Katy had mixed feelings about today. On one hand she was freaking out a little bit about the test coming up, but on the other hand she didn’t have to study today. Azura had said to use the time before the test to relax. Something about how being calm and confident would help more than a few extra hours of studying. To be honest she hadn’t really been listening, she was just grateful for the break. Currently she was spending it exercising. She didn’t want to do anything too intense, the test would be hard enough without her body being all sore and tense.
The group had mostly split up to do their own thing for today. She guessed after spending 2 whole days studying together, tensions had started to run a little high. Mostly between Lily and Luna. She didn’t know what Luna did, but Lily seemed to dislike her intensely. She didn’t really mind any of them, in fact her and Cynthia actually got along pretty well. Based on what she said the nobles of Belmond weren’t quite as bad as Delford as a whole, but they definitely had their dark side. Which she supposed was obvious or she wouldn’t need an old man in the shape of a 13 year old to protect her.
Luna was a good sparring partner, but not the best conversationalist. Well except with Azura she seemed more comfortable with him then the rest of them, he said it was because they had to work together alot during his trial. Cynthia had healed her injuries during the trial, but not much else. Then again the other 2 accomplished even less so… She shivered remembering the fight at the end of her trial, it had been brutal. The enemy was a brute thankfully, his attacks were powerful but not fast enough to get a clean hit on her. She had still goten her fair share of bruises, but they were all gone when she woke up in the auditorium.
Azura had said a healer must have gotten to everyone while they were unconscious, because he hadn’t seen any injuries. She looked to where the sun was in the sky. She guessed it was probably about 2 hours to noon. The test was probably in a little less than an hour. So she reluctantly decided now would be the time to start heading over.
The auditorium doors were closed and locked when she arrived, but she saw a good number of student hopefuls sitting around the huge corridor waiting. Some were waiting patiently, others… Not so much. She didn’t see Azura, but he had that time telling spell, so he knew exactly what time it was and didn’t have to estimate.
“Oh hey Katy, guess you couldn’t wait either.” She looked up to see who had called her name. There were only 2 girls here that knew her name and could talk, so she wasn’t super surprised to see Lily smiling at her, before sitting down next to her. “I’m glad I met you guys early on, Azura is surprisingly good at forcing info into you until you remember it huh?”
She was a little glad that she had others who knew the pain of studying with him now. Azura was lenient about a lot of things, studying was not one of them. She tried not to complain about it to his face, because he was helping her out immensely, but his studying regimen was rough even after all these years.
“Yeah his teaching method is definitely effective, but it’s not something I would wish on someone that doesn’t absolutely need it.” Lily was about to respond, but they both noticed the rest of the group showing up minus Azura who still hadn’t arrived.
“Hey guys, is everyone feeling ready to go?!” Ugh. She didn’t dislike Roran, but his energy was a bit much for her.
“Sorry about him, he has always been a little over energetic.” Katy had gotten used to Cynthia’s telepathy the last couple of days. Since it was a unique magic it was a lot more versatile than its advanced magic counterpart.
“It’s ok, it doesn’t really bother me. It just gets a bit exhausting.” She realized everyone else had responded to Rorans question and quickly did so as well. “As ready as I can be at least.”
“I’m sure you will do fine. In fact, since I owe you one I can try and give you answers if you want.” Woah, that was tempting.
“Thanks, but if I can’t even do this then I would just drag Azura down.” Cynthia just smiled at her and nodded. Then she felt the presence leave her mind and focused more on the verbal conversation taking place.
“-zura, don’t you think he’s cutting it a little close.” Luna looked around with concern. Katy almost laughed. Azura didn’t do early, well unless he had to. He would be right on time, as usual.
“He’ll be here. Azura just likes to have as much preparation time as possible. He will probably arrive right as the doors open.”
“Even I’m not that reckless, I gave myself 5 minutes in case they decided to start a little early.” Azura walked up to the group. He looked relaxed, and she was secretly a little annoyed. He was going to breeze through the test and then sleep through most of the 2 hours allotted to taking it. Stupid smart people. She grumbled under her breath about the unfairness of it all.
However she wasn’t one to miss an opportunity to tease him. “Oh wow really? And here I could have sworn you were almost late to the first trial.” She gave a vicious smile as Azura reddened slightly. It disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Due to his father’s training he could hide his thoughts behind the best poker face she had ever seen. His father didn't count, because every face he made was the same.
