Ezril made to rejoin what was left of the group, but his pride served to keep him in place where he’d fallen to his knees. He rose to his feet. Cautiously, he waded through the mist, finding only more of it with each step. As he wandered, he considered the possibility of Darvi and Olufemi being the last in line a conscious choice of the priests. He decided that if he was to place a wager on who would be the last out of the group it would be Olufemi.

The sound of twig snapping pushed panic into his mind. It sent him on a panicked sprint through the mist. He knew nothing of this part of the forest and stories abounded amongst the older children that some tests would involve fights against beasts. Slowly, as Ezril ran, the mist thinned into nothingness. He sidestepped a tree as his vision cleared, narrowly avoiding it. A stray branch hit him in the face immediately after and he fell to the ground, like a discarded log.

Sprawled on the floor, he opened his eyes. The sun was at its peak. The direction with which the light bore through the shades of the trees was proof enough for him. This was not the forest he had been dropped in when he'd been brought to the seminary.

He’d already been through two of the seminary’s gates. This was the third. It left only one more gate. Ezril wondered if Urden had chosen the gate he’d been left at on purpose. Perhaps there had been something safe about that gate. Or maybe he knew Ulrich would be there that day.

Unlike the mist at the other gates, this one felt more like dew. Ezril wrung his hair free of whatever moisture was present from the mist. He slipped back the strands matted against his face and fore head, then drew his knife from its sheath. Convinced that it was intact, he returned it, replacing it with his water sack.

It did not take him long to realize why they had been asked to fill the sack before the test. The forest, as far as he had gone, proved to hold a dislike for things such as a trickle of water. Possessing a steadily increasing chill, this part of the mist was strikingly different from the one they used on Weltiff. The part of the woods Father Zakarid trained them in had water and fruits and simple animals. This one was barren of such things.

Ezril walked on without destination. To simply plunge back into the mist was to risk getting lost. This was the test of the pathfinder, after all—he was required to find his way back.

Hours went by and the light of the sun seemed to deem. Tired of walking, Ezril chose to rest. He perched on top of a log to drink from his canteen and his mind wandered to his companions. He had no worry for Olufemi. He believed with a certainty that if anyone would finish first it would be the boy.

Greater men have died in lesser ways, Ulrich' words echoed in Ezril’s mind. Soon after, Talod’s words followed. I will be happy if you didn't return.

Was it a part of the test to addle their minds and sow terror in them? Ezril doubted it. Apart from Alric who’d only been spoken to because of what he had said, none of the other children had been told anything.

Does he hate me that much? Ezril wondered. Ezril doubted the words as quickly as they came. It was not that the priest hated him, it was something else. Urden had thought he would suffer backlash for being adopted, and he had. In the earlier days some of his brothers had treated him differently until they stopped. What he really suffered for was his new name. The name Antari was not smiled on by any of the priests. Ezril wasn’t sure if the priests hated Urden or simply hated his association to Urden.

One thing was certain, however. His relationship to Urden caused him more than his title as an orphan. It was rare to find peace amongst the priests as the son of Urden Antari.

The words of the priests crawled through his mind and he wondered just how many of them were expected to make it back between him and his brothers—how many dead bodies the seminary expected to find after the test.

Unkuti, in one of his many tales had told of a forest situated to the east of the seminary. It was known as the forest of the Tainted to the dissident tribe of Umunna that had inhabited it long before the first Alduins claimed it, dwindling the tribe's numbers and eventually forcing them to flee to unknown parts.

What Ezril knew of the Umunnas was what Urden had told him, which was basically the same. Here, the effects of the Tainted were said to be stronger on the Umunnas. It called on the souls of those who wondered carelessly into it in Unkunti’s tales.

Ezril did not believe in the stories, though he agreed it made a great form of entertainment during their nights. However, its only validity was in nothing but the existence of the forest. Still, Ezril felt no virulence from the forest even as he sat in it. The only feeling it gave was an odd sense of being watched. It was born of the mist spilling into it, ominously engulfing the grasses as far as the eyes could see.

Divine, believing Unkunti’s stories, had once asked Father Talod why the seminary had been built within the lands of the Umunnas. He often seemed exempt from the priest's answers of the cane rather than the words so he took liberties in asking questions. This did not change the fact that he was often graced with the cane occasionally.

Ezril believed it was Talod’s attempt to curtail any obvious signs of favor.

"Brandis Algon had a hand in the capture of all the lands of the realm during the wars of the first king, either by involvement or by leadership," Talod had told them. "But of the lands he led in the capture of, this was the only one he requested of the then king. It is the only land he ever owned. This seminary was built inside the forest of the Umunna tribe, not near it, long before Alduin grew so large."

