Azura was pretty well sick of trials at this point. Garrion had decided that he was going to have to face 3 trials. One of heart, body, and mind. The giant dragon hadn’t said much more than that before leading him deeper into the cave. His eyes widened as the darkness fled revealing a giant cavern, glittering lights of every color lit up the vast space. The space easily rivaled the amphitheater of the academy. He took a second to recover his ability to breath after the stunning display had taken it.
Garrion had no such hang ups and immediately gave out his orders. “The first trial will be the trial of the body. You will not be allowed your weapons, or equipment. Training clothes will be provided to you, magic will also not be allowed.” Couldn’t his near magicless climbing of the stupid mountain count for that? “The test itself will be one of survival, I will send out whatever creatures I see fit, and your job is simply not to die.”
“Oh, wonderful because that definitely doesn’t sound ominous.” Still as far as rewards go a true dragon familiar was a pretty damn good one, so difficult tests were to be expected really. As promised he saw a set of folded clothes on a bench like rock not far from the entrance. If nothing else his father’s constant warnings about over reliance on magic would serve him well here.
“It should sound ominous, of the hundreds who have attempted my trials, only 6 have survived the first one. Of the 6 only 1 survived the other 2.” Yeah his father. He didn’t like the man, but even he could admit his father was incredibly powerful. Not just in terms of magic power either, he was smart, and brave, and well connected. Even if he was the biggest prick Azura had ever met.
“Yeah yeah, I’ve heard plenty of my father’s praises being sung, let’s just get this over with.” He reluctantly stripped his enchanted clothing off, and replaced it with the plain white tunic and trousers that were supplied. They were made of a quality material, he could tell they wouldn’t tear or fray easily. “So what, do I just stand in the middle and wait?” It was a shame he would be fighting for his life so soon, the area truly was beautiful, and dense with magic and life.
“Such vitriol, has Tiamat truly been so horrid to you? I remember him being rather polite, if perhaps a little full of himself. Beyond that he was certainly a man of principle.” Oh he was a man of principles all right, but that didn’t mean anything when the principles were all skewed. Either way, no point arguing about it with the dragon who had gifted him a new name.
“It doesn’t matter, good and evil are purely subjective. One man’s hero is another’s villain. Me and my father are simply diametrically opposed in almost all subjects. Whether he is evil or I am, depends on who you ask.” He would be the first to admit he wasn’t perfect, and there were probably just as many people that would reject his views as those that reject his father’s. He wasn’t so conceited that he’d claim himself as the morally just, but he wasn’t willing to abandon his own view of justice either.
“I see, I’m sure you won’t be happy to hear that you 2 have more in common than you might think. 2 sides of the same coin even, so similar yet destined to never see eye to eye.” He already knew that too. As much as he desperately wanted to believe they were nothing alike, he wasn’t that naive. It’s not like his hands were clean either, plenty of blood soaked them. No matter how many times he cleaned them, it would never wash away.
“Alright, enough with the moral philosophy, can’t we just skip to the part where you throw waves of disposable minions at me?” Frankly, he was a little curious what the dragon would use for this trial. Hopefully nothing too crazy given the restriction on magic usage. He didn’t even have a weapon, it really wasn’t surprising that so few survived the first trial with rules like these.
A deep rumbling laugh echoed out from the dragon. “Eager are we? You won’t be for long.” The dragon tapped one of his claws on the ground, sending a red light towards a crystal on the wall across from him. The crystal began to glow as the wall parted, revealing several adolescent drakes.
“Are you serious?!” They weren’t anywhere near as big as the frost drake during his 4th trial, being shorter than 4 ft tall, and only 8 ft long not counting their long tails. Still there were 6 of them, and they looked hungry. “Couldn’t you at least start small? Let me warm up a bit.” At least they didn’t seem to have an elemental attunement, a breath attack would be really difficult to deal with without magic.
“What good is a trial that doesn’t test your limits?” Ugh now this dragon was starting to sound like his father. He didn’t have much time to complain though, because the hungry looking drakes had all zoned in on him as the only living thing in the room that they had a chance of taking down. Garrion stepped back and layed down. He assumed that meant the drakes had permission to hunt, because the second the dragon’s belly hit the ground they rushed at him with surprising speed.
