Rondel was thirteen years old now, standing in line, slowly walking forward in the ceremony to become a true 'man' of god, the coming-of-age ceremony in this place, the place that prayed to Herimun, the god of the hunt, though he, himself, had never really been all that religious.
If he was to be honest, he had always thought that the gods might be real, but if they were, then why would they even care about humans, why should they care about worship, why should they care about not furthering their own power and instead cultivating theirs if they were so far beyond, why should they care about anything like that, that was a question he had always asked himself.
When the gods were born, the first was the god of the hunt, that was what the church of the golden wheel had told them, but other churches in ancient times had claimed all kinds of gods to be the first, and often enough, the only one of the gods.
There was Serium, the goddess of the sea who liked to collect people and drown other gods in the eternal depths filled with darkness, something that gave Rondel a slight fear of water, he couldn't exactly breather under it after all, though he was sure some kind of magic would one day allow him to do it.
Then there was Ralia, the goddess of nature, a wise and seemingly old woman who taught others skills of medicine and mediation, someone capable of bridging the barrier of genders and willing to transform the body of the asker into whatever they might choose, if they truly wish to be so, whether female to male, whether male to female, whether animal to human, whether dead to alive, whether mortal to immortal, all was possible if one truly yearned for it, something that had allegedly once caused a great lich to be released from the realm of the forsaken after being stuck there for a few centuries, letting him cause havoc amongst the world a millennia ago.
Other than that there was Erios, the god of progress, his personal favourite as he had never really done much other than collecting information and knowledge, though his following was fairly small perhaps because of exactly that, he was however also the brother of Aria, the goddess of the sky, she who ruled above the unchanging eternity up there, the one who dances amidst the skies and gives the great warriors eternally buried up there their last honour, also known as the goddess of death who brings one to the eastern star of eternity, to be used as fuel one last time and become part of heaven.
When he thought of it like that, it seemed really weird, especially since there were still some others who took care of other tasks, like Tarian the god of light, Siruis the goddess of storms, and many, many others, the mainstream religion seemed to change every few hundred years if he was honest.
To be honest, now that he was sitting on a bench and listening to someone talk about all these gods, one brashly followed by countless devotees, as if they were demonic evils, fully well knowing that Herimun might as well end up exactly like that one day, he felt kind of weird.
He was bored, Julia sat next to him, the other side of the church that was bestowed with the symbol of an arrow hanging form the ceiling, pointed right at the man in the blackish robe with the seriously badly kempt hair, but she was too far away to talk with, and as such he had nothing to do other than twirling his thumbs and wait, his body, thirteen years old, was still hyperactive after all.
Truly, why were children supposed to wait like this, though, certainly, they were now soon to be seen as adults when he thought about it, slightly annoyed that they wouldn't even have the choice of going to school when it was finally time, preparations for this senseless event had taken quite a lot of their time after all, and they were all tired from having to go to the sermons half a hundred times just to get the permission to finally get to be treated as adults, and even then, only in a religious way that had nothing to do with legality where they were only seen as adults when the body truly stopped growing, around twenty-one, though the people had lowered it to eighteen to stop the older people from taking control of everything, not that it had ended up succeeding.
The old people still took control over the managing of the city, their jobs were just made that way, and while it was kind of infuriating, they at least had the experience, that was the reason they were told, while many believed it was just so they could maintain money, a flow of control, and perhaps even have intercourse with younger people, becoming something wildly known as a sugar daddy, corruption was everywhere after all, that was for certain...
When he had been even younger than he was now he had wanted to become a grand mage, but now he had already realized that he would need incredible connections for that, even if he had quite the arsenal of impressive magic and such, he had gotten even better at his current age after all, having gained great skills in comparison to others his age who could barely summon a snowball, whereas he was already above some adults, being able to summon a arrow made of ice and fire it like a projectile, a three-circle spell of relatively high difficulty, as it consisted of three steps, making the cold, making the water, making the form, then after that, in a separate step, shooting the arrow, so three circles were needed.
He was beneath some still, but he was in the top percentile, just like Julia, who had become even better at alchemy, though she had decided on medicine whereas he was still unsure about what he wanted to do in the end, the world was limitless after all, aside from high-profile, that was all corrupt, he was sure about that.
In retrospect, though, he had to one day admit he had been really pessimistic back then.