“What….What was all of that!?”

  The cry, from a man that looked to be in the mid-late twenties with a long, thick mullet, reverberated throughout the trainarium. Voices of confusion rose to match his own, only much quieter, as everyone watching the trial of the final group tried to work through what exactly they had just witnessed.

  “Why was the creature there?”

  “What happened to the first one?”

  “Why was their scenario so…different?”

  Victor reckoned that he had about twelve more seconds of listening to this murmuring in him before he snapped and froze all of them in time for a few minutes. He had come here to use one of his Faith’s most highly honoured rituals because Xyn not only claimed to have individuals worthy of it, but because a Hand of his very own Lord had reached out to allow it.

  Now, however, he found himself with a mounting headache and a ritual that he had had to bastardize and stitch back together just to keep vaguely stable and the prick at his side that had tricked him so thoroughly was doing nothing but taking joy in his pain. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know when, but he was going to find a way to make Xyn pay for putting him through all of this; he swore that to whichever Hand had allowed this to happen.

  “Be quiet.” He snapped, taking an almost sadistic glee in the way that all of the students, from the youngest of adults to men almost as old as he, pressed their lips together firmly to avoid pissing him off even further than he already was.

  “Aren’t you going to answer their questions, Victor?” Xyn hummed teasingly from his side, grinning even more widely at the look of pure scathing that he got in return.

  “Fine. Listen up.” He grumbled, gesturing towards the misty portal that was currently a soothing current of rainbow colours, unable to show the rituals’ participants while they were between Steps as they were right now.

  “The Trial of Kronethia is not a simple ritualistic spell, nor even a Greater Spell, but an almost living entity in and of itself. To a certain degree, it can make choices entirely of its own regard, and very rarely has to even confer with the caster of the ritual before implementing most of them.”

  With each word that he spoke, he could feel the tense aura behind him only getting more and more high-strung. However, the man couldn’t quite find it in himself to care, more worried with getting the details of his explanation right than the feelings of some students who had asked for this information in the first place.

  “The people that go in there are aware that this is a trial and are usually aware of the four Steps of the trial and what they, roughly, contain as well. It can be hard to create distress in someone when they know that what they’re facing isn’t real.”

  It was a real issue for certain people, even ones that he had personally seen go through the trial or set the trial up for. Their sense of reality, of logic and reasoning, was too strong for something like pride or oaths or connections to sway them appropriately for the intentions of the first Step. The moment that they realized that what they were looking at was just a simulation, any sense of attachment or fear of what they saw and sensed went out the window entirely.

  It had, actually, created a rather large discourse within two sects of the Kronethian faith a good three centuries back. That feud, given the inherent nature of those who worship and are given power from the God of Time, was still technically happening as he spoke, but the official end had been declared five years after its start.

  “It seems that two of them, the blue and white-haired ones, were such people as well. So, to incite the proper amount of distress in them to undergo the Step, the trial itself made them think that something had gone wrong with it.”

  A small wince overcame his features as he rubbed his throat. How long had it last been since he had talked so much in such a small length of time? He couldn’t remember, and he hated the fact that it was happening now.

  “Wait, so that cloaked thing is meant to be there?” There was a brief, tempting urge to throttle the clueless student that had called that out, but Victor held it in with what he believed to be rather momentous willpower.

  He was fairly certain that if he made any moves, both Xyn and the dragon in the rafters would start fighting him, and he really didn’t want to deal with either of them right now, thank you very much.

  Little bastard and his walking apocalypses that he called parents. So many timelines where Zenik was lost to the fury of those green-scaled menaces…

  “Yes. It is. Trust me, an anomaly in the Step would have been far, far more overt than something like that.” Victor scoffed instead, crossing his arms, “By pretending to be an anomaly, it created a very real feeling of distress in the two of them, which then had a knock-on domino effect on the other two as well. Which also means that once one of them realized what had happened, it was fairly quick for the rest to regain their wits about them.”

  At his words, another round of murmurs and muttering rose from behind him, getting a twitch of his eyebrow that he tried very, very hard not to let Xyn see. The man was still teasing him over things that he had done as a teenager; he really didn’t need to give him more ammunition.

  “I wonder what enemy they’re going to need to face for their second Step.”

  “I wonder if it will be worse than ours?”

  “Do you think they’ll actually manage to beat theirs?”

  That last comment had Victor rolling his eyes before he could stop. By Kronethia, he wished that they actually would. If he had come all the way here and gone through all the troubles of setting up his ritual just for no one to even make it to the third Step, let alone complete the trial, then Xyn could forget a repeat performance, let alone bringing him here again.

  “Oh! The illusion is back!”

  “Shhh!

