Hope

"Ready?" Elizabeth asked for one last confirmation from the other end of the room.

"Go," Irwyn confrimed, magic already swirling around him. Empyrean blood was burning in his veins and turning his hair golden, though the increase in how much magic he could draw was not the limiting factor in what he was about to attempt.

As soon as Elizabeth triggered the device again, a thousand finger-lenght disks of Starfire surged into the air. Irwyn had roughly four seconds to eliminate all of them. The first two failed attempts had taught them that much. The issue was that each of those thousands of projectiles was individually imbued with nine different and seemingly random intentions and if Irwyn ever hit them with a spell that wasn't a perfect match the entire mechanism would reset.

And the ceiling would lower by another few centimeters, as it did every time they failed one of the 'puzzles' - though for some that word was a stretch to use. Either way, that was not an immediate worry, as they still had some leeway when it came to the space above. Irwyn couldn't afford to be distracted. Four to five thousand tiny disk were already manifesting. Irwyn had to identify and match each with appropriate beams of Starfire.

That was - according to the math he had done a few minutes ago out of curiosity - the difficulty of about 1 451 520 000 one-intention spells. An absolutely ludicrous number to fit into four seconds of action. It was to a point where even using hairbreath beams he would run out of physical space to cast all that magic. Not to mention made all the more ridiculous by the fact that he had almost done it on the previous attempt.

With all his focus channeled through the Constelation of will - which he had recast to make the spell a bit more efficient than his original version - Irwyn let his magic flow. It was a level of multitasking so complex he literally could nor process it. Despite all his growth it was only remotely possible because of the phenomena that made a mage's mind multitudes more efficient at processing magic than normal thoughts. A multiplier that seemed to only grow in potency as he was progressing.

The following barrage was obviously blinding - efficiency and limiting leaking magic were not priorities. Irwyn was immune to the illumination anyhow, and he was practically eyeless for the task anyway, as the depth of focus required needed him to detach from mundane senses. Watching the sheer mayhem visually with his eyes? That had been the mistake that had ruined the last attempt. Too much clutter that needed processing, therefore he had shut it out. Same for hearing and touch.

His past training for his painful physical carving had actually become quite useful for filtering most sensations out, letting Irwyn focus on only the magic. It was still difficult. At that level of splitting, he was arguably acting more on instinct and reflex than actual thought. Every bit of him was portioned and then dedicated to spotting one of the disk, identifying the needed intentions, sending an appropriate beam to intercept it, then moving on. The closest thing to actual logic applied was that he avoided accidentally aiming at the same projectile twice. Thankfully the beams were just fast enough that he didn't need to account for trajectory as that would have made the task impossibly difficult.

"Done," he said as soon as the last disk was broken, his eyelids opening and immediately shifting towards Elizabeth.

She was dealing with only several hundred of simlar disks, though hers were made of Temzdaflame. They were also chasing her at far faster velocity than the ones Irwyn had shot down. It seemed almost like a swarm of insects, buzzing around a desperately dodging form. Said evasion wasn't even fully physical, as Elizabeth was forced to rapidly shift between the local Void and mundane reality to make impossible escapes from omnidirectional encirclements. Not that she could really hide there, as lot of the disks followed her on both sides of reality. It still allowed Elizabeth to at least maneuver, which resulted in her mostly flashing across over half the room's width at speeds that Irwyn was struggling to keep up with despite his Concept enhanced mind.

The two of them assumed the puzzle would consider it a failure if the disks ever touched her. That wasn't actually tested though, as their very first failure stemmed from Elizabeth trying to immediately destroy them. Second had been a few from Irwyn's share striking the far wall. Their best guess was that Irwyn needed to get rid of his barrage first before she was allowed to do the same to her own. Which she just got to as Irwyn looked her way.

She also took about four seconds to clean up her share as instead of resorting to beams like Irwyn, Elizabeth manifested a black blade and began to systematically cut the swarm appart. It was kind of mesmerizing, both visually and magically. Since the disks likewise each had nine intentions that needed matching Elizabeth had to change the nature of her blade half a hundred times during each swing - with the edge already moving blindingly fast to boot.

