Interlude: The Trial of Magpie

Three days earlier:

Magpie was seething. How was she supposed to know the big cow-thing was friendly? She was going to kill Uncle when she got back. Or at least sulk strongly when she was out of sight from his cameras. He expected her to 'achieve an outstanding result', but then he told her nothing about what she was supposed to do. Except not die.

She could still feel the embarrassment from her first encounter in her flushed face and squirming gut. It's just common sense, she thought. When you see a giant cow monster looking down at you, you run and hide.

The creature had laughed at her! And called her a frightened mouse, before opening that door that literally sucked her into the room where she was currently standing, facing three doors, one each of stone, metal and wood.

"Some kind of trick, I bet," she said out loud. She didn't want anyone who was listening in to think she was some kind of sucker. Uncle had trained her better than that. "Obviously you want me to take the silver door."

Wealth was always hidden. The jewels on display were fake, the painting on the wall a copy. It was one of her first lessons; never take the obvious approach to your goal. Having eliminated the metal door, she considered her other options. "Stone door, black flower. Wooden door, white flower." Uncle had admonished her on more than one occasion for her habit of musing out loud.

"Think in your head, foolish girl!" he was fond of saying. "You never know who's listening."

Well, he wasn't here, (though with Uncle, you could never be sure) and she didn't care who was listening.

"I don't like the looks of that black flower. It's all droopy. Of course, that's probably what you want me to think."

Uncle's words came to her again.

Don't overthink things. Nine out of ten times, a warning is a warning. You think other people don't live and work in the places we break into? Only loners and very small groups who expect intruders will hide their secrets with tricks like that; otherwise it causes more problems than it solves. Know your target!

Fine. She would take the warning and go through the white flower door. A quick examination told her it opened outward, from the left side. She pressed her body against the hinged side, reached over to the handle and gave it a tentative push. The door opened just a crack with no resistance or sound, allowing a bright light into the small chamber.

Great, flood lights.

She always avoided brightly lit areas when possible; they indicated manned defenses. She almost closed the door but decided to wait and listen instead. Targets were always over-confident in the light, and if anyone was there they would soon give themselves away.

She stood with her ears alert, listening to the ambient noise, which was mostly rustling and buzzing. The buzzing made her nervous. Electric defenses? Wasn't the Inside a fantasy world? She cursed Uncle once again for the total lack of advance intelligence.

After another minute, she filtered out the background with her system and cast her hearing range as far as it would go. Nothing. She waited. Still nothing.

Patience is everything, she reminded herself. She held herself utterly still and focused on her breath to allow time to pass easily. After a few more minutes, she noticed tiny shadows flitting against the light from the narrow opening.

Microdrones!

They sure don't make this easy, she thought. That explained the buzzing. She had some countermeasures built into her system, but it all depended on the model. She brought her eyes closer to the crack, while scanning for radio frequencies and electromagnetic fields that might power the drones. Nothing.

Without warning, one of them flew right through the crack.

Crap! As it buzzed around the room, she quickly closed the door. Hopefully its signal strength would be too weak to alert the network. She focused on the tiny flying robot as it flew erratically around the room.

What an inefficient pattern.

It looked like an older generation model, back when they bothered to disguise them as insects. Some kind of bee? She looked more closely. It looked very realistic, and it slowly dawned on her that she was looking at a living creature. Not a drone at all.

She sighed in disgust, both at the wasted effort and the creature itself. Screw it. She opened the door and walked out into a wooden structure hung with vines and flowers, her system immediately adjusting the light level for her. There was a strong floral scent in the air that her system didn't flag as toxic or narcotic; more of the disgusting insects flew and climbed over the purple blooms that were its source. Just beyond the end of the structure was even brighter light; she could see a field of green grasses and yellow flowers flanking a path of white stone.

Gravel. God, she hated gravel. Countless hours of practicing silent movement on all manner of surfaces flashed through her mind. While nightingale floors were the most difficult to navigate, gravel was the most irritating. With soft feet, there were always larger stones that would hit just under the arch of the foot, while with hard feet one had to move at a frustratingly slow pace. At least with a floor, there were options. You could hug the walls, swing from the ceiling or even belly slide. Gravel just sat there and tormented you.

Still, she was beginning to think that this 'Trial' was less about the techniques she had trained over the years since she joined Uncle’s flock, and more about wandering around the way an untrained person would.

She decided to be one notch less paranoid, and walked forth on the path, trying not to wince at the crunching noises she was making with each step. She stayed attentive to her surroundings, constantly scanning for movement or irregularities in the gently rolling grasses. Some small part of her begged to relax and enjoy the sun and breeze. They were unlike anything she had experienced Outside.

She squashed that part of her mind down and locked it up tight. She had a job to do.

Soon, she approached the edge of a forest. The path split, one option heading between the trees, the other running between the boundary of meadow and forest. Decisions, decisions.

The forest was right out. Those trees looked tall and soft, like they could fall over at any moment. Or all manner of nasty things could drop on her. She took the left branch of the path, glad that it transitioned to packed dirt with only patches of stone, careful to stay on the edge farthest from the trees and any potential ambushes, listening carefully for any hints of presences lurking in the woods.

Her caution was rewarded. A crackle of brush just inside the trees alerted her, and she was off and running along the path. She heard footsteps pursuing, heavy thumping at a slower pace than her own footfalls. Never look back unless they stop. She knew that there were no firearms Inside, but she bobbed and weaved every couple of seconds out of deeply ingrained habit. The footsteps were receding as she pulled away.

“Waaaaight,” a hoarse, breathless voice bellowed behind her.

The footsteps came to a stop, and she allowed herself a quick glance back. A huge humanoid creature with tree branches attached to its back and shoulders stood on the path, hands braced on knees as it tried to recover its breath. She could see no sign of a missile weapon.

She ran another fifty feet to be safe, and then stopped and turned. No point in running into another ambush fleeing an opponent who couldn’t catch her. She saw the creature watching her from small, close-spaced eyes set in a broad pig-like face. Its skin looked brown and crusty from a distance and she felt a little involuntary shudder pass through her body.

Seeing her stop, the creature held up one uneven hand.

“Sorry Runk scare!” it yelled across the distance. “Runk need help!”

Right, she thought. Huge ugly monster lurks at the edge of the woods springing out at travelers for help. Sounds legit.

She kept silent, not wanting to announce her presence to listening ears. The creature looked at her expectantly, and she rolled a hand for it to continue.

“Runk lost rock.” Runk announced.

Runk’s not very bright, is he?

The strange creature changed in her estimation from a threat to a mark.

“What do you need from me?” she called back as softly as she could.

Runk cupped his gnarled hand to a twig sticking out of the side of his head. “Eh?”

“I said, what do…you know what, screw it.” She walked back toward him, closing the distance by half. “I said,” she began again, “what do you need from me?”

Runk looked at her as if she were the dim one. “Find rock?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Runk give you other rocks.”

Really? This was just too stupid to be a setup. If she was on the street back home and a man wanted help finding something… well, she knew the dark path that led to. But this was the ‘Trial’; Runk was probably what he seemed. An idiot who had lost his rock. What she had to do was figure out the angle. This wasn’t some random encounter, it was part of something larger. Something designed. What would a normal person do?

A clannie would probably kick poor Runk’s ass. A serf would run away. An assie wouldn’t know what to do without a clannie to hold his hand. No, an assie would probably try to help; a lifetime of service would create strong habits after all. Too much ass kissing their clannie bosses. So, what would Magpie do?

Case the mark. Use Uncle’s three questions: Does he have valuable items? Does he have valuable information? Is he valuable to someone else?

Was it worth finding out the answers? His presence in the Trial told her the answer to that question.

She approached to what she estimated to be the closest safe distance. She noticed he was wearing torn cloth pants with pockets and a small hip pouch. His gnarled, wooden anatomy confused her sense of what he might be holding, but she thought he might have something in his right pocket, and the hip pouch looked full and heavy.

“Show me what you got, Runk.”

He looked at her with a vacant expression.

She tried again. “What’s in the pouch, my friend?” She put a pleasant smile on her face. Not too sleazy now, just the right amount of friendly. There.

Runk straightened up and his face lit up with a broad smile, answering her own.

“You help Runk?” he asked.

“Maybe, maybe not,” she replied. “I’ve got a lot of important things to do now. I’d love to help you, but…” she studied his expression, waiting for the moment disappointment bloomed. This is just too easy. This guy’s like a toddler or something. “…I’m really going to be in trouble if I’m late.” She put on a sad expression.

Runk was not discouraged. “It not take long. You nice and Runk give you lots of rocks.”

“Show me the rocks, honey.” Am I laying it on too thick? she wondered.

