Rage Venom has failed to be resisted.

Rage Venom has failed to be resisted.

Rage Venom has failed to be resisted.

Rage Venom has failed to be resisted.

Rage Venom has failed to be resisted.

Rage Venom has been resisted!

I blink. There is pain in my chest, my breathing ragged and strange. There is pain in my hand, my right fist clenched so tight my nails dig bleeding lines into my palm. There is pain in my head, a thumping that comes with each beat of my heart, feeling like water pressing on the inside of my skull, trying to make it burst. The iron tang of blood soaks in my mouth, pulling me into the moment, a grounding sensation.

The window floats in front of me, the first thing my blurry eyes focus on. My eyes hurt, but I force myself to focus, to kick my brain forward. I blink again, and as if coming out of infinite darkness, the room starts to come into color. A flash out of the corner of my eye catches me up before I can concentrate. My hand darts out, catching a ball of snarling meat and fur where I might have expected an arrow. It is heavy for its size, not much larger than a cat but far heavier, appearing almost like a three eyed fox that has had too much to eat. Instead of paws, singular talons, like the blade of a sickle, stick out from nubby arms. It squirms as I hold it, the weapons on the ends of its legs attempting to stab into my arm, to pierce the gauntlet and skewer me.

Mad Caavar(Rank One)

I grunt as its blade slips around my armguard and scores a long gash in my forearm. “Irritating.” The monster in my hand bursts into violent orange flames, the scrabbling of its arms becoming panicked. It burns away in my hand, charred dust becoming pink mist before it can even fall to the ground.

A hiss to my right grabs my attention. This room is similar to the last, a square space of stone, though the stone here is a dark gray. Loose chains dangle from the ceiling, some bearing hooks while others have attached blocks of wood. A stench like wet dog assails me, and I see the smell coming from a thin layer of red mist that covers the floor up to my waist. Several bodies of the Mad Caavar litter the floor, laying in pools of their own fluids, no burning as far as I can see. I catch sight of three more of the little monsters beneath the surface of the mist, skittering along the edges of the wall, trying to move around me while avoiding one another.

They’re quick, quick for a rank one at least. Too bad for them that my own speed has long broken through that threshold.

The first one is blown to bits by an uncharged Dragonfire Bolt as it makes for a corner of the room. The remaining two screech at me, turning their three red eyes on me. The sound of their bladed feet pecking the ground as they race toward me is an awful beat in my head.

I flow to the right, moving into the first one before it understands what is happening. My armored boot catches it in the body before it can turn. It thuds into the stone wall, not even having enough time to fall before fire consumes it. Turning, I find the other already mid-flight, its four bladed legs aimed at me to run me through. I blow a torrent of fire at it, stripping the fur and flesh from its bones before it can make its attack. Then, the room is quiet once again, the only sound the pounding of blood in my ears.

“Galea,” I say, too afraid that trying to think the words in my head will make my head pound worse. “What happened?”

She squints at me, gesturing to the still open window floating just to the side. Strange, I didn’t get rid of the thing when I went to burn the last few monsters. It being there didn’t seem to hamper my ability to fight. That will need more looking into later.

“I can read it,” I tell the spirit. “And now I am certain that you know I can read it. If you are going to show respect in what you call me, the least you can do is not insult me at the same time.” A dull thudding in my hand makes me look down, finding my fist clenched tight again, nails cutting into healing lines across my palm.

Galea floats away a half step, nodding to me. “Very well, Mistress Charlene.” She clears her throat against the back of her claw, though I can’t see any reason she might need to. “You dropped into this chamber and breathed in the Rage Venom. If you look around you on the floor, you will notice the red mist: you might also notice the eight monsters you pummeled to death while under the effects of the venom. I surmise that the toxin was meant to bring on feeling of violent rage.”

Looking at the monsters littering the floor once more, I see my knife sticking out on the back of one of the Mad Caavars. Most don’t look to have died in that way. I hold out my gauntleted hands, finding them scorched black with seared blood, rusty with a purplish texture. A long hiss pushes out of me and my fingers stop shaking by the end of it. The square hole in the ceiling stands still, a roiling mist of darkness inside of it, the number 2 standing out from the stone.

“What sadistic bastard designed this room,” I say, spitting to get the gunk out of my mouth before taking a swig of water from a steel flask. One-by-one, the bodies of the monsters change into mist, swirling toward me and disappearing into my inventory. I spend a moment looking through what the ability created from their bodies but find nothing particularly noteworthy.

A rumble from the wall catches my attention before I can catalog everything. From the gray stone on my left, two doors descend out of the ceiling, somehow shifting through the stone like it is molasses. I approach, moving aside chain and hook.

The door on the left stands out, the image of a swallow sitting nestled in a tree embossed in brilliant cerulean on its surface. Sweet calligraphy of the same shade in inscribed just beneath the bird, “The Path of Caution: 3.” On the other door, an adder bearing long fangs stands out in a ghostly green, written beneath “The Path of Daring: 1.”

I frown at the doors, tapping a finger on my breastplate while I think. “Daring is just another word for stupidity,” I muse. “People only ever use that word when they are talking about men that died doing something smart people wouldn’t.”

“As you say,” Galea agrees.

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“On the other hand, it would not really seem like caution to attempt a three room by myself.” I click my tongue, looking around at the room again. “Then again, this one was best done alone I think.” An odd thought strikes me, and I spend a moment gathering as much of the Rage Venom in some glass bottles I have filled with water.

“This room was a sort of trick perhaps,” Galea says. “A trick to affirm that the numbers cannot always be trusted. Likely, there is a lesson hidden in that.”

“Something tells me that the Willian Guild is not aiming at instructing us much.”

