The soft, steady glow that had run through the sphere for Theron and Kael did not stay soft and steady for Bruce...
While the guy was speaking It suddenly surged. The light flared up through the orb all at once, bright, far brighter than it had been for the others, and kept climbing, the whole sphere blazing brighter and brighter until the clerk took an instinctive half-step back. The display above the orb scrambled, the letters of the talent-class grade forming and breaking and forming again, unable to settle on a value.
The orb was trying to grade Bruce's talent and could not. The number it wanted to show kept climbing past where the display had room to put it, the light pulsing in hard fast waves, the air around the pedestal humming faintly.
The brightness held for a few seconds. Long enough for several nearby hunters to glance over. Long enough for the brisk clerk at the main counter to look up.
