Young Swordmaster's Journey

"So," Callum began, crouched low to the ground with his arms resting on his knees, "What do you think we might have to face?"

His question was carefully aimed at Olivia and Alec, attempting to circumvent Glenn in his entirety. His placement on the opposite end of the two of them to Glenn helped in that endeavour as well.

"Hm, as the priest said, it's going to be difficult to tell." Olivia began, her arms crossed beneath her chest as she rested her back against the wall, "The Step of Distress might involve something similar to the destruction or ruin of Zenik, because three of us come from here. But I have no idea what the other steps might look like."

"Ohhh! I hadn't even thought of that for the first step. Man, that would be a really sucky way to start this trial out."

"I don't think it's meant to be pleasant." Alec replied in amusement, only getting a petulant raspberry in return.

"A failure as a swordsman and as a thinker. You truly are the gift that keeps on giving, aren't you?" Glenn shot back snidely, leaning forward to look around Alec towards the crouching green-haired young man at the other end of the group.

"And you're the mouth that keeps on yapping." Olivia sniped in return, glaring out of the corner of her eyes towards the large, bulking mass of rage that Glenn was slowly devolving into with each passing second.

"Oh, is that what you think, Black Sheep?"

"It is, Larstud." She retorted coldly, her grip on her arms becoming more pronounced as her glare deepened, "The fact that the only thing you have to add to the conversation is childish taunts and cruel mockery is just more proof that you only talk just to hear the sound of your own voice. All hot air and no substance."

"Oh, you think that you're such hot shit, don't you?" Glenn growled, his hands balled into fists and his shoulders tense, "And yet you're the one hanging around the dead weight. The fact that he hasn't dragged you down kicking and screaming-"

It was a single step taken towards Olivia. That was the only action that Glenn partook in. Not because it was all he intended to do, but because it was all that he was allowed to do.

The slight pressure against the side of his stomach froze Glenn solid, his eyes widened and his jaw tense and held closed only through stubborn defiance. It was only the tip of Alec's forefinger pressed against his side, yet something about the way that the blue-haired teen was staring at him seemed to instil a distinct danger into the normally harmless act.

Yet Glenn refused to let himself be cowed, scowling darkly and slapping Alec's arm away as roughly as he could.

"Don't fucking touch me, Dius. Try that shit again and you won't even be able to join in the trial."

The words were quiet. A hissed warning that promised nothing but pain and suffering if the teen dared to go against Glenn's words. In return, all the stocky young man got back was a flat, unimpressed stare.

"And what do you think would happen if you started a fight right here and right now? That you'd just get a pat on the head and a 'now that's not nice'?" Alec challenged, his expression not twitching so much as a singular inch as the realization visibly crashed down on Glenn's mind.

As much as he hated it, he knew that Alec was right. If he had started a fight here, while the priest was still setting up the ritual, he was toast. Forget just getting in trouble with the headmaster, his position at the very academy could be in jeopardy, let alone whatever horrific punishment the priest would no doubt levy against him.

Sure, he may be able to take the Dead-Weight or Black Sheep down with him, but that would still involve him having to suffer through those punishments. Which, if absolutely nothing else, Glenn refused to do.

"Whatever. I'm serious though. Try that shit again and you're losing that finger." He huffed, stepping back to take his previous position, leant against the wall with his arms crossed and his eyes closed.

It seemed pretty obvious that, now that he had been placed pretty firmly on the back foot in terms of the power dynamic of the group, he was intent on doing nothing but ignoring the three of them for as long as he humanly could. Something that the other three were more than happy to take full advantage of.

"Well, as for the second step…" Olivia began, very deliberately and overtly changing the topic, "That's just as difficult to tell. You heard what he said, we may never even run into the enemy that we end up facing."

Beside Olivia, Alec placed his hand along his jawline, just barely covering his mouth with the top of his hand as his eyes seemed to go distant in thought.

"Well, I hope that it's not some shared enemy of the four of us. That would…really suck." Callum muttered, shivering dramatically and rubbing his arms as if he was actually, physically cold.