She does make a good point. Perhaps the numbers are not meant to be trusted, or maybe just the ones found next to ominous holes of darkness found inside the tower. If that is the case, the numbers on the doors in front of me could be tricks as well. In the end, the decision isn’t all that hard to make. My hand lands upon the right door, the door of the bold, and the stone begins to move the second I touch it. The door beneath my hand swings open, showing a long hallway of more gray stone stretching out in front of me, while to the side the second door slides away into the floor, leaving the wall smooth and bare.

I check myself over before stepping forward, making certain that all of my armor is in place, no straps loose, and that my staff in clenched tightly in my hand. I take a moment to change the color of the fire to a brilliant emerald before striding forward.

Fourteen steps through a length of dark stone let me out into a circular chamber. A soft purple light peeling off of leafy bushes growing upside down through the ceiling cast shadows around the room. A buzz, like the calls of insects, vibrates through the chamber, but its noise is too low, too heavy, and the baritone chittering bounces echoing around me. I do not break stride, reaching the center of the chamber, my eyes scanning the wan light.

“Let me–”

“Left,” Galea says in my ear.

I spin, dipping backward on instinct, a swinging claw bouncing off my breastplate, scoring a shallow line in the surface of the metal. A mass of bulky muscle, ragged gray fur, and snarling teeth sails after the claw, its momentum carrying it past me. Before its body can clear halfway past my own, the head of my staff stabs into what should be its belly, a fully charged Dragonfire Bolt exploding from the point of contact.

The force of the explosion buckles my already awkward position, pitching me backward suddenly. I recover my flailing roll, making it to my feet in an instant, the head of my staff already up and facing where the monster should be. A vision of suffering and immolation is all I find.

Terror Wolf(Rank Two)

The beast is exactly what I might expect, a huge gray wolf, its hair shaggy and long, its teeth too large and pointed to be housed in its head. It screams, flailing and rolling on the ground, green fire spreading through and burning up its hair. The Growth affix eats into it, more fire clinging to the screaming monster by the second, fur dropping to the ground in burning clumps of awful smelling oil.

I stand, moving further back as the monster staggers blind before its rear legs give out. It crawls another few feet, its hideous maw open, a terrible high-pitched whine coming from its throat. The whine continues as it finally slumps sideways on the floor, but not for long. Another few seconds later and it is over. The carcass of the monster continues to smolder, throwing off a shining green light that competes with the purple, but no life is left in it.

It is a hideous, pitiful thing, the body on the ground. The flames show no sign of dying out, of relenting in their endless search to devour. Tiny pockets in the stone are eaten away where the fire meets it.

Galea appears at my side, a window held between her claws.

THRESHOLD FOR SOUL REINFORCEMENT REACHED!

“Already?” I can’t help but say.

“That was a powerful creature,” Galea says, nodding at the smoldering ruin in the middle of the room. “Did your book on adventuring not say that killing a monster a full rank above yourself is something only the strong can do?”

I remember what she is referring to. Adventurers tend to group together to kill monsters stronger than themselves, often looking to cover for each other's’ weaknesses. It is typically expected that a magician in the highest reaches of their respective ranks should be capable of tackling a monster even a rank above themselves, but the practice is not done all that often, due to the incredible danger.

Danger. I stare down at the head of my staff, emerald fire bubbling in the lantern housed on its end. Killing the wolf had been quick, easy almost. Likely, I would not have thought it was so easy if its first attack took my head off like it intended, but still…

“Do you think I am strong?” I ask Galea. For some reason, the thought never occurred to me before.

“Comparing you against the accounts you have read, I would say that you are far from the central deviation for your rank,” she says.

“I’m not even level forty yet,” I say, watching the dancing flames. A smile cracks my lips as I stare into the fire. I allow myself a bit of happiness in the moment.

I might be strong compared to the world at large, but here, inside this contest, are hundreds of elite magicians, most of a higher level than me. When I think of Jor’Mari, I can’t see myself beating him if we ever came to blows, not how I am now. Despite all of his bluster, I have to imagine that the man is only slightly better than average when compared to all of these pampered and long-trained magicians. With that in mind, how could I be anything better than middle of the road in this competition. A sobering thought, but middle of the road compared to these kinds of geniuses is more than I can ask for.

My eyes roll to the right, to the door that stands silently in the middle of one wall just as it has since the Terror Wolf expired. The same glowing snake silently hisses at me from the stone, the same line written beneath, “The Path of Daring: 1.”

The body of the wolf shakes as I slap a hand on it, the churning fire allowing my hand to pass through without so much as growing warm. The body of the wolf vanishes along with the fire, leaving the room once more bathed in a purple glow. My eyebrows shoot up when I read over the items put in my inventory, and I cannot help but pull the interesting one away.

Terror Essentia(Very Rare): The condensed magical essence of primal fear driving the horrified to panic.

The pyramid of black between my fingers almost seems to pulse with a light all its own, something that seems to eat light rather than throw it off. It is so cold that it almost sets my fingers to trembling through the gloves. Holding it, my mind returns to the swamp all those months ago, that first essentia found lying in the mud after a huge snake almost killed me. How different everything was then. I don’t think that I could have ever dreamed then of being where I am now. Looking about, I am not too happy with where I am now, really.

The essentia disappears into my inventory, the cold sensation running through my gauntlets vanishing the instant it does. I stare up at the strange bushes growing from the ceiling. A part of me wants to find a way to climb up there, perhaps stack crates high enough one on top of another so that I can steal some of the plants. How ridiculous.

I shake my head, padding over to the door and tapping it with a finger. It opens, and I step through, pouring more magic into the head of my staff, preparing for what is ahead. I can’t help but snicker to myself as I see the next chamber coming into view, filled with the flickering lights of amber torches. It never occurred to me once before that it might have been the smart idea to turn back.