  “Who will it be…?”

  Like a bunch of children sat before a play, the entire trainarium went silent as the colours and sounds played out of the mist once more, letting them see the four teens standing in a large, jungle-filled room.

  They weren’t the first group today to get a jungle room, but theirs was certainly much more densely filled and ancient-looking compared to the previous examples. If Victor had to guess, it was likely a forest important to the enemy that they were going to face.

  Which meant that they would be the type to abuse their environment and avoid an outright confrontation with any of the four of them unless forced into it. Either that, or they were a nature-type mage that used trees and plant life for their spells. Both were valid options.

  He watched with an almost bored gaze as the black smoke began to rise from the ground, creating the carbon copy of their fated enemy while hidden within its thick concealment. He wondered, idly, which of his two guesses would be rig-

  That…wasn’t meant to happen.

  He couldn’t believe it. He knew that having four people inside the ritual would mess things up, making something too easy or too hard for four people to clear or add in factors that usually weren’t there. But this was outside of anything that he had ever expected before.

  Without realizing, his arms uncrossed, and his eyes widened as he stared at the situation unfolding inside the trial, his jaw slackening ever so slightly as he tried, and failed, to comprehend what he was seeing.

  The trial had tried to keep it away, had even tried to summon multiple other adversaries for the four of them. Yet despite its best attempts, an anomaly had forced its way into being summoned instead of anything else. The second Step for those four had just become something that Victor had never, not even once, seen before.

  XXXxxxXXX

  Inside the Trial, Two Minutes Earlier

  “A forest?” Alec questioned, looking around.

  When the bright light had overcome their vision once more, heralding the start of the second Step, he had expected something like a colosseum or a room similar to the ‘limbo space’ between Steps. Yet now he found himself in an environment entirely alien to him.

  Trees as thick as two men were tall, as lush and vibrant as fresh blood was red, and as densely packed as the hair a top of one’s head. Wherever this was meant to be mimicking had not seen the touch of humanity in hundreds of years at the least; perhaps never. The bright spots of sunlight beamed through what little gaps they could find in the thick leaves and branches, spotting the forest floor in equal parts illumination and darkness.

  “A jungle, actually.” Olivia rectified, a hand on her hip and her gaze in the canopy, “The air is too humid and the sun too vibrant. Not to mention the type of trees and foliage growing around us.”

  “Very helpful, Black Sheep.” Glenn scoffed, only tertiarily noticing the way that Callum shifted uncomfortably away from him, putting both Alec and Olivia between them, “But that doesn’t exactly help us figure out which one of my enemies we’ll be facing.”

  If any of the other three felt anything at the blatant egotism of assuming that the enemy that they would have to face would be one of Glenn’s, then none of them voiced it. Their gazes just caught on the phenomenon ahead of them that Glenn caught onto a mere moment after them.

  Seeping out of the ground, the very pores of the earth itself, was a smog thicker than honey and darker than night. It started small at first, caught by Callum, who was looking anywhere except in Glenn’s direction, but began to coalesce with greater and greater speed, catching the rest’s attention quickly.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  A shift in the air; the smog began to slowly swirl. A column formed in the centre, and the swirling smoke shifted slightly as something inside the column shifted.

  Something was forming inside the column– someone was forming inside. They knew, from watching previous teams that had gotten this far, that inside this smoke, their enemy was being formed. And once they were done, they would step out, and the smog would disappear entirely.

  A dramatic reveal, but one that held the gravitas that such an occasion deserved.

  Except…something was going wrong, genuinely wrong. Once, twice, thrice. A figure tried to step out of the smog, only to be dragged back inside by something that they couldn’t see. Hands and feet flailed in the mysterious darkness of the summoning column, swiping far enough out of the smoke that they could see it, only to be dragged back in time and time again.

  Chipped weaponry and severed extremities rolled out of the smoke after forty seconds, blood staining the earth beneath them before they dissipated into the same black smoke that made up the summoning column. The face of a man that none of the four recognized –square jawline, a burn scar on his left cheek, an earring on his right eyebrow– burst out of the smoke, screaming silently in pain. A feminine hand followed, reaching out of the column and grasping around his face, dragging him back in just as an arc of blood stained the ground outside the ring of smog.

  “What…the hell?” Glenn muttered, and none of the other three could blame him.

  This was nothing like the other Steps of Strength that they had seen, and they weren’t entirely sure it was because there were four of them here, considering that that hadn’t seemed to mess anything else up for the rest of the teams that had gotten this far.

  “They’re…fighting to be summoned?” Callum questioned, looking just as lost as Alec felt, his mouth slightly ajar and his eyebrows raised almost into his hairline.