Replacing the lid on his canteen, Ezril rose to his feet. He moved from a sense of being watched. He scanned his surrounding discreetly, as Father Zakarid had taught them. The priest's words were a steady guide in his head: the fact that you are not hunting does not mean that you are not part of a hunt. Always ensure you are never the hunted.

Ezril’s survey of his surrounding showed nothing suspect. The air had no hand in the chill that seemed to creep into his bones and the mist didn’t touch him. Still, he could not shake the feeling of being watched. He convinced himself that it could simply be one of his brothers watching, perhaps Olufemi, as he fell into a run. His pace remained steady as he cut through the forest, making certain not to wander too far so that he would not lose sight of the wall of mist.

A shuffling sound broke to Ezril’s side as he ran. He pulled to a stop and ducked behind a tree. The sound grew intense, like someone searching devotedly for something. With the evening drawing close, he doubted any of his peers would be so tactless as to make so much noise. When the noise stopped, he stuck his head out to assess the situation.

Ezril froze. Knowledge eluded him. Fear held him.

Yellow eyes looked back at him. They held his gaze transfixed. Ezril stared at the beast before him. Hairy and large, it was easy to be terrified by its size. The bear rose from the misty ground without taking its eyes from him. Large as it was, it was still young, not yet grown to full size. But to call it a cub would be to gravely underestimate it. After all, it was at least twice Ezril’s size.

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Ezril took a step back from behind the tree. He watched the bear rise to all fours. Clearly, it out-weighed him. To face it was to court death.

He flexed his grip on the hilt of his knife. He took a step back, thought better of it and took two more. His growing fear propelled him more than his instinct. Father Zakarid’s words came to him late.

"You will meet a wild beast one of these days. Do not panic or fear for they do not hate us as much as we hate each other. Be calm, controlled. If you run, they will chase. Why? Because only prey run. So tell me, are you prey?"

The bear bounded towards Ezril. The ground trembled beneath Ezril’s feet as it came. He pulled his blade free and threw himself to the side. He moved quickly but wasn’t fast enough. The bear slammed into him. It sent him flying off the ground and through the air. Ezril landed a few feet away.

Pain throbbed in Ezril’s hand and he glanced around for his fallen knife, lost mid-flight. The bear seemed to ignore him for a moment, sniffing at the foliage around it. A moment passed before Ezril caught a glimmer within the mist that creeped along the ground. It was the soft glint of steel and he moved for it, spurred by a need.

The bear turned at his movement and charged him again. Ezril ducked to the side, moved for safety once more. A massive paw came swinging at him. His fear slowly dominating his thoughts, Ezril threw himself to the side, dived again, and hit the ground rolling.

Run! Run! Run! his mind screamed frantically as he ran for the shimmer of steel he’d seen in the mist.

The bear came charging again, and Ezril moved once more.

Again, he moved too late, the action taken at the last moment, propelled yet delayed by the same fear. This time he proved slower. The impact of thick muscle bashed his leg, knocking him askew. He soared through the air, oddly placed, spinning like a windmill placed horizontally rather than vertically. He hit the ground with the power of a boulder and it knocked the air out of him. The mist threatened to swallow him whole when he hit the ground. Ezril refused it like a drunk with a final mug; groggily and without zeal.

He rolled a few paces before coming to a stop. There, he forced himself to his knees. The pain in his arm raged now. It was no longer something he could ignore. His fear and need to survive had numbed his mind to it. Now, it had risen to match his body’s natural anesthesia. He looked at it and squirmed at the sight of the stick embedded in his upper arm. Blood slowly sipped from the wound. Whatever was damaged inside, the stick seemed to serve as a stopper to the flow of his blood.

Is this how I die? he wondered, fear slowly becoming terror.

The bear watched him, uninterested but willing to do whatever it felt was necessary. The sight and the thought kindled a new feeling in Ezril. He didn’t want to die. The fear slowly dissipated. In its place rage swelled.

Ezril’s body screamed in protest as he forced himself to his feet. In one tormenting motion, he pulled the stick from his arm, coercing more blood from the injury. It would’ve been best to leave it in, keep the blood flow contained. Unfortunately, it would’ve hindered the choice he was about to make. The glimmer on the misty ground was closer now and Ezril reached for it with a new zeal in his heart.

I am Ezril Vi Antari, seminarian of the Holy Martyrs of Alduin Seminary. I will not fail. In a year he had embraced Urden’s last name. Called too many times by it by every priest, it was hard not to. He raised the knife before him as his aggrieved arm remained motionless at his side and the bear saw it as a threat.

The bear charged.

The sound of its steps bellowed its size. Ezril’s nose wrinkled with the smell of death. He waited. Lowering his body, he reached up with his blade before the bear ran into him. He felt the slight resistance of flesh as the blade of his knife bit into the bear’s neck. Cold blood splash against his hand and Ezril found himself lost in the air once more.

