The King’s Courtier

    In the year 2200, the world has developed beyond one could fathom. Earth is no longer divided amongst rulers, presidents and individual governments. Earth now has a single immortal ruler: King Sulfur.  King Sulfur was as human as the rest, only he never aged above twenty, which was when he first got crowned ruler of all earth. His immortality made him wise, strong and talented in all sports, arts and music. He looked no older than twenty, which often aided in misguiding his opponents in battle. Seldom did anyone believe a handsome young man owns the entirety of the planet.  Despite his perfect features and arrogant personality, King Sulfur was singlehandedly the most feared creature on all earth and beyond. No one dared look him in the eye outside his group of friends and no one dared question him unless they had a death wish.    King Sulfur was so stunning that women often had literal heart attacks at the sight of him. Perhaps watching all those women die on the spot was sometimes his guilty pleasure. He never failed to grin as another lady fell, mesmerized by his beauty.  He seldom found a girl worth looking at twice, and he never found them worth looking at after bedding them. In his forty five years as ruler, he had changed escorts and courtiers exactly seven hundred and fifty six times. Aurelia could vouch that neither of those women were happy when he discarded them, and she had it on good authority considering she was next in line. Earth was now called Elexia. King sulfur found the word 'earth' rather dull in comparison to 'Mars' or 'Saturn'. Elexia is still shaped the same way it was before King Sulfur started ruling, only the mortals are now all given categories and labels telling them who they are to become on the day they're born. Upon each mortal human's birth, they are to come fourth the king so he can sense what talent they possess.  Those who he senses are gifted with strength go to the continent that was formerly called "North America". These men or women are given a choice as to what task they'd like to uptake in their category - strength - which could be a number of things that relies on strong arms.  The best of the best are to be brought to the King's castle to serve as the guards. There was a ranking system in place to determine each person's ranking.  Those who he senses are gifted with rhythm and acting skills go to the continent that was formerly called "South America". They usually help towards making content for the media, the specifics of which is dependent on their favored task. Some choose to make songs for those in all the other continents to enjoy, some choose to teach the new comers, some choose to create interesting videos for people to watch when bored.  Often the most skilled amongst them was chosen to play in the grand opera theatre that was open to the public, and attended by the king, every month. Each month a different task was orchestrated. Sometimes the pianists and violinist played, sometimes the vocalists sang, sometimes a play was screened. It was an honor for all those chosen, and it gave everyone in that category a specific sense of drive to become the best version of themselves in what they do best. Those who he senses are gifted in a certain sport go to the continent formerly called "Australia". They decide on the sport they find most fitting and often compete against one another. The winners are always awarded by being given a choice on whether they hope to move to any other continent. No one has ever wished to leave the continent though. Perhaps the king knew what he was doing when he placed each person in the fitting continent, because somehow, everyone was satisfied with their allocation. Those who he senses are gifted with brains and a high IQ go to the continent formerly called "Asia". These people are often called the perfectionists and are very valued since anyone who falls under a certain IQ level is always reallocated to a different continent. These people often choose between tasks such as budgeting, becoming scientists, healers, surgeons, mathematicians and the list goes on. The perfectionists are given the most options and most parents hope for their children to be born into this heritage since they not only get the safest tasks, but many of them end up being brought to the king since each individual task holds high value and there are many tasks for this category to choose from.  Those who he senses are gifted with artistic talents are allocated to the former Antarctica. The artists travel the most. Each year, two hundred of them are chosen to travel to other continents and decorate and build beautiful buildings and design new helpful tools fit for each continent's category. The best fifty are allocated to the King's continent. They are given the freedom to choose which task they favor, and those who could bring explicitly new and rare artistic talents (such as creating a stable mansion only out of recyclable items) are the elite ten that sit with the King personally and are given direct orders on what to do with their rare abilities.  Those who he senses are gifted with linguistic talents are allocated to Africa where they have a set of very important tasks to choose from. Some decide to create books for the youth. Some record history. Some write newspapers and magazines. The list of tasks continue, some less important than others. The most skilled are hand picked to do editorial work for the King.   The last category contains the dreaded few.  The continent formerly called Europe is divided into two sections which are referred to as "void" and "oblivion". void contains the talentless and ugly. These people are often brutes with weak ancestral backgrounds as they inherited absolutely nothing of use. These people are the forgotten. They live and exist as servants and coachman and are often treated brutally. Despite having one of the highest population, their budget is scarce and they live in one of the ugliest continents due to the lack of decor. Regardless, they are given access to movies and songs as the rest of the continents. The oblivion is a world of it's own. The oblivion contains those gifted with immense beauty. The oblivion is the second least populated category, most of which are females. Being apart of the oblivion does not necessarily mean you lack other talents, it frankly just means that your beauty was so outmatched that your other talents were overlooked.  In some ways, those in the oblivion were handpicked by the king at birth to service him when they were of age. The only tasks allowed in the oblivion were becoming escorts and courtesans. When oblivion babies were born, they were brought to the mistress's house and cared for until the age 5. These children were taught and tutored by the best of the perfectionists, and were given a choice of a side talent to be tutored in.  This was all because the population of oblivion was scarce and the king liked a good beauty with brains. If the oblivion baby grew up to be dumb and couldn't hold an extra talent, they were thrown to the void by the mistresses as it was considered a shame to present them to the king, therefore, very seldom did people reach the age eighteen and deemed presentable. In over forty years, only close to eight-hundred women were deemed acceptable.  Despite the fact that oblivion babies were judged the harshest and had to uptake double the tasks of the other continents, they were still called pathetic and talentless. They were looked down upon for being prostitutes and escorts, but they didn't have a choice in the matter like those in the other continents did.  Of course in some categories, many beautiful men and women worked at a talent based task, but those in the oblivion were the extraordinarily beautiful. Only five oblivion babies were produced every year whereas above a ten-thousand sportsmen and artists were produced every year. On average, one of the five was usually male, so the other four were given very grieve attention and care and were to become not only beautiful but smart. At the age of ten, they were expected to have perfected a talent and be fluent in English while also having a fair amount of mathematical skills. Their lives were more complicated than any other child's. The population of Elexia was close to two billion. On the king's journey to the thrown, many lives were taken. He realized that the overpopulation prevented the general public from becoming their best self, so once he decreased the population, he worked out this system to give every mortal the chance to reach their highest potential during their life span.  The continents resembled courts now. They were rarely referred to as continents, they were now called 'categories'. No one called the former Africa 'Africa' now. They simply referred to it as 'the linguistic category'. It was basically like having nine courts all ruled by the same king. The void and oblivion were now two separate courts or categories even though they were formerly apart of a single continent.