Runk opened the clasp on his pouch and began pulling out rocks. Smooth gray river rocks. Hunks of white and yellow quartz. Something that looked like a hunk of mud.

Looks like a ‘no’ to the valuable items. Though there’s always his special rock…

“Those are lovely, Runk. What did your special rock look like?”

His eyes widened, and he whispered, “Shiny. Blue.”

That sounded good to Magpie. “Okay, Runk. If I help you, I want you to walk ahead of me on my journey and scare away any dangerous creatures. I will hold onto your rock until we part ways. How does that sound?”

Another blank stare.

Take two.

“I find rock. You do what I say. Then you get rock.”

This time he nodded, causing the leafy branches on his head and neck to rustle.

“Now, where did you lose the rock?”

“It sunk in pond. Runk floats.”

“I can see how that might be an issue.”

Runk really was a strange creature; an unfortunate cross between a pig, a man and a tree. Dark mossy skin like thick bark covered his body. Small, leafy twigs jutted randomly from all over him, while several long branches with full foliage grew out of off his shoulders and curved over his head, shading him from the hot late-afternoon sun. He has a built in ghillie suit, she thought.

“What kind of creature are you?” she asked.

“Orusk,” he replied with a snort.

Now it was her turn to stare blankly.

He tried again. “Orc. Boar Tribe.”

She felt confused. Orcs didn’t usually sprout tree branches, as far as she knew. “What about the…” She gestured towards the leafy bower sprouting from his shoulders.

He took a moment to get her meaning, then wiggled his branches to and fro. “Runk is tree-touched. Tree spirits take away all his mad, give pretty branches.”

Well, that explained that.

She looked up at the trees. So far they hadn't shown signs of falling without warning.

“Take me to the pond, Runk. I’ll be right behind you.”

She followed him through the forest, dodging branches and brambles, until they came to a pool of water nestled up against a rock outcropping. A small stream trickled out of it, though nothing fed into it that she could see. Runk stopped and pointed at the water.

“Stone fell in there.”

Magpie considered the pool. It was no more than twenty feet across, with clear dark water and no visible bottom. She was confident in her swimming skills; Uncle had made sure there was no circumstance for which she was unprepared. She could swim decently and hold her breath for several minutes.

This is not real, she told herself. Even if you drown, it doesn’t matter.

Though she really didn’t want to die if she could at all avoid it.

Might as well take the plunge.

“Hey Runk, how big is your stone, anyway? And how will I know which one it is?”

“It not big,” he replied. “Maybe small hand? And it blue and sparkle.”

Sparkle sounds promising, she thought.

In a flash, she stripped off her tunic and dove in. The water was cold, and her hands and feet started to ache as soon as the initial shock of ice wore off.

I’ve only got a few minutes before this will be unbearable.

With that in mind, she took a breath and began to kick down. The cold water pressed into her ears and her system began to compensate for the low light as she swam down, searching for a bottom.

It’s not real, she repeated to herself.

Shafts of afternoon sun caught the upper few feet of the water, providing just enough ambient light to highlight the darkness all around. The walls of the pool were receding as she descended, which did nothing to help her growing claustrophobic anxiety. Not going to die, she reassured her beating heart.

Twenty seconds of descent served to compress her sense of time to an eternal present. Another ten seconds and she could hardly remember what it was like to be warm and dry, as if those sensations belonged to some parallel universe Magpie, not the current cold, dark and wet one. Her heart pounded in her ears, which were popping painfully with ever few feet of descent.

This sucks.

She was just about to turn back, when she saw something glimmering far below. She knew that this would be her one attempt; she couldn’t imagine being able to force herself to undergo this a second time, so she pushed herself to continue, kicking and twisting through the void.

That was when she felt a cold, long fingers wrap around her ankle and squeeze.

She kicked out wildly with her other leg and connected with something gelatinous that snapped and gave under her foot. Any air that had been in her lungs was long gone after her exhalation of surprise, and she turned in the water and struck for the diffuse light of the surface opening.

I really wish I had blood bugs, she thought in an oddly clear moment of reflection on her predicament.

She looked up to gauge the distance and was shocked. Not only was the surface impossibly far away but floating in the water above her was a dark diaphanous form, an inky blotch with trailing tendrils that flowed in all directions around a skeletal human form.

I’m never going to sleep again, she realized, as she floundered in the water.

She knew there was no way she was getting out of this without a death, but every instinct screamed for her to flee from the floating nightmare, so she kicked for the faint glow on the bottom once more.

It had only been a minute or so since she started her dive, but her oxygen reserves were being rapidly depleted by the combination of activity and fear. At least I can see if that stupid rock was worth it. Her lungs were burning and the urge to breathe was powerful.

It brought back memories of the enclosed tub where she had learned to hold her breath. It had a top that could slide shut, enclosing her in utter liquid darkness for a set duration, a little longer every day. When the lid opened, her trainer expected her to slide silently from the water and perform a mental or physical task, with no dramatic breathing or other display of weakness. Of all the training she had done under Uncle’s discerning gaze it was the one that came closest to breaking her, to exiling her from the flock. She could still vividly remember the time when he had explained the consequences for failure to complete the training.

The memory of Uncle’s displeasure gave her a new burst of energy. Maybe she could kick off the bottom and get past it? Then another creature swooped just behind her, leaving a trail of inky bubbles in its wake.

They’re just too fast, she thought.

The blue glow from the bottom was close now, close enough that she could resolve it into a large faceted gemstone. With one last push, she grabbed it, even as a curtain of darkness was descending over her vision. She picked it from the rocky bottom of the watery crevasse and pulled it into her chest.

I wonder if I can bring things with me when I die? was her last thought before the darkness won.

Waking was a strange process. First, she felt cold, and then felt the hard presence of a faceted rock in her hands, which were clasped over her heart. I guess you can take it with you, she thought. Then she opened her eyes.

Looking down at her from only feet away was a distorted skull encased in dark translucent jelly. The eyes moved within the sockets, squirmed even, as if dark leeches had taken residence. She screamed and closed her eyes.

Just finish dying already! Please, please, please let this be over before it starts to eat me.

She flinched and curled into the tightest ball she could. She felt a touch on her bare arm, a gentle, slimy caress and she screamed again.

Uncle would not be proud, she thought.

But nothing in her training had prepared her for gelatinous skeleton monsters attacking her in dark frigid water at the bottom of hundred-foot crevasses. She was sure Uncle would have trained her for this if he had thought of it though.

Another thought occurred to her. Did I just scream? Shortly followed by… Am I breathing?

She was breathing.

Huh. That’s different. The frigid water pressed around her body, but her breathing felt normal. No water up her nose either, which was nice. Still waiting to be eaten alive though. She cracked open an eye, hardly daring to look. Now, several of the horrible skeleton things floated passively in the dark waters, the wispy tendrils of their inky flesh waving gently in the unseen currents, wriggling eyes surveying her.

She also noticed a faint blue glow surrounding her, from the stone she was holding, but also emanating from the skin of her hands and arms. She looked down at the stone to see a spiderweb of glowing particles moving out from it, covering her chest and arms and spreading the subtle glow. The gem was noticeably smaller.

She suppressed the urge to panic. Even if the effects of the stone stopped when it was gone, she still had a minute or two to escape the situation. In the last few moments, two more of the jellied skeletons had drifted to the scene, but none were making a move to attack. She crouched, preparing to kick from the rocks below and make an attempt to break out, and the drifting assembly moved in concert, swirling into a barrier of bones and inky flesh above her.

“What do you want?” she cried in frustration, her escape thwarted. The words felt normal leaving her mouth but came to her ears as a distorted underwater burble. Oddly, no bubbles came out as she spoke.

A hissing noise filled the waters in reply, a drawn-out bubbling sibilant, followed by a breathy aspiration.

“Ssssssss aaaaaaaah,”

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any creepier. Magpie’s level of horror at the unfolding scenario had maxed out some time ago, and now she felt an almost surreal detachment.

“I need to get back to the surface!” she pleaded.

“Nnnnnnnnnn,” came the humming reply.

“I’ll take it that’s a no?”

She waved the hand holding the stone at them in frustration and the closest creatures contracted their wispy flesh filaments around themselves.

“Don’t like the stone, huh?”

With a burst of movement, she lunged in the opposite direction, plunging the hand holding the stone directly into cold gelatinous flesh. A burst of bright blue light illuminated the skeletal figure from within as the flesh surrounding her hand dissolved and receded from the stone like plastic wrap from a flame, sending a burst of hissing bubbles toward the surface. The injured creature pulled its remaining flesh together in a contraction that sent it flying away from her through the water. She felt the stone shrink in her hand; it was now half the size it had been when she first picked it up.

She knew what she had to do.

