Chapter 19:
I gasped back to consciousness, and realised both that I was conscious, as I could feel my body and my heartbeat. I was not back in that horrible nothingness between the realms, and that I was alive, and not bleeding from a wound in my neck. I scrabbled at the skin, and did find a rougher patch, but no liquid; No blood. In fact, I was surprisingly clean all over, and my clothing had changed, I saw as I raised my arm into my eye-line. I seemed to be wearing something very close to a bathrobe from my first life, in all its fluffy white towelled glory.
I also wasn't lying in the mud, but was in fact lying in a very comfortable feather padded recliner made from unvarnished wood. My immediate thought was to panic. Where was Boone? Where was Mia? I jerked my head to either side and saw that both my sister and my best friend were to the sides, one on a recliner just like mine, and one in a padded dog bed like one might have seen in my old world. Both looked to have been sleeping but we're waking up, slowly at first, but then with the same jerk I had had, when I realised that reality and memory didn't fit together like neat puzzle pieces, but rather the broken remains of crockery on the kitchen floor.
“Are you guys okay?” My voice sounded raw and scratchy, both like I hadn't drank any water in far too long, and like I had smoked far too much tobacco in my life.
Both snapped their eyes to me, and I think they both forgot their own circumstances and just zeroed in on me. “‘Cadia!” Mia screamed, instantly breaking into tears and leaping from her lounger to grab me in a hug, before she started to examine every inch of me with wide eyes, as though doubting I was real. “I thought I lost you.” I felt the heavy weight of Boone jump onto my legs and I felt through our connection that he felt equally as relieved at seeing me without a hole in my artery. I placed one hand between each of their ears, and just breathed in the clean smell of their scents and relaxed further into the chair. We were okay. I had no idea where we were, but we weren't dead in a muddy forest a mile underground.
“I'm okay. My throat is a little sore, but it could be a lot worse.” I tried to joke, but it fell flat when Mia gripped my arms with a death grip that nearly cut off my blood supply.
“You have a new scar there…I'm so sorry, Arcadia. I reacted before thinking. If I hadn't thrown that knife, we could have done things differently, and…” she trailed off into muffled sobs and cried into the fluffy towelling I had been dressed in. I did care about that, and was worried where we were and who had changed our clothes, but not enough at that moment to break the comfort I was drawing from all three of us being safe.
The trial had been a nightmare, in every sense, and that lion had a lot to answer for. Eventually, we were all assured of each other's well-being, and we were all able to sit up and get a better bearing on the room we had been relocated to.
Honestly? It looked like pictures and videos I had seen in my first life of super rich Turkish spas, built in salt cave systems deep underground, and only accessible if you were a billionaire or their supermodel squeeze. The walls were smooth, polished and rounded striated stone. They were the colour of butter and creamy coffee, with bands of salt running through it like diamonds, glimmering in soft golden light from an overhead chandelier. Apart from the recliners and the dog bed - I would have been somewhat annoyed about Boone being treated like a pet, if he didn't look so damn comfortable - there was a wide, low bathtub big enough for six that looked like it had been carved by the tide, a pair of very comfortable looking beds straight out of a four star hotel from my last life, and a long table with a crisp white tablecloth holding…
“Oh gracious gods, is that a Buffet?” I yelled out, realising as I said it that Buffet was not a word in Axian standard, but Mia and Boone would have known exactly what I was talking about when I launched towards the weighed down table of sliders, cold cuts, olives, pasta, pizza, crisps, chips, dips and a hundred other finger foods. All things I remembered from my last life and almost none of them being things I had seen in this world. I grabbed a mini cheeseburger and bit down with a wistful sigh that turned into a moan of pleasure. I had missed Beef like a flower missed the rain.
Mia wandered up behind me and I could practically see the drool forming in her mouth as she caught the scents coming from the table. “‘Cadia, I don't know any of this food, is it safe?” I didn't know how all this food was here, I didn't know why we had been moved to a spa from a horror forest full of zombies, I didn't even care if this was Fae food and I’d just sold myself into a thousand years of slavery; they had Pizza!