  “No. They’re being slaughtered.” Olivia denied, slowly drawing her blade and crouching low, “One of them is fighting to be summoned.”

  “I don’t like what that could mean.” Alec drew his blade too, squinting mildly at the swirling smog.

  A feminine hand, the same one as before, burst free from the smog and grasped blindly in the air, lowering until it reached the ground. The moment that their fingers swiped the soil, the movements of the hand changed entirely, going from blind and stumbling to refined and assured in an instant. Her palm met the earth, and her fingers curled, digging into the soil with ease. There was a flex of her forearm and a flick of her wrist, and a cone of smog exploded out of the column.

  The figure curled into a tight ball, flipping and rotating in the air, before straightening out and digging their feet into the soil, forcing themselves to a complete halt. Finally freed from the confines of the column, the smog began to lower back into the earth and dissipate, its form bubbling in what could only be construed as anger as it did so.

  “Yeah, yeah, don’t get pissy at me just because your boss made a mistake.” The figure waved a dismissive hand in the smog’s direction, straightening up and turning to face the four teens, thin wisps of smoke still trailing off her lazily.

  She stood almost eye to eye with Alec, tight but flexible pants adorning her legs and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up around her abdomen. Dark blue scaled greaves covered her shins, and a similarly coloured scaled cuirass protected her chest and back. Tight black fingerless gloves covered her hands, and a fluttering black shoulder cape with semi-reflective dark blue edging hung over her left shoulder and reached just slightly below her hips. Just beneath that, two sheathed blades could be seen in rather exquisitely made, but not pompous, sheathes.

  One was, much the same as the four of them, a typical south Western-Continent longsword made of a dark metal with a strange sheen to it that Alec couldn’t place for the life of him. The other was a slightly curved blade that he knew came from the country of Hama, in the Eastern Continent, but had never seen in person before.

  Above her shoulders sat shoulder-length blue hair, about the same shade as Alec’s, interspersed with thick strips of black –much like a tiger’s stripes– and far, far thicker than his own hair. Two similarly coloured tiger ears stuck out the top of her head, but were kept low to her head, shifting slightly as her gaze moved. Her eyes, unlike the rest of her, were a startling burnt orange colour that seemed to almost physically light up once she saw the four of them.

  “Well, Ho-ly shit! As I live and breathe!” The woman grinned, wide and predatory; her arms splayed out to either side of her, excitedly.

  “So, who do you belong to?” Olivia called out, her grip adjusting on the hilt of her blade with a small rolling wave of her fingers.

  This woman ahead of them, somewhere in her early twenties if Olivia had to guess, was sending mixed messages, unlike anything that she had ever seen before in her life. Everything she did was surprisingly graceful, yet left herself open to any matter of attack, whether that be spellcraft or melee.

  Yet that was wrong, somehow.

  She wasn’t sure what it was about her, but she knew to the depths of her soul that she would know an attack was coming even before it approached her. For all that the woman in front of them appeared fluid and calm, her guard wasn’t dropped for even a moment. In fact, if anything, it felt like she was hoping that they would strike first.

  “Ahhhh, Kio.” The woman tutted, shrugging and shaking her head in a ‘what can you do’ motion, “I see that part of you hasn’t changed in the future.”

  Olivia could feel the gazes of her teammates on her –No, that was wrong; just Glenn and Callum– but all she could offer was a noncommittal hum, unwilling to take her gaze off this woman for even a moment.

  “So, you’re mine then? You obviously know my name.” She was trying everything she could to figure out something, anything about this woman.

  Her skin colour was fair but not the sun-burnt darkness of a good portion of Gladia, her features were slim but still containing a good bit of body-fat and plumpness that ruled out the Meian Wildlands or the Brynel Summits; wherever she grew up was strife with combat, much like those two countries, but plentiful with food and resources. She was a beast-kin, what looked to be a tiger beast-kin, but that narrowed it down very little. Perhaps a native of Unikka or Zveil? She didn’t seem the type to stem from the Hama Dynasty, despite the blade resting against her hip.

  The armour adorning her form spoke of Jrotti craftsmanship, but that meant very little by itself, not to mention that feline beast-kin tended to avoid the country due to some of the plants native to the area; she doubted one stuck around long enough to have a child. She supposed that there was a chance that this woman could come from Litvarna, but she didn’t put much stock in that. Something told her that she was missing the mark with that one, and she was more than happy to believe that hunch.

  “Know your name? Oh, come on.” The woman in front of her snorted derisively and waved a dismissive hand in her direction.

  “Olivia Kio, the-“ Whatever the woman was going to say next never made it to reality; the sound of her voice turned to static, and even her lips seemed to fuzz beyond recognition.