“Here I come, boys!” she yelled, and pushed off from the bottom with the stone held above her head, like some ancient superhero. The creatures wriggled and darted to avoid the glowing gem, and she shot up through the water like a glowing blue torpedo, kicking furiously to dislodge their grasping attempts at her unprotected legs.

About halfway to the surface, she was forced to turn and wave the stone wildly at the trailing tendrils that had wrapped around her ankles and stopped her progress. She could see dozens of the floating skeletons in the waters below her, working their inky flesh through the water to propel themselves like a school of horrible jellyfish.

For the next minute she swung the rapidly shrinking stone to drive them back repeatedly, gaining a few precious feet each time. Just as the stone dissolved completely, she reached the first rays of light percolating through the waters. The glow on her body was lost in the light from the surface, and she began to feel drops of water entering her mouth and nose.

With one final push, she broke the surface of the ‘pond’ and sucked in a huge breath of forest air. A quick glance at the waters near her feet showed only clear water, with not a hint of the inhabitants of the dark.

Well, that goes in my top ten craptastic experiences, she thought. She pulled herself over to the edge, where Runk was waiting expectantly.

“Rock?” he inquired.

Magpie had to let him down gently. “Sorry Runk, I couldn’t find it. The water was just too deep.”She really didn’t feel like explaining the horrid details. “Hey, how did your rock end up in there, anyway?” she said as she pulled herself from the water.

“Runk too sad to talk about it.” Immediately forgetting his previous statement, he continued, “Runk likes to float on the water. Special rock fell out of pocket.”

He broke into tears, weeping with extravagant moans and inhalations, his leaves rustling with each heaving sob. Magpie felt embarrassed by the display.

“So, anyway,” she tried to squeeze in, “I need to get going now. Would you rather come with me, or give me some of your other rocks?” She wasn’t ready to give up on Runk just yet. After all, his special rock really had been pretty special.

Runk turned his bleary eyes to her. “You want rocks? I take you to good rock place.” He seemed completely immune to the notion of her own fictional urgency. Brightening, he went on, “Maybe find new special rock for Runk! Come, follow!”

With that, he turned and disappeared into the trees, leaving Magpie no time to decide her next course of action. Guess I’ll follow him. At least he’ll flush out any nasty creatures. Hope the trees don’t fall.

***

As it turned out, Runk was no good at flushing out nasty creatures. Something about his tree-touched nature made predatory animals ignore him as threat or food, while his movements through the woods attracted their attention to the morsel trailing behind him.

First there was the big cat-thing lurking in the branches of a large tree Runk was passing under, which Magpie noticed, thanks to her system’s enhancement of her ability to detect subtle movement and outlines. She watched as it ignored the large tree-orc, its eyes already fixed upon her as a future meal.

She avoided a confrontation by the simple expedient of circling around the tree holding the cat-thing. It was much bigger than the cats she had seen on the streets and abandoned buildings of her home, but not so big she was afraid to confront it on the ground if it decided to follow her. After that encounter, she armed herself with a decent stick to fend off any opponents of the tooth and claw variety.

Magpie was very well trained in unarmed combat, as well as knives, hand guns, and staff. She was passably familiar with most other weapon formats; part of her training was in improvised weapons, so she could pick up just about anything and hold her own. Her absolute favorite was a modified chigiriki Uncle had designed for her, a hollow pipe with a weighted chain passing through the center that could emerge from either end. It was a complicated weapon; practicing with the chains whirling and flowing around her body as she leapt and spun took her to a place of pure focus and flow unlike any other activity.

But a stick would do for now.

The next attack took place as they were halfway up a steep forested hillside. Runk didn’t seem to believe in following paths, or the terrain, or anything other than going into a straight line until he encountered something impassable. Magpie was pulling herself up a particularly steep area by going from tree to tree when the wolf leapt from the slope above her. She heard it inhale sharply just before it sprang upon her and she swung around the small tree to which she clung before she was consciously aware of the danger.

Luckily for her, the wolf got more tree than human, though its claws tore off a strip of skin on the arm still holding the narrow trunk. She brought her stick around the other side of the tree and hit the wolf’s hindquarters as hard as she could at the bad angle, causing it to yelp and flinch away. It was a mangy, dank smelling thing, about the size of the big dogs she was familiar with from her training, so after the initial surprise she handled it easily, hitting and poking it in its sensitive areas every time it gathered itself for another lunge, until it gave up and fled down the hill.

“Never just one of those,” observed Runk, who had watched the fight from his perch up the hill with a placid expression.

Magpie snorted. “Thanks for the tip, dude. Feel free to help next time.”

Runk looked at her calmly. “Trees don’t like Runk to fight. That’s why they took his mad.”

“I hope you get termites,” she replied.

***

Night fell quickly under the dense canopy, bringing with it a host of unfamiliar sounds and a sense of heighted danger for Magpie. Not long after the sun set, Runk set his feet and stopped abruptly, causing Magpie to freeze and scan the area for enemies. Eventually, she picked up a low buzzing rasp that turned out to be Runk snoring. Guess it’s another side-effect of being tree touched, she thought.

Upon approach, she saw roots extending into the soil from his calves and ankles. It was both creepy and inconvenient, she decided. What was she going to do all night?

She had a feeling that the local wildlife would be out for her blood; just like the neighborhood where she grew up, the most dangerous predators were nocturnal. She took a moment to search through Runk’s pouch and pockets and took several stones that might be useful for her defense; two smooth river rocks for throwing and an angular piece of slate to sharpen a stick or two. After gathering some more materials, she scampered into the branches of a tree that topped a ridge near Runk’s resting place.

She settled in for a long night of alternating between watching the ground for threats and hacking at the end of the sticks she had gathered to sharpen. By the time the first moon rose high enough to cast its light on her perch, she had made two crude spears to go with the staff she had used before. The moonlight brought with it her first visitors as well, when several gliding forms lit upon her tree in the branches above her.

She got a good look at them when one of them swung around to the bottom of a tree limb that projected at a forty-five-degree angle to her own. It hung upside down from hook-like claws on the fold of its gray wings, supplemented by many long, segmented legs. She heard little ticking noises as it clambered along the branch, the sound of its many claws digging into the bark of the tree, and she realized that the night air was full of the sound, in her tree and those nearby. When it was halfway along the branch, it turned its head and looked at her with four large dull black eyes; she could see a short spike where its mouth might plausibly go, and as she watched, a small drop of fluid formed on the end of the spike and dropped to the forest floor.

Oh god, it’s looking at me and drooling. This is bad.

Suddenly, her secure position up in the tree felt more like an invitation to dine. A soft fluttering sound, just over the threshold of her augmented hearing was her only warning of the first attack, and she flattened herself to the branch to avoid another of the gliding creatures at the last moment. Its trailing legs skimmed over her back as it narrowly missed grappling her, and she felt an odd pressure through the back of her tunic as the creature looped around below her, almost as if tethered to her branch. Then she saw the thin line of webbing connected to its abdomen and realized what was happening.

Inside, we need to have a talk about the creepy shit you keep throwing my way. Giant flying spider bats? Really?

While she was internally grumbling, she was in motion. It would do her no good to stay in place dodging the things if it ended with her tied onto the branch by their webs. At least if she was on the ground she had mobility and leverage. She was thirty feet above the forest floor, too high up to jump safely, so she scrambled toward the trunk, feeling a light resistance from the single strand of webbing as it stretched and snapped. The ticking noises were all around her now; the creatures were converging on her location.

She abandoned all caution and lunged for the trunk, allowing herself to fall and slide from branch to branch and crash into the ground in a mostly uncontrolled descent. Thankfully, the area under the tree was soft from generations of pine needles, so she was able to half roll as her legs struck and gain her feet without major injury. Any minor injuries would have to wait until she was no longer on the menu.

Dodging and weaving with a sharpened stick in each hand she ran without any goal other than escape from the spider bats which swooped down at her from all angles. Her body was covered with thick strands of sticky silk, and though it currently did little to hamper her movements, she could tell that it was only a matter of time.

She began to move the sticks in a swirling redonda, another of her favorite fighting styles, holding her hands higher than she normally would, spinning and intercepting the falling webs. As she did, she took the measure of her enemies.

The creatures were not particularly agile in the air, more gliders than fliers. She noticed that they preferred to land on a tree trunk and climb to regain height after dive-bombing her, though she could also hear heavy flapping sounds from those that chose to gain height in the air. A dozen or so of the things stalked her from the air and the trees. They kept pace with her easily as she wove through the woods in constant motion to avoid further entanglement.

Choosing her moment, she dove into a roll, tucked her sticks, and came up throwing one of Runk’s polished river stones. It struck her target on its wing membrane and tore through, leaving a hole in what she now realized was finely woven silk spread between two branching legs. The spider bat veered off to the side and clasped onto a tree trunk just above the ground, already orienting itself to climb back into the canopy. Before it could ascend Magpie was on it, smashing its head and body and knocking it to the forest floor.

