I took my time walking back to the barracks, not in any particular hurry to interact with anyone after reliving those events. The excitement surrounding the fire had mostly died by the time I returned, and the damage had even been cleaned up. A few people were lingering in the building, some fresh out of the showers, while others were eating their breakfast. I decided to clean myself up before starting the day, having not had the chance with being rushed into the memory dive.
Much like before, there was a single changing room with two doorways to either side. I grabbed a towel from one of the cubbies, hoping they weren’t assigned to anyone in particular, and headed into the doorway on my right. Immediately, I turned on my heels and walked back out, blushing from embarrassment. I really wish I could read their fucking language, I thought, cursing myself internally for walking into the women’s showers. However, upon crossing the opposite doorway, I realized I had made no mistake; the showers were simply not divided.
Not wanting to wait for the room to empty out, I swallowed my pride and stripped down, heading for a spout toward the back of the room. I turned on the tap, and was assaulted with icy water. I scrubbed myself down as quickly as I could, the water running black from the soot that didn’t initially get splashed off. After a few minutes, I shut the water off and wrapped myself in the towel, and headed back into the dressing room. A couple of people were enjoying some casual conversation after their respective showers, until they spotted me.
“Hey, Torch,” one jeered. I must have set some sort of record for the fastest time earning a nickname, technically securing it before I even woke up on my first day. “They didn’t fix you up?”
“What do you mean,” I asked uncertainly. The man just pointed at my face, with a dismayed look on his own, and after a moment, I remembered smashing my face on the ground. “Oh, yeah! Thanks for reminding me,” I said before proceeding to slide my nose back into place with an audible crunch. I grimaced slightly from the pain, but not nearly as much as the others standing in front of me. Ignoring their obvious discomfort, I extended my hand to introduce myself by my proper name. The two returned the gesture and identified themselves as Remir and Arellon.
“Oh, hey, you’re the one who put out the fire,” I asked as I pointed to Remir. He nodded in confirmation, and I gave my thanks for the assist. “I appreciate you doin’ that. Didn’t realize it was possible to use magic while sleeping. Feel free to skip straight to splashing me awake if anything like that happens again,” I offered with a smile. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if I was allowed to be a fire hazard again.
“Do you have visions often,” asked Arellon, concern plain on her face. I shrugged my shoulders and gave a so-so motion with my hand before responding.
“Not really. I usually only remember a handful of my dreams, but they’re not usually that bad. That one will probably stick with me for a while,” I stated, getting a slight chill at the thought of being swarmed by monsters with no end in sight. The looks I received were some combination of awe and confusion, causing me a twinge of anxiety.
“It sounds to me as though you’re quite the clairvoyant, if that’s the case,” replied Arellon. “I’ve never met anyone with the time affinity before! What did you see?”
“Maybe it would be best if we don’t make him recount what caused him to set fire to the barracks, Arellon,” interjected Remir. The woman tried to stammer out a response, but Remir cut her off. “Besides, our group will be testing soon. It would be best not to distract ourselves with such things.” I breathed a sigh of relief and mentally thanked Remir for saving me, while Arellon sagged in defeat.
I took advantage of the lull in conversation to fully dry off and throw my robe back on. With my morning routine taken care of, I reentered the sleeping quarters, soon joined by Remir and Arellon. To my surprise, my clothes were sitting on my bed, clean and folded. Not wanting to feel so exposed, I quickly grabbed them and found a secluded corner to get properly dressed, putting the robe over the top of my usual outfit. Just as I finished up, an instructor entered the barracks to make an announcement.
“Listen up, recruits! All members of the fifth barracks, follow me for your first round of assessments,” he ordered. Once everyone was gathered together, the instructor turned around and led us over to the administrative building. On the way, I felt a nearly imperceptible chill as the warmth left the color of the world around me. Oh, right. I almost managed to forget about that, I thought. I’ll have to figure out how to turn that off soon. I definitely don’t want to share my temper.
