Seth gazed at the tower, the black glass visible through the water even though steam still poured off it. The whole place smelled like a boiling sea. The girl had invited all the students standing around to enter the tower with her, but Seth felt uneasy about it. Other students rushed in though, and quickly came out with small keys of the same black volcanic glass.

“Not going?” Owen asked him.

“I don't think so,” Seth answered. Fire and wind synergized violently well, and it quite frankly scared him. He should probably just go take the key regardless, but he couldn't bring himself to. He didn't want to think about why. “I may never get the chance again, considering what that tower is like, but I think it's dangerous.”

Owen nodded, and didn’t make any move towards the tower.

That made Seth feel a little better about being afraid to go in. “What about you?”

“I don’t like fire.”

Seth’s familiar hopped down from his knapsack. She gave both him and Owen a disgusted look and he could feel her disapproval through the familiar link. She then vanished into the mist. Her spotted gray fur was the perfect camouflage in the hot mist. Seth considered grabbing her, but decided she’d be fine. She was bonded to him now so she couldn’t be stolen. And she was smart enough not to get into trouble with the magic towers.

Seth put the Fire Tower out of his mind and set off in a trot around the courtyard. It was fairly big, and the more distant towers were hard to make out due to the dense mist that still filled the courtyard. There were several towers though that looked like they were repelling the mist.

Fire was the first tower inside the gate, and Water and Stone flanked it as the first towers. They were easy to identify, one was a pillar of water where the mist was denser than anywhere else in the courtyard, the other was sheer stone without windows or a door. Owen trotted over to the Stone Tower for a closer look. Past those were the next batch of towers, forming a staggered line. There was a pattern to the layout, but Seth didn’t bother trying to figure it out beyond noticing the first tier towers were closest to the gate, so the higher tier towers would be further in..

The Wind Tower was between Thunder and Lightning. It was made of white sandstone, and there were many unusually large windows. Seth could see nothing protecting the tower unlike the others.

The Lightning Tower was made of amber stone and it crackled with power. Seth could feel the thrumming of the Thunder Tower from where he stood and the deep colored stone visibly vibrated.

Seth was pretty sure he understood the nature of these puzzles. If you were able to protect yourself from the element, you could just enter the tower and take the key. Of course a school wasn’t going to prevent students from learning, but if the magic was dangerous to them then they shouldn’t be in that class.

Seth gathered his power around him and felt for the wind he knew had to be surrounding the Wind Tower. Sure enough, there was wind powerful enough to fling him quite forcefully. He looked at the nearby towers. If he wasn’t careful the Wind Tower wasn’t what would harm him, but impacting another tower and suffering its defenses.

So this should be simple. All he needed to do was prevent the wind from touching him, like the guy that first walked through the Fire Tower. He thought through all the spell structures that Saben had taught him, but none really would work for this. Saben had also taught him unstructured magic, which according to Saben, tended to work better for his talent.

He pulled the air around him, and imagined it as a buffer that would prevent the tower’s wind from touching him. When he was confident he had a firm grasp on it, he stepped forward into the protected zone of the tower.

Seth’s wind was not strong enough. It was wrenched away by the force of the Tower’s wind and Seth was dragged straight up before pulling himself out of the airstream and was barely able to cushion himself enough not to sprain his ankles on the pavement in front of the Thunder tower.

A short girl was sitting on the ground not far from where he landed. “Watch yourself on that one,” she said. “Outside goes up, but inside goes down. You’ll break bones like that guy.”

Seth turned to look, and sure enough there was a student sitting on the ground leaning on the wall of the Wind tower, both legs clearly broken. As Seth and the girl watched a healer trotted up to the student.

“The healers aren’t affected by the defenses on the towers?” Seth asked.

“I guess that makes sense. They’d need to get to anyone wherever they are, and they’d have healing talents so some of these would be hard for them,” the girl answered.

That meant there was something excluding them from the tower’s defenses. Seth was torn between irritation that there was a way to cheat, and excitement at the prospect of learning how to do it.

“Are you okay?” Seth asked the girl.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just letting my insides settle down after the Thunder tower.” She held up a key and smiled. “Success!”

“Congratulations! Good luck on your next tower.”

“You gonna try this one again?”

“I think I’ll check out my other choices, get the easy ones done first and come back. That way if I do get injured I at least have something.”

“Smart. Good luck to you too then,” the short girl said. Her attention shifted to the Lightning Tower, and the occasional electric discharges into the ground nearby.

After the Thunder Tower was Ice, and after Lightning was Metal. The back row of towers were the third tier with Circle, Celestial, and Rainbow. The mist was fading now, and was mostly gone from around the Celestial tower.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

There were a few students trying to gain entry to the Celestial Tower. There was no big effect, no apparent defenses. Like the Wind Tower, it looked undefended. But the students could not actually approach the tower. Seth watched as one student got a running start and tried to leap into the tower. He jumped into the air and landed in nearly the same spot, no closer to the tower. Another student was quietly casting a spell, and the last student was drawing details onto a circle on the ground.

Seth tried approaching the tower, but no matter how fast he walked or for how long, he got no closer to it. He had no power that could overcome this, so he moved on for now.

He could see the Rainbow Tower. It was a beautiful tower, decked out in flowers and colored stone, and glowed like it was lit from the inside. Once again, this tower looked like it had no defenses. A group of people were playing small stringed instruments and dancing in front of the doorway. They invited everyone to dance with them for a key.

This is so suspicious. Curious, he headed over.