At first it seemed he would travel forever, a companion to the mist seduced wind of the forest. Then his back erupted in pain, the kind he only felt when Olbi struck him in unarmed combat. However, compared to what wrought his mind now, that was nothing more than a sliver.

Ezril fell to the ground and moved to get up immediately, remembering he was an active part of a hunt now. His head swirled. Pain accompanied it. Black spots tormented his vision and he fell back down. Each sensation kept him on the ground as the bear stalked up to him, bleeding from its neck. There was something odd about the flow. Its blood dripped like something that didn’t want to spill. Perhaps it was because his knife was still in its neck.

Ezril’s body cursed. His arm tormented him as he laid there. His eyelids drooped, surprisingly pulled by the pain. It was contrary to the knowledge he was acquainted with of pain. Pain was meant to keep him alert, not muddle the mind into drowsiness. He wondered if he had struck his head at any point in time and found no answer. Thinking proved as difficult as staying awake.

In the end, just as Vayla faded from his sight, he was graced with the final vision of a snout with a viscous liquid, a translucent red hanging from it like syrup. Stench accosted his nose and it didn’t take him long to place it. It was like fish left out to decay. It was the smell of something dying or something dead for too long. The bear continued to sniff him. It pushed his body one way, then the other with its paw.

Ezril hoped whatever happened would not punish him with too much pain as his eyes closed to the darkness of unconsciousness.

……………………..

It was night Ezril opened his eyes. Darkness surrounded him. His body protested as he rose to sit. He checked his arm, scared that he could feel no pain. It wasn’t unheard of for people to lose limbs due to injuries. The thought led him to panic. The injury, he found, was covered in a mixture of wet leaves mashed together and held to it with a tight wrapping of dry leaves. It smelled of something he could not identify.

Ezril sighed. At least he still had his life.

The darkness of the night had long proved to be more of an ally to Ezril than an enemy. As the days had gone by in the seminary, he realized his vision adjusted to darkness, given time. He’d spent most of his nights sneaking out of the tower and into the night, a sojourner within the confines of the keep.

Once, on an occasion of great misfortune, he'd been caught by Father Talod. The whipping that followed had been very unlike what he had grown accustomed to during practice. It led him to believe the priest had taken it as an opportunity to vent out his dislike for him in the privacy of the night. Either that or the man really hated people who wandered about at night.

But this had not dissuaded him. Ezril continued to walk the night as often as he could with more caution than he did before the encounter. Suffice to say, such an encounter never happened again.

Ezril rose to his feet. Ignoring the numbed pain in his hand, he leaned against a tree. A distance away was the glow of a night fire. Someone was doing something unadvisable. He wondered if one of his brothers had made their way to the area and decided to rest but thought better of it. We have till dawn; no one would rest at this time.

Thinking caution was his best course of action considering his state, he moved away from the light.

The mist flowed into the forest, accompanied by the darkness of the night. It gravened the menace of its presence and, for the first time, Ezril found himself believing Unkuti’s stories. Perhaps the forest was cursed. After all, he’d been attacked by a bear that had defeated him, ignored him when he was unconscious, and was now nowhere in sight.

Tree, Ezril thought as he walked the forest, looking for one tall enough. What he needed was a tree. If he could find one tall enough, he could climb it and look over the mist. He could locate the seminary that way and learn in which direction he was to walk, He checked his nose reflexively, remembering how many hits he’d taken from the bear. Even if none had been to the face, he still worried. As deadly as a crooked nose not healed properly had looked on Dorni, Ezril was certain he didn’t want a crooked nose. He’d already broken it twice in the seminary, having it reset properly so that it healed well each time, so he knew how to reset it if it was broken. But it only mattered if it was reset on time.

A quick survey gave Ezril his answer. He was glad to find that it was not broken.

The action reminded him of the last thing he’d smelled before fainting. He remembered the smell of death and his nose wrinkled at the memory. Ignoring the memory and the discomfort it brought, Ezril continued on.

He picked a tree not so far that he would lose sight of the mist and climbed it. At the top he searched for the direction of the seminary. To his dismay, the mist extended higher than the tree. It presented him a view of nothing but more trees and more mist. The mist, it seemed, extended higher than any tree he could see.

I guess there’s no luck on this idea, he thought.

Ezril’s disappointment was oppressive and overbearing as he climbed down. Just when he was beginning to ponder on the insanity of his situation and how he would make his way back, the hairs on his neck stood on end and he feared his solitude was no longer a luxury of his. He tasted fear on his tongue at the thought of another assailant. The pain in his back throbbed where it once often itched and his skin broke out in sweats. When a sound cracked the mist, it was the voice of a person. It was calm and gentle. It was the sound of a man who had lived a long life.

And it addressed him.

"Are you lost?"