What followed was the most intense game of keep away he had ever played. Thankfully the cavern was so spacious, because he was having to do every maneuver he knew just to keep himself alive. He slid under one, flipped over another, used the wall to backflip over a third, and then narrowly rolled under the tail swipe of the second one. “Couldn’t I have at least gotten a weapon?!”
He swung himself onto the back of one of the drakes hoping they would at least hesitate to attack him while he was on one of them. They did not, and he had to jump off to avoid the tail whipping towards him, which left him with not a lot of room to avoid the claw swiping at him. He swerved his body as much as he could midair, but he wasn’t able to dodge it completely leaving a relatively wide gash across his stomach, thankfully not more than skin deep. He wondered how many of his father’s scars had come from these trials.
His only saving grace was the fact the drakes weren’t very intelligent. They were clearly young and unused to hunting anything with complicated movement patterns. They made up for lack of skill with enthusiasm though, they never gave him a chance to think as they relentlessly chased him. Not that he had a ton of options without magic or his equipment. The cave was barren of anything he could really use to turn the tide, and their scales were hard enough that slamming head first into the rocky walls barely fazed them.
If they were smart enough to understand speech he might have been able to play them against each other, but they would also be smart enough to really work together, so he was probably better off with the way they were now. He didn’t have time to dodge a lunge from one of the drakes, but he was able to divert the claw away from him with his arm, and slam his knee into the beast bottom jaw to close its mouth before it could bite him.
“I was starting to think you were too afraid to go on the attack.” The dragon’s occasional mocking was not helping. It had already been almost 5 minutes, and he had no idea how long Garrion expected him to survive 6 hungry drakes. He probably shouldn’t bother responding, it was a waste of energy.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Funny! I was starting to think this test is stupid and that you should give me some actual parameters!” Waste of energy or not, it did make him feel a little better. The ominous chuckle, and the sound of another section of the wall opening immediately dashed the positive feelings. The drakes roared at the screeching sound coming from the new opening, as a pair of blaze wyverns flew out of it. “Or just throw more monsters at me! That works too!”
***
Katy was actually starting to worry. It had been several hours since the start of the trial, and the 3 most troublesome members of their little party had yet to return. Gareth had returned with a nemean lion of all things. Those things had pelts that were nearly indestructible, and were extremely strong. Gareth clearly had some kind of beef with her friend, because he had come out of the portal, and immediately went to their party to mock Azura for taking too long.
Her return shot about them finishing earlier than him was brushed aside as him taking extra time to find the ‘ideal partner’. She didn’t like him very much, but Azura seemed to respect him so she let it go. On top of that one of the more recent returnees mentioned a giant blaze near the mountains, that she’d bet anything Lily was a part of. At least that was something though, she had no idea how Luna and Azura were doing.
“I’m sure they’re fine Katy, frankly I can’t even imagine the kind of monstrosity that would be able to take any of them out. Luna’s got her advanced warning, Azura’s always got something up his sleeve, and Lily’s her own kind of monstrous.” Wasn’t that the truth, if she was being honest Lily was definitely the person in the group she’d be most afraid to fight.
“Honestly it’s Luna I’m most concerned about.” The other 2 are absurd in their own ways, but Luna’s skills are more normal for their age. “Those 2, and Roran are head and shoulders above all the other applicants save maybe Gareth. Luna’s way closer to the rest of us though, except her luck is even worse than Azura’s. Who knows what kind of crazy stuff is going to happen to her out there!” Advanced warning or not, there was only so much Luna would be able to do against some of the stronger monsters.
“I think you forget the rest of us are pretty strong too. It’s easy to forget when we’re around those 3 monsters so often, but remember the thousands of applicants there were at the beginning? We are all pretty strong for our age, don’t underestimate Luna just because she isn’t as powerful as the other 3.” Cynthia had a point, Katy had never had someone to compare herself against other than Azura, and given he was the one teaching her, that could only ever end in her being the less powerful one.
“Yeah you’re right. Thanks, I think I really needed to hear that.” Luna could handle herself, besides Luna was probably the most level headed member of the group so at least she wouldn’t do anything too crazy. “So which of the 3 do you think is going to have the craziest familiar?”
