made a good team, but when the trial ended and we both touched the exit orb, we went our separate ways. I wondered where Nimbus was now. He couldn’t have gone very far, seeing as I’d only completed my trial earlier this morning. Though I doubted I’d ever see him again, if I was going to be honest. He didn’t seem like the type to work with humans for longer than necessary.

  “Aside from that Reclamation Protocol thing, tell me what other tabs you have,” said Isaac. He was tapping the air with one finger, perhaps taking notes on his portable.

  “Just one for my stats, my spells, equipment, and Codex Beasts.” I scratched my head. “Are any of those unique?”

  Isaac raised an eyebrow. “Not particularly. Those all sound like standard tabs. But the Codex Beast one is interesting, as most people don’t get access to that one until they sync with a Codex Beast for the first—”

  A high-pitched bell suddenly rang through the hallways of the Codexium, interrupting Isaac and forcing me to cover my ears with my hands to avoid losing my hearing. It was extremely loud, especially in this room.

  “What the heck is that noise?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the ringing bell.

  Isaac immediately stopped tapping the air and drew a weapon, a dagger covered in strange glyphs, from his robes. His serious expression was back. “That’s the Codexium’s security alarm. Draw your weapon. We’ve got an intruder to deal with.”

  patreon.com/LucasFlint

  Codex Trial sign up and download page