"What, don't want the heads up?" Olivia questioned with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

"Wha- No! I can't believe you-" The young man froze mid arm-swing as he seemed to realize what had happened and sighed with his face in his palm, "You were just messing with me."

"Me? Never."

"Hah hah." Callum drawled, lowering his hand and rolling his eyes, "But what I meant was that I really hope that the four of us don't have a shared enemy in the future."

"Of course we won't. Unlike you losers, I won't allow an enemy to escape if we lock blades." Glenn snorted derisively from the side of the group, just getting an annoyed look from Olivia in return.

"Well, he's not wrong. I'm not sure about you, Callum, but I know for a fact that I'm not the type to leave someone lying around if they're a genuine enemy of mine." Olivia relented after a moment, turned back to face Callum before Glenn even got a moment to react to her words within her eyeline.

"What if it's not a person?"

The question from Alec stopped the conversation dead as all three of them turned to face him with confused and wary looks; even Glenn, as much as he tried to hide it.

"What, are you suggesting that something like a magical beast could appear?" Olivia questioned with a tilt of her head.

"I mean…So long as it's an enemy of at least one of us…" Callum trailed off, clearly giving the idea some thought.

He wanted to claim, off nothing but reflex, that such an idea wouldn't be possible, but he couldn't find any reason for that to actually be true. They didn't know the ins and outs of this ritual, nor what the priest may have been forced to change or tweak due to the higher-than-expected turnout. For all that any of them knew, it could just be a pack of wolves that they had to face, so long as it was something that at least one of them considered an enemy.

"Precisely. So, there's a good chance we could face a beast like a Wyvern or-" Alec paused and shivered, his body unnaturally still and his complexion noticeably paler than it was before.

"Alec? Hey. You good, man?" Callum frowned and took a step forward to try and reach for his shoulder, only for Olivia to stick an arm out to block him off while shaking her head at him.

"Alec. You'll be fine. The chances of that appearing are low." She spoke, her words slow and her voice calm and vaguely soothing.

"Y-Yeah. Yeah. It won't appear. It….it'll be something different." Alec nodded slowly, functionality returning to him in bits and pieces as Callum and even Glenn gave wary looks towards the teen.

The both of them had seen Alec barely so much as flinch at the worst that the two of them could throw at him, even if under drastically different circumstances. The idea that there was something, some kind of magical beast, that could make even the usually unflappable [Swordmaster] terrified to the point of near mental shutdown was one that didn't quite fill either of them with confidence.

"At the end of the day, we really have no way of knowing what we'll face once we enter." Olivia sighed, placing her hands on her hips and looking over at where the ritual circle was being set up by the priest, "We're just going into this with such little information that we could sit here talking ourselves in circles until the moment that we enter the ritual-space."

A shuddered sigh left Alec's lips, and he shook his head silently, looking over at the nearly complete ritual with regained clarity, though a pensive look was still present on his features.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"You aren't wrong. I guess we just have to wait." The sigh that left his lips was a long and morose one, just getting a roll of Glenn's eyes and a slight snort from girl at his side.

And above them all, hidden from sight and unnoticed amongst the beams supporting the roof of the structure that they all currently stood inside, was a small green dragon. Its form rested lazily atop the wooden surface yet its gaze wide open and intense. Its sight did not follow headmaster Xyn, who was spewing ambient power like a broken faucet, nor did it follow priest Victor, who's every iota of attention was being poured into the ritual circle developing beneath him, but rather on the blue haired teen stood all the way over by the wall.

It would have to wait a while longer before it got to see what it had come to watch, but that was fine with them. They knew that it would be special; something well worth the wait it would be forced to sit through.

Now it just had to stay here and avoid detection, child's play.

XXXxxxXXX

Group after group entered the ritual circle, a large monstrosity of a thing carefully constructed from chalks that were more compressed sticks of magical dust than true chalk and items that Alec couldn't even begin to understand the symbolism of.

Every time the group of four would step into the center of the ritual circle, and without so much as a word from Victor, the circle would activate all on its own. Muted white chalk turned to brilliant gold, and the items strewn strategically throughout the circle took on their own glows as the chalk beneath and around them lit up. Alec had been too surprised the first time it had happened to notice, had been too busy watching the area where the group disappeared from during the second time, but by the third time and beyond, he took a moment to watch the glow each and every time.