The instructor led our group into a large classroom by the back of the building, filled with several long tables, dozens of chairs and crude pencils at each one. Everyone started filing into the seats, breaking into several cliques. I spotted Lira during my search, and sauntered over to join her. My two changing room companions followed suit, sitting on either side of us. With everyone seated, the instructor grabbed a stack of rough papers off of his desk and began passing them around the room as he explained the process.
“The following test is to assess your mental abilities. You will be given two hours to complete it to the best of your ability. Do not worry if it contains subject matter that you’re not familiar with, as nobody is expected to achieve a perfect score. If you fall short in any area, we will simply provide education,” he explained as he passed by me and handed me a stack of ten papers. “You are not allowed to rely on the knowledge of your fellow recruits, so any collusion will result in a retake for any involved. Once you are done, bring your test back to me and exit the room. With that said, you may begin!”
As soon as the rules were explained, everyone picked up their pencils and got straight to work. I inspected the test I was given, and couldn’t help but feel more than a little discouraged. Each page was double-sided and absolutely covered in the weird runic language I had seen on signs while roaming the streets of Nakstal. From what I could tell, there was no discernible rhyme or reason to the layout or structure of the language, and nearly admitted defeat before an idea wormed its way into my head.
Ever since I had teleported, the local language had been automatically translated for me, no doubt through magical means. With any luck, I’d be able to cast my own translation spell in order to decipher the alien characters. I took a moment to clear my mind, then focused my efforts onto the pages before me. After a moment of staring, the writing began to shift and unravel, revealing their contents to me. I was surprised by how little power I had to give the spell, only being made mildly uncomfortable by the sensations associated with magic, but ultimately relieved I wouldn’t burn myself out just trying to read.
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As expected, it took the form of your run-of-the-mill standardized test. However, I had no confidence that I’d be capable of coming close to an admirable score. There were a few questions involving basic math, but the rest of the test was a combination of subjects I had no knowledge in, at least in regards to Astema. Most questions were about history, geopolitics, theology, magic theory, or alchemy. I answered everything I could, but that didn’t end up amounting to much. In total, I managed to answer roughly twenty questions, but I was confident in the answers I gave.
I cut the translation spell off, and the writing slowly writhed back into its original form, my own additions somehow doing the same. As quietly as I could, I took my test to the instructor, who immediately proceeded to review the papers with a disappointed expression. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. If I were in charge of training an army, I would be rather upset with the prospect of essentially being presented with a toddler, as far as general knowledge was concerned. Noticing several pairs of eyes on me, I retreated from the room and set about finding the mess hall.
It didn’t take long to secure some breakfast, as my nose was readily able to lead the way. I grabbed a large bowl of the hearty stew that had been prepared, along with some water, and returned to the barracks to eat in peace. Having only used about fifteen minutes out of the allotted two hours, I was left with plenty of time on my own to just relax while people slowly filtered back in, one or two at a time. It didn’t take long for me to wolf down my meal, and relaxation transitioned into boredom. Almost as if on cue, Lira came through the door with Remir, Arellon, and someone I had yet to meet, cheerfully chatting away.
The unidentified man locked eyes with me upon entering the room, and rushed over so fast that I thought he was about to spring an attack, until he extended his arm straight out between us for a handshake. “You’re the clairvoyant! Zachary, correct,” he asked, while enthusiastically shaking my arm like he was attempting to rip it off.
“Just Zach is fine,” I replied as I reclaimed ownership of my arm. “And you are?”
“Ah, sorry! Got ahead of myself, there. My name is Cyrol.” Lira and the others were suppressing snickers as I slowly realized who exactly I was talking to.
“Oh, shit. You tried to wake me up and got burned, right? Are you okay,” I asked as I tried to look for any signs of the damage I did. Cyrol waved his hand dismissively with a slight laugh, apparently not too upset about what happened.
“Oh, the healers here are excellent. I barely even have any scarring,” he happily proclaimed. “More importantly, what did you see?” I gave a disappointed sigh, coming to the understanding that I couldn’t escape the curiosity of others. Lira was about to protest, but I held up my hand to stop her.
