Azura was a little surprised at the letter for the final trial. It had been 4 days since they had made it back to the academy, and he and his friends had been using the extra time wisely. He had spent a good chunk of the time making stuff using the materials they had gathered from their little expedition, some of it he sold, but a lot of it was spread among his friends. He hoped the boost would be enough for them all to get through their final trial. Although the letter left him a little nervous.
“Dear taker of the trials
Congratulations on passing the sixth trial, a subjugation mission is the bread and butter of professional mages. So no matter what your skillset it is important to know how you can be useful on such missions, even if your skills lead you in a specific direction. Now I’m sure everyone is anxious to get to the part where I tell you what the seventh trial is, but be warned this is the last and most important trial, the seventh is the only one that is the same every year and as such the information shall never leave this academy. You won’t be told the details in this letter and shall only get the specifics after an oath of secrecy is taken. However we did promise at least 2 days for preparation, so some basics must be shared. This trial will test your spirit as much as your body. Be prepared to fight for your life, but it is equally important to know when not to fight. Some you must make enemies, but even feared foes can be allies in the right circumstance. The end result of this trial is often considered one of the most important events in a mages entire life, so think carefully and choose wisely. You will have 2 days to prepare as usual, but remember this trial isn’t about pass or fail. Most pass the final trial, but if you pass poorly you may not live to regret it, it is better to fail and try again next year than to pass and regret the decision you made. Meet in the auditorium at first light on the day of the trial. Prepare well.
Sincerely the headmistress of G.F.A.”
The letter somehow told him a lot of information, but he still learned almost nothing. Most pass was a little relieving, but some don’t live to regret it? What does that even mean? He had 2 prep days, but how was he even supposed to use them? He felt reasonably sure that he was competent enough in the survival aspect, but what kind of test would it be? What kind of choice did they have to make? If nothing else he could rule out them defending an object. There wouldn’t really be a choice like that, only succeed or fail.
There was just enough info in the letter that he genuinely felt like he knew less than he did before. Which he begrudgingly acknowledged was a good thing. Better to go in unsure, than with info that was completely wrong. He sent out a copy to the library as he usually did, they said the info never left the school, and ostensibly the library was only for students so maybe some info might be there. He sent another copy to go over things with his friends.
He normally talked to them personally, but he felt his time was best spent at the forge. Only the real him could reliably recover mana after all. He had been spending a lot of time in the forge since returning from their last trial, and he had to say it definitely lived up to its name. The grand forge mostly referred to the school forging young students into professional mages, but he couldn’t help but feel like the forge had to at least be part of it. Although it was pretty rare for the students to do any work in there themselves, it was more for ordering things, but he was as usual the exception.
It wasn’t too terribly far from his room, but it was definitely a decent walk. He sighed and went on his way. Luckily he didn’t really run into anyone as he navigated the seemingly endless hallways. He took a wrong turn at one point which unfortunately cost him a few minutes, but he still made it to the forge before half an hour passed.
After showing his special allowance ticket to the magic scanner he was allowed into the room that never failed to take his breath away. The forge was ridiculously impressive. The room was huge, easily as big as the auditorium that had held the initial thousands of applicants comfortably. The forge was split into many sections for different things, different kinds of furnaces for metallurgy, heat treatment, glasswork, and anything else he could think of took up half the room, while the less hot crafting tools for woodworking, or leatherworking, and other things of that nature took up the other.
He had traded some enchanted armor that he had made with the panther hide for some interesting metals, so this was going to be his first time using the furnaces and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little excited about that. Although he hadn’t quite decided what he was going to make, he was thinking that if he used the metals to infuse the spider’s exoskeleton he would be able to make some very durable armor, but it would also be pretty heavy.
None of his friends really used heavy armor, so he wasn’t sure if it was worth making that to trade for some better materials to work with again. Well there wasn’t much else to do with it, The materials were too rigid to be good for light armor, and they would be wasted on a weapon given their nature. He took a deep breath. It was going to be hot and smoky in the forge section, and his temperature enchantments would only help so much. Even still he resolutely walked over and got to work.
