Azura was restless, the remaining hopefuls were gathered in the auditorium after taking their vow of secrecy for the final trial. It was kind of interesting to see the auditorium with so few of them left, he remembered how before the first trial it was practically filled to bursting, and now it was mostly empty. He would just be happy to finally know what he was going to be facing. The not knowing had been driving him nuts for the past few days.
All told he was all too happy to hear the headmistress’s voice echo across the space. “I’m sure you are all quite curious about the nature of this final trial, and why we go to such lengths to keep it hidden.” She paused, the ensuing silence thick with tension. “Well it is time for all of you to find out, the final trial is sacred, it is one of the biggest reasons this academy stands head and shoulders above any local mage school.”
His eyes widened, he was finally able to put the pieces together. He knew logically it would have to happen at some point, but he didn’t think it would be a trial in of itself, he thought it wouldn’t happen until his third year at the earliest. “You will be taught a special spell that is as closely guarded as the trial itself. The spell can be cast once and only once. Today, you will be performing a binding ceremony, and choosing your familiar.”
It was as he thought, that was not ideal. He was hoping to have more time to research what he wanted his familiar to be. He now understood why it was better to fail and try again next year than choose poorly. The binding ceremony tethered a creature to your soul, it could only be cast once because if you tried to use it a second time your very soul would split in two.
“There will be a portal in the center of the room that shall take you to the sacred choosing grounds.” The actual location of the area was long since lost to time. As far as he knew the only known way to get there was awakening a few dormant portals to the area. Many people had tried to find another way there. The magic there was supposedly so dense, that it can support even rank x monsters without them needing anything else.
“Now as I’m sure you know there are many powerful beings in the choosing grounds, most will not be hostile unprovoked, but be very careful. I know for sure there are at least 10 creatures that surpass rank 9 there, and once you get into rank x territory they are basically forces of nature all their own. Do not provoke anything you can’t handle or you will die.”
Of course they would die, frankly he would be lucky to survive anything above rank 6. If he used up all of his saved resources he might manage to best a rank 9, but anything above that just wasn’t possible. Which of course meant he was going to run into one. His mind raced trying to think of something to keep him alive if or more likely when that happened.
“That being said, there will also be many weaker creatures that will be more possible to tame. You will go through the portal one at a time, and will each be allowed 24 hours from when you step out of the portal to choose, and bind to your familiar. Your starting area in the grounds is randomized, so the odds of you running into each other are quite low. That being said, there are some rules you will have to follow should you encounter another hopeful ....”
He tuned her out for this part. He imagined the etiquette was going to be a slightly adapted version of hunting etiquette, and he knew that well enough already. He wasn’t going to have his friends to back him up, so his only real hope for the worst case scenario was to run and hope the higher rank creatures didn’t attack him. He really wished he had mastered Luna’s clairvoyance spell, but his control wasn’t good enough yet, so he wouldn’t get the forewarning that Luna would when she also inevitably ended up near an x rank threat.
He vaguely heard the headmistress starting to get into the more obscure rules and decided to tune back in. “... and naturally, don’t try to interfere with someone else's binding ritual, under any circumstances. Even if they are about to die, it would still be kinder to let them die than to interrupt a ritual that has already started.”
Grim, but fair. Pretty much any form of soul magic was incredibly dangerous to interrupt. “That’s enough for the general rules, does anyone have any questions?” The headmistress’ gaze swept the area, apparently someone had a hand raised, because she nodded in a random direction.
“What if two people come across a creature at the same time, and they both want to make it their familiar?” The same time was pretty unlikely, so it would still probably be first come first serve.
“Hmmm as unlikely as that is to occur, it’s probably best there be some ruling on it hmmm.” She then sat there in silence for an uncomfortable length of time before finally continuing. “Well just play a game of rock paper scissors or something, the winner stays and the loser leaves.” His jaw dropped, that was the ruling. He hadn’t thought the headmistress would choose something so half assed, but he supposed it would serve its purpose well enough.
A few more clarifying questions were asked after that, but nothing that interested him enough to really pay attention. He didn’t even know what kind of creature he should be aiming for, his father was definitely right, the way he finished this trial was going to be very important for his future. His father didn’t talk much about his familiar, all he really knew was that it had been extremely powerful, but it had died when he was still a young child. Sometimes it almost felt like his father mourned more for the familiar than his mother, but he hoped that was just him wanting to see the worst in his father.