I grabbed a slice and put it in my sisters’ hands, before placing an entire wheel of bread, tomato sauce and pepperoni on a nearby plate and placing it down for Boone, offering the prince his due. The fox took an experimental sniff before practically launching at the pizza slices and tearing into them, getting his paws and half his face covered in sauce, but failing to pause even to breathe it seemed like. When he was well and truly sorted, I took a slice for myself and folded it in two, before taking a heavenly bite of bread, tomato sauce, cheese, meat and bacon. Mia looked at me doubtfully and then took a careful bite, before moaning and filling her mouth. “Merciful Gods, what is this!? It's the most delicious thing I've ever eaten!” Boone didn't even say anything, just wolfed it down and begged for more. I felt a shiver up my back and knew my mood was about to be brought down - call it the intuition of the jaded.
“Forgive me for interrupting you, but I wished to see if you found the recovery room satisfactory.” A voice said from behind me, and in the space of a second, several things happened at once.
Boone, as the highest level of us all, reacted first, and one of the recliners was surrounded in Force and hurled at a figure that had appeared in the centre of the room. I didn't have much time to see more than they were very tall, broad, dark skinned and wearing a suit, before the chair smashed them across the face and crumpled around them. At the same time, my tail manifested, and I spun low on one ankle, trying to wrap one of their legs and pull them to the ground. As I was doing this, Mia also manifested two daggers from the shadows in the tablecloth, and leapt at the person, stabbing one high and one low.
As the chair broke across his body, the figure didn't move, merely stating, “I suppose I deserved that.” When I tried to pull him down it was like trying to pull over a concrete support beam, to which he simply stated, “really now?”
When the first of Mias’ daggers stabbed into his chest, it entered barely half a centimetre, before snapping in two, and the lower one didn't get a chance to stab below the belt before he grabbed my sisters’ wrist and held it there. “That, though, would be taking things too far. Everyone has their limits.”
When none of our attacks even made him flinch, we backed up as far as we could in the room, which in this case was to the buffet table, and we looked over the interloper in our midst.
As I stated, he was tall and broad and dark skinned. What I had missed were the sand coloured eyes, and the shaggy mane of long, dark hair and neatly trimmed beard. His suit was actually just a vest and slacks with a dark shirt, cuffs rolled to the elbows, but it was tailored so impeccably, you'd think he was in full tux. He had a purple pocket square and a bolo neck tie with an amethyst gem studding the clasp. His smile, though - his smile was familiar, even if his voice was different in this form. “You're the lion.” I said, my voice still a horrendous croak, but my tail swaying back and forth, ready to attack for all the good it would do.
His grin grew wide, showing large and sharp teeth, and he nodded at us, hands spread in the barest hint of a bow. “I am indeed. It is so nice to meet you properly now the Trial is completed. I wish you welcome to my recovery room, as I realise the Trial of Courage has a terrible toll to it if you are not prepared. But you did extremely well. I am very pleased.” he looked so smug, that the burning ember of anger that had been dampened in the downpours and mud, surged back to life, and I grabbed the nearest heavy thing to me - a large wooden bowl of mixed fruit - and threw it right at his head. Unfortunately, the smug bastard simply brushed it away with an exasperated look.
“How is the trial complete? We didn't bring down a single tower, we could never even hope to fight you. Even the damn supply cache was a fake!” I yelled at him, putting my whole chest into the words, and so much anger poured out of me with them. He had hurt my sister, tortured her for weeks. Starved her, denied her sleep. And he had made me see and remember things I never wanted to see again. On top of that? We had failed, completely and utterly. Even this moment of comfort and respite was ruined by him being here. Which did beg the question of why we were even here in the first place and not dead in the woods, but I was too angry to question it at that moment.
To my surprise, his shoulders slumped, and all the energy seemed to simply drain from him. He took a few steps towards the stone tub, and sat on the edge. With a long and weary sounding sigh, he ran his hands through his hair and bowed his back to look at the floor.
“I'm sorry: Truly. The trial is not meant for kids, never was. But Kintsuji slapped this whole thing together in the spur of the moment, and leaned hard into her domain to make it happen. She was presented with an opportunity to help this world that didn't require drastic action, and felt she had to take it. It didn't give me or my siblings much wiggle room in what we could change - only how we graded it, and the people taking it.” He looked up and rather than smug, or proud, or anything else, he looked tired. “The Trial of Courage isn't meant to be completed like other trials. You can't pass it with force of arms, and is designed, at its core, to be impossible. In every single version of the trial we have ever run, it is where most people fail, where most people…” he glanced at me, specifically at the rough area of my neck that had so recently been a hole in my throat. “It's where most people die. Mostly by letting their fear control them, or to the monsters - which really were endless, by the way. Well done for figuring that out and realising there must be a trick. Most don’t get that far.”