***
Katy was starting to get really annoyed. Azura was being even more evasive than usual. No matter how she tried to get details out of him, he just adamantly maintained that nothing special happened at Fire Ward except for Lily’s eruption. Not that Lily’s fire wasn’t a major event, but honestly it felt like he was probably hiding something about that too.
“So was it just me or was the letter super vague?!” She snapped back into the present at Roran’s exclamation. “I mean, they didn’t really give us much to prep for, I mean training our skills is kind of obvious, they could have at least pointed us in the right direction!” He had a point. She wasn’t particularly pleased with the lack of details either, and she knew for a fact it was driving Azura nuts.
“There is a copy in the library, looking to see if there is any info there. The letter said no info leaves the school so I figured it was worth a shot.” She rolled her eyes, of course Azura wasn’t even really here. Even she couldn’t normally tell if one was the copy or the original, he would have said I sent a copy rather than there is one if he was the real one.
“Where’s the real one then?” The rest of their friends sent her odd looks, but the Azura copy just gave a sheepish chuckle.
“The original is at the forge, he’s the only one that can recover mana fast enough to get a solid amount of work done there.” He wasn’t wrong, and logically she knew that good equipment could make all the difference, but she still hated it when he sent a copy to hang out. Most of the time she couldn’t even tell, but when she could it always hurt. She felt a little vindicated to see the others giving weary glances at him. He coughed. “Look, I understand most people would prefer not to deal with the copy, but we don’t really know what we’re preparing for so we have to prepare for anything and everything.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“I get why you did it, but don’t you think that the real you should have at least hung out for a little while before ditching and leaving us with a copy. No offense.” She scoffed Luna was right, but she has had this argument with him a hundred times by now and he refuses to back down every time.
“I’m not really offended, but you know I’m not really different from the original mentaly, pretty much all the differences are spiritual. That’s why my mana doesn’t recover unless I focus on gathering mana to recover it with. I have to tune myself to the spirit world to gather magic since I don’t do it naturally.”
“Wait?! Are you saying you’re soulless?!” And Roran was now bouncing around excitedly. Lovely, that would help getting Azura to see reason. Although she had heard the explanation before it hadn’t really occurred to her what it had meant. Were the copies really soulless? She couldn’t quite tell if that made their deaths better or worse.
He didn’t seem to be upset by the question, only crossing his arms and zoning out as if to think more deeply on the question. “Sort of. I don’t really have a soul of my own, but I do have an echo of the originals. Or rather I’m still connected to the original soul maybe? I guess it’s kind of like how you can connect to the spirit realm from anywhere, except it’s me connecting to my own soul from further away.”
She rolled her eyes, he had found his opening to change the subject. The other’s were all either paying rapt attention or had let their eyes glaze over as they zoned out. Normally she was part of the latter group when they started going into theory, but she wanted to know how to differentiate him and his copies aside from a few specific sentences that very rarely come up naturally in conversation.
“Interesting! Is there a range limit?! What happens if there is a bunch of stuff between you and the original?! Is that how you know you’re the copy?! If your memory was erased would you still know you’re a copy?!” She hadn’t been able to keep up with Roran’s rapid fire questions, but Azura was actually pretty hyper himself when it came down to his academic interests.
“Hmm alright let me answer those in order. Yes and no I always have the echo, but if I’m too far away we aren’t able to stay in contact. As far as I can tell objects don’t make any difference, even if I was in an area surrounded by anti-magic or magic resistance. Kind of, I still have all the original’s memories, so I know how my body normally is, but there is also this instinct. When the original makes a copy he has to do it with a purpose in mind, and that purpose is ingrained into me. As for the last one, I honestly don’t know. The instinct to accomplish whatever goal I was made for would probably still be there, but I wouldn’t know what my life is normally like so I guess I wouldn’t.”
She gave up, she couldn’t keep listening to them drone on and on. She finally joined Lily and Siara in the glazed over eyes group. She vaguely recognized that Luna had asked the copy a question, but was too checked out to know what that was.
