Standing from where she had fallen, though still struggling to remember actually doing so. Kori peers around, looking to the shaman surrounding her, their faces a blur and forms featureless, she can’t even tell which of them is Ortik. Around each of them float and swarm tiny lights, congregating in places around brighter spots arrayed about their person.

Calling out to them as she slowly takes a few steps, the action feeling unnatural as her feet make not a sound on the smoothed stone and her body feels both light and constrained at the same time. “What did you do to me?” Fear entering her tone as she speaks, her words sounding garbled and echoed even to her.

“What the scale?” None of the Kobolds surrounding her shift in the direction their facing, though she can’t be sure of their gazes with the few details she is able to make out. Slowly getting used to the changes in her own movements Kori begins to take stock of her surroundings. After waving her hands in front of one or two of the sitting shamans and trying to make faces at them to provoke reaction, without success, of course.

As she looks to her surrounds, she notes that the light no longer comes from torches or runes, but more of those motes, flitting through the air all around her. Looking out from the center she sees the blackened waters of the ring of surrounding them, the many motes of light drifting up to the border of the water before halting and changing direction. The depths of what she knew to be shallow waters now appearing unfathomable, as though a whole ocean lay beneath the still surface.

The braziers beyond that, each now billowing in a distinct colour, each producing a column of smoke that disappears into the ceiling above. Where the entire room should be blanketed in sch a volume of fumes, but is not even clouded outside the individual plumes. The smoke flowing from the coals of the braziers drifting in unique patterns no breeze could explain, twists and twirls giving the impression of life, flame, falling snow, and more. The more she observes, the more depth and motion each pillar of smoke seems to reveal.

Finally, the strewn objects between the braziers and the edge of the dais all glowing with their own internal light, staring at any one too long giving her impressions of emotion. Dread, joy, pride, and sorrow and many more, each object giving their own flavour of emotion, each with their own nuance. One strikes her as menacing pride, pride that will lash out to defend itself at even a perceived threat. Another a drowning sorrow, one of loss and regret that rivals the fathomlessness of the waters around her. Another, joy, unbridled and uncaring, infectious in its nature.

These are the easier of the objects for Kori to focus upon, others are simply alien to her thoughts. The rigidity of a boulder taking joy in its own steadfast existence. The flowing grace of a river, merciless in its ever-rushing dance. The famine of a consuming flame, always starving for more and more, to burn ever brighter. The ambivalence of a breeze, uncaring if it ruffles the leaves of a tree or topples the home of a family, only that it be unimpeded. Concepts even more foreign to her mix with those she can identify, why water would rage at falling from the skies or what the leaping energetic thing that is not flame, but feels like it could burn the very earth to glass truly is, they do not make sense to her young mind.

Even darker things stand amongst the others, the light they shed seemingly inverted to a glaring darkness, even a glance causes her to pull her vision and her thoughts away from those places.

She sees these things as she looks about, knowing them to be obstacles she must pass but not understanding the why of them, not knowing what to make of each of these things blocking her path to what she thought would be the real test of things, finding the entrance and navigating the maze of tunnels.

Approaching the first obstacle, she watches as the various motes of light dance about in the air until they reach the boarder of the waters, some retreating before they touch it, others striking it as though a cavern wall stood there. Kori reaches her hand to the same place, slowly extending towards the edge, and as she finally comes into contact, it feels as though a wall of smooth and polished stone lay beneath her palm.

Sliding her hands about the barrier before her, she presses and leans, careful not to press with too much force at first in case she should pass through and find herself falling into the waters below. Escalating when nothing she does seems to change the solidity of what she faces. Following the entire circle with her hands upon the smooth wall she finds it unblemished and unbroken.

She spends hours poking and probing the barrier, attempting to approach it in any manner she can think of slow deliberate movements without force, running leaps met with hilariously abrupt ends, lengthy sessions of struggling to push it as though it were a boulder blocking her path.

Ok Kori, think… This is a rite for the shamans, there’s no way they just trapped me here in the middle, Ortik always has a point or lesson, so what would they want a new initiate to learn?

Sitting and pondering upon what she knows, watching the flitting motes and trying to break down the logic of this test before her. Hours pass as she sits and thinks, ideas and theories created and discarded as she tries to understand what the Circle wants from her. Eventually taking some time to eat, she finds the fish to be flavourless and bland, the water rune filling her cup she looks with some apprehension, unsure if this water too will deny her presence, though thankfully those worries were unfounded.