Still, it was well within what she could manage. For the first second her dance remained manic. A struggle to not get hit as she culled the numbers. In the next, she was allowed a lot of leeway. During the third she no longer needed to even slip into the Void. The last second was almost casual - a graceful epilogue as she cut down the last stragglers with ease. Once that was done, both Elizabeth and Irwyn paused, holding their breath as they looked towards the ceiling. Instead of it descending, there was a shift as the next challenge manifested on a different place on the wall with a soft thud.

"Yes!" she laughed, jumping in jubilation.

He had previously expected her to be fatigued after similar exertion in a different puzzle, but she had explained to him that no matter how hard she pushed, physical exhaustion simply took longer to arrive than a few seconds of battle. Her body with all its empowerments could last minutes without truly tiring even at the very edge of capacity.

"Enjoying yourself now?" Irwyn softly needled with a laugh of his own.

"It's definitely much better than the first room," she nodded. "Moving around more is nice. And I got used to the headache."

"We can only hope that the positivity will last until the end," Irwyn smiled, looking around the room. "If we have to fully fill every surface, we are not even third of the way there."

Indeed, after every puzzle they had completed a new one would appear, rising either from the ground or from a wall. Unlike in the previous small room, these ones all required the two of them to cooperate is some way. That meant anything between two individual tasks - like the disks had been - to needing them to directly coordinate.

For example, in one of the tasks Elizabeth had to spot moving targets only visible within the Void that she then had to reverse engineer the location of under normal geometry and instruct Irwyn on where exactly to strike all of them at once with Starfire. Made harder by the fact that her trying to physically point out the locations with her magic would make the task reset.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Reset, not fail. Whenever they failed the ceiling would lower by a tiny bit. Most of the puzzles were generous with that though, only resetting when they were not following their rules. Failures generally meant they were doing the right thing, just executing it poorly - though not always. Most of the obstacles so far they had solved without letting doom step any closer. Ones like the disks that had required two failures to get right were the exceptions.

Still, it was a bit worrying. While they yet had plenty of space overhead, the ceiling had gone just about third of the way down. If they really needed to fill every surface fully, they had to do better, since they wouldn't necessarily be able to actually do the puzzles once the ceiling was so low as to obstruct their movements. Not to mention Irwyn wasn't sure what would happen once the ceiling was lower than the highest puzzles that were just a bit overhead.

Either way, they had no option but to continue. There were always clues as to what they had to do next, so Irwyn moved over to the new feature. It looked almost like a beer tap, a single metallic pipe reaching out from the wall. He could also feel something new and magical had appeared behind it. Shifting like… well, a liquid. First they needed to figure out what that might be about, he decided. There was a hint somewhere in there, and behind it another solution. Irwyn was honestly having a blast.

The ending felt almost anticlimactic. As more and more puzzles fell, their cooperation rapidly improved. As had the skills that were being tested on. They failed less and less as time went on, more easily able to predict each other and then execute with unerring precision.

The last challenge required Irwyn to remove some leech-adjacent beings that Elizabeth couldn't see but were trying to clinging onto her body. At the same time she was fighting a group of apparitions that were invisible to Irwyn in turn. The difficulty was that they would receive a failure if Irwyn ever so much as touched Elizabeth with his spells. Probably.

It wasn't going to happen. It would have at the very start of the room, but not anymore. There was a fluid grace to her movements. To how Elizabeth slipped in and out of the Void, weaving impossibly in between attacks. Twisting at unlikely angles and striking through parries and guards as if they weren't there. A flurry of mastered strikes, merged together with impeccable footwork, a nightmare for any opponent who sought to take her on from up close. Which tended to be the only option with her sheer mobility.

She could also make the motions predictable when she wanted to. Exactly a full second of motion, then one instant when Elizabeth would stand perfectly still. Too brief to be a noticeable pattern, barely even possible to exploit if any foe could actually anticipate such. But Irwyn knew to look for it. He would time his magic so that they would hit exactly in that split-moment she wasn't moving.

They had practiced that, extensively. After suffering three failures in a row to a very similar challenge earlier, they had dedicated hours to it. Elizabeth dancing in incomprehensible patterns at the edges of reality, giving Irwyn always just that one moment to strike. He was rather embarrassed how many times he had grazed her, even if those spells had been just harmless intention-less Light. Nonetheless, they had perfected it eventually.