Grounded, the creature was not so intimidating; its body was half the size of her own and its legs and ‘wings’ thrashed in disarray as it tried to right itself. She cartwheeled over it and planted both sticks in its abdomen as she passed, her weight resting on the sticks just long enough to drive the sharpened points through its exoskeleton before ripping out in a spray of ichor as she came back to her feet.

That’s one down, she thought. They’re not so tough on the ground.

Her sticks were becoming unwieldy from a combination of webbing and spider bat juices, and she was pretty sure one had cracked during her acrobatic stabbing maneuver, so she kicked off a tree trunk to reverse her momentum and threw the broken stick at another strafing flyer, successfully fouling its wing and bringing it down somewhere out of her sight.

I need a clearing. And another stick.

Luckily, there was no shortage of sticks on the forest floor, and she fell into a rhythm, running, dodging, and rolling to pick up and throw any stick she could find. After a minute, the battle had turned into an active stand-off. Her thrown sticks could disrupt the spider bats’ fragile woven wings, but she didn’t have time to follow up before they climbed back into the trees to repair them.

It’s only a matter of time before I screw up, she thought.

Naturally, it was at the moment of her thought that she twisted an ankle on the uneven forest floor and rolled herself into a tree trunk. The impact came halfway through the motion, and she ended up sprawled on her upper back and neck with her legs over her head, trapped against the tree. In the split-second of her disorientation she was tagged by several sticky strands, and as she tried to gain her feet, she found herself attached to the trunk by her upraised legs.

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She cried out in anger and frustration with herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Lose focus, lose freedom.

Uncle had been drilling that into her head since he took her off the streets at the age of eight. Now she understood why he wanted her on the Inside. All the training runs and jobs in the world couldn’t have challenged her abilities like fighting these stupid spider bats in a dark forest.

More strands fell around her as she jerked herself up at the waist and ripped the sticky silk off her legs, pushing off with one foot into a tucked backward roll. She reached her feet and saw a spider bat on a trajectory to grab her. Before she could react, a huge form swooped down from above and grabbed it out of the air, crushing the frail creature in one enormous talon and swooping back up. She registered white and gray feathers and a wing span that barely fit among the trees before it disappeared from sight.

Looks like the big guys have arrived.

She had figured it was only a matter of time before larger creatures were drawn in by the commotion. Thankfully it was something that ate spider bats and not her. At least not yet.

The other spider bats vanished into the canopy, and she bolted for an area of the forest with densely packed trees just ahead, which she thought might protect her from the larger airborne predator. No sooner had she reached the shelter when she heard a screeching wail from somewhere in front of her, and then another off to her right. Yet another type of creature coming to see what all the fuss was.

She froze, listening for movement in the now silent woods. Sweat trickled down her back, stinging the many scrapes and abrasions covering her skin from her various tumbles. She forced her heart to slow and her breath to deepen, feeling a wave of dizziness before her body adapted to the new state. If the creatures hunted by sight and sound, she might be able to survive.

Her hearing expanded outward. About one hundred meters behind her, she could hear the little ticks of a spider bat’s claws as it changed its position. From the front and right, where the wailing sounds had originated, she heard the rustling of tree branches and an occasional thud or light scraping sound. Whatever they are, they’re moving through the trees. Swinging from branch to branch?

Another wail pierced the night, now about twenty meters in front of her. The answering screech came from behind her and to the right. Still just two. They move fast. She repressed the urge to break for it, choosing instead to silently crouch within the light undergrowth.

Never thought I’d miss the bushes from earlier. Eyes down, break the silhouette. Utterly still. Hold. Hope they don’t smell me.

She held her breath and listened, keeping her eyes glued to the forest floor. Eyes were dangerous. Collected is reflected, was another of Uncle’s sayings. If she could see, her eyes were reflecting light. On the Outside, she had special lenses that solved the issue, but those were only for real jobs; Uncle would never allow her such a prop for training.

The sounds of the approaching creature grew more distinct. She could hear as it grappled from tree to tree, moving within the lower branches about fifteen feet from the ground. As it passed her, just to the left and above her location, she could hear its breath, and fought the temptation to catch a glance. From the amount of noise and the rustling of the branches, she thought it was about the size of a large person. After another minute, and one more wailing exchange with its companion, it was well behind her. She allowed herself to breath again.

The rest of the night was an exercise in stealth and patience. She moved as quietly and slowly as she could, searching out new weapons and looking for a hiding spot. It was ironic, she reflected, that the only place she felt safe at the moment was the ground. At the beginning of the long night she had anticipated that there might be more wolves, or something similar anyway. Now she knew that every level of the forest had its own threats.

Eventually, she settled on a stand of closely spaced saplings that had grown up in a tiny clearing created by the fall of several enormous trees. The roots of the fallen giants had brought the earth up into several walls taller than her as they fell, and the dense undergrowth served as a decent shelter. She remained fully alert until the sun rose, modulating her cortisol and orexin levels as needed.

With the new dawn came the challenge of finding her way back to Runk. Even with her highly trained situational awareness and special skills, it had been a frantic and stressful time, and it took her over an hour to find her way to the scene of the previous night’s struggles. She finally found him as he was pulling his roots from the soil and stretching his arms above his head.

“Not good light here,” he said as she approached. “Feel sleepy.”

Magpie repressed the urge to beat him with her newest staff. Biting back her irritation, she asked, “Are we close to the rock place?”

“Just little hills now.”

Three arduous hours of climbing later, the forest was long behind them. They were climbing through fields of loose shifting rock and boulders, punctuated by steep rock slopes and cliffs. Magpie could only marvel at Runk’s inherent stability. While she had to watch every step to avoid loose rocks and dangerously slipping gravel, he somehow walked straight up the hill, oblivious to the treacherous materials underfoot. When confronted by a near vertical surface, he would turn just a bit and traverse at an angle, somehow finding a footing for his bulky body in places she was forced to climb with her hands and toes.

Must be a tree thing, she thought.

“Almost there,” he announced placidly. “Gets breezy.”

Magpie had traveled with Runk long enough to automatically distrust his opinions of such things, or at least to expect vast understatements. Sure enough, as they crested the next ridge, she began to hear a sustained moaning noise from just ahead of them. The moaning became a howling as they reached the top edge of a narrow canyon cutting deep through the hills.

She could see that the canyon was acting as a giant collection funnel for the prevailing breeze, forcing it through pillars of curved and twisted rock. Runk walked over the edge without hesitation and fell through the air. Magpie watched agape, as he was blown down the canyon, taken by the wind as he fell. He struck several of the stone formations during his uncontrolled diagonal fall and left her line of sight before he landed. If he landed. For all she knew, he was still blowing down the canyon.

“Huh.”

Upon further examination, Magpie determined that the walls of the canyon bowed out beneath the rim where she stood. She could see several places on the other side where the top edge had collapsed into the depths, creating a more vertical descent, but didn’t see any such areas on her side. The canyon looked to be about a hundred feet deep, and about thirty to fifty feet wide at the top.

While she was a great climber, able to scale almost anything given time and tools, her experience in natural settings was quite small. Even with little experience, she could guess that the rock walls were not stable, and not trustworthy, even if they had been vertical. Could she survive what Runk had done?

Throwing a variety of stones into the windy fissure gave her system some data to work with. The wind did make the fall less dangerous, theoretically, mostly due to changing the angle of her velocity; it would be akin to falling onto a very steep hillside. A steep hillside with stone pillars on it. Assuming she didn’t hit pillars on the way down or blow into the walls.

She was confident in her ability to fall and roll onto hard surfaces; her training had taken her up to twenty-foot drops, and Uncle insisted she would be able to manage even greater heights with practice. The biggest danger was loss of control. She was facile with a variety of wing suits and gliders, mostly from simulations and trips between rooftops, though Uncle had once arranged for her to fly from a high-altitude balloon. The problem here was that she had nothing even close to a wing suit.

Should have caught some of those spider-bats, I guess.

After consideration, she decided that this was a legitimate, though risky option. It was her setting, more than anything else that helped her decide to make the attempt. After all, the Trial was practically begging her to follow Runk, and the worst that could happen was that she die temporarily.

Uncle will kill me for real if I die over something so dumb though.

Pushing thoughts of possible consequences from her mind, she mapped out possible routes, throwing handfuls of grit and pebbles to follow the path of the wind from various locations along the rim. After another thirty minutes of experimentation, she backed away from the side.

Here goes nothing!