With an odd thought she flings what liquid remains in her cup towards the impenetrable ring and watches as it passes unimpeded to splash upon the stones beyond. With this new path of thought comes many tests, wetting her hands to see if she too may pass, adding some of her water to the ring to see if there are any changes, creating her own ring of water to see if it is the shape of water that dictates the function, attempting to redraw or divert the path of water upon the stones, and several other attempts, each getting stranger and less likely, each as unsuccessful as the last.

Returning to where she had sat before, she begins to think upon the shamans themselves, the things that Ortik demanded she know as an apprentice and even her time training as a mage. The first skill on either list, one she was wholly convinced she would never attain, was [Meditation]. These tests being related to the skills of an apprentice would make sense.

Oh scale… If this is some test about meditating…

“Well, I don’t have any better idea…”

Sitting and trying, for what feels the thousandth time, she attempts to quiet her mind and focus on nothing. The more she tries, the more the little motes of light occupy her thoughts, watching them flit and twirl about, gather and disperse, she falls into the closest thing to a trance she’s ever managed. Hours pass, Kori oblivious to them all, as she watches the little motes, she slowly begins to see differences in them, some brighter, some dimmer, each with their own distinct colours. All of them just barely not a pure white, some with the lightest tint of reds or greens, blues or browns, a myriad of colour swarming about in this place.

Her trance rudely interrupted as the motes come into a sudden clear focus, their differences once minute now so evident she cannot understand how she missed them for so long. A light of a notification accompanies the sudden change that shook her from her peaceful contemplation.

Wait… Did I just get meditation? All this time telling me to look within and it’s literally the opposite that finally gets it? Oh that’s… That’s… Just unfair…

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Huh… Guess not… Didn’t even know that was a thing…

Her new skill immediately changes the way she sees the world around her, the invisible barrier rising from the water isn’t quite so invisible, an opaque wall of dark mist now surrounding her, while it obstructs this new sense, her eyesight still tells her nothing is there and reveals what lie beyond. The contradiction stressing her thoughts the longer she tries to reconcile them.

The more she focuses on the barrier blocking her path, the more she sees the eddies and currents flowing through its mass. Rising from the waters below until it meets the ceiling of the dome and cascades down until it reaches the water below and disappears into it to rise again. Watching the many motes of light, she sees that those that strike the barrier always do so at points where the haze shifts and thins, those that veer off at the last moment avoiding places that seem normal or denser.

She circles repeatedly, again and again, watching the flow of the mist and the motes, what she is coming to suspect are spirits of some fashion, battering at it, seeking freedom from its confines just like her. Knowing what she’s looking at, she finally spots a single mote, bright and vivid compared to its cohort, streak towards the barrier and pass through its surface, dimming as it enters the mist, the further it goes weakening the light it emits, until it too vanishes in its depths. She’s unsure if it made it to the other side, but the fact that it pierced the wall before her captures her attention.

Moving to the place that the little spirit had ventured forth, she can see swirls of a wake it produced in the mist, the spot feeling less solid as she presses upon it. Though still unable to pass, her enthusiasm is buoyed by the thought of progress she presses on, seeking out the brighter motes and observing them, each one seems to originate from one of the sitting figures, though it appears that there are fewer of the shaman sitting around the ring than there had been before. She had missed their departure entirely.

I’m getting kind of tired… I wonder how long it’s been. Ortik said I have seven days to complete the rite, but I have no way of telling… I guess I keep going until I make it, or they end whatever they did to me and I fail…

Wait… What did they do to me… I didn’t get a status condition notification or anything…

Opening her status to check and seeing nothing.

This has to be some kind of status condition, right?

As if recognizing that she was under the effects of a condition was a necessary step, she watches as an entry appears on her status. No notification of it being acquired, just now listed.

Status Conditions: ??? - Unknown Condition

Oh well that’s helpful…

Deciding that that’s enough for now, she looks about and sees that where the various members of the Circle had departed there remained thin cushions that they had been seated upon.

Looks like a better place than any other to sleep, hope they don’t get mad I slept on their pillow…

Curling up on the relatively small pillow she finds sleep elusive, while she feels tired, it simply refuses to come to her. Sitting up after what had to have been a few hours in her attempt, her fatigue still wearing on her mind, though her body feeling simply worn, but not exhausted.

I felt better after I sat and tried to meditate when I got that skill… Maybe I’ll give that another shot…

As she sits and watches, still upon the shaman’s cushion, no reason not to be comfortable after all, she tries to replicate that feeling when her thoughts were absorbed by the little spirits movements and simple existence. Unfortunately for Kori, the thing about trying to enter a specific state of mind is that it’s often impeded by the very effort of the attempt to do so, or at least for her that was the case.