Finally after everyone was satisfied that they had as much info as they could reasonably get the headmistress started calling names to have people go through the portal. Thankfully the group of remaining hopefuls was only about 100 give or take a few now, so it didn’t take all that long before it was his turn. He took a deep breath and stepped into the shining purple light.
After an extremely disorienting moment that was too fast and too slow at the same time he found himself standing on a huge rock sticking up in the middle of a raging river. He looked around to see himself in a valley with a sheer cliff on both sides of the raging river. The cliffs were both tall enough that he couldn’t see the top. Behind him the river went on for a long distance before it turned out of sight. The roaring sound of the waterfall 40 feet in front of him drowned out any other sounds there might be in the area.
He saw a sea of green in the distance past the waterfall. It was too far to make out any details, but he assumed it was a fairly dense forest. “Well now I’m terrified, this is a down right beautiful place to start out.” Which meant his bad luck was going to manifest in an extra painful way. At least the air was fresh, and the dense ambient mana left him feeling unusually energized.
He immediately made 3 copies. “You guys sit here for a bit and recover mana. It shouldn’t take long to fill up with how dense the mana here is, so once you’re done start looking for a good familiar.” They naturally couldn’t do the binding ritual themselves, but they could herd any worthy creatures to him or disperse so he knew where they were.
He however didn’t have an excuse to sit and do nothing. He had passive mana recovery, so he got the boost this place provided even without meditating. The only thing left was to decide where to go. He really didn’t want to, but scaling the cliffs to get to higher ground was probably his best bet. Well actually on second though perhaps scaling them would be unnecessary. Normally he conserved his mana over stamina, but here that felt especially unnecessary.
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He channeled mana through the enchantments on his back, they helped solidify it and keep it in the form he shaped it to. Within seconds he had glowing blue and silver wings, each feather emitting a dim light. He put his hands on the ground, and a sky blue glow covered his gauntlets as an updraft formed around him. His clothes and hair ruffled violently, and willed his temporary wings to catch the updraft sending him rocketing upwards.
If it didn’t use so much mana, he imagined he would probably use this particular spell more. He quite enjoyed flying, the wind rushing past him combined with a view of the world shrinking below him was a rush every time. Sadly it was over as fast as it began, the wings dispersing as he landed on the cliff. He hadn’t really been able to tell until he got to this even higher ground, but even the valley he had been in was quite high up. He was probably midway up a mountain that’s height he couldn’t properly judge because so much of it was hidden behind the clouds.
Should he go up or down? There were likely to be more creatures in the forest area he saw in the distance, but he figured one of his copies would definitely take that route, so he figured his best bet was ascending. Although a really strong monster would probably make the peak its home. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. He was going to end up running into something dangerous anyway, it might as well be on his own terms.
He groaned. Flying wouldn’t be practical going forward, if any of the monsters could detect magic those wings would make him a beacon. It was fine this low, but he really didn’t want to piss off any creatures that were strong enough to survive higher up. “Guess the long way it is.”
He began walking towards the ever steepening slope.
***
It had been a long time since Azura had to do this much physical exercise without magic to back him up. Well excluding his workouts, but even then they definitely weren’t this bad. He felt he was probably fine circling some magic to keep his breathing even as he got into higher altitudes. Anything beyond that ran the risk of him running into a lot more monsters than he was prepared to handle.
It occurred to him that his plan wasn’t very well thought out when a giant bird started circling far above him. It was too far to accurately gauge its size, but he was fairly confident it was big enough to eat him. Its feathers were brown in the center but got darker the further out they went, by the end of the wing they were pitchblack.
He ran through his knowledge of monsters and magical creatures to see how much of a threat this might be. He didn’t know of any birds like that that were intelligent, whether that was a pro or a con he didn’t really know yet. Well he knew of quite a few giant bird type beasts in both categories so that didn’t really help much. Of course not even counting the possibility it’s a smaller or bigger creature that was magically altered.
Frankly he was surprised it hadn’t dove for him yet, he was climbing a vertical surface at the moment so it would at least appear like he was vulnerable. He nearly lost his grip in surprise when the bird flew off without attacking. “I knew I should have written a will before coming here.” He was terrified, that was twice now his luck had actually been good.