“You wanted to know, too, so here’s your chance,” I said, directed at her and the others. Without hesitation, they sat down on the beds and leaned in to make sure they’d hear every detail. “So, first of all, I’m really banking on it not being a vision. I assume since that’s everyone’s first assumption, you guys don’t have dreams or nightmares?” My question was met with a chorus of ‘no’s, and I shoved aside the ensuing anxiety in favor of ripping off the band-aid.
“Well, where I’m from, we don’t really have visions. Some claim to have them, but they’re usually just con artists hoping to make money off of grieving families. That’s beside the point, though. Dreams and nightmares are essentially hallucinations we get while we sleep. They’re largely thought to be the mind’s way of processing information. Nightmares usually have more to do with fears, and dreams are pleasant fantasies. With that being said, what I had was nowhere close to being a dream. I say that in case me setting everything on fire wasn’t enough of a hint that what happened wasn’t pleasant.” The four of them nodded to confirm their understanding, albeit looking slightly less sure of themselves.
“Okay, then. I don’t know whether everyone with me died and I just didn’t get to see that part, but I had to clear a dungeon alone.” I paused for a moment to let the implication sink in, and their expressions went from unsure to anxious in an instant. “However, I was more scared than anything, so I’d assume I simply got separated. Either way, it was a large dungeon, easily twice the size of the one to the east of here. Where that one was only dangerous in the labyrinth, this one was filled with hundreds of revenants, if not thousands. Somehow, I made it to the core chamber, but I was already reaching my limits. I tried to fight my way through, but I got swarmed and overwhelmed. Instead of killing me, though, the revenants started dragging me toward the core, and that’s when I set fire to everything and was woken up.”
I got chills recounting the events, and silence reigned in the entire barracks. Everyone who had already come back from testing had decided to listen in, much to their own dismay. While I had certainly been through many things as bad or worse than that, that clearly wasn’t the case for everyone around me. Several of the eavesdroppers had even broken out into cold sweats, sporting haunted expressions. I couldn’t help but pity them, relating to learning more than you wanted to know, having been in that position too many times to count.
Arellon was the first to break the silence, asking an unexpected question. “What do you plan to do if that is a vision, not one of your nightmares?” Truth be told, I had been too caught up in denying that it was anything other than a dream to consider trying to do something about it.
“I don’t know, die? Can you even do anything about visions? I just figured it was set in stone,” I replied. Arellon vigorously shook her head, giving me a shred of hope.
“Of course not. That’s the benefit of having visions, otherwise they would just be cruel. They certainly drive some mad, but most often they enable you to carve out your own fate. Visions are one of Samar’s greatest gifts to Astema,” she explained.
“Well, that’s a relief to know, at least. But, uh, who’s Samar?” Based on the reactions around me, that was a relatively ridiculous question. Thankfully, Lira remembered my limited knowledge of Astema and informed me without any fuss.
“Samar is the god of time and destiny. It’s rare for anyone to have His favor, but that doesn’t seem to matter with you,” she said. I nodded absently, trying to remember if I had met him in the gods’ domain, but ended up drawing a blank. Not a part of the main entourage, then, I thought.
“I’m definitely not getting a passing score on that test,” I said with a small chuckle, attempting to shift everyone’s focus off of me. “To be honest, it’s still a little hard to believe gods and magic exist anywhere, even though I’ve seen plenty of proof already. I just keep expecting this all to be a dream, and I’ll wake up at home at any moment. But that hope gets crushed a little more every day.”
Fortunately, the deflection worked, and the eavesdroppers lost interest, going back to their own business. Lira and the others accepted the change of topic and happily went about trying to educate me on the wonders Astema contained. Eventually, though, they grew bored and I was once again left to my own devices. With the hope I had been given related to visions, I used the rest of my day to try to come up with a plan in the event that I was forced to face the dungeon. Before I knew it, the sun had set and I settled into bed with renewed confidence.