We fell into a blinding, whirling well of white lights and howling winds. It appeared almost like a tunnel of sorts, where the walls were naught but silver specters and inhuman shapes, icy phantasms that laughed and giggled as we descended. It did not, however, last for long.

I landed face first on the familiar, but wholly unwelcome, softness of frigid snow. My face went cold almost immediately, the ice stinging my cheeks as I sputtered and pushed myself up as quickly as I could. The winds howled and screamed as I beheld a starless sky that was painted in the deepest shade of blue I have ever seen. I glanced around and found only tall trees as far as my eyes could see. Olga had landed a few feet or so away from me, her back against the cold snow.

I walked towards her, my feet sinking as I did, grabbed her hand, and pulled her up onto her feet. Her disheveled face sported light sprinkles of snow and frost, and her cheeks were flushed red. Her eyes, however, were filled with fear. “Are you alright?”

She nodded, absently brushing away the bits of white that adhered to her robes. Olga shuddered in the cold, “I’m fine; the snow broke my fall.”

“Right….” I reached for her hair and brushed away a few clumps of snow. And then, I glanced around. “Do you know where we are? This isn’t the library; that’s for sure.”

It definitely wasn’t. And yet I distinctly remember opening the double doors to the library, before falling into this… place. Was this another test? Were we to survive another hellhole before we were allowed to read a few books? That… oddly enough made a lot of sense in my head, considering everything else that’d occurred thus far. However, that… didn’t make any sense. What was even the point of this test? We weren’t told anything. I breathed in and closed my eyes for a moment as I reached out with my inner senses… and almost fell to my hands and knees as I recoiled; there was so much magic that I felt as though I would drown in it, a tidal wave of power that dwarfed me by an unthinkable magnitude. I was naught but a tiny droplet in an ocean that spanned entire worlds.

What was this place?

“We’re in a-” Olga cut herself off, eyes narrowed. She had a pensive look about her for a moment, before she shook her head ever so slightly. “I don’t know where we are, but I can almost smell the magic in the air; there’s just so much of it.”

“Hello children,” An unfamiliar voice spoke through the wind, like a distant scream that echoed and reverberated. I heard it clearly and plainly, and yet it also felt as though it wasn’t there. The voice chuckled in clear amusement. “I am the Ice Queen, but I’ve no mood for further introductions; welcome to my realm, the Great White. I brought you here to… test you. You are, little boy, the apprentice of a very dear friend of mine, the Crow-Mother, and I am very eager to find out just how vast your potential is. So, we’re going to play a game.”

The snow shifted and receded, moving away from us and revealing the ground, which was made entirely of solid black rock with an almost oily, greasy surface that glimmered softly. The snow’s retreat formed something that somewhat resembled a road, a straight line that extended forward and through the forest and into the horizon. It seemed almost endless. I glanced upwards, “What do you want me to do?”

I was in someone else’s world – if I understood that right. And I was still just a Neophyte; whoever ruled over this realm was so far above me as to be inconceivable in power. I couldn’t fight back – not without dying horribly and getting my soul eaten, at least. And so, I figured it was best to just play along. If they wanted me dead, then I would already be dead. I hoped, at the very least, that I had an actual chance of winning this game and that its rules would be fair. Unfortunately, I was probably dealing with a Dark Mage and that meant all my hopes were for naught.

I just had to be smart.

“Excellent – I’m liking your attitude thus far; keep it up!” The voice, the Ice Queen said. “As for the game, your objective is really quite simple. All you have to do, little boy, is walk forward until you reach the end of the road. Just keep moving forward. Once you reach it, I will give you a reward and, of course, grant you a safe passage out of my realm.”

That… seemed way too simple and not in a good way. There had to be a catch, something, anything that would turn it from relatively mundane to monstrously nightmarish. Once more, the voice chuckled. “You’re adapting to this a lot quicker than most children do; a lot of the Neophytes in my time spent weeks crying and hiding in their rooms, until someone had to drag them out. You remind me a lot of Victoria. Whatever the case; yes, there is a catch. Of course, there is always a catch; this game wouldn’t be fun, otherwise.”

“The catch, oh cute little boy, is that you must survive the onslaught of the elements and the… monsters that will be doing their best to cut you open and feast on your guts! Have fun!” The voice cackled and howled with laughter, before fading away.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I turned to Olga, whose face was pale and whose eyes were filled with fear. I breathed in and spoke, “We should… probably start moving.”

It was cold, even for me. I knew that, somehow, I was able to resist the cold better than Olga could. But standing in the open, bombarded by frost and snow, was a good way to freeze to death. Olga stood still, eyes looking at me, but also through me; she wasn’t staring at anything in particular, I realized. She was deep in thought. So, I took a step towards her and clapped my hands in front of her face.

That seemed enough to pull her out of her own mind. And Olga blinked and shook her head. “Yes… yes! I’m fine… I was just… thinking.”