As someone as separated from the study of magic as he was, getting to see such a high-level ritual in action was something that he was, at least tangentially, interested in. Oh sure, he had seen monstrous displays of power out of Alexandar, but those had been almost effortless. They were spells and actions that may have been powerful, complex, or demanding, yet Alexandar had cast them so quickly, as if he were but a child doing nothing but conjuring embers from thin air.

There was something unique about seeing something this complicated, needing this much preparation and materials to set up just to make it useable. Though more than once, odd offhand comments of Alexandar's had snaked their way into Alec's mind, making him frown minutely and tilt his head at the ritual circle, as if examining it and somehow finding it lacking.

However, those thoughts often didn't last long, as the most interesting part of the ritual usually dragged his attention back to it every single time, without fail. That, of course, being the white mist edged 'window' that spawned out of thin air each time a group entered, allowing everyone to watch their progress through the steps as it occurred.

Alec had, for the entirety of the first group's time inside the ritual, thought that it was a little bit unfair for the first group to go in blind, only for everyone else to get to study everything that happened and that they did. However, those thoughts died quick, agonizing deaths once the second group entered the ritual, only to get challenges so utterly different to the first group that they could have had a whole month to go over the first groups progress and gotten approximately nothing useful.

However, it also hadn't taken Alec long to realize something else about all the challenges that each group went through. That being, much to his consternation, the fact that not a single group had managed to get past the Step of Strength; even the [Gold-rank] students of the academy had been unable to muscle their way through that step.

Alec wanted to say that it was just bad luck, that the groups that had more strength happened to keep getting the poor end of the stick to land the tougher of their potential opponents –which could be beasts, they had discovered– but something in his heart of hearts told him that the answer wasn't so innocently cut and dry.

The way that it was playing out –had played out– seemed almost…performative. Cruel in its display of difficulty and ruthless in its goal of hampering all progress of any that entered its grasp.

So, by the time that their group had been called up, the absolute last group to enter the ritual, and thus the ones who had the most time to watch and realize the difficulty of what they were about to go into, none of the four of them had been particularly raring to enter. Even Glenn, for all his usual ego and bravado, had seemed to realize the most realistic option to meet the four of them once they entered and had looked less than enthused about having to go through with it.

"Alright, you're the last group." Victor muttered, almost apathetic in his neutrality, as the four of them walked towards the centre of the circle.

Alec supposed that he really shouldn't be surprised; the man had probably seen more people enter and fail this trial than any of them could even fathom. He certainly hadn't seemed shocked or disappointed when any of the groups had failed. He wondered where he and the others would get to, though; would they even make it to the Step of Strength? Or would Distress get to them first?

Oh well, there was no point in deliberating over it any further; they were about to enter. His only goal now would be to roll with the punches and just keep on getting up until he couldn't anymore, wherever they got up to, they got it to. It was as simple as that.

The golden glow at their feet intensified just as it had with every other group, their own mana flaring in response to the concentrating energy of the ritual. The brightness ascended to a stage where Alec could only barely keep his gaze on the circle beneath them with one eye squeezed shut and the other squinted almost entirely shut as well. It hadn't been this bright for every group that had gone before them, surely. They had appeared fairly unaffected by the ritual's activation apart from the mana it had needed to concentrate, yet all four of them felt like their eyes were about to be gouged out just from the intense brightness of the intricate spell.

Alec almost screwed his lone eye shut to save himself, potentially going blind, tears gathered at the rims of his eyelids and his teeth grit so hard he was worried that he was going to crack something. He squeezed his fists as tight as he could and blinked.

Darkened robes and a clockwork head. Hands of bone made of fingers of babes beside those of crones. Reaching for him. Grasping for him. If it grabbed him- No! He couldn't let it!

The upwards swipe of Alec's blade ruffled the hair and clothes of his three teammates and blew out the flames flickering at their feet. His breath came out in heavy pants, and his eyes were wide and shaky, almost unable to believe what it was that he saw before him.