I ran a hand across the rough and ridged skin on my neck, self conscious. I hadn't had a chance to see myself in a mirror yet, but I imagined there was a large scar there. Healing magic could do miraculous things to speed recovery and heal wounds and diseases - but in the end, it relied on the bodies’ natural processes to work. And that included scars. Even magic couldn't make something from nothing. If a person lost a limb, healing bottles could seal the wound and save the life, but that person would still be wearing an enchanted prosthetic for the rest of their life. If a person had their throat torn out…I realised the grating and rough quality of my speech since I woke up may not be the result of dehydration. “So what is the point of the trial, if you can't complete it? Just to torture people? I thought my Mother was a goddess of healing - of making things stronger. This was just nightmares piled on top of each other.”
“Kintsuji - our Mother - is a patron goddess of the broken. Yes, the other half of her domain is reforging. Making things stronger than they were before, but her core is in her power to break things.” While he looked at his feet, and spoke of the Goddess, I saw Boone perk up strangely at the fact that this powerful beast considered Kintsuji his mother too. I could only imagine what it must feel like for Boone, right now, to apparently be confronting his brother. If we shared a soul, did that make us related too? I put the thought aside for another time. Right now I wanted very little to do with the Namean Lion and his games. At least the Serpent had shown that it didn't actually mean me harm. “The Trial is designed to break people down of every false idea they have about themselves, and reveal their core, as a base to build them back stronger. You,” he pointed at me, “were the target of this trial. You have a more solid personality than just about anyone I have ever thrown into that forest. Immutable, even. But I don't know why Kintsuji sent your sister in there without preparing her first.” He looked at Mia and met her eyes, trying to hold her gaze with his as he spoke. “We spirits, and Kintsuji even more so, are very old. And sometimes we forget that not everyone is meant for every situation. You should have never been put into the forest as you were, and though you may never forgive me for it, I am sorry.”
I didn't know what to think. I didn't know which was the real personality and which was the projection. The monster or the remorse. I didn't trust him, didn't like him, but his confession caused me to lower my guard. My tail fell to the floor from its threatening display with its spread pink feathers, and curled around my feet in a loop. I honestly dreaded meeting the third member of this dysfunctional sibling set. I honestly didn't know what to expect from them, only that I would have to face them eventually.
“So…what was the point? Why keep me in there for two weeks?...just, why?” Mias' voice broke on the last, plaintive ‘why?’ and my heart went out to her. I pulled her to me and hugged her to my side. She may have been a year older than me in this life, but she was still a child. Every buried instinct in my far too adult psyche told me to protect and comfort her.
“The point was to find your courage. To throw off your fear,” he looked at me, “Or to find a way to do what was necessary despite it.” He looked at Mia and she seemed to stand taller, as she had in the last hours inside the forest. “Giving in to fear is what gets more soldiers killed than anything else. A flinch at the wrong moment, a hesitation, a lack of a will to move forward into the fire.”
I looked around for somewhere to sit, as my legs began to get weak. A trick. It had all been a trick and it had nearly killed us. Not finding a chair within easy reach, I instead sat on the curled coil of my tail, and found it a particularly odd, but comfortable position, like sitting on my knees would have been on a futon mat. Every hour spent with it, made the tail feel more a part of me that had always been there, rather than a power I could dismiss. I wondered briefly if a point would come where I didn't wish to dismiss it at all. I also wondered if my body would be changed in even more ways by the essences the Goddess had chosen for me, and who I would be at the end of it.
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“So, what now? Why this place? Why the Earth food?” I asked, the word slipping from my tongue before I even realised it. Earth. That had been the name of the world in my previous life. The name had been a fuzzy dot in my mind for eight years, but with the sudden memory of it, came a rush of information that made me reel. Sense impressions and memories, places, smells, and tastes. Still fuzzy people that had filled my life. It was slightly overwhelming, and I nearly missed the answer.
“This is the Recovery Suite. I insisted on it when Kintsuji designed the Trial, a long, long time ago. Time moves at a crawl here, and it is heavily enchanted to promote mental health and trauma recovery. You may stay here as long as you need, until you feel you are ready to continue.” He pointed to two doors that had appeared on the wall behind him while our attention was elsewhere. “One door there leads to the Trial of Intellect, which I would advise you, Mia, to attempt when you are ready. I have it on good authority that the answers have not been changed yet. Call it an apology from me and my sister.” The Lion glanced at me with a tiny smirk that I hated him for, but I understood his meaning - coach her, help her cheat, and get her through the trial without incident. I nodded to him grudgingly. I would prefer to go in with her, but I doubt that would be allowed.