“Well, you can do that while we’re walking,” I told her. The last thing I wanted to do was to just stand around, doing nothing. Olga obviously knew a lot about this place and was doing a poor job at lying about it, but I hardly cared. People had secrets and whatever she was trying to hide probably had nothing to do with me. “And we’re gonna need your flames, too; it’s way too cold out here.”

Olga nodded briskly as she cupped her hands and willed forth a ball of multi-colored flames to life, blazing brightly as it radiated both heat and light in equal measure. Her eyes flared with raw magic, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow. Still, she huffed, her face pale and her cheeks flushed red. “That should do it.”

I nodded, feeling the radiant heat that emanated from the flame.

The cold retreated from us. Ice and snow melted down into colorless puddles, before seemingly shifting away to the edge of the path before us. With nothing else to do, we moved onwards – slowly, at first, but then we both must’ve realized at the same time that the longer the time we spent out in the open snow then the higher the chances of the both of us simply freezing to death. Not to mention the Ice Queen’s threat of monsters on the horizon; there was no room for rest. We just had to keep moving forward until we reached the edge of the road. Once we were back in the Shadow Academy, in the safety of our rooms, then maybe we could rest.

Because I was tired of this shit – tired of having to fight for my life every single day, tired of having to kill just to live, tired of all the mud and blood that’s been dumped onto me on the daily; most of all, I was tired of not being in control.

Rage simmered in my chest, burning like a great and untamed fire in the night. For once, I hated everything, even myself. I hated my circumstance, I hated my life, I hated the people around me, I hated those in power, and I hated myself for still being weak, despite everything.

“I just wanted to spend a quiet time inside a library,” I spoke in a voice what was just above a whisper. Olga seemed to freeze at my words. Something seemed to awaken within me, like a pair of eyes snapping open in a great and endless darkness. And I felt power surge through me, coursing through my limbs, whirling at my chest - raw and untamed, roaring in wrath and rage. “All I wanted to do was read in peace, learn more about the Shadow Academy; I’ve never opened a book before. It was supposed to be a special moment.”

It wasn’t fair, “All I wanted was to read!”

I felt a rush of magic blazing through me, red as blood and dark as night. The ground at my feet seemed to shift and writhe, and the trees that stood around us, at the edge of the path, begun to shake. Olga suddenly turned and glanced off to the side, where the tall and hard trees went from shaking to dancing, their bark breaking and their branches snapping as the flesh within moved. Blood seeped from them as claws and crimson limbs burst from the sap, eyes snapping open from gnarled orifices that appeared all over their forms. Rivers of red ran from as jagged, bone-white spikes emerged from their trunks, followed by gnashing teeth and misshapen jaws.

My hands clenched into fists and the forest around us came to life in a sea of howling maws, jagged limbs, and gnarled bones. Some uprooted themselves with coiled and muscles limbs, crawling on the snow and dragging behind entrails of flesh and wood and blood, leaving a trail of steaming red. Another pulse of power from my chest had the writhing trees slowly merge with each other, forming a strangled mass of bark, bone, blood, flesh, and roaring maws.

The snow began to melt as streams of blood begun to boil and steam, releasing great waves of heat that felt almost like fire and blasts of superheated air.

And then, I felt my own limbs shift, waves of power radiating from my chest and all across my body. I felt my flesh writhe beneath my skin, my blood boiling and churning. I felt my bones moved, cracking and snapping painlessly. From my back came an eruption of power that pushed my forward.

“Uriel, calm down!” Olga reached out and laid her hands on my shoulders.

I blinked and glanced down.

My skin was covered in scales and spikes that’d torn through my robes and dripped with hissing, boiling blood from gaping maws filled with jagged teeth. My nails had turned into long, black talon. Long, sinuous tendrils writhed from the top of my head, ending in sharp and gruesome barbs of bone. Twin, leathery wings extended from my back, dripping with blood and some other pinkish fluid that hissed and bubbled as it dripped and fell on the ground. I stood much taller than Olga, perhaps even twice her height. I felt strong... too strong. And I felt my flesh hissing with heat and raw magic, bursting within me, akin to a great flood that threatened to swallow everything.

My eyes met Olga’s, “What’s happening to me?”

It was then that I noticed the broken wand in my right hand, snapped in two.

The ground shook as the mass of trees arose and took on a dreadful shape. It lumbered towards us, a grotesque giant that was covered in blood, wretched skin, jagged bones and spikes, and gnarled wings. Its head, if it could even be called that, was massive, with gargantuan horns that still vaguely resembled trees; its maw was lined with teeth the size of arms and the eyes... there was so many eyes. Its dark and bloody form was covered in eyes that stared at everything and nothing all at once. The strangest part was the connection I felt towards the creature, a sensation that told me this was mine - a part of me, a child of my creation.

"Uriel!" Olga snapped. "You have to focus!"