It was the day of Telin's test, and Flyte felt prepared. Telin had set him up in a new quarters so that he could test summoning runes without the fear of summoning any demons.

Flyte had been told to go to the training wing in a few hours, and with his new quarters he could make it there within a minute. He just had to take a left.

At the moment, though, Flyte was working on something that he considered genius. On his reinforced boots, he had engraved Star's rune. This would allow her to help him whenever she felt like helping him. He had also tested them out earlier, and was confident that using this rune would let him step on patches of hard light that Star made, allowing him to get the upper hand in a tough situation.

On his helmet, Flyte carved Rowlo's rune, mostly because slowing anything or anyone down was a major benefit.

Right now, Flyte was putting Glow's rune on his shortsword. This would allow her to come into the corporeal world at will, and it would allow him to heal at all times.

The runes had to be made very neatly to gain their full effect, and with Flyte's skill in engraving, that was pretty difficult.

Flyte hadn't ever done anything very meticulous, such as engraving, before now. Back in his hometown, the only thing he knew to do with a writing utensil was write his name down for legal purposes. Everything else he did could be summed up with farming, feeding, and making barrels.

Flyte had noticed that his hands were somewhat steady. His untrained fingers stumbled awkwardly, but they could push his tools in a straight line when he needed them to.

Just as Flyte finished with his sword, a man walked into his room.

"The trial's starting time has been changed, he said. "It will now begin in ten minutes."

"But why?" Flyte started asking, but the man left before he could finish.

Grumbling, Flyte walked over to his equipment and began putting it on. His armor was all very light, at least compared to the soldiers in the prison and in his hometown. The movement it allowed Flyte to have greater speed than many of the opponents he had fought, and it would also allow him to take a weak hit without injury.

Flyte decided to take his extra time to make his way to the sparring area to at least get a feel for the test.

What he saw surprised him. In less than a full day, the sparring arena had turned into a miniature canyon of blackish stones.

Telin was looking into the chasm with his hand on his darkened short sword.

"Hello Telin," Flyte shouted.

Telin jumped and Flyte thought for a second that the slightly older man would fall into the depths. When he didn't, Flyte sighed audibly in relief, but that sigh cancelled out a sound Telin made when hitting the ground, so Flyte couldn't tell what the sound was.

"Flyte," Telin calmly said. "You're early. You're never early."

"Yeah," Flyte said awkwardly. "I figured I should see what the test was before doing it."

"Well Flyte," Telin said. "You can't be in here yet. Go into the hallway, and I'll get you when the time comes."

Flyte walked off, wondering what the test could be, if it involved a canyon like that. 'Could it be a battle against several other guilders again?, would it be a test to see who could live off the land the best, or could it possibly be a test to see who could take the most non-lethal pain from sources they couldn't see.' Telin was too new to Flyte for him to be able to tell.

'If it were between me and Ander, I would be at an advantage for the second one, because I've lived on a farm for the last eighteen years of my life. The third and first options, Ander would be best at, because between the two of us, Ander is the better fighter, and he'd also lived with pain often, because every blow to his stone arm felt like some form of blunt smacking.' Ander had told him that.

After two minutes of waiting, Telin called for him.

When Flyte arrived back at the manmade chasms, he felt something odd in the air. something less pure than before.

Flyte looked around and noticed that there were only about twenty other guilders there. Telin opened his mouth to speak.

"This test," he started. "Is going to be a team fight against monsters. There will be four teams of six. Whichever teams do the best, or destroy the heart in the middle first, will be able to proceed to the next guild rank."

Telin stopped for a moment but thought of something else to add. "All around us is a group of high tiered guilders ready to swoop in if any of you are about to die, so none of you are in any real danger. Good luck"

Telin held out a bucket with small, numbered papers inside it. Flyte was the tenth in line, so the wait was long. Around him he noticed a few groupings. One of the groups was made with two people he remembered standing with each other on the kidnapping test. He wondered if they cheated to team together, but then he remembered that he didn't care.

Flyte was grouped with them, and upon asking, found out that the two were dating. The guy was around Flyte's height, and he specialized in frost, flame, and stone manipulation spells, while the girl was a head shorter than Flyte, and specialized in light, nature, and healing spells.

Flyte asked for their names.

"Mine is Thammeus John," the boy said. "And hers is Hilda Brown. How about yours?"

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"My name is Flyte Tenner," Flyte said.

"And what's your specialty?" Hilda asked lightly.

"I specialize in light, fire, ice, healing, and speed based spells."

Thammeus let out a low whistle. "Looks like someone's going for archmage."

Flyte realized he didn't know other mage's terminologies on the subject of magic. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Thammeus started. "Ever since the Aliranic fall that happened about three hundred years ago, mages have standardly gone for three areas of magic that they focus on. When a mage does more than that, they are classified as a generalist mage. Despite using only one more spell type, they normally aren't as good with each magic type as a standard mage."

Thammeus caught his breath. "After generalists, there are mages that work on one half of usable spells, generally based on emotion type. These are called rounded mages. When a mage works on every type of magic, they are called archmages. The path of the archmage requires the most work, luck, and natural talent no matter how weak the archmage is."

"There are also monocasters," Hilda continued. "These focus on just one type of magic but try to master is by appealing to every facet of the spell's possible power. An example of this is for fire, one might try to sound enthusiastic while saying its word in order to appeal to the brightness of fire, but they might also try sounding welcoming to make the fire warm instead of blazing hot."

"Why do you guys know so much about this?" Flyte asked. His first experiences on magic were untrained, because of the magic restriction, so he never dreamt that there might be specific paths for mages to use. It was almost strange that paths existed, because that meant there would have to be some coalition with mages despite the laws against it.