Where before it had been blinding light and the ritual circle within the trainarium that had been before them, now they stood in what appeared to be some kind of city in the midst of ruin, likely besieged by something or someone. Alec would have like to claim that he knew which city it was, but it had the same architecture as Zenik, which meant anywhere inside Xyrtah and Kairahl.

"Alec, are you ok?" Olivia questioned quietly, glancing between his calming expression and his slowly lowering blade.

"I- Uh." The teen stumbled over his words as he tried to describe what he had seen crawling out of the center of the circle, the terror that had gripped him at the simple thought of its hand managing to grasp him, "I'm…fine. Yeah. I'm good. I just…I thought I saw something."

"Alright, if you think you see it again, let me know." She encouraged quietly, giving him a small smile and getting a shaky one in return.

"Where are we?" Callum asked as he took a few steps forward, looking around curiously.

"Beats me." Olivia sighed, looking around herself, frowning as she saw Glenn glaring at Callum's back whenever the young man happened to land in his own swivelling gaze.

"I can't believe either of you idiots can't figure it out. This is clearly Zenik." Glenn scoffed, shrugging the twin glares off with his usual ease and leaping to the top of a collapsed wall nearby.

The first to join him atop the partially crumbled wall was Alec himself, followed shortly by Olivia and hesitantly by Callum. The sight that met them was a burning hellscape where usually there was a bright port city full of people and life. Where once market stalls were set up and merchants haggled, there was now rubble and ash. Where there were usually stables full of horses and other mounts, now there was a twisting gout of flame that roared its fury to the heavens. Where the dock was usually full of ships of all shapes and sizes bustling with people and sailors, now there was bubbling water and thundering seas; Waves larger than two men stood atop one's shoulders that crashed into the docks and tore them to shattered planks and splintered pillars.

The city was under siege, undeniably, yet seemingly there was no force behind it. No great beast of legend, no unfathomably large army destroying and pillaging all in their way, no terrible item or ritual tearing reality asunder around its form.

That lack of a discernible cause was what put the most anxiety into the four of them, the sheer unknown factor behind what had managed to create all of this chaos and why.

"What the hell is happening…" Olivia muttered, looking around with a small frown as a gust of unnaturally hot air buffeted the four of them.

"This stupid trial. It's trying to scare us." Glenn scoffed, though it didn't take a detective to hear the slight trembling in his voice. "Apparently it thinks that just showing Zenik in ruin is enough to make us back down."

They all knew better than to believe his words, however. They had seen too many groups go through the Step of Distress, and too many fail it, to believe that just seeing Zenik in ruins would be all that this step threw at them. If anything, this was more of a warning, a preview of things to come.

Let it not be said, however, that any of the four of them were ones to back down easily.

"Well, then I guess we better start looking around, see if we can't find what we need to get past to pass this step," Olivia suggested, hopping down from the wall and quickly being joined by Callum, and then Glenn a moment later.

However, Alec did not move, staring squint-eyed at something in the distance that, from ground level, none of the three of them could see anymore.

"Alec?" Callum questioned, shuffling a half step to put Olivia between him and Glenn.

"So. I think I know where we need to go first." Alec responded, just enough trepidation in his voice to get their blood pumping.

"Alec, what did you see?" Olivia took a step towards him, only to leap back a half step as Alec practically launched himself off the wall and down to the street alongside them.

"A window in the royal palace just exploded."

"Got it. So, it looks like-" Olivia turned to comment on the development with their teammates, only to see two empty spaces where they had previously been.

"Come on. Getting split up isn't a good idea, especially in this stage of all places." Alec tapped her shoulder with the back of his hand and started running, the pearlescent-haired girl right on his heel.

When she got her hands on the two of them, she was going to strangle them both. This step of the trials was doing everything that it could to throw them into a panic and stop them from acting calmly and rationally, so how could they allow themselves to react so emotionally to the second thing that happened upon their arrival!?

Olivia didn't know the exact powers of the ritual, nor how far those powers could extend, but she was certain, at that exact moment, that this was perhaps the worst way that their first minute and a half in this step could have gone. She just wished that Glenn and Callum kept their cool and didn't do anything too extreme before they could catch up.