Reg woke early for the first day of tryouts and headed down to the dining hall. There were low conversations at a few of the recruit’s tables about what the day would have in store. At others, the recruits ate in silence. He didn’t feel particularly hungry, but he grabbed a few dried mushroom strips to chew on and sat down near Yeva and a pair of chubby brothers who took turns complaining about the accommodations and food.
After the first horn of the morning, Captain Merrin called the trainees to attention; Reg took a bit of pleasure in coming to attention the way the rules manual described, “with thy thumbs front and palms ilialy affixed.”
Captain Merrin looked them over, before barking a single command, “follow,” and heading out of the hall at a quick march.
Captain Merrin led them out of the Achivian Guard campus and away from Ithilia. The pace was quick, but still slower than the pace that Reg and Barkle had made when heading to and from East Starswallow branch. The crowd of a hundred plus trainees shook out into a rough line behind Captain Merrin. Looking around at nearby trainees, the pace seemed hard for many of the humans and gnomes. After only thirty minutes, many were panting heavily and seemed to be flagging. The elves, on the other hand, all seemed fresh. Several seemed to be treating this as a nice morning stroll for chatting and admiring the countryside. The muscular elf who’d made fun of Reg kept whispering things to his friends, while gesturing towards Val and the gnomish woman who seemed like she’d been a hunter; both of them had short enough legs that they needed to jog to keep up.
Captain Merrin gradually upped the pace as the morning went on, and some trainees started falling out to the sides of the trail and trudging on at slower walks. The captain ignored them entirely, Reg didn’t think that she’d even looked back once the entire hike. After an hour and a half, she finally stopped in a clearing and waited for the trainees to circle up around her. Many were bent over, heaving heavy breaths. She took a look at them all, “Welcome to the first day of tryouts. We shall see how many of you are even worth the effort of training, and so far I’m not hopeful.” At this, there were a few titters from the elves. She continued on, “for today’s first trial, you shall race back to our campus. I shouldn’t need to say this, but there shall be no interference with other runners on the way back. Anyone who comes in after me, shall be given two days’ wages and kicked out. Now, go!”
There was a bit of a mad scramble as everyone turned around and started running back the way they’d came. Reg ended up near the front: keeping up a punishing pace for hours was something he knew how to do, and by bark and bramble, he’d do his best to be there at the head of the pack.
Around him, the frontrunners were almost entirely elves.
The muscular elf who kept making fun of the non-elves noticed Reg running behind him, “What’s this? The short one is trying to keep up? Want a wager on the race?”
The elf to his right, a sinewy one with brilliant purple eyes, interjected in a relaxed voice before Reg could “Of course, you’d be challenging lessors, Fenjor. Have you no pride at all? You have no hope of beating anyone of consequence, but you could at least make an effort.”
Reg spat, “I’m no lessor. I’ll beat you both back.”
The purple-eyed elf laughed, “I look forward to being proven wrong. Now, who’s interested in keeping an actual pace?” With that, he lengthened his stride and started pulling away from the group.
Fenjor and two other elves followed. Reg did too, breathing hard as he pushed his legs to try and keep up the insane pace the first elf had set. It felt as if they were moving close to a full sprint. Minute after minute he kept the pace before his legs started to give out and the gap between him and the four elves started widening. He spat out some phlegm, and slowed down to a pace that he thought he could keep the rest of the way back to the campus.
As he slowed, the purple-eyed elf yelled back “Disappointing!” as they pushed on. It looked like Fenjor and his two friends were flagging a bit as well, but they were still keeping a pace well beyond what Reg could do.
After a few minutes, the rest of the frontrunners caught up with him, and Reg pushed himself to try and match their pace. He could do this.
To his side, a black-haired woman with an aquiline nose and green eyes, gave him a friendly pat on the back as he rejoined the pack. Between heavy breaths, she panted out “I’m surprised you tried to keep up with Dun. He’s fast. You must play, right?”
“Play? Throwball?” Reg gasped back as he focused on keeping his feet moving. Twenty more strides and they’d be at that bush with purple flowers. He could do nineteen more strides. Eighteen.