  “Callum, the-“ Once more, her lips blurred out of view and her voice turned to static, though this time she seemed to notice the phenomenon with a raised eyebrow.

  Olivia might have thought her to be messing with them if not for the way that she followed through with her introductions even after they were blocked off, and the quizzical look on her face once she realized. Something or someone was attempting to stop her from sharing their future nicknames with them, a gesture both helpful and infuriating to the teen.

  Yet that didn’t stop her. A gleam entered her eye as she turned her head to face Alec, her grin stretching into something more demented than amused, and her pupils shrinking ever so slightly.

  “Alec Dius,” The way she said his name sent shivers down all of their spines, with so much more meaning than either Olivia’s or Callum’s, “The-“

  The interference this time was not a simple blocking of sound and blurring of her mouth, but a screeching whistle that pained the ears and made the air around her entire form bounce and vibrate chaotically, her form so hidden that she might as well have been standing behind frosted glass.

  The ‘reality’ around them flickered, as if struggling to comprehend the enormity of what it was hiding from them, but only for a moment. The interference died out the moment that, Olivia could only guess, the woman before them stopped speaking.

  For a moment, they were all silent as the four teens tried to recover from the itchiness in their eyes and the ringing in their ears, and the woman looked around at the sun-spotted trees with nothing but pure amusement painting her features. A previously unseen, puffy blue tail flicking idly behind her as her expression took on something a bit more…proud?

  “Huh. This is that ‘Trial of Kronethia’ that I’ve heard about, right? Sturdy stuff.”

  “So? What’s my nickname? Gonna try and say that one too or not?” The woman turned a wide-eyed, curious gaze on Glenn as he called out, glaring at her through slightly fuzzy eyes and with a clenched jaw.

  “Hm?” Her head tilted to the side, and one of her ears flicked idly, “Who the fuck are you? A tagalong that Alec and Olivia dropped?”

  “Wha- You-!” Glenn’s face turned bright red, his grip on his sword white-knuckled; he couldn’t seem to figure out what part of that sentence to blow up about, leaving him in an odd loop that just seemed to amuse the woman before him.

  “But wowie! Look at little old you!” The woman cheered, spinning around with a dramatic step, her gaze focused on Alec, and no one but, “Where’s that scratched up armour of yours? And little Miss Witch? Not even Sir Punch-a-lot?”

  Despite never taking his gaze off her for a moment, Alec still couldn’t stop his expression from morphing into one of blank confusion. The kind of confusion that one could only show when not even a single word of someone’s query registered as familiar in their mind.

  “Shit. I got brought back early.” The woman breathed out in disbelief, a small giggle escaping her lips as she leaned back.

  And then her expression darkened, her orange eyes glowing dimly as she held them wide open, unblinking.

  “Though I could have guessed that by the fact that you still have the light in your eyes.”

  Goosebumps immediately rose on Alec’s arms, and he flinched slightly, unable to comprehend just what such a sentence might mean. The light in his eyes? Had something…happened to him in her timeline?

  “You’re speaking in riddles now,” Olivia growled, shifting just slightly closer to the woman.

  Something about that statement, about the connotations it held and the mental image that it formed, made her heart leap into her throat and her blood rush through her limbs so quickly that she could almost feel it.

  “Huh. Suppose I am. But if this place can’t even handle his name, then it would shatter in an instant if I so much as tried to allude to who caused it or even say her name.” The woman scoffed, her right hand grabbing the handle of her longsword and slowly starting to draw it, “And we don’t want that, now do we?”

  “You’re not Olivia’s enemy, are you? You’re mine.” Alec spoke, trying to ignore the feeling of a hundred blade edges pressed against him, when her attention was fully focused on him once more.

  “Bingo. Get the man a medal.” The entirety of her blade came free with an almost soothing ring of metal, her gaze half-lidded and her grin small yet sharp, “And there’s no way in hell-“

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  The woman hadn’t moved an inch towards him, yet the speed of Alec’s backpedal blurred the world around him and turned his nerves to fireworks. His eyes wide and his teeth grit in anxiety, his blade held out between him and her with a grip that would have been trembling if not for his rapid movement.

  ‘She’s about to do something, something big. Something-‘

  “That I would ever miss an opportunity to see what the baby [Swordmaster] looked like.”

  Alec’s next hurried backstep never finished. His legs crumpled beneath him, and his hair swayed in the air as he fell backwards. With a hard, wet thud, he hit the ground and came to a halt in an instant. The gaping hole in his neck, perhaps about three and a half centimetres wide, gushed blood like a waterfall.

  Alec Dius was dead before he even hit the ground.