She ran toward the edge as fast as she could, planted one last foot, and soared out over the narrow canyon, legs together and arms spread, twisting in the air to angle her body lengthwise. For one glorious, timeless moment she hung in the air, the sun on her back and the wind in her ears. Then she fell.

The wind took her after the first twenty feet, pressing on her back and squeezing her against the fall, then squirting her forward with a roaring rumble. She used every ounce of strength and experience to remain angled down the canyon, allowing her arms to go back past her shoulders. She knew intellectually that she was nowhere near terminal velocity, but the close canyon walls made her feel like she had never fallen faster as they blurred by, and the first set of pillars was past before she knew it. Her eyes burned and blurred as her speed increased, more pillars and arches flashing past her. Almost there! The ground beneath her approached; through her watering eyes, she noticed it was flat, a floor with large square tiles.

Suddenly she was hit by a powerful warm updraft. She had a split second to wonder where it could possibly be coming from and then she hit and tucked and rolled. And rolled. And rolled some more, losing skin as she tumbled along the hard, warm sandstone.

And then she was still, though her head was still spinning. She opened her eye; the walls and a small sliver of sky spun around her. Runk’s grotesque leafy face appeared above her, framed in her spinning vision.

“Almost there,” he said, looking down at her with a placid expression. In reply, she threw up on his feet.

While recovering from her dizziness, Magpie took a few moments to enjoy how fast her body healed on the Inside and observe her surroundings. The bloody scrapes and abrasions from her fall were shrinking by the minute. She inspected the flat expanse of floor lining the bottom of this end of the canyon; it was dotted with thousands of one-inch diameter holes, each furnishing a strong warm draft. She realized that this was the source of the updraft she had felt just before impact. It hadn’t been enough to make much of a difference for her descent, but if she had used a wingsuit or small glider, it could have allowed a more graceful landing.

It’s got to be on purpose, she thought, wondering what type of people would be willing to regularly take the harrowing plunge through the windy fissure. Whoever they were, they sure put a lot of effort into the landing area.

The canyon narrowed further and turned into a cave just a few feet from where she had come to a rest. Soon, she and Runk headed into the dark space, and then up a narrow stair that branched off from the main passage. The steps were very worn and broken in places, but Magpie could tell they had once been even and well-constructed. After ascending steeply for twenty feet, they began to spiral up through a narrow column in the rock.

I’m going to be so pissed if this just comes out on the other side of the canyon, she thought.

She kept her hand on the wall of the spiral staircase as they ascended, and the dim light faded into utter darkness. After another few turns, light began to return, and soon they emerged in a well-lit chamber with narrow windows on one side overlooking a grassy plain dotted with clumps of trees.

She would have assumed it was a watch tower of sorts, if it weren’t for the massive sculpture consuming the center of the room. Four animals carved of black stone flowed around each other and up to the ceiling, where they met a cluster of descending carved roots. Or were they tentacles? Either way, the statue gave her an uneasy feeling, despite the elegance of its composition.

Runk gestured towards the sculpture.

“Rocks are on that.” He walked around to the opposite side and began to pry at something with his gnarled hands. “Rocks are stuck,” he added.

Magpie moved to join him and saw that three of the animals had colorful fist-sized gems integrated into their forms. A lizard held a ruby in its front claw, an eagle held a diamond in its beak, and an oddly stretched goat had an emerald between its horns, where Runk was busy trying to extract it. Moving around further, she saw a long fish with an empty cavity in its mouth. She also saw a pile of crushed bones lying on the floor.

“Umm, Runk… how did you get the blue stone before?” she asked.

“Blue rock was on floor.” he replied. “Runk found it before trees took away his mad. Was scouting for tribe.”

“Maybe you should stop-,” she began to say, as he got the stone wiggling. Before she could continue her thought, there was a grinding noise and the stone tentacles above the statue began to descend, uncoiling and writhing in slow motion.

“Watch out!” she cried. Runk pulled on the stone fruitlessly one last time and looked over at her as the tentacles continued their descent, gaining speed and vitality in their movements.

“Above you!” she cried in exasperation. He continued to look at her for several seconds, then a look of comprehension crossed his face and he looked up at the slowly writhing stone tentacles that were less than a foot from his shoulder branches.

“This new,” he said, craning his neck. “Eye and mou—"

Magpie never found out what he was going to say. The tentacles descended to the floor, covering Runk and the statue in one great writhing heave. The room shook from the impact, and she heard unpleasant cracking and crunching sounds from within the mass of heaving stone.

After a moment, a green fluid began to seep around the edges of the tentacles and Magpie looked away, sickened by the sight. Her back pressed up against the wall, she sidled toward the door, forcing her eyes back to the site of Runk’s demise. She was prepared to bolt if the tentacles showed any signs of coming for her, though so far they had stayed tightly clumped around the sculpture in the center of the room.

As she approached the exit, she realized that the door had been sealed off while her attention was on the tentacles and Runk, a stone slab dropping neatly down two grooves set back in the doorway. She kicked herself for failing to notice them on the way in.

While she was discovering this, the tentacles had stilled somewhat, which gave her hope that the mechanism of the trap would eventually reset. She decided to wait, as the only other option was exploring the windows for egress, and she had no wish to re-activate the trap with further movement.

This explains the blue stone, she thought. The previous thief must have gotten it loose before being crushed. Then Runk found it lying on the floor and took it without activating anything. Despite Runk’s horrible death, she hadn’t given up on obtaining one or more of the remaining gems, though the magical nature of the stone tentacles coming to life gave her pause. She understood mechanical and technological traps very well; they had been a big part of her training for years. Magical traps were an unknown, of course, but still…

A trap’s a trap. Condition and effect.

The condition was obviously any attempt to remove a gemstone. The effect was the descent of the crushing tentacles. Traps were only powerful if you were ignorant of one or both. They were vulnerable to circumvention once you understood them. She decided to treat the magical nature of the trap as technology.

Motion or proximity detector on the stone. Not easily triggered, so it doesn’t need a simple deactivation method either.

If the trap was sudden, she would expect that there was an easy way to turn it off.

Uncle had taught her to always think of the people who used the security, not the security itself. When people had lived here, people used this chamber. Somebody probably cleaned the chamber. Either they had something like a system code that allowed the trap to identify intruders, or they had to make the trap less sensitive so that it didn’t crush the janitor. Since Runk had tugged on the stone for a while before anything happened, she assumed that it was the latter.

The only other possibility was that age and wear had made the trap less effective, which was an important consideration. If that was the case, she would need to be prepared for its next activation to be quite a bit quicker.

As she sat and pondered, the tentacles began to withdraw back to the ceiling, leaving a dripping smear of Runk’s fluids on the floor and statue. Runk’s body was nowhere to be seen, other than a single dripping leafy branch protruding from the clustered tentacles, and she assumed that it had been brought up to the ceiling, purposefully or by accident she couldn’t guess.

That the trap reset itself was expected but important information nonetheless. Less expected was that the slab blocking the door did not move. Guess it’s time to inspect the windows.

The windows were a fine way to exit the room, if you didn’t mind a sixty-foot drop. The wall below the opening was smooth for about a foot, then ended, curving sharply under and out of sight. Above the window was another ten feet of smooth stone. The ground below the window was full of boulders- there would be no rolling out of that fall.

It was a good trap, she decided, as long as the victim had no rope or other climbing tools. She regretted leaving her staff back at the canyon’s edge for a moment, but pushed the thought aside. There was no way she could have brought it. Although, she could have thrown it in.

Shit. That would have worked, too.

She walked over to the pile of old bone fragments and kicked at them. They were held together by some old cloth or leather.

Skin, said a little voice in the back of her mind, a crushed body sucked dry and left to time.

She ignored her thought with a shudder and put herself into a dispassionate analytical state she had mastered over the years, partly through her time living on the streets of the city, partly with the help of her system. The mindset allowed her to avoid inconvenient feelings such as disgust and remorse and focus on the pragmatic necessities of survival. Uncle didn’t like it when she ‘went cold’.

“You need to stay human to understand people, to fool people, to out-think people,” he would say. “Our power comes from feeling what they feel, understanding their needs and desires. I’m not training you to be a machine; I’m training you to be a better human. Feel what you feel and learn to use it.”

Good advice, she was sure. But nothing beat the comfort of the cold, and she was pretty sure that whatever she was up against here wasn’t human anyway, not anymore, if ever. After all, she was essentially in the mind of a vast machine, pitting her wits against an intelligence that had as much in common with the man on the street as she did with a cockroach. She glanced up at the fluid still dripping from between the nestling tentacles. Speaking of cockroaches… She had actually allowed herself to feel bad for Runk, allowed an attachment to a piece of code, a meaningless figment. Typical human weakness, she observed.

