Of course, we did not succeed. A wave of dizziness struck me even as we ran away, my surroundings spinning in what looked like a sudden attack. I continued running. A decision I soon discovered to be a bad one.

In moments, I was running towards the rabbit. Space had turned us around. The monster had just cast Space magic, and it was not being reluctant with its use. I did not know why it was even bothering to do that. The wind blades were too fast for us to even run from.

The red eyes glowed even brighter, the smile turning downright evil as the darkness around it took on a reddish shade. There was an intelligence to its eyes, a happiness to its smile that made me think of a possibility.

The rabbit was enjoying this. The monster was looking at me with an expression not too different from Leif’s on that day. The difference was, I was the one getting killed not someone else.

I looked at the beast, my feet frozen as I tried to figure out what I should do. There did not seem to be anything.

This was so unfair.

The wind blades hovered in the air, a silent reminder of what awaited. Perhaps it was our previous failure, or just the fatigue in our muscles, but neither Elena nor I moved. There was little we could gain from it.

A laughter filled the air and my mind, just its presence causing my head to feel like it would split. And that was not all. I could see cloaks of mana emerging from the trees, threads emerging from them.

A number of threads headed towards Elena and me, but more, far more, were connected to the rabbit. The direction of the mana flow was obvious. The trees were providing the rabbit with mana.

The sound of laughter increased. A loud, mocking sound that made my head ache with its presence. Mind magic. Was this really an illusion? Or was there something else going on that I was unaware of?

What was I even thinking about, there clearly was far more going on than I knew. The trees did not look like they were supposed to be part of the test.

The wind blades stopped whirling, turning to face as I felt even more mana being sent through the threads. This was like a villain telling the hero their plan before they killed them. The reason I was seeing this was because the trees were showing this to me. I knew that I did not have the ability to see it otherwise.

The blade shot towards us, faster than I had imagined them to be. Before I even knew it, they were at my neck. Was this it?

The blades stopped

A stillness came upon the forest. The laughter died down. The rabbit fell to the ground. I looked around, moving my neck as little as I could as I tried to figure out what had happened.

The rabbit growled. The trees soon joined in, hundreds of growls echoing out of the darkness as an increasingly large number of trees appeared from within it. Just a dozen appeared at first, and then they began to multiply. With each growl there were more trees, more cloaks of mana connected to others.

Elena and I were surrounded. Of course, we were, this was a forest and our enemy was trees. The question was, what were they growling about?

What had stopped the wind blades? I did not think it was the trees.

A loud voice spoke into my mind.

“NO.”

The voice had hundreds of voices, all shouting together in a manner that seemed to be aimed to deafen me. Mana rose around us, more mana than I could make sense of. I could no longer identify where it came from, or what it was doing.

I could only watch as a sea’s worth of mana went to form some spell. A spell that was clearly aimed at us. I could feel my heart beat loudly in my chest, my body sweating even while it stood there frozen, unable to move.

The mana stopped too. As if there was a barrier a centimeter from my and Elena’s body, the spells just stopped there, not moving forward.

“LEAVE US THE BETRAYER’S CHILD.”

The voices spoke again. The headache got worse. A pounding took to my brain, and I could feel liquid trickling out of my ears and nose. What the heck was happening?

I did not get to find out. Mana began rising again, and I could feel the trees put even more of their will into it. Why were they so set on killing me? Just who was this betrayer? The Duke? I was his child, and he was the kind of person that would betray others.

But even more important was the fact that someone was stopping them. Just who was it? And how much power did they have?

Mana rose, forming another sea…and then just stopped. For a second I wondered what had happened, but the answer came soon enough. In a memory I knew would keep for the rest of my days, I saw reality flinch.

Like someone had struck glass with a hammer, cracks spread throughout space. I gulped, though this time I knew what was happening.

“Elena.” I whispered. “Do not move. The cracks lead to the void.”

The girl just turned her eyes too look at me, though her face told me what she wanted to say. ‘I am not a fool’. Well, I suppose it was pretty obvious that cracks in reality were dangerous things.

A man stood at the very center of the cracks, his golden eyes shining even in this darkness. I could not really make out the rest of his body, but I did not need to. I already knew who he was.

The Monarch of Justice.

Not in his real body—that would destroy the planet—but as an echo. A form provided by the surrounding mana that would allow him to interfere more directly.

“Why have you broken the rules?” the Monarch asked, his voice light, as if he were having a friendly conversation. The trees shuddered, pulling back their threads and clinging to them.

“There is no broken rule! This test is ours to administer!” the trees responded, though their fear gave away their nervousness. The cracks in reality slowly healed while the Monarch stayed in place, not letting even a little of his power show.

“The test was to be fair.” the Monarch replied, still using that tone. “This was not. The rabbit was far too powerful.”

“No!” the trees denied. “The rabbit was Rank 3! So is the boy!”

I blinked. The rabbit was Rank 3? Even towards the end? That had been powerful. I did not feel nearly as powerful as that.

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The trees scoffed, their laughter echoing through the forest. “Yes, a weak Rank 3. Even a Rank 2 could defeat it. This was not an unfair test. Reducing its power would have been unfair. The first two tests were unfair for you should have survived them”.

The Monarch sighed.

“The boy knows not how much mana he has, or how to use it. How can you use such power against a boy who cannot even cast a spell and call it fair?”

“That is ours to judge!” the trees yelled, and I felt like they were losing the argument. Or maybe that was just me.

“The test is ours” the trees stated and I felt mana rise. I felt myself tense as spells started appearing in the air by the hundreds, all pointed at me.