“The other door leads to the Trial of Brawn. Honestly, it is the most straightforward trial. A measure of physical strength, athletics, acrobatics, balance and speed. Mostly, it is a trial by combat. It's Master, my second youngest brother -” here he glanced at Boone with a fond smile that made the foxes’ skin crawl - he hated the lion as I did at the moment, and I couldn't blame him. “- does not do well with subtlety. The trial is not without danger though, and I would advise taking the time to take your rewards from my trial before you enter his. He has not run a trial before - it was designed by someone else, and I cannot guarantee it will work as we intended it. Please, take precautions.”
He produced, seemingly from nowhere, a tray upon which was a small pile of Ability Crystals, and 2 shining Constellation Stones. Additionally, I noticed another table had appeared near the doors, with our clothing and equipment on it, which all appeared to have been cleaned and repaired. “As for the Earth food? When Kintsuji met you, Arcadia, she took a measure of your life and the world you had come from, and found that you had a great love of the foods of your home. This worlds’ cuisine, from what I can tell, leaves a lot to be desired by contrast. As you have told your Sister your origins, we siblings thought it would be a good way to introduce your story while you recover, and Kintsuji didn't raise an argument. I am very fond of the meat you call Honey Glazed Gammon, by the way. Thank you for introducing it to me.” He smiled at me at that, all teeth, before making his way to the buffet table beside us and picking up an entire joint of glazed ham. “I realise I am, however, making your recovery harder, so I will leave you to it, now. Try to enjoy your time here, but do not linger past when you need to. You still have the trial to finish.”
He didn't move, he didn't leave or walk through a door, but one moment he was there, and then I blinked, and he was gone.
If I hadn't already been sitting, I think I would have collapsed. Mia certainly did, crashing to her knees next to me. “Is it over? Is he gone?” She asked me, her voice a quaver as the adrenaline crash hit her. I felt much the same. Even after being in this place for a much shorter time, relatively speaking, I felt ragged.
“For now, yeah, I think he’s gone. I don't like him, or trust him - sorry Boone - but I am going to follow his advice and use this place. Can't see someone as powerful as a literal goddess lying about magic and what this room does.” I climbed to my feet and went back to the buffet table. While we hadn't been looking, the pizza, sliders, and even the ham had been replaced with entirely new ones, and I figured that was another part of the magic of this place - unlimited comfort food. “We should eat, rest, and relax. But we shouldn't stay too long. Mum and our Dads must be frantic by now.” Mia frowned at my words, and then, struggling, frowned even deeper, as though trying to remember something. “What is it?”
Mia looked at me, and her eyes were a tiny bit glazed. “I remember the dumb Goddess telling me and our parents not to worry, that you were safe and would be back soon. Then I remember them having an argument, I think, but…it didn't feel right. They don't argue where we can hear them, Ever. It's all fuzzy though, like in a dream. I feel like I'm forgetting something, but then Kintsuji was talking, and you being in trouble became all I could think about.” I nodded to that and started getting a kernel of worry along with the burning ember of anger. That sounded like how I remembered my family from my last life - and I knew that was because Kintsuji had changed things in my head so I didn't remember something painful. I didn't like the implications if Kintsuji had been forced to do that involving our parents. But I also didn't want Mia to worry unnecessarily. We were stuck down here for now, and the only people who could let us out were all vastly more powerful than we could ever hope to get. I needed Mia to focus on recovering, and finishing the trial, not on what might have happened to our family.
I at least couldn't imagine Kintsuji killing them. Whatever else the goddess was, I couldn't see her acting in ways that would serve no purpose. She wanted me and Mia as her allies, for whatever use or reason that could be, and had used a great deal of power to make sure we acted along with her plans. Killing our parents would not help tie us to her - quite the opposite.
Rather than voice my concerns, I placed a plate with pizza, burgers, chips, and cold cuts of meat piled on top of it into my sisters’ hands and encouraged her to eat and rest. I promised if she did, I'd answer any questions about my last life she wanted, as much as I was able with my patchy memory. Eventually, she did start on the food, as did Boone and I, before the bath and the comfy beds called to us, and we rested - not in separate beds, but cuddled close in one, safe in each others’ embrace, with Boone laid across our feet at the foot of the bed.
