Azura found himself in a dark room. He could feel Garrion’s presence, but he couldn’t see anything in the darkness. “Are you ready? The trial of the mind isn’t one that can be passed with strength or skill. Failing it will leave your mind shattered beyond all recognition. You would be alive only in the barest sense of the word.” Well the dragon certainly knew how to make his trials sound terrifying. Not like he could back out now anyway.
“Well I’m not going to be any more ready in the foreseeable future, so might as well do it now.” The dragon laughed. The sound echoed through the pitch black room, causing the entire room to vibrate. He was allowed to keep his equipment this time, but he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be doing him much good for the trial. Still, there was a certain reassurance to having it with him.
“Indeed. Your courage is not in question I suppose. Quite different from your father’s answer too, I believe he said that he didn’t fail. I laughed at the time, but he lived up to his ego.” Even he could admit his father’s pride was well earned. Didn’t mean he wasn’t an absolute scumbag.
“Hate to say I might have said something similar had I not encountered failure so recently.” He wasn’t as bothered by it as he thought he would be. He was raised in an environment where failure meant severe punishments. He was lucky in that the only time he had failed before the forest incident had been with his father’s little test with the bandits, and his father couldn’t risk punishing him too severely with the trials near, not that the threat of not being allowed to take them wasn’t punishment enough.
“I see, I’m sure that is an interesting story. Perhaps you will share it if you pass this trial.” Before he could respond he felt an extreme sense of vertigo. He barely kept his feet as the world spun, he wondered if the room being so dark was to stop this from being even more nauseating. Before he knew it he seemed to be in an entirely different place. It was still pitch black, but his senses other than sight told him he was somewhere completely different.
“Not even going to tell me what I’m meant to be doing this time?” He knew the dragon wasn’t present anymore, or at least not in a position to answer him. “How do I keep getting myself in these messes?” He sighed He was no Luna, but he could use his magic to get a general idea of his surroundings at least. He touched the wall on his left. The glowing blue symbols that began to spread from his hand revealed the flat stone walls behind him and to his right.
As the symbols spread it became clear there was a long rock corridor in front of him that kept going far past where he lost sight of his glowing symbols. Worse It branched off several times, and he was willing to bet there were branches on the other side too. “A maze? Fantastic, not like I’m on a time limit for the academy’s trial or anything.” Unfortunately that meant he couldn’t afford to waste time complaining.
He left his hand on the wall as he began walking forward. Navigating a maze wasn't difficult, but it was time consuming, and arguably that was currently much worse. He bet the others were probably done already.
***
Lily jumped sideways dodging the claw that was trying to tear her head off. Her current opponent being a hellhound, A large black dog with very sharp teeth and glowing red eyes. It was at least 2 of her tall, and had apparently decided that her existence was an insult to its very being. The extremely angry canine was a very unfortunate matchup for her. It was practically immune to fire, and worse with its shadow jumping it was essentially a much more powerful shadow panther. Its wicked sharp horns and claws certainly weren’t making her survival any easier.
She put a wall of flames between them, the hound could go right through it, but it limited visibility long enough for her to discreetly pull a shard out of her pocket. As expected the hound dove through the flames and charged at her, thankfully it didn’t notice the blue white crystal in her hands. She had no doubt that if it saw the shard its actions would change to keeping its distance.
She pushed her mana through the shard before unleashing it in a wild burst. Ice formed instantly in a wave in front of her. The hellhound and a large swath of area around and behind it were frozen in an instant. She lowered her hand cautiously. She wondered if she could pretend this didn’t happen. She did not need to see Azura’s smug reaction if he found out she had needed to use the shard afterall. Especially after she had gone on a rant about her fire being strong enough to deal with anything. Well her unique magic probably could have burned the hell hound, but her control over it wasn’t always the best.
Right as she turned to walk away a slight hissing sound drew her attention back behind her. She turned to see steam rising off the rapidly vanishing ice. “Of course it's a blaze variant, because why wouldn’t it be!” The ice fully sublimated leaving the now on fire hellhound. The blaze emitted from its body and mouth coalescing into the form of armor around the canine. “Good doggie?” A blast of fire shot from its jaw, she caught the fire and dispersed it around her. “Yeah I didn’t think so.”
***
Luna hadn’t really been surprised when she was immediately besieged by a wide variety of monsters the second she arrived here. She had never been so thankful for her clairvoyance, without it she’d certainly be dead already. Not that she was in particularly good condition anyway. She hadn’t gotten away from the mob scott free, she had various cuts and bruises all over and she was completely exhausted.
