Kaius stared up at the behemoth in front of him with a slack jaw.
Sure, he’d been able to see it for the last league — it’d been clearly visible as the tunnel that held the course had gradually grown wider and taller to hold more complex obstacles. That didn’t mean he’d ever studied the thing.
For his own damn sanity, he’d put it out of mind; refused to even look at it directly.
Now it was right in front of him, and it was unreasonable.
Utterly unreasonable and completely unfair.
A final