Kneeling, she ripped apart the bundle of bony fragments with both hands, searching for any tools or items that may have been on the body as it was crushed. She was hoping for a small knife, or other utensil, but what she found was a bent and tarnished silver ring and a teardrop shaped pendant of polished black glass. The ring fit on her index finger, and she tucked the pendant in the pocket of her tunic, having no other way to secure it. The bones themselves were brittle splinters, no good for anything. Except going under fingernails, her cold voice commented.

Leaving the old body, she turned her attention to the only other possible source of tools in the room.

What was left of Runk was trapped well above her head; the ceiling was a good fifteen feet up, and the tentacles descended to meet the sculpture a few feet below that. She touched the sculpture tentatively, ready to roll to the farthest corner of the room at the first sign of tentacular activity. Nothing happened, so she set about probing the threshold of activation for the trap, gradually applying more force to different parts of the statue while carefully avoiding the gemstones. As she suspected, the main body of the sculpture was completely safe to handle, and even climb.

Next, she scaled up the fish-eel thing, following its winding form around the other animals, until she was close enough to touch the tentacles. She struck one firmly with the palm of her hand and immediately vaulted off the top of the statue, dropping and rolling to the floor to break her fall. The dramatic action was meaningless, as the tentacles remained inert, though she noted that the tentacle itself had been warmer than the rest of the statue.

She repeated the action, this time pulling on Runk’s branch as it stuck out from a small gap, gently at first, and then with increasing violence as she tried to break it from the stone’s grip. All that she managed was to strip some of the leaves; the branch itself was too flexible to break, and too tough to tear. So much for that idea. She hadn’t been sure what she would use the stick for, but she figured having a tool of any sort would create more options. With that notion failing to pan out, she dropped to the floor and inspected the gemstones.

At this point, she had two choices, wait, or try to get a gem. While she had virtually infinite patience in her current cold state, she couldn’t see much utility in waiting. If the door didn’t raise when the rest of the trap reset, it was either broken or designed to hold an intruder prisoner. Either way, it was unlikely to reset itself while she waited.

The gemstones were held by the physical structure of the stone settings. It would be simplicity itself to remove them with a hammer and chisel. She wondered briefly how the sculptor had gotten the gems into their positions, but decided it wasn’t a helpful chain of thought, since magic could be involved. Magic is just another word for cheating, she decided.

She pondered which stone to steal. The emerald was already loose, but even Runk’s considerable strength had not pulled it out at the end. The ruby wasn’t even a possibility; it was caged in the lizard’s talons and would require serious tools to remove. That left the diamond, which was pinned in the eagle’s beak. She thought that sufficient lateral force could knock it loose, though its position as the highest stone on the pillar made that tricky. She planned out her movements, visualizing them over and over for different possibilities. Finally, she enacted her plan.

 ***

A few minutes later, Magpie was hanging from the outer edge of the window opening, hoping that the wind would continue to behave for just another minute or two. One swift heel kick was all that was needed to send the diamond flying across the chamber. She had hung from Runk’s branch with one arm and a more tenuous finger-hold on a crevice between two tentacles with the other.

The contact with the tentacles was the key to her plan- any sudden movement on their part would translate into movement on her part; the hand was braced as much to push away as to pull herself up. And it was a good thing she had set herself for that possibility. As soon as she swung her foot up and completed the precision strike, the tentacles lashed out, pushing her across the room as they descended to pool around the sculpture. Her swinging movement turned into a twisting backflip that took her to the edge of the chamber, where she had landed perfectly in a three-point crouch. Perfect.

Less ideal was the further behavior of the trap. Missing a victim, the tentacles exploded out from the center, sweeping around the room in a whirlpool of stone. Magpie had only a split second to dive for the window, barely grasping the sill with her finger tips to avoid the fatal fall below. Now she hung, body dangling over the void, feet kicking to maintain her balance against the gusts of wind flowing up from the valley below.

Not a comfortable situation, but not unfamiliar either.

She had trained for exactly this situation for years. Except for the questing tentacles that regularly came out the window, brushing the edges in their blind quest for flesh. That was new.

She moved her hands to the farthest corner, where at least a couple fingers were protected, and settled in to wait it out while listening to the rumbling and grinding sounds from within the chamber for any signs of cessation.

In ideal circumstances, switching hands every fifteen seconds to avoid lactic acid build up, she could maintain a fingertip hold for five minutes. With the wind twisting her dangling body and the need to cram her fingers into the corner she reached a breaking point in less than two. Tentacles or not, she had to pull herself up, or she would lose the necessary strength for the maneuver.

She waited just a few more seconds for a tentacle to finish probing the window and then swung her body up, getting her chest over the sill to look into the room. She needed to understand this trap if she hoped to survive, so she forced her mind into the same place of focused flow she used when fighting multiple opponents.

Just like people, the tentacles couldn’t pass through each other. There were at least ten of them sweeping the room, each around twenty feet long, writhing and twisting around each other with no discernible pattern. They didn’t react to her appearance in the window, which gave her hope; a blind search, however thorough and unpredictable, was much better than being targeted by sight or sound. In a split second she had scanned the room for dead spots, untouched shadows in the tentacle's range of movement. The corners of the roughly square chamber were her best hope, but she could tell that they would not save her. At least not the lower ones.

She made her decision and flowed into the sweep of a tentacle moving across the room. The safest places would be where a tentacle had just been. She had to fling her body sideways to stay in line with her chosen guide through the maelstrom twice to avoid tentacles crossing over and under, always keeping the corner of her eye on the space above her in case of attack from above. The arrangement of the thick trunks where the tentacles emerged from the ceiling kept them from getting too tricky, so she could just keep pace.

She made it to the corner of the room and leapt, left foot to wall, right foot to adjoining wall, pushing off and catching the cornered walls with her palms flat and bouncing her way to the top of the room. It was a tricky move to execute under pressure, but her training carried her up and into the corner, to the truly difficult part of her plan.

Staying there.

Here she was helped by the irregular texture of the sandstone walls- the corner wasn’t perfectly squared and had just enough texture for her to push on with all four limbs. ‘Cornering up’, was Uncle’s term for it, and it was an important move she had practiced for the last six months or so. Upper corners of tall rooms were dead spots, typically poorly lit and unobserved. Maintaining the position took all of her strength and stamina, but mentally she could relax a bit; the tentacles had yet to explore any of the upper corners of the room as far as she could tell.

She took a moment to survey the room, noting the diamond, which had been batted into the next corner over, and poor Runk’s body, which was being tossed around the room and battered. Amazingly, it was still mostly in one piece, though almost every surface below her was covered by his green blood, and leaves were strewn across the chamber. Her legs trembled with effort, and her palms and feet were sweating and bleeding. She gave thanks that the surface was rough sandstone, and not a surface like granite or metal, or she would be sliding down from the corner into the tentacle blender.

At long last, after she had passed the point of physical endurance and was holding herself with pure grit, the tentacle maelstrom subsided and gradually withdrew. She judged that the whole ordeal, from kicking the diamond to the trap’s reset, had lasted for about five minutes. The longest five minutes she had experienced in some time. She dropped down to the floor and collapsed, beyond caring about further threats.

After ten minutes of pure, glorious rest, she forced herself to her feet. She was still trapped in the room, after all, and anxious to see what magic the diamond might provide. The elemental symbolism had not been lost on her, heavy handed as it was, and she had some hope that the diamond might hold the key to escape. The sapphire had allowed her to breathe water and kept the gelatinous water skeletons at bay (some small part of her wanted to call them skelly-fish, but the name was far too trivial for such horrid creatures).

She went to pick up the diamond, but stopped herself. Even the smallest chance it would set off the trap again was too much, not until she had a much better plan than last time. She looked over at Runk’s body and shuddered at his twisted and mangled state; she must have lost her cold mental status, to be feeling disgust and empathy again. Then she noticed movement.

You have got to be kidding me.

She looked closer. Small tendrils, root-like hairs were moving within the mangled corpse. It reminded her of the vines in Uncle’s rooftop garden. No matter what you did to them, they would eventually grow back. Too bad there’s nothing to take root in here.

With that thought, she had the inkling of a very, very, stupid idea.

 ***

Whoever had said, “When pigs fly,” probably hadn’t been thinking of Magpie’s current circumstance. For one, Runk wasn’t a pig, strictly speaking. Additionally, he wasn’t really doing much in the way of flying. More of a plummet really. But however unlikely porcine flight was, she figured air surfing the somewhat dead body of a pig-tree-orc for a sixty-foot drop, while holding a fist sized diamond that had yet to display any miraculous powers was a fair substitute as a gauge of unlikely happenings.

After several hours of racking her brain, it was the best plan she could come up with. She figured it increased survivability by a sizable percentage, as Runk’s body would increase drag, flattened and shredded as it was, and provide her a cushion of sorts. Ideally, she would be able to roll on impact without hitting too many boulders.