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For several days, that was how we stayed. The food regenerated whenever we took some - and I took the opportunity to stuff my Travellers’ bag with things I might not be able to find again and wanted to save - the beds would be freshly made whenever we needed them, and the huge mineral bath hot tub was heavenly.
It took us a couple of days to figure out that we could request things that weren't there. Both of us were complaining that we couldn't see the changes to our own bodies because we didn't have a mirror, and before we knew it, a large free standing mirror was sitting in a corner.
Like that, I finally got a look at the scar that now wrapped half my throat. The zombie rat had bit into my much further round than I thought it had, like it had been trying to chew into my windpipe. It looked like it had healed years ago, but it was a ragged gash easily two inches wide, and a different colour completely to my tanned skin. It looked like a comet with a fiery tail, if I was being poetic about it. A large ragged circle just to the side of the centre of my throat, and a ripped tail dragged back to my shoulder.
I swallowed, watching the skin move as I did, and felt out how I felt about the unwanted addition to my body. Oddly, I felt very little about it. Like my tail, after a moment to process it, it was just another piece of me. It didn't change who I was or how I felt about myself. If anything, it could be completely covered by my hair - which had grown longer even in just the time we had been in here. After a couple of days of it getting in the way, I had had Mia help me cut it extremely short with one of her shadow knives, and we had dumped the pink mass in a corner, where it had been cleaned away and disappeared the next time we looked.
Speaking of my tail, I finally got to see it from others' perspective as I moved and walked. I could control it like a very long third arm, if I wanted to, but if I left it to its own devices, it would move on its own to wherever it felt it would best suit my balance. The honestly weirdest part of it wasn't the tail itself, but the fact that there were new muscle groups in my back to complement it, and even my spine seemed to have been thickened and strengthened to support it. Given my relatively small frame, it looked like my back was absolutely rippling with muscle compared to the rest of me. Overall, I found it fascinating.
Mia didn't have such a good reaction to seeing the change in her eyes, hair and ears though. As she had already been able to tell, her regular human ears had closed up and disappeared, and it changed the lines of her face, making her look more streamlined and vulpine, like the Fox-kin her soul card now said she was. With her sharper teeth and black/gold eyes, she claimed she looked unnerving. “Like a ghost…or a monster.” I hugged her tight when she let me, and let her cry out what she thought was a horrible change. I would not, could not, tell her that she looked adorable. It was utterly the wrong time, and I feared she would think I was mocking her.
She accepted that they were there eventually - there was little we could do to change our circumstances at the moment, after all, and we both doubted it was something someone less than a goddess could change. We would ask Mum when we got out of here, though. As a Foxkin herself, she might know more about it and how it could be undone, if it was possible at all.
Even so, I’d see her glancing at her reflection with a deep look of mourning occasionally, and I resolved to find a way to help her change her looks, or at least disguise them. Perhaps at higher levels my Fields of Illusion ability would be able to help make a convincing cover for her, or I could look into higher level healing enchantments or transmutation magic. I didn't care how my own body changed, or so it seemed, as long as nothing changed who I was as a person, but my sister wasn't me. I'd help if I could. Something about that felt very wrong to me, in memory of my last life and the fact that I had spent my whole life fixing what I saw as a mistake in the body I was assigned at birth, but it was true. Perhaps it was because I controlled the changes here, and could dismiss them as I needed? Or maybe it was a change from the instinct downloads? I didn't know, and I doubted anyone but Kintsuji could tll me. Right now, the tail and whatever else came down the line were useful, and provided the tools to survive. Also…the tail was both cool and cute and I just kind of really liked it.
Additionally in those days, we spent long hours talking - mostly about any topic from my last life that Mia wanted to ask a question about, as well as me helping her memorise the answers and solutions to the Trial of Intellect challenges. When she heard about how different our first experiences of the dungeon were, she actually got quite upset, and I couldn't blame her. I would have spared her the entire trial of courage if I could have.
We talked about the city I had grown up in, the countryside and what cats and dogs were. We talked fashion, and food, and technology. After a few questions I realised I could use Fields of Illusion as a slideshow, although the pictures weren't the most detailed - I felt I'd need to level the ability quite a bit higher to make photo-realistic images.
She admitted during this multi-day conversation that she didn't quite know how to feel about me being a reincarnated soul, and being so much older than her, but that she would try her best to get over it. It didn't change how she felt about me as her sister, that was the important thing. Anything else could be worked on in time. I may have found a corner to cry happy tears when she slept that night.