“Off to a great start.” She groaned as she slowly did her best to patch herself up. She wondered how the others were doing, better than her most likely. She would have to get a move on pretty soon, or run the risk of running out of time. Now she just needed to figure out what kind of creature she should make her familiar, maybe a jackalope? Might offset her bad luck some.
“Come to me. Child who’s been touched by darkness, come and I shall cleanse you.” She stiffened looking around. She was familiar enough with telepathy to recognize it, but her instincts kicked in at the sudden sound regardless. The feminine voice was gentle in her head, but just the fact it knew she was cursed was enough to make her wary. Not only that, the kind of creatures that could cleanse a curse could be counted on 1 hand, and all of them were extremely rare and powerful.
“Where are you?” As risky as it was, if it could get rid of the curse then she wouldn’t have to bother Azura every couple of days. He was too kind to complain, but she knew the loss of time he could use getting stronger didn’t sit well with him.
She heard a pleasant chuckle. “I’m sure you can figure that out, perhaps finding me yourself will ease your concerns. Even with your life on the line, your friend was the first thing that came to your mind when weighing pros and cons. Your devotion does you credit, find me, and perhaps more than just being free of your curse may be accomplished.”
She winced, the creature had clearly read her mind, which left her with 2 possibilities. Assuming it wasn’t lying about being able to cure her it had to be either a pheonix or a unicorn. Both had been known to help the worthy, whether or not she qualified she wasn’t sure, but she was just going to have to try her best.
***
Azura couldn’t believe he had been walking through the maze for 2 hours already. What was the point of this? There were no traps, the walls were tough enough that he hadn’t been able to break them, and the walls went all the way up to the ceiling, so he couldn’t get above the maze. Was it just a waste of time? Mind Games to make something else harder? He just couldn’t fathom what this could possibly be testing.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Try as he might, his magic still hadn’t detected any kind of exit, or even any monsters or traps. Far as he could tell he was alone down here, only darkness and the maze to keep him company. “I think this is actually worse than the trial of body. At least with that one I was able to do something.” He crumbled to himself as he took a right turn keeping his hand on the left wall.
He hoped this wasn’t a moving maze. His strategy would then be rendered pointless, and he’d be forced to waste more time trying to figure out the movement patterns. He froze. He felt something, it was faint, but there was definitely magic coming from a corridor leading off to the right. He bit his lip. He had no guarantee the corridor would actually lead to the magic source just because they were in the same direction, and as long as the maze was still keeping a hand on the left wall it would inevitably let him out eventually.
He wasn’t usually a gambling man, but how much time could he really afford to waste? Of the 24 hours he had been given he would be surprised if less than 16 had already passed. His time-telling spell hadn’t worked since he got to the dragon's cave, so he couldn’t even find out how much time he had left. He was wasting time sitting here thinking about it though he had to decide quickly, slow and steady or take a risk.
“Fuck, I’m so gonna regret this.” He ran off down the corridor on his right.” The corridor branched several times, he kept track of each of them so he could backtrack and try each one to get to the source of the magic. He had thrown caution to the wind, trading his weary scanning spells with enhancement spells to boost his speed. He had backtracked a couple times to try another route, but he thought he was finally on the right track. The magic source was extremely close now
He had actually let himself think he had made the right decision when he came face to face with the worst case scenario. Or rather he came face to face with a wall, and he could sense whatever was emitting the magic was directly on the other side. He cursed and kicked the wall. He could get back to where he had started, but he had wasted another hour on this expenditure. He didn’t have all the time in the world for this, he needed to find a way to hasten it along.
Well failing meant death anyway, he was desperate enough to try something crazy at this point. He pulled out his grimoire, and opened it keeping tight control on the surging magic released from its pages. “Teleport.” He spoke calmly, but spatial magic was not something he was well versed in. He knew more than most, but even with such a small distance he was taking a major risk using a spell this complicated. Grimoire or no.
He felt space bend around him as he felt the unfortunately familiar sensations attached with going through spatial anomalies. He hadn’t quite anticipated how much more difficult teleporting would be if he had to manage the spell while dealing with the disorienting effects of the spell being cast on him. He now understood why self teleportation was considered one of the most advanced forms of magic there was.
He was honestly a little surprised when the nausea faded and he found himself facing some kind of altar. His vision blurred before he got a good chance to look at it though, and the nausea returned 10 fold as he keeled over to vomit. Managing to find the wherewithal to use his magic to scan his body he was glad to find that nothing was out of place. After losing all of his stomach’s contents, he was finally able to stand and get a better look at the altar in front of him.