That was the hope, anyway. If she were Outside, she would never attempt such a foolish stunt, but Inside all she needed to do was survive. Broken bones would heal in a fraction of the time. Even a broken neck was survivable if it didn’t stop her breathing. And if horrible creatures didn’t eat her while she lay helpless.

The ground rushed at her and there was no more time for thought, even the oddly timeless musings that often passed through her mind in the middle of horribly perilous situations. They hit the rocky ground unevenly, and she felt her left leg explode, and then she was rolling through boulders the size of her torso, rolling down a slope that was much steeper than it had looked from above. She had tucked as best she could, but she felt her body opening up, now cartwheeling and flipping, crashing from boulder to boulder in brutally chaotic gymnastics. And then she was still.

It was common lore that one shouldn’t turn off pain signals during the Trial, and Magpie couldn’t care less. There was no way on earth she was going to experience the next few hours with pain included. The good news was that she could still feel her limbs, and once she noted that, she hit the internal switch on her pain sensors as fast as she could.

There were still a couple hours before sunset, and she hoped she could recover enough by then to find shelter from the inevitable parade of predators the Inside would throw at her. In the Trial, there was no access to the kind of status reports and helpful screens she was accustomed to on the Outside, and that she had heard were available after the Trial as well.

It took her thirty minutes before she could bear to assess her physical situation visually. She had landed on her side, face into the ground in a fetal position she had probably assumed unconsciously. With her pain turned off, she was able to roll onto her back, feeling the strange sensations of a body that was not at all in good condition.

By sense of touch alone, she could tell that her left leg was currently more pretzel than leg. She could feel her foot resting on a knee, and visa-versa, unfortunately on the same leg. Her right leg was relatively fine. It was difficult to breathe, though she wasn’t coughing blood, so she figured her ribs were broken, but not puncturing anything internal. Both arms were severely broken, and a shoulder dislocated. Outside, it would take multiple surgeries and months to heal. Inside… well, she was about to find out, wasn’t she?

Another span of time passed in a fuzzy delirium, and the next she knew, the sky was dark on the horizon she could see, though there still no stars. She didn’t feel any better; she could tell that her pain was a raging torrent behind the damn of her system. She spent several minutes hoping for a wolf or other normal animal to dispatch her, so she could just respawn and escape the situation.

“Where’s a monster when you need one?” she asked aloud.

Her voice was weak and hoarse. It sounded strange to her, like an odd echo of her thoughts. Guess my brains got a little scrambled too. It was strange to think that her real body was sitting in a pod in her home, entirely uninjured. I wonder how brain injuries work Inside, she thought. Could I be mentally disabled here and not there? She figured that the Inside could mess with her senses any way it wanted to, and thus simulate all manner of cranial trauma.

Time to get to work, came a voice from some other corner of her mind.

What’s that even mean? she wondered, as she felt herself stretch out an arm that really didn’t want to be straight. Guess it means I need to straighten out my body, so it can heal, she decided.

This odd disassociated state continued for the next ten minutes, as she went about straightening her disturbingly floppy left leg, pulling her right hand until the bones went back under the skin where they belonged, and similar housekeeping for the dilapidated wreck of her body. See, that wasn’t so bad, she told herself. Then she passed out.

Somehow, she awoke before the vulture finished removing her eye. It was a delightfully dreamy state, and without knowing why she pointed her index finger at the huge scavenger and giggled.

“You’re late!” she said. “I’ma gunna zap ya.”

She felt the hairs on her arm stand on end and there was a sharp crack as a charge jumped from her finger to the alarmed bird. It took flight with a squawk, only to plummet into the boulders just a few dozen feet away.

“How did I do that?” she wondered aloud.

She couldn’t remember the dream she’d been in, but her right eye was seriously messed up now. She continued to gain alertness and noticed a tingling on her side. She reached across her body and felt the faceted form of the gem, where it lay half embedded in her flesh.

I wondered where that had gone, she thought, feeling rather distant about the discovery.

The small part of her mind that seemed to be on top of the situation chimed in.

There is something seriously wrong with me. I should log out.

The other part of her brain complained. But Uncle would be so mad if I wimped out now.

The choice was taken from her as she passed out again.

The next time she awoke, she felt the sun beating down on her. Her body felt stiff and it took her a minute to figure out where she was and why her bed was so uncomfortable. When she opened her eyes, she was greeted by the sight of a flock of huge vultures encircling her. They were perched on the boulders all around, though none was closer than ten feet. They stared at her silently, with beady, hungry eyes in their bald misshapen heads. Holy crap that’s creepy.

“Get out of here!” she yelled. “Go on. Shoo!”

The birds closest to her raised their wings and ducked their heads in an odd bobbing manner but continued to stare defiantly at their prospective meal. She remembered the odd dream from the night before, somehow zapping a vulture with her finger. Then she realized that the gem stone was in fact embedded in the skin over her ribs and was noticeably smaller than the last time she had seen it.

Crap! Another shrinking gem. I really wanted to try to keep this one. She was actually a little fuzzy on whether items found during the Trial could be kept, but she sure wanted to try.

Guess last night actually happened. She reached up and felt her eye. It felt normal, and she could see just fine. Of course, she was moving her arm freely, and that had been broken in many places the day before as well. I could get used to healing this fast. It sure would make training easier.

Her injured leg looked much better as well, though it was still lumpy and swollen, with magnificent bands of discoloration under the skin. She wasn’t going to be running any marathons in the next couple hours, that was for sure. Nonetheless, she pulled herself up on the nearest boulder and waved her arms at her hungry audience, yelling as loudly as she could.

The movement sent a wave of reaction through the flock, but the bolt of electricity that followed as her arm extended sealed the deal. It struck several of the birds, and they dropped where they perched, feathers smoking. The rest of the flock took to the air with graceless flapping, launching themselves down the slope of the hill.

Magpie took a moment to consider her new power. It seemed like the diamond controlled electric charges, which made sense as an elemental air power, though she really had no idea how it worked. She figured the gem had been keeping the birds away all night, which explained its shrunken size. It was just like the sapphire, losing size as it used up its power. She picked at it where it sat on her rib cage; somehow it had bonded to her, which was terrifying, but convenient. At least she wouldn’t need to spend half the day looking for it. Besides, it would shrink to nothingness soon enough.

Her bad leg was still too damaged to bear weight, but she was sick of being stuck in the same place. She hopped and pulled herself along through the boulders, trying to get to where she had landed and see what had become of Runk.

When she finally made it to his body, she found that a small sapling had sprouted, its roots spread over the remains.

Guess Runk’s a tree now?

She felt a little bad for using his body the way she had, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now. She hobbled among the boulders and found a few pretty stones and made a little stack next to the young tree.

“I guess you always liked rocks,” she said. “You should love this place. Maybe I’ll see you again.”

She hobbled away in the direction of the fertile land of the valley below the hill.

Worst guide ever, she thought with a smile.

 ***

After the ‘excitement’ of traveling with Runk, the rest of her Trial was mundane. A few hours of uncomfortable limping brought her to a human town. Then there was the usual rigmarole; thwarting bandits, avoiding crazies, stealing stuff. Not that different from her usual life.

Then there were those poor suckers at the keep. That was so not her scene. She hunted down the first batch of goblin scouts for fun, and then she was out of there, avoiding the goblin hordes with ease as they thrashed across the landscape. And that was it. The Trial ended, and she hadn’t died.

She still wasn’t sure why it mattered so much to Uncle, but in the end, it was just another ‘mission accomplished’ for her.

The first character sheet that came up for her was full of tutorial nonsense. She swiped that away and figured out how to convince the Inside to lay it all out for her.