Several students were dancing with the musicians, and asking how long they had to dance for.

Are they just here to waste time? Would you have to spend the whole hour dancing? Is that the trick?

Seth concentrated and called on his wind. He didn’t try to cast anything but tried to just listen like Saben had told him to do. He had a feeling that any illusion spell would be able to fool a detection spell, but it might not fool the wind itself.

The wind didn’t really tell him anything. There was nothing it had to say about the people or the tower. He wondered if he were really that bad at listening to the wind that it couldn’t tell him about what was in front of him. It didn’t even enhance the sound of the musicians at all.

Of course. They were part of the defenses for this tower and were illusions. They were only illusions of light and sound though. Seth closed his eyes and walked to the tower. He walked past the point that he thought the tower wall was until he reached the real wall. He followed it until he found the real doorway. There was nothing stopping him from entering. Was it really so easy? A tier three tower?

Inside, there was a girl in a school uniform with a thick braid down to her butt and pearl earrings. She was staring at a table with six keys on it that looked like they were made of rainbow colored feathers. An unwashed and homeless looking man sat on a stool next to the table.

“What’s the trick here?” Seth asked. “There is no way it's this easy.”

The man smiled. “Only one key is the right key. You can only pick once.”

Seth glanced at the girl in the foyer with him. “There’s two of us here though.”

“Still only one key.”

The tier three challenge was the competition for limited slots. Seth looked at the table and the six keys there. If five of them were illusions, they’d probably disappear if touched. If he could only pick once, then he needed to eliminate all the bad ones and find the good one in the same action. He had an idea.

“You were here first,” he said to the girl.

“I really need this key, but I don’t know a spell to detect this type of illusion.” She looked really pained. “You can go first while I try to think it out more.”

Seth nodded. Tactically, she was making a smart move. Seth was more likely to pick wrong than right, and would reduce the wrong choices she was faced with. He decided making the wrong move wasn’t a critical failure for him, as the Rainbow Tower wasn’t one he needed now anyway. So he tipped the table over and only one key fell to the floor.

Seth looked back up at the girl. She hugged herself and looked about to cry.

“Can I leave and come back again?” She asked the unkempt man.

“There is only one key.”

He felt bad for the girl. She was here first and he didn’t really need this key. He needed Wind, Circle, and Celestial. He could only take three classes anyway.

“You take it,” Seth said to her. “I think you need it more than I do.”

“You figured it out though, it belongs to you.”

“It was just a lucky guess. I haven’t touched it yet, so you can take it.”

“Do you have other keys already?” she asked.

“Not yet, but I will. Good luck.” Seth walked out of the Rainbow tower without the key. He wondered if he was a sucker. He’d passed up two keys already, and had none himself. It wasn’t until he was outside that he realized she could have been an illusion too.

Well, if she wasn’t an illusion, he made the right choice. Even if he didn’t get the three keys he needed, she was there first.

And if she was an illusion, he wouldn’t blame himself for choosing kindness even if it meant he was stupid.

It wasn’t far to the Circle tower. On this tower every stone was carved with images of living things. Of all the towers, this one looked like it had been constructed with conventional building methods. There was a healer standing just outside the tower. That concerned Seth enough that he didn’t try to just walk up to the tower to see what it did. This one also looked to have no obvious defense.

Seth concentrated on doing the detection spell he’d done before. Similar to the Rainbow Tower he wasn’t trying to find anything specific, but instead of just listening he tried to sense magic in addition to what was around him.

He could feel the wind around him, and concentrated on following it into the tower. This was unstructured magic, and very difficult to keep a hold of. The slightest shift in attention and the wind would wander off.

He could sense the wind in the tower. He knew there was a table inside with keys. Seth didn’t have the skill or references to know what magic was there or what it would do.

There was an active spell though, he could feel it. He just had no idea how to dispel or bypass it.

He opened his eyes and considered the tower. He flicked a glance at the healer, and decided to just go for it. A couple other students were standing around, but no one was trying anything.

He summoned defensive wind and stretched his left hand out and approached slowly. Just inches from the door he felt it. Corrosive death magic touched his fingers like he’d dipped them in acid. He tried to bolster the protective wind, but it did nothing. The longer his fingers were in the tower's defenses the worse they hurt and the more severe the damage became.

He didn’t last more than a couple seconds before pulling back and asking the healer to heal him.

“The Circle tower is not for everyone,” the healer told him as she cured Seth’s blackened fingers. Curing a couple seconds worth of exposure took a couple minutes. “Don’t be discouraged. Sometimes learning techniques in other towers can help you gain entry to the towers you don’t have a natural affinity for. And if not, then by your third year you should know enough spell formulas to open the way.”

“Thank you,” Seth mumbled.

Internally he was quailing. Saben couldn’t do without his powers for so long, he’d be killed in a battle or accident. Seth needed to get access to these towers today. He’d tried all three, and got nowhere. Sure he could have had Fire and Rainbow, but they wouldn’t help him help Saben.

His best bet was wind. If he tried it enough he could possibly get in, or have his legs broken and be out of the Gauntlet.

For the other two, he had no idea. He had no method of traversing a dimensional boundary or protecting himself from it, and no means of staving off the corrosion of death magic.

Seth considered asking the other students for help, but honestly, he was mortified at the idea. There was a good chance his classmates wouldn’t help him anyway. Not being able to retrieve the key meant you weren’t qualified for the tower. And the healer certainly seemed to think he didn’t belong there.

Not even half way into the test and he was truly stuck.