It was thin and only went up to his waist, but the oddest part was the glowing round gem at the top of it. The green light emitting from it gave him an odd feeling of familiarity. He reached his hand out to touch it, and the second his hand came to rest on the crystal a spike shot up impaling his hand. He grit his teeth, and through sheer force of will stopped himself from moving.
Logically he knew moving would only make the injury worse, but knowing that and actually following through were 2 very different things. “How is this a trial of the mind?” The answer came in the form of his vision blurring again. When it cleared he was surrounded by all manner of nightmares. Terrifying visions and haunted memories surrounded him. He gently tried to lift his hand off the spike, but the spike seemed to get longer as he pulled, preventing him from freeing himself.
The visions never touched him, merely taunting him and reminding him of his numerous regrets. “You don’t deserve to live. You know it better than anyone, so why do you struggle? Why fight against the inevitable? Why suffer through this pitiful existence?” The echoing sounds filled his head, giving him a splitting headache. So many different voices saying so many different things, it all blurred together in a cacophony of noise.
Even amongst all the white noise there was one voice he couldn’t miss. His mother’s voice played out with the rest of them. “It’s because of you I died. If you had managed to stop your brother without killing him I’d still be alive, but you didn’t. You didn’t even try, did you? He was in your way, so you slaughtered him… Just like your father would if someone got in his way,”
That wasn’t what happened. This wasn’t his mother, he knew that, logically he knew that, but… That didn’t make this any easier. To this day he still wracked his brain, thinking of all the ways he could have better handled the situation, but he was only a child at the time, he had been scared, and unprepared. He had done the best he was able to.
“You don’t really believe that. You know, deep down you wanted him to die. He had been a thorn in your side for years, always bothering you and punishing you for his failures. Congratulations you freed yourself, all it cost was a brother and your mother. Was our sacrifice not enough for you?” This wasn’t right, why were these words so hard to ignore. He knew they weren’t real.
The phantoms faded away, and he was left watching the memory. He saw himself from a long time ago. His 10 year old self was sitting on a bench outside the castle. He didn’t have to look to know his younger self was reading Applications of Spirit Magic. This day was burned in his memory. He would probably remember it till the day he died.
He sighed. “I wish you would walk away.” He wasn’t surprised when his younger self didn’t react. At least not to his words. The vision of him did turn to face the boy approaching from the right. The boy looked a lot like him, except his eyes were red like their father’s. His brother had only been 14 when he died, 1 more year, and he wouldn’t have even been in the castle.
“Hello brother, I see you’re slacking on your training again. The practice field is back the way you came.” He winced, he wasn’t exactly the nicest person now, but he had been much worse as a child. He had been most of the things he now hated.
The vision of his brother snarled. “I was thinking since you’re so full of yourself, because you passed a few of dad’s little tests you might want to spar with me.” His younger self turned back to his book eyes filled with boredom.
“Why? You're older and stronger, if we spar with swords I’ll lose, and dad says we aren’t allowed to use magic against each other without him or mom supervising.” He had almost forgotten that there had been a time he called that man his dad. He had never been kind per se, but he had become even worse after the events he was being forced to watch played out.
“What happened to if I don’t get my act together, father will choose you as his heir?” He didn’t want to watch this. He already knew how it was going to end. His younger self remaining completely oblivious to his presence looked back at his brother like he had just said something particularly stupid.
“I told you that so you would start taking training more seriously, not so you’d think the way to prove yourself to dad was by trying to beat up someone 4 years younger than you.” He hadn’t known at the time why that had made his brother so angry. He only found out years later that his brother trained late into the night long after he himself had gone to bed. His brother dedicated so much of his time to training, but was always overshadowed by the sheer talent he was gifted with. Not that he hadn’t trained hard as a child, but he knew now his brother had been more dedicated to training at the time.
“You don’t even know anything about me! You’re dad’s perfect son! Your mom’s favorite too, you act like me and Selena don’t even exist.” Of the many painful memories he knew this was going to drag up, that might very well have been the worst. Back then he had been so competitive he barely interacted with his siblings. That Selena had forgiven him after this incident showed off the depths of her kindness. At least his behavior towards the servants was more in line with his mom than his father.
His younger self looked up at his brother, and to his surprise didn’t say what he had said back then. “Perhaps you’re right… I’m sorry.” His vision swam, of all the times he had run through this event. What he could have done better. What he could have done to fix things. He had never thought to apologize.