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."