“the boy fails!” the trees yelled, their voice echoing in this space.

The Monarch of Justice just looked at them.

The spells died down. The mana returned to its calm state. I did not have any spells active, but I could feel that they would have disappeared too. Mana would not listen to me anymore. A notification declared why.

Darkness leaves.

The trees screamed. The noise was so loud that I could not hear anything else. Just the sound of them shouting was enough to for me to clutch my head and close my ears, trying to keep them out. The darkness that had been overwhelmingly present in the surroundings was gone. The forest looked like a normal forest once more.

But I did not have time to notice that.

A number of images passed through my mind. A forest seen from the sky, covering everything in sight. Fires burning through it, killing trees by the hundreds. A man looking shocked as he swung his blade, hundreds of trees dying as copies of his blade appeared near the trees.

I felt my mind focus on that man, seeing it again. The blade struck slower, tearing through the trees. I felt the power within it, and I felt something within me respond.

The power of the Bloodline Cutting Blade flows through you.

Bloodline activation at 99.999%

Bloodline is activating.

ERROR! LOCAL MANA SYSTEM IS OFFLINE

The Monarch of Justice continued looking at them.

The images faded. The trees retracted their cloaks of magic, though I could feel something different about them. A power that had been there that had left. There was no more of that strange darkness. The trees even seemed more normal.

Like they were normal trees and not creatures of magic that emerged from the darkness.

“Are you done?” the Monarch of Magic questioned.

The trees remained silent.

“I know of what you speak.” he continued. “When this ends, and the time comes for the Court of Justice to make its judgment, I shall consider it. That is all I am willing to give to you.”

For a few seconds there was no response from the trees. Then slowly, like a scared child reaching out, a thread extended from one of the trees towards the Monarch.

The change was so quick I might as well call it immediate. The ground cracked. The sky turned green. The trees withered, all of their leaves falling onto the ground at once. The rabbit disappeared from my sight.

A voice, deep and threatening emerged from the Monarch. “Do not push your luck.”

A silence covered the area as the trees dared not respond.

“Conduct the test properly. I shall be watching.” the Monarch said as he left. The cracks in space went with him.

Elena disappeared. The leaves returned to the trees, and the sky was once again blue. Even the ground went back to normal. A rabbit appeared in front of me. The same one as before, though its eyes were no longer glowing.

The beast bounced on its legs as it looked at me. I was still confused about what had happened. The forest had just tried to kill us. That much was clear.

The Monarch of Justice had interfered and tried to make things fair. In return, he would consider something. I did not know what that something was, but I was pretty sure it had to do with the man that had used the Bloodline Cutting Blade.

I did not recognize him, but I had my suspicions. Blonde hair and blue eyes, along with an ability the royal family was famous for. The question was which one. The forest was clearly up in arms about it, and the Monarch of Justice had promised to consider it.

That meant I had to avoid this man. Getting on the other side of a Monarch’s justice was not among my plans.

I would have probably spent some more time thinking over things, but I did not get the chance. The rabbit decided it had waited long enough. With as much speed as it had shown in the second test, it jumped at me, claws extended towards my chest.

What had the trees said? The rabbit was a Rank 3. The Monarch had agreed, saying that I did not know how much mana I had. I looked at the rabbit jumping towards me and released mana.

Mana obeyed me, following my determination to kill it without question. The rabbit was pushed back. But I did not stop there. I called for more. I had not done that before. Perhaps it was mana’s initial reluctance to answer me, or just my lack of knowledge.

But I had not thought to call on more mana to strengthen my spells. Now I did so.

Mana collected in my hand. This mana had no shape, not yet. I doubted it would do anything. The rabbit ran away from it anyway. I gathered more, happy to have it on the run for once.

I regretted it not a moment later. The magic grew, and grew until I was doubting my own ability to control it. So I did the thing I had made it for.

I shot it out. A bolt of darkness shot out of my hand, and my head suddenly felt empty. A wave of weakness washed over me, much larger than the one I had felt before.

I was out of mana. But it was enough. The bolt did not look any different from any of the others I had shot, but it was different. The reason was simple.

This bolt ate the rabbits face. The Monarch had given me the answer. I just had to put more mana into my spells. There was the problem of it taking too long, but…it did not manner anymore.

The rabbit was dead.

Test 3 concluded

Aphra Eldanveir

PASS

The Forest Path opens

Elena was suddenly beside me, the darkness still hovering in our surroundings. Was this perhaps what the Forest of Tragedy really looked like? For a few minutes there, the darkness had disappeared. I did not know when it had returned. For some reason I had not noticed it.

I suppose it was in the darkness’ power to be stealthy. But it also meant the trees had their power back. I gulped, waiting for them to make their move.

The trees spread apart, a path of darkness appearing before us.

[LEAVE]

The message was clear, we were no longer welcome.

Elena and I did not have to speak, we both stepped into the path together, heading off. I looked at the System map. With each step we took we crossed miles, and within minutes we had reached the edge of the Eldanveir estate.

The journey had taken too long, nearly all of the twelve hours we had. But it was done. The escape had been successful, even if we had nearly died in the process.

The darkness disappeared, the trees receding until only a clearing of empty ground stood before us. The sun was shining in the sky. This was no longer the forest.

A carriage waited for us in the clearing, a sword dipped in blood painted across its side. Beside it stood the boy I had wanted to escape from. Purple eyes looked at me with humor as a smile played across his face.

Leif was waiting for us outside the forest.

Quest: escape

FAIL