The woman nodded, “Yeah, throwball! Only reason I can keep up. Not much of an athlete otherwise, but I played a ton at university.”
Reg shook his head, and did his best to answer between breaths, “No, never played. Never got spells. Did more circle dueling.” There was a wooden bridge that flowed out of this branch and arched high to the bough that the campus was on. He could make it to the bridge at this pace. Just had to keep his legs moving.
The woman was breathing hard, but seemed to be having an easier time of it than Reg, “Oh, I was never much into circle dueling. Didn’t have the reflexes or balance for it. It looks fun. I’m Annise, by the way. Like the flower.”
“Reg,” Reg gasped back.
The miles crawled by, but Reg kept with the fast pack until the Achivian Guard campus’ tower came into view. Once it was in sight, most of the runners sped up, jockeying with each other to get back first. Reg just kept the same pace until reaching a tall guard with a scroll who was marking down names as the trainees came in. As soon as he stopped running, Reg staggered over to a small ornamental shrub and spent a few minutes dry heaving. He wasn’t the only one puking and he saw several trainees lying on their backs gasping and others walking around with their hands over their heads.
It took almost two hours for the rest of the trainees to stagger in, but after forty minutes, Merrin arrived at a slow jog and declared, “that’s the cutoff.” The tall guard nodded, and handed her the list of trainees who’d made it back in time. Reg was surprised to see that Yeva had made it in time, despite her age. There’d been many more hearty trainees who hadn’t been able to keep the pace.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Merrin handed the group over to a frail looking elf who guided them to one end of the dining hall where quills and paper scrolls had been evenly laid out on the trestle tables. In a quavery voice, the elf introduced himself as Instructor Firheel and explained that while they were doing their examinations, they’d be taken away one by one to do mental testing.
Reg’s heart sank. The scrolls were covered in dense script, and Instructor Firheel had explained that they had four hours to complete the examination. This wasn’t going to be good.
Reading through the questions was discouraging. There were sections on history, applied arithmantics, guard protocols, mist phenomena, Thornbound duties, navigation, and more. The only section that Reg felt halfway confident on was the guard protocols, but even that had a few questions that he had no idea about. History was rough. it was full of questions on Conclavic Decrees and societal movements that Reg hadn’t even heard of. Applied arithmantics he left almost entirely blank: he recognized almost none of the terms, and the diagrams were completely unintelligible. For mist phenomena, he put down folk tales, but was sure that there were proper answers to these questions that he just didn’t know.
As the hours dragged on, Reg felt worse and worse. The test wasn’t remotely fair. This was where his dream of joining the guard was going to end, just because he wasn’t a fancy elf who’d had an upbringing that covered all this.
It was a relief when a serving man tapped him on the shoulder to take him to the one on one mental testing. He gathered his parchments, and followed the man to a table at the other end of the dining hall where examiners had set up folding wooden screens to separate themselves from the test-takers. He was led to a table and bade to sit down across from a young-looking elf in a guardsman’s uniform. The elf had a magus’ staff leaning on the screen behind him, and his uniform was decorated with glyphs and runes that glimmered oddly under the crystal-light. On the table, a long dagger with a sharp point had its hilt facing towards Reg.
Once Reg sat down, the elf introduced himself as Instructor Mossgate. His voice was low and melodic as he explained, “going into the mist is a terrible strain on the mind. We want to make sure that everyone undergoing guard training has some amount of resistance to its influence, so we’re going to test your natural resistance to mental invasion. Sadly, this means I’m going to have to mildly assault your mind. Do I have your permission to do so? There’s no shame in saying ‘no.’”
Reg nodded immediately, “yes, do it.” The written examination was going to drum him out, but he wasn’t going to give up until he was told to leave.
Instructor Mossgate sighed, “very well. Look into my eyes.”
Reg looked into Instructor Mossgate’s brilliant green eyes and started to feel a strong sense of lethargy. Maybe he could take a nap here? He felt like it was the second or third watch on a fall night watching the herd when all he wanted to do was fall asleep. He kept his eyes on Instructor Mossgate’s: he knew he was tired after that morning run, but he wasn’t going to fall asleep until he’d passed these tests.