"Well, me and Hild-," Thammeus was stopped as Telin shouted:

"That's the last of them, go into the chasm through the entrance with your group's number."

Flyte looked around to find that he not only hadn't noticed two newcomers, but their last teammate was also walking towards them. She had clay colored skin and green eyes and was even shorter than Hilda. Her hair was also green, which really popped out in the black guild robes.

"So," Flyte started asking. "What are you?"

His question was taken quite comically as Hilda just gaped at him, Thammeus started laughing hysterically and the new girl started walking toward the chasm.

"I'm a girl," she said. "Stupid farmer boy."

Flyte wasn't really offended. He was a farmer's boy, but he felt like he probably shouldn't point that out. It was a little annoying to already be on the wrong foot, but it was also much better than fighting hordes of shades.

And so, the group went on their way to the entrance.

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The group made it to their stairwell down the chasm. The helix formed steps were steeps, but also smooth, as though the rocks were formed that way, which they likely were.

Between laughs Thammeus told Flyte that their groupmate was an azial, but before Flyte could ask what that meant, Thammeus told him he'd see.

Telin sent them the signal to start, which was just the word start floating in the chasm, and the group went on their way.

After his mistake with the short azial girl, Flyte decided not to ask the two that had come before her questions. He had noticed that one had a large sword, while the other used a large mace and a shield.

Flyte stopped thinking about his team when they made it to the bottom of the stairwell. Immediately upon exiting the stairwell he noticed a strange creature. It was a chitin covered man, but some of its limbs were cut off, and replaced with those limbs were masses of tentacles. On the strange thing's chest was a massive eye, and the creature had no head.

Flyte rushed at it to stab its eye with his sword, and as he did so, the monster tried hitting him with its ropey tentacle arm. Flyte ducked under its swing, using his youth to his advantage.

As he got past its arm, however, he felt an odd aura around him. It felt like he did after a fire spell, but that feeling was somewhat twisted.

The decapitated creature suddenly charged at him in an almost crazed way. The fury of its blows towards Flyte reminded him of Borigan's short fight with Elliot. A battle of stamina. This creature, at least, was unlikely to throw him.

Flyte didn't just feel that strange magic, he also felt something reminiscent of shades, like this creature was just a shadow of another form.

Any shadow is some sort of harmony between light and dark. A shadow won't be seen in pure light or pure darkness, but they could be found where the two meet. Flyte was going to make it so that no darkness remained.

"Nelar," he shouted triumphantly, trying to use light's natural ability to cast out darkness as a facet.

It worked. Sort of. The spell was much harder to push out that it was when he sparred Telin, but it took the same amount of his energy to use, which was a miniscule amount.

The flash of light sounded off with a boom, and when the light passed, all that was left of the creature was its chitin.

"What was that?" The azial asked.

"I don't know," Flyte responded. "Seemed odd."

"That's not what I'm asking," she said to him. "If you go alone after every monster we fight, you're going to run out of energy and be a hinderance throughout the entire test."

"Uh, okay," Flyte responded. He had no clue what that was about. 'Is she still mad about my question?'

The party walked on and, to no one's surprise, found another eldritch creature. Rather than tentacled and decapitated, this one was a dark purple orb surrounded by metal in the shape of a large man.

The two bigger guys walked in and started pounding it with their massive weapons, but that wasn't doing very much to it.

The metal man, who wasn't a fan of the mace or the great sword, opened up its chest of shot out a stream of fire at its two assailants.

Grasping the opportunity, Thammeus shot a beam of ice directly into the sphere. The sphere vibrated wildly, and the metal man around it shook and started falling to pieces.

"Good job Tha-" Flyte started. The sphere blew up in a gout of flames, knocking nearly everyone back. The only one in their group who avoided the explosion was the azial girl.

"That was pretty dumb," she said.

Flyte would not be hearing that for the entire test. "What is your problem?" He shouted. "Please get it out now, because this is getting annoying fast. You didn't even help with that last thing, so how can you criticize us?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. farmer boy," she shouted back. "But if we keep making stupid mistakes, we won't be able to get either of the objectives complete, and it'll be another chance to rank up wasted."

Flyte did acknowledge that what she said was true, mistakes like these wouldn't let them kill the most monsters or the heart. "We can't pass this test with a team of complete strangers either," Flyte said. He wasn't as annoyed anymore, despite the girl's total dodge of his point of her not doing anything. "I only know two other people's names, and nothing else about anyone. Let's go in a circle, we'll say our names, then our magic focus, and finally one other thing about ourselves. I'll start."

"Hey, I'm Flyte Tenner. I think I'm best with light magic, but I use many different forms of magic as well. Last month I hung out in prison with a person who was part stone." He didn't want to use Ander's name just in case.

The azial girl went next. "I'm Azalea Greentree, I focus mostly on nature magic, and I have a half-brother who is only one half azial."

Next came Thammeus, then Hilda. "I'm Thammeus John, I focus on frost, flame, and stone. I'm dating this wacko." As he said 'wacko' he rubbed Hilda's hair.

"I'm Hilda Brown. I use healing, light, and nature spells, and I'm dating this moron." As she said 'moron', she elbowed Thammeus in the gut.

After them, the kid with the mace spoke up. "I'm Jim Brown, I focus on light, slowing, and stone manipulation magic, and, if you couldn't guess, I'm Hilda's older brother."

Flyte was certain they cheated to get the same team, that's too many to be coincidental.

The last one spoke. "I'm Lanus Crete, I monocast lightning, and I'm from Balis."

That gave Flyte some Ideas. "Guys, I think I know we should do."

Then he went to explaining.