After a time that she isn’t really able to quantify, she gives up on the attempt, though she does find her mind to be clearer and less fatigued. The stress of trying and failing somewhat weighing down that fleeting restfulness.

Returning to her observations, Kori follows the motes, looking for the brighter ones that may make an attempt to pierce the wall. Following her earlier theory, she is able to find more of those luminous motes, gathering and swarming around points of light upon the shaman’s person.

That’s probably their totems, right?

Each cluster of spirits around the totems look similar to one another, their tones and shades, attracted to totems of like natures. The more she watches the more she sees the similarities, feels something resonating between the totems and the motes as they brighten and become more energetic than their compatriots.

As she watches, getting closer and closer to one of the shaman. Her face mere centimetres away from their blurred form as she stares at the motes and totems. Her hand idly reaching out to try to capture one of the little motes, those flitting freely always escaped her grasp but this time it’s almost as though several of the little specks of light allow themselves to be grasped.

Her hand feels empty, the contents insubstantial and weightless, the light escaping between her fingers the only indication that she’d managed to capture them. As she pulls her hand away, she feels resistance, not tiny pricks of it like grains of sand trying to escape her grasp, but as though she were lifting a weight away from the ground. The more she moves away from the glowing totem of the shaman, the less the pull to return her hand to it draws on her.

Loosening her grip to observe the little spirits, they flee her grasp without hesitation, most returning to their orbit around the totem, one, the brightest, streaking away to assault the wall, striking a spot where the mist seemed thinnest and piercing barely past the surface before being rebuffed, returning to their confines, dimmer than before.

Ok, so the bright ones can get through, but it takes a lot of effort for them to make it to the other side. They’ll also let me gather them in my hand and move them away from the totems… How can I use that…

Falling back into her thoughts Kori takes what felt like minutes but could have been hours watching and planning, adjusting and discarding ideas until she has a solid intent.

Searching for the brightest cluster of spirits, these ones with a pale blue hue that circle a similarly hued totem, she waits and watches, the spirits brightening as time passes, until she sees one that looks to be fighting its own attraction to the totem, knowing from her time observing that this precedes it’s escape and attempt at the wall.

Reaching in and slowly closing her hand, several of the spirits seem to take this as a free ride out of their orbits and alight upon her scales. The brightest of them attracting others after it too perches within her grasp. Closing and withdrawing her hand slowly, the force arrayed against her heavier this time than before, she steps back until the draw becomes negligible, soon counteracted by other light pulls in several different directions. All towards places in the wall she can see beginning to thin in the cascade of mists, or thin places that are beginning to be swallowed by the surrounding mists, their pull lessening and vanishing altogether as she observes.

Waiting until she feels a new pull upon her hand, she rushes forward along its path as she spots a thinning just starting to form, the closer she approaches, the stronger the magnetic pull of the little spirits becomes. She ignores a new blinking light as she thrusts her closed fist towards the spot and watches as it breaks through the outer edge of the mist, new larger eddies forming and swirling around its passage as she pushes forward. Her hand seemingly drawn through the gap she had created, crushing pressure surrounding her she leaps to follow and not fall into the waters below.

The mists press in around her, compressing upon her painfully as she passes through, the forward draw lessens as her closed fist escapes the other side, as though the little spirits were being sucked forward by some force and are now free of it. The momentum of the leap carries her through, but the pressure of the mists leaves her gasping on the ground. For some time, the only thoughts she can manage are about why she isn’t wet, unimportant and inconsequential, but nonetheless something she just isn’t able to shake.

After some time gathering herself, Kori looks at her new surroundings, without the haze of the water’s barrier blocking her new senses she can see more spirits flitting about on this side, gathering at the various braziers, some changing and growing as they approach, others dimming and fleeing as though they had touched a boiling kettle. The smoke of the braziers now vivid in her mind, each feeling as though it holds a power beyond the scope of her experience.

With a tone full of disdain, “Hmph, two days. I expected more from your lauded apprentice Spiritcaller. I’ve not seen many worse than that. And that meditation? She looked like a hatchling being told to sit still while a beetle crawled away.” A cackling laugh rebounds around the room as she finishes.

“I will admit it took her some time, but I expected this to be a difficult obstacle for her. I’ve told you before Lowy, she has struggled to attain the [Meditation] skill, I think it’s something to do with that odd trait of hers. Hopefully, she’s finally done it this time.”

Ortik and the other shaman go back to their observation of the initiation, most have come and gone over the past two days but only Ortik and Lowy have remained throughout. Though they did have to take breaks from supporting the spellwork with their mana to recover and rest from time to time, they still maintained their watch.