After a minute he started climbing again, but was hyper focused on everything around him. Oddly even knowing his luck was what it was he didn’t really feel like anything truly bad was going to happen. Which worried him even more. His gut feelings and his mind were usually on the same page and this disconnect was making him tense and nervous.
Something big was going to happen. He knew that much, but he didn’t think it was going to be bad. No that wasn’t true he did think it was going to be bad, but he didn’t really feel like it would be. “At this point I’d rather whatever it is just happen so I can stop stressing about it.”
His plea went unheard and unanswered as he continued to make his way up. After an hour of constant climbing he finally decided to take a break. He was sitting in a small alcove. It wasn’t very deep, maybe 5 ft in but it was a welcome shield from the fierce winds.
He wondered how the others were doing. Cynthia and Siara were both probably done already. Cynthia’s telepathy could convey thoughts as well as feelings, so bonding with an animal would be easy for her, and Siara knew where they all were and their approximate strength. Technically Luna was also well suited for this trial, but her luck was typically worse than his. Although he hadn’t been doing too bad, so maybe this place off set their natural bad luck somehow.
Frankly Lily was the one he was most concerned with. If she was forced into using her unique magic no creature would come near her, or maybe they would throw themselves on the pyre like those panthers had. He shivered. He had never seen creatures throw themselves to their death like that before and he hoped he would never see it again.
Killing a creature was one thing, but watching them kill themselves so determinately would probably leave him with nightmares for years to come. He chuckled darkly, it was pretty awful, but he had plenty of memories fighting to be his nightmare fuel every night. At this point what was one more.
“Hurry to the top human, I grow tired of waiting. The longer I wait the lower your chance of leaving this mountain in one piece.” The deep and powerful voice resonated in his head. It was like Cynthia’s power, but the being connecting to him was obviously way stronger. It probably said something about how messed up his life was that he wasn’t even surprised.
“I mean I suppose I can take that to mean if I hurry up I have a decent chance of leaving unharmed, so all in all much better than I was expecting.” Clearly his attempts at going under the radar had failed spectacularly, and the ruler of the mountain had already claimed him. At least that explained why the big bird had left him alone.
Well if he wasn’t hiding the last leg of the trip was going to be much easier. He tried to form the wings again, but was shocked when a dense power filled the area and snuffed out the wings as soon as they appeared. He blinked in confusion. What? The power was the same as the one attached to the most recent voice in his head. He grumbled apparently he was being tested on more than just his punctuality.
He sighed. “Fine, back to climbing the stupid thing.” He begrudgingly stepped out of his little shelter and was immediately bombarded by the violent winds. Ignoring his cloak and scarf whipping around violently he continued his climb. He was a little concerned about what kind of creature he would encounter at the peak. Obviously it was intelligent, and absurdly strong too. It disrupted his magic from at least a mile up the mountain.
“Tired of waiting he said.” If he was really so tired of waiting he wouldn’t make Azura climb another mile up a mountain. He sighed, at least it wasn’t a vertical wall anymore. He had found a spot with a pretty steep incline, but it was low enough that he could stay on his feat. Since running was much faster than climbing even if it was up an incline this steep he would still be making much better time.
Honestly a part of him was even kind of excited to meet whatever was up there. It was obvious the being wanted to meet him, and if it was just to kill him it wouldn’t have bothered disrupting his magic. Since most sane people would have taken that as a reason to start climbing down and look somewhere else. He nearly slipped as memories of one of his copies entered his head.
He winced. “Well it’s a good thing I didn’t follow the river deeper into the valley.” That copy had been given a slow painful death impaled on multiple medal blades courtesy of a strix. He remembered the shiny looking animal completely covered in sharp metal spines. The beast had clearly not appreciated his copy entering the little cavern it had decided to call home. He could block the spines if he knew they were coming, but they shot out so fast that his copy hadn’t had time to respond to them in the dark.
He hoped he wasn’t walking directly into a similar fate, but somehow he still had this gut feeling that things were going to work out ok for this. He stretched a little to clear out the phantom pains caused by the memories of his copy’s grizzly death. He would have preferred to take more time to assimilate the memories, but he had an extremely powerful being not to piss off.