After some long moments, Instructor Mossgate smiled, and Reg felt the unnatural lethargy leave him. “Well done, Reg. Now, for this next one, I’m going to push a little harder. I’ll stop if it seems like you’re going to hurt yourself and there’s a healer on hand. Ready?”
Reg nodded.
Instructor Mossgate’s eyes grew huge until it felt like they were the entire world. He felt a command resonate through his entire body, “pick up the dagger and stab it into your palm.” It felt as though if he were to follow that command, he’d discover something magical. He just needed to pick up the dagger and then he’d learn something special. But some part of him didn’t want to do that. He pictured Ankie, she wouldn’t want him to stab himself. That’d be silly. He felt himself push away the command until he was looking at a beaming Instructor Mossgate again.
“Excellently done, Reg! Sorry about the command: it’s easiest if it’s something self-injurious or people will often happily go along with the command because there’s not a good reason not to.” Instructor Mossgate’s face turned a bit more serious, “You’ve already passed with top fork marks. Normally, it takes a few more tries for someone to cast these things off. With your permission, I’d like to push a bit harder and see how you do. It’s good practice for down there.”
Reg thought for a second, and then nodded, “Do it.” He wanted to see how he could do too. He still had nightmares about almost walking off the branch in the mist storm and what would have happened if Ankie hadn’t stopped him.
Instructor Mossgate stood up, grabbed his staff from where it was leaning against the wooden screen behind him and then pulled out some dried herbs from a pouch that rested at his hip. He spoke a slow series of words that left his mouth as floating motes of light. The motes of light were drawn to the herbs, which started glowing as each mote entered them. When the mote from the last word left Instructor Mossgate’s mouth and entered the herbs, the herbs lit on a pale green fire that didn’t burn the instructor’s hand. Instructor Mossgate held that fire in front of his mouth and whispered, “bleed.”
Reg felt the command hit him like a physical thing. He needed to take the knife and cut into himself. There were secrets in his blood and he could get them out and everything would make sense again. All he needed to do was take the knife by the hilt and then slice. His palm? His gut? His neck? Fighting with himself, he slowly reached out and grasped the hilt of the knife. He wished Ankie were here. He remembered Barkle’s voice saying, “Trust your spider: she's smarter and better looking than you are.” What would she tell him to do? He thought for a few long moments. She wouldn’t want him to stab himself -- that might lead to fewer treats -- but she was always curious, and if she knew there were secrets in his blood, she’d want him to learn them. His hand played over the knife hilt while he thought, and then he slowly reached out his other hand and pricked his pinky on the tip of the blade. A drop of blood welled on the tip of his pinky, but it was normal blood. Nothing special. Seeing it, he felt the compulsion lessen and lessen until he was sitting in front of Instructor Mossgate again.
The instructor’s smile was even wider than before, and had a slightly manic glint to it: “I hope you make it through the trials, Reg. I’d love to have you in class.”
Reg didn’t trust himself to answer: he had a splitting headache and wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened. He stood up, saluted the instructor with his hand over his chest, and headed back to his seat to suffer through the rest of the test. As he walked back, he could feel the headache going away with each step, so by the time he was back at his seat, the only misery left was the knowledge that he knew the answer to almost none of the answers on the examination scrolls.
Reg spent the rest of the examination time paging through the scrolls, looking for any question that he might be able to write down reasonable guesses for without any luck. He just didn’t know the content. He eventually admitted defeat and turned in the examination scrolls to a dour-looking lieutenant who’d been proctoring the exam. Almost all of the elves had finished a long time ago, with the exception of a few more studious ones that looked like they were writing long essay answers to questions that Reg hadn’t even understood.
Outside, Reg ran into a group of humans and gnomes who looked as glum as he felt. At least he wasn’t the only one who’d fallen off the branch on that examination. Yeva was grumbling, “that blighted test can rot and burn. When I fail out, I’m joining the scavs. Hear they get to go down sometimes.”
Others added their complaints. Reg added a few of his own. That test wasn’t remotely fair. At least he’d studied the rules manual a bit beforehand, but he still had the sinking feeling in his stomach that he’d be leaving the guards as soon as the examinations were graded. He didn’t want to return to the ranch a failure.