***
Azura was sweaty and exhausted, but satisfied. Making the armor had not been an easy task, but he was quite proud of the end result. It was tough enough on its own that it didn’t really need durability enchantments, so he had been able to fit in lots of convenient ones. Self cleaning, temp control, and self repairing to name a few. It would sell for a good amount of gold, maybe even a platinum. Of course he had to find someone who had that kind of money and needed an armor piece like this.
He thought the fact they would only need new armor if they needed something better or if they fought someone capable of destroying the entire thing in one go, and they themselves somehow survived would help make the high price worth it. The item trades in the forge told him that they could probably get it sold for a fairly solid amount within the week, although to be honest he had barely paid attention after he had set his minimum cost requirements. They didn’t even try to hide their shock at how low it was.
Part of him wanted to set it higher, but he knew better. He needed money sooner rather than later, if he lost a few coins in the exchange then so be it. He was within range of both of his copies, so he knew one of them was looking through the library without any luck. Figures they wouldn’t have a book with any details of the upcoming ‘mystery’ trial. The other seemed to be having a very interesting conversation about the nature of his unique magic, he was actually looking forward to getting those particular memories.
He was however not looking forward to the inevitable scolding he was going to get from Katy for ditching them with a copy. Good cause or not she always got angry at this particular habit. He didn’t understand what the big deal was, he was being practical. It’s not like he wouldn’t remember the conversation so what was the big deal if it was a copy or not.
Either way he didn’t really have much in the way of an excuse not to face the music. With a sigh he reluctantly headed toward his friends hoping the theoretical conversation was interesting enough that any frustration they had with him had cooled off. Somehow he doubted it.
***
“How would you feel if we ditched you to go do something else?” Azura knew he had to tread carefully here. A bad answer would no doubt cause him lots of grief later. The second he had dispelled his copy all eyes had turned to him, and unfortunately the interesting memories weren’t enough to ease the tension in his shoulders from the coming confrontation.
“I didn’t ditch you, I remember everything from both me and my copy as if it was me in both places, if the copy could have used the forge properly then I would have switched places.” He let himself get riled up and defensive. He knew from experience if he acted too calm it would only make Katy angrier.
“That’s fine, tell us in person that you have something you have to do, don't just leave a copy here pretending to be the real one.” He would if that would actually help, but he had tried that before, even if he had a copy tell her it was a copy she would just get mad at him for not being there himself, and if he left to do something without leaving a copy she also got pissy. There was no win. The only times she didn’t get mad were when she didn’t find out or when he invited her to whatever thing he was doing, but even then she still got grumpy after a few minutes of being bored out of her mind.
“If I do that you get angry at me for not spending enough time with everyone.” Oops, shouldn’t have said that, he saw her eyes widen and then narrow. Yeah she caught that, the downside of letting himself show how he was feeling this much was that he had a tendency to get carried away.
“I knew this wasn’t a one time thing! How often have you been ditching us?!” Ugh as if it wasn’t bad enough when she guilt tripped him on her own, the sad eyes everyone else was making only made it worse. He was thankful for Roran, Lily, and Siara who all seemed completely unbothered, so he at least knew it didn’t bother half the team.
“You’re so dramatic, how can it be ditching if you don’t even know it’s happening.” He really needed to drop it. He knew at least Katy well enough to know there was no winning this argument; it was just going to make them both angry. He released a breath with his pent up frustration. “Look I’ll tell you what, I’ll start telling you when I have something important to do, instead of sending a copy, but there are witnesses to this, so you don’t get to be mad at me when I do. Deal.”
He put his hand forward. She narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to use this as an excuse to always be off doing your own thing?”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not like I don’t like hanging out with friends Katy. That’s why I send a copy. I like to have those experiences, but sometimes there are other things I have to do. My copies can’t do everything I can do. I prefer to have my copies do the errands, but sometimes it’s just not feasible.”
She sighed and took his hand. “You can keep sending the copies, but don’t try to hide the fact that they’re copies anymore, and tell us why.” He rolled his eyes, he didn’t love having to explain himself all the time, but they were his friends and sometimes he was just going to have to compromise.
“Fine, it’s a deal.”