Perhaps a week later, we both came to the decision that Mia was ready to attempt the Intellect Trial, and when she finished, we would make our way through the Brawn Trial together. Before we could do that, though, we had to finally take our Ability crystals and Constellation stones. All together, there were four Wood 1 ability stones, two at Wood 2, two at Wood 3, and a single Wood 5.
We split them between us, but I tried to give Mia the majority. After a heated argument, I finally accepted the Wood 5, one of the Wood 3 stones, and one of the Wood 1s. The last question was whether to take them before or after our constellation stones. Mia decided on taking them before, wanting to shore up her current abilities. I chose after, wanting to take the risk of early levels for new abilities. Getting myself comfortable on the bed for the inevitable pain of Quickening and attribute, I began by pressing the Constellation stone to the same burned in pattern on my chest as the first one, and felt the energy tear into me.
This time, when my vision went dark and I was dragged into the night sky, it was to the West, where a constellation of nine stars erupted into being in the night sky of my spirit body:
Constellation Stone of the Imperatoria Leo Consumed. This Constellation stone will bond with your Will Attribute.
Will Attribute Unlocked. Will governs your ability to resist mental effects, concentration, and instincts. Will also governs your Essence regeneration rates. As you gain levels in Will, you will have an easier time shrugging off negative mental effects, and positive mental effects will last longer. You will have an easier time maintaining concentration in stressful situations, and your instinctual reactions will become more pronounced. As well, the higher your Will Attribute, the more Essence you will regenerate in a set period of time.
Additionally, Unlocking the Will Attribute grants you affinity with one school of magic outside of those gained through your constellation stones, if any. Your granted magical aptitude is: Primal, the magic of elementals, great beasts and nature spirits. A rare higher order magical affinity that is not trained on many low rank worlds.
Imperatoria Leo Passive Ability Unlocked: Royal Lion Senses.
Imperatoria Leo Constellation Stone is attempting to unlock an Inborn Talent. [ERROR] Inborn Talents already unlocked. Reviewing: Divine Intervention detected, applying override. Redistributing essence to Will abilities. Imperatoria Leo Constellation Stone has unlocked its 1st gate. Predators Armament has been unlocked from Will Attribute at level Wood: 1. (1 / 4) Abilities unlocked to Will attribute.
Royal Lion Senses: Wood 1 (0/3)
* Your senses of sight, smell and hearing are sharpened as long as this ability is activated. This ability also improves your ability to see in dark and low-light conditions. At higher levels, your senses will become supernaturally sharp, but may be tuned to pick out individual stimuli to focus on.
Predators Armament: Wood 1 (0/3)
* Transmutation Ability. Ability may be activated to summon a physical transformation. You will gain the claws of the legendary Namean Lion. The claws my belly used as natural weapons, with damage commensurate to the level of the ability, and may be used in climbing attempts, doubling the effects of the Body Attribute in those respects. Magical gloves will adjust to the claws, but mundane hand coverings may be destroyed.
* Once summoned, the claws require a minimal essence investment to remain summoned.
Ability Crystal Detected. Applying Upgrades. Perception Ability Foxfire Imbuement Increases [Wood 1 0/3] > [Wood 1 (1 /3).
Ability Crystal Detected. Applying Upgrades. Intellect Ability Dawnslight Increases [Wood 1 (0/3)] > [Wood 2 (0/5)].
Ability Crystal Detected. Applying Upgrades. Will Ability Predators Armaments Increases [Wood 1 (0/3)] > [Wood 2 (0/5)].
Claws, the ability had given me claws - and sharper senses, but that was a non transformative ability. When I came down from the Quickening pain, and was able to think clearly again, I activated the ability, and watched with fascination as long, coal black metallic claws grew out of where my fingernails were, replacing the nail completely. They were nearly two inches long and, testing them on the rock wall above my head, as sharp as razors. Once again I pondered how this transformation made me feel, and found that it didn't bother me. The weapons would be useful, and seeing as though we were entering a trial of physical strength, something that improved my climbing ability would probably come in handy.
I looked over to where Mia was just sitting up, and found she looked upset, and had a vaguely haunted look in her eyes. I tried to ask her what had happened, what she had unlocked, but before the words could exit my mouth, she had grabbed the tiger skin cloak and entered the door of the Intellect Trial.