Not even the only such mutual skill they had mastered. The apparent lack of a time limit meant that every time they ran into something that they clearly struggled with they could practice. The ceiling did not lower, no matter how long they worked on improving, so they took advantage of that. For some examples of their achievements:

Elizabeth could now perfectly exploit shadows Irwyn would intentionally create with barrages of his spells, using them to obscure both herself and remote use of magic - Irwyn could even intentionally make his spells less mana efficient to generate more magical noise for her to hide in. They had created a basic code of sorts by weaving weaker, but detectable, intention-based spells into salvos, though it was still relatively simple and would need gradual expansion. They could even perfectly layer barrages of magic while in each other's arms, able to not let the Void and Light in their magic disrupt the other at all while striking a target - which was actually a higher standard than the trial had required, though Elizabeth had insisted it was better to master the harder option.

It was a testament to said improvement that Irwyn could even afford those idle thoughts as he precisely removed the leeches as they began to cling onto Elizabeth. He wasn't sure how long they needed to stay there to qualify as a failure, but it was clearly more than a single second as he would always remove all of them on their rotation. The difficulty of the challenge seemed to be endurance rather than speed as they were already nearing the 15th minute according to Irwyn's estimations.

Which seemed to be the cut-off, as not long later Irwyn noted that the spectral leeches stopped appearing. He called as much out and Elizabeth confirmed that the same went for her own opponents. They didn't need to wait long for the last puzzle to dim down, signifying completion. The walls and the floor were all fully filled with solved challenges - or symbolic marks of them, at least. Some had retracted to not take up space or trip them up, but the signs of them were still visible. So was the cut off point above which none of them rose. The lowering ceiling still had at least a good half meter to go before reaching even that low. They had passed with some room to spare.

|| Well done || the golem's voice said, confirming as much.

The walls retreated, increasing the space available from a large room to a massive hall in seconds. A new monolith much like the one from after the first trial arose in the middle of it. At the same time Irwyn was pretty sure he saw doors leading to possible side room appear to the sides, though he was distracted by Elizabeth speaking up.

"So, the point of this Trial is to help us improve, yes?" she adressed their guide.

|| And prove worthiness. ||

"But improvement is a major part of that."

|| Yes. || it agreed after pausing.

"Then, about my spell for accelerating thought. It is very imperfect. I can improve it, and by a lot. The problem is, that would be dangerous. If I were outside this Trial, I would spend the next month being attended to by proficient healers to remove said risks. But without that care, it is simply too dangerous to make these major strides. What I am saying is, that my improvement is being hampered by our restrictions."

|| A trial is meant to be challenging. || the golem replied. It's voice was too alien to read emotion, but Irwyn was still rather sure it was hesitant.

"It was also likely build with Light healing availability in mind. Which Irwyn cannot provide due to a binding even you could not break. I have passed the boundary of inventing the initial spell without dying, the rest should be just refinement. If I cannot do so safely, it will just hamstring my progress," she immediately added. The argument actually gave the golem a pause. A long pause. About a full minute, enough time for Irwyn and her to start sharing glances.

|| Very well. You will not suffer physical injury from using or changing this specific spell in between chambers. ||

"Thank you," Elizabeth said. There was a jolt of magic Irwyn felt, then she suddenly collapsed.

He naturally rushed to her side, grabbing Elizabeth before she was halfway to the ground. But by the time he got hold of her, she was not longer even limp, leaning into his embrace. She did not seem even surprised while meeting Irwyn's worried gaze.

"Turning that spell off should have knocked me out for at least a week, I think," Elizabeth said with a grin. "Oh, this is strange. I feel so… slow all of a sudden."

"Yes, it does," Irwyn nodded. He had redone his spell during the trial itself and the slowness with it disable had been… jarring. Like his mind had been suddenly plunged into ice, then frozen over, compared to the enhanced clarity.

"Well, I do actually intend to keep my half of the bargain," Elizabeth sighed and stood up with minimal help. "So unless our guide has something to add?"

|| I do. || The golem actually answered. She had been just sort of silently hovering abovehead. || To your left is a feast hall… ||

"I thought we didn't need to eat here?" Irwyn interrupted, a frown forming.

|| Need and can are separate. Prove yourselves further to earn comforts. ||

"And to the right?" Elizabeth asked.

|| A library. Missing knowledge in lore is expected. Use this mortar well, to fill the gaps that will otherwise rise to become barriers. ||