***
Azura didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to hold out. The blaze wyverns were emitting fire at random intervals, and that was burning through the already pretty thin air this high up, and deep in the cave. So between it getting harder and harder to breathe, 6 drakes desperate to eat him, and the 2 angry wyverns he was starting to think he wasn’t going to make it out of this alive.
He dived out of the way of another burst of flame, quickly transitioning into a roll to dodge the drake attempting to stomp on him. What he wouldn’t give to have fireproof scales like everything else in the cave seemed to. He shot up into the air to avoid the teeth looking to close around his arm. He flipped so his feet landed on one of the wyverns and launched off of it right before the other one crashed into him. The wyverns fell in a tangle of wings screeching all the way down.
Too bad the drakes weren’t dumb enough to take eachother out like that. He didn’t really have anything to kill the wyverns without his magic, and they’d be up again relatively soon. Overall his situation was pretty grim, and the dragon mocking him every few minutes was really starting to get on his nerves. As if that wasn’t bad enough between the blood loss from his numerous cuts and the lack of oxygen he was starting to feel light headed.
“Giving up already? I expected more from the son of Tiamat.” He was too busy frantically running all over the place avoiding his many draconic pursuers to bother responding this time. He needed to come up with something fast, or he was going to pass out, and given that passing out probably meant death that wasn’t really an option.
If it came down to it he could make a run for his grimoire. He would fail the trial, but it would give him a chance at survival at least. The narrowly avoided ball of fire alerted him to the wyverns managing to untangle themselves. He groaned, they were definitely the biggest threat. Mostly due to the decreasing oxygen. He was about to try something desperate when a loud roar echoed out from where Garrion laid. The wyverns and drakes retreated back into the holes they crawled out of, and the walls sealed shut.
He fell to his knees panting for air that wasn’t there. “Well done child, I think that shall suffice for trial 1. I will grant you some time before trial 2, good luck catching your breath.” He was starting to hate this dragon. At least with the trial done he could use his magic to enrich the air entering his lungs. He took deep gasps as his magic finally left the air around him oxygenated enough to really help when he breathed it in.
After a few minutes of carefully controlling his breathing, and infusing the air with magic he had recovered enough that the dark around the edges of his vision had properly receded. He quickly put his own equipment back on, the adrenaline leaving his body reminding him of how cold it was up this high without his special enchantments. At least fighting for his life had kept his body warm. Plus now that he wasn’t moving around so much the cold was helping his blood quickly congeal. He really couldn’t afford much more blood loss at the moment.
He used the tattered training clothes as gauze to wrap up the worst of the wounds. His gear would help speed up his body’s natural healing, but it would probably be best to have Cynthia take a look at his injuries once he was back at the academy. He hoped the trial of mind and spirit weren’t as physically demanding as the trial of body had been. He definitely wouldn’t say he was fully recovered, but he was probably as good as he was going to get without someone to actually heal his injuries.
He guessed that meant it was time to find the giant dragon and start his attempt at the trial of mind. He went back towards the cavern exit Garrion had left through and began his trek down yet another long winding tunnel. He wondered if the dragon had worked some kind of magic on the mountain, because it seemed to him like there was far more space inside it than there should be.
It wasn’t as bright in the tunnel as it had been in the cavern, but the occasional glowing crystal provided more than enough light to see. He thought back to the test the guardian spirit of the forest had put him through while he traversed the seemingly endless tunnel. He had already failed a trial of spirit in the past, but hopefully the conditions were different this time. What was he most afraid of? He was scared of his father, but he knew there were worse things. The death of his friends, his friends discovering even a portion of the things he so desperately hid.
Really the list went on. So what was it then? The one thing that scared him more than anything else. Was it becoming like his father? Perhaps it was that his father had been right the whole time, and he was the one making mistake after mistake. Could that really be it though? None of them felt quite right, despite how terrifying those thoughts were. None of them were the thing he feared most.
There was something else, something buried so deep he was even hiding it from himself. His head began to ache, as he saw flashes of something in his head. The image was too fuzzy, and the more he focused on it the more it hurt. He groaned as his concentration failed and the image dispersed. “Just how bad must it be, that I seem to have repressed it to this extent.” He was no stranger to repressed memories, he had several things resurface in the past. The night his brother died for one. How could there possibly be something even worse than that in his past.
Regardless of what memory lay just beneath the surface, he had a bad feeling that it was about to come back up. Whether he was ready to face it or not.