----------------------------------------

 Name: Amihan Matapang* Level: 7

Deathless

Trial Results: 99th percentile, Academy Eligible

 Achievements:

Deathless:

No deaths in the Trial (1/5000); +20 VIT

Natural Born Killer

Over 25 solo kills in the Trial including five or more different species

+10 Free Points to weapon skill of choice

The Deadliest Weapon of All

You have earned the top-level skill for armed combat:

Weapons (All)

Accomplishments:

Source Finder

You found and internalized 2 Elemental Sources

Flies like a banana (x2)

You survived a drop of over fifty feet

Sir Robin's Certificate of Approval

You bravely ran away (a lot)

  EXP: 724

Available Free Points: 70

Natural Traits

STR: 24

END: 72

SPD: 65

KA: 105

 Magical Traits

POW: 15

INV: 17

VIT: 36

FLASH: 36

CHARM: SENTIENT: 14

CHARM: ANIMAL: 1

CHARM: PLANT: 3

Elemental Affinities

20% Fire: 20 + 0   (Tier IV)

22% Earth: 20 + 2   (Tier IV)

42% Water: 20 + 22   (Tier III)

45% Air: 20 + 25  (Tier III)

(Tier IV 0-29%, Tier III 30-54%, Tier II 55-79%, Tier I 80%+)

 Mana Well: 25

Mana Gathering: 5%/100 seconds

  Abilities

Scan II

Low Light Vision III

Skills

Unarmed Combat: Natural Expert (VP = 8)

Acrobatics: Natural Expert (VP = 8)

Gliding/Flight: Upgraded Expert (VP = 16)

Climbing: Upgraded Expert (VP = 16)

Weapons (all): Natural Expert (VP = 8)

Mental Deception: Natural Journeyman (VP = 5)

Mental Manipulation: Natural Journeyman (VP = 5)

Manual Deception: Natural Expert (VP = 8)

Disguise: Natural Journeyman (VP = 5)

Swimming: Upgraded Apprentice (VP = 6)

Traps and Hidden Mechanisms: Upgraded Expert (VP = 16)

Stealth: Upgraded Expert (VP = 16)

 Magic:

Source: Water II (Initiate)

Clade: Aspect II (Initiate)

Class: Fused II (Initiate)

Spell: Breath IV (Journeyman)

 Source: Air II (Initiate)

Clade: Charge II (Initiate)

Class: Projected II (Initiate)

Spell: Bolt IV (Journeyman)

  *Current character name: Amihan Matapang. All Inside announcements and statistics will be attached to this character name. You may change this name within the next 24 hours. After this time, the initial publicly available statistics and announcements will be posted.

----------------------------------------

That just won’t do, she thought. She rarely used her system registered name anymore; it reminded her of when she was weak and alone. Now she was part of Uncle’s flock, and she would use the name he gave her. “Change name to Magpie,” she ordered.

 ***

Uncle was pleased with the result. His robotic avatar had no means to convey emotions beyond mild vocal inflection, but he characterized her efforts as “… an acceptable display of competence for a fledgling,” and suggested that she return Inside to enroll in the Academy as soon as she was up to it.

Magpie decided to get some real food and a shower before hopping back into the gel-filled pod. As she ate, she took a few minutes to reflect on her Trial results. She had known going in that the primary goal was access to the Academy, and the most likely way to guarantee acceptance to that elite institution was the ‘Deathless’ title. Every year about sixty thousand kids undertook the Trial, and only two thousand were accepted to the Academy. The Deathless were guaranteed a spot, as there were only five to ten of them a year out of all the kids who tried.

She thought the way the Clans gamed the system was really shameless. Non-clan serfs were controlled through debt, and the primary source of that debt was the crappy systems they bought from the clans. An average serf might earn a thousand credits in a good year, Inside or Outside. The lowest end system, barely capable of decent sensory feedback, cost five times that much. And everyone had to buy a system, if they wanted to get ahead in the world. Parents would scrimp and save to help, but in the end, everyone who wasn’t in or associated with a clan, owed the clans.

Owed them with interest rates that kept them in debt for most of their lives, just long enough so they couldn’t help their children.

The kicker was that the Clans wouldn’t sell to anyone under the age of sixteen who wasn’t a member or associate. Since the Academy was for ages twelve to sixteen, that kept the bulk of the population in a never-ending spiral of ignorance and debt, since the Academy and its less prestigious cousin the Institute were pretty much the only places to receive an education anymore.

That left the clannies and their associates (she called them ‘assies’). Most clan associates were just glorified servants, some more valued than others. Their kids were the bulk of the Trial participants, and most of them had no training or education that would help. In the end, over half of the Academy eligible each year were clan children, about eleven hundred. Maybe seven hundred assies, and about two hundred shibbies, serfs, and gobs.

Magpie didn’t consider herself any of those things, but she was a rare exception. Uncle’s flock existed outside of the clan’s neat little system, or more accurately alongside and embedded in it.

The Clans had use for Uncle’s services, both Inside and Outside. She wasn’t sure at all what her role was to be over the next few years; Magpie was only told what she needed to know to complete a mission. She knew she was supposed to hold her nose and ingratiate herself with as many clannies as she could, pretending to be a member of some obscure pacific island clan that Uncle had created. Uncle had tasked her to discover as much as she could about her new classmates and collect current rumors as she laid a foundation for her future roles.

Magpie felt uncomfortable about what was to come, even a little nervous, if she was honest. She had barely interacted with kids her own age for years, much less spoiled clan scions. Somehow, she was supposed to take all her training in social deception and manipulation and apply it to real people, to make them like her, when she would be much more comfortable kicking their ass instead of kissing it.

She sighed and looked at the empty bowl in front of her, feeling unmotivated to go back to her pod or train. This often happened after a mission, especially if she had to tweak her emotions. It was all just so pointless. Meeting Uncle’s high expectations used to give her satisfaction, excitement even. Now it was another part of her routine. She needed something more, some kind of challenge that was hers and hers alone.

She pulled up her character sheet again, hoping for inspiration. Most of the skills were old news. Boring. But the magic stuff was new. Maybe I can get good at that too, she thought. I’m so tired of sneaking around and being cautious. I want to blow shit up. Too bad I don’t have any fire affinity.

Her musings were interrupted by Uncle’s mild voice in her system.

“Magpie, there has been a development of interest to us.”

Uncle always used ‘us’ and ‘we’.

“We need your assessment of an individual who has requested our assistance. Go to the Academy now. All the necessary maps and information are in your system, as well as your immediate action plan. We will contact you in forty hours.”

Uncle had never been one for conversational pleasantries, at least not with Magpie, and that was fine with her. She had a job now.

Less than an hour later, she walked down a pointlessly long and winding corridor and found the correct door. 3557. Her room, and the subject’s too, through some machination of Uncle’s.

Her data on the subject was very thin; a female name, Emily, and an impressive list of Trial results. Ninety-ninth percentile, four achievements, three titles, one death.

At least I beat her there, she thought.

Ninety-ninth percentile was not particularly impressive; at least six hundred participants earned it each year. It was the highest public score available, as the Trial statistics did not go into more detail, only listing a double digit percentile, number of titles and achievements, and number of deaths. A note in the file had estimated her true placement, based on the number of titles and achievements, as top three for the year. Particularly impressive without Deathless.

Out of long habit, she listened before entering. The space beyond was silent, so she slid the door open a foot and ducked inside, sliding her body to the wall on the left. She scanned the empty room for threats, taking in the doors on the right and left walls, and the two doors in front of her. Before she could decide her next step, the door to her right opened and a shockingly small girl emerged. Her subject.

She put a bookmark in her sensory recording system, and began a physical appraisal. Height three feet, nine inches. Apparent weight under fifty pounds. Small boned with dense musculature. Asian and Caucasian ancestry. Black spiked hair with green streaks, huge dark brown eyes. Disproportionately large ears and teeth, slightly recessed jaw and flat nose structure, large hands and feet. Magpie kept her eyes moving around the room as she assessed.

She decided she would wait to use her Scan ability, as it required a fixed gaze for several seconds. Staring was considered rude in most cultures, and doubly so on the Inside, where it was associated with scanning without permission. Not that everybody didn’t do it; they just made sure the other person wasn’t looking back when they did.

 “Hello!” said Emily. She shifted her weight awkwardly and blinked her eyes. Was she trying to look innocent? “My name is…” she paused and Magpie rolled her eyes internally. This is real amateur hour stuff here. “Emily. But you can call me Lily.

Now that was interesting. Her primary goal was to obtain the subject’s Outside identity. For some reason, Emily was already moving away from her chosen Inside identity, and toward a name she found more comfortable. Lily wasn’t an uncommon name Outside or Inside, but it was a start. The subject gave a small smile as she delivered her name, which told Magpie that she was somehow pleased, as if she had just thought of it. Magpie decided to let the silence drag on a bit longer. It was always easier to pull with a vacuum. After several awkward seconds, the girl spoke again.

“What’s your name? Are you from the Outside?” Her voice was less high and squeaky than Magpie would have expected, and it almost sounded as if she was trying to be soothing, as if she was talking to a small child.

She thinks I’m nervous, she realized. Magpie scoffed internally. Then she noticed that her palms were sweaty and her heart was beating faster than it should.

Holy crap. I am nervous.

It was one thing to run a short con, or to handle stupid adults, who wouldn’t care about her anyway. But she needed this girl to like her, to be friends with her and tell her secrets. It was different somehow, and her amygdala knew it. She forced herself to breathe.

“I’m Magpie. Don’t call me Maggie. And yes, I’m from the Outside.”

Okay. Now say something nice, but stupid.

“Nice hair. Are you a gnome or something?”