“Oh are we going to talk about tardiness? Are you sure that’s a topic you of all people want to bring up.” She winced. Man she hated being in public with him. It was so much harder to knock him off kilter when he had his walls up.
She laughed awkwardly. “No that’s fine, the test is probably going to happen soon.”
***
Azura was honestly looking forward to this trial. Physical training was mostly the same no matter what the physical trial ended up being. No matter the trial you want to be as strong and fast as possible, but mental trials aren't the same. You can spend your whole life studying, and still brutally fail if you studied the wrong thing. He had learned a little bit of everything he thought could reasonably be tested and he was fairly confident in his own ability to pass this trial. He wasn’t too worried about the others eather. They had all studied hard, and each of them were intelligent. If they failed then the test would be primarily luck based. Just hoping you ended up studying the right thing.
Most of the test would probably be open ended essay questions. That way they could get a good grasp of the mindset, attitude, and intelligence all in one go.
He was brought out of his musings when the doors finally opened. They were all ushered into the huge space that was the auditorium. He immediately knew any attempt at using magic to cheat would not go unnoticed. There were several mages evenly spaced around the walls. Each one had their eyes closed, and he could feel their mana feeling out for any magic use. The space was filled with rows upon rows of desks. Given that there were over 1000 of them, he still wasn’t sure there would be enough desks.
“Listen up, because I’m only going to say this once. Come over here and grab a ticket, it will give you a row and column. Your seat will be where those intersect. There will be no cheating, any magic detected will be an instant disqualification, and don’t think for a second we don’t know how to catch more conventional forms of cheating.” He recognized the lady giving instructions. It was the noble lady that helped save him from the elementals. She looked at the mass of people and her eyes stopped on him and Katy for a second before continuing on their path. She was sitting at a big table at the front of the room. There was a bucket full of paper slips in front of her.
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He guessed that was the end of the instructions, because after saying her piece she went silent. He went to grab his slip and nodded respectfully at her. He looked at his slip. “Z53, of course the furthest possible seat. Sounds about right.”
“Not quite the furthest, I got Z54.” Wow her luck really was even worse than his. If he didn’t like Luna already he certainly did now. What a depressing thing to bond over.
“At least we have company for the walk now.” She smiled and nodded then they chatted about minor things while they walked all the way to the opposite corner. It took them a few minutes to get to their seats, and then they chatted for another few minutes before a loud crack of thunder silenced the room.”
Sylvia used magic to make her voice carry across the room. “Alright no more talking, the tests will be delivered, and you are expected to silently work on them. No one can leave this room till everyone is done or the time limit ends. When you are done, turn your test over, once you do so you will not be able to turn it over again, so make absolutely sure you are happy with your answers before doing so. You have 4 hours.” Then a piece of ceiling opened up, and hundreds if not thousands of papers fell, and then a breeze snapped up and cleanly grabbed and distributed a huge stack of paper on every desk. It was at least 100 pieces of paper. Well he better get started.
He didn’t really have much trouble. The test was almost exactly as he expected it to be, with the only exception being there actually was 1 question about magic circles, being why one was typically powered by more than one mage. He finished up in a little over half an hour with no trouble, he considered double checking, but didn’t want to 2nd guess himself out of paranoia so he simply flipped his test over and started taking a nap.
***
She hated him a little right now. It hadn’t even been an hour, how was he already done? Katy hadn’t even gotten half way through her ridiculous stack of paper. She had ended up pretty close to the middle of the desks, but she had good eyes and knew what seat he was going to be in before he even drew a slip. Although she was a little surprised to see that Luna was actually in the seat she had expected Azura to be in, he was right next to her.
Unfortunately she couldn’t really afford to sit there cursing him for being unfairly good at tests. So she reluctantly turned back to her own. What were the factions of the spirit war? Who cares, it was more than 300 hundred years ago. Why did they have to know? Luckily she did know. Azura had been positive there would be a few questions about the spirit war. Good thing too, because when he first tried to teach her that they were 11 and she definitely wasn’t listening.
So she wrote down the 3 factions, and then what caused the war and a few other questions about the war. It looks like they weren’t spreading the questions around. If there were multiple questions about a topic they were all in one place. After a little over 2 hours passed she was finally almost done. She had to really search her brain for some of the answers, but Azura had really nailed it when he guessed what would be on the test. In the end she finished with a little over an hour left on the clock. She, unlike Azura, was not confident enough to just flip the test over when she finished, so she began looking over her answers.
She hoped this was the only trial involving a test, because she liked the first trial better and she was stranded in a desert with Cynthia’s healing being the only semi-useful thing her ‘team’ could do in that one. After looking everything over, she was satisfied with her work and decided to try to relax for the last half hour. She flipped her test over and then leaned back in her chair.
***
After the time limit their papers all got sucked back up through the hole they came from and then the opening in the ceiling closed. So the second trial was over, and much easier than the first. At least for him. He was guessing by the exhausted look on the vast majority of the people there that not everyone thought it was as easy as he did. Luna got up and started stretching as soon as the tests started flying upwards. “Well that was exhausting.” Luna complained. She had only flipped her test a few minutes before time ran out.
He wisely chose to remain silent. If he agreed she would glare at him because he slept through most of it, and if he said it wasn’t that bad she would still glare at him. Katy had taught him that in some regards discretion really was the better part of valor.
“Everyone shall return to your rooms. If you have passed you will receive a letter within the next 3 hours with the details of the next trial. If you have not received a letter in that time, then you shall promptly pack and leave the premises.” Sylvia’s magic enhanced voice once again spread out through the whole auditorium. “You are not to leave your room until either the 3 hours pass or you receive your letter.”
“Well I guess we should get going then.” He saw Katy walking towards him and Luna, so they started walking towards her. He didn’t see any of the others, so they must have been closer to the exit. Although he did see Gareth briefly, it was good to know that he had passed. Azura didn’t really like him, but he was a strong mage.
“If I never have to take another test like that again, it will be too soon.” As soon as she was within talking distance Katy immediately started complaining about the test. Luna immediately started trading complaints with her. Yay he got to listen to them whining until they got to the split off.
Luckily once they were halfway to the split off, the girls decided to talk about how they answered certain questions instead, which he was more than happy to participate in.
***
Azura had been in his room for almost 2 hours when his letter had finally arrived. He opened it and scanned its contents quickly.
“Dear taker of the trials
Congratulations on passing the second trial, preparation is a very important part of being a mage. This wasn’t so much a test of knowledge as a test of your ability to prepare when you don’t know all the details. The next trial will be a test of your magic abilities. You will be scored on your control, total mana, mana regen rate, mana density, and your overall casting ability. Once again you have 2 days to prepare after this one, use your time wisely.
Sincerely the headmistress of G.F.A.”
Interesting, but right now he had bigger concerns. His stomach growled violently. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and a quick check of his time spell revealed it was 5 hours past noon. Yeah that would explain the ravenous hunger he was feeling. He decided to check on the others, see if their letters had arrived yet. Seems like some of them had the same idea, because when he opened the door he was greeted by Luna and Katy. “Oh hey, guess you guys got your letters before me.”
“Yeah I got mine first, but Luna is closer so we ended up getting here about the same time.” He wondered how the order was decided, but it was probably at random.
“Well hopefully the rest have theirs, because I am starving and I’ll wait to get everyone, but not wait for letters to arrive.” They nodded in agreement, and he was pretty sure he heard their stomachs rumbling as well.
“I’m with you there. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this hungry. Roran is the closest to your room, so we should probably head that way.” Luna glanced in the direction of said room.
“Unless he already got his letter and went to get Cynthia.” Katy brought up a good point, luckily they happened to have a prodigious sensor with them. He glanced at Luna with a raised eyebrow.
She returned his look with confusion. “Wha- oh duh, give me a sec I’ll check.” Her eyes began to glow. She stared at the wall for a minute or 2 before the glow stopped. Roran and Cynthia are on their way here. We should meet them pretty soon if we walk that way for a bit.” She pointed to the left.
“What about Lily?” Katy did seem to get along pretty well with Lily, but he could understand why Luna was a bit reluctant in regards to her. Lily didn’t seem to like her very much, but it didn’t seem to be anything severe.
“Oh she isn’t here. I checked her room, but she was already gone.” Yeah he was thinking Luna was too nice to let something like that get to her.
He shrugged. “Can’t really blame her, I considered going straight for food myself. So let’s get the others and go.” The girls nodded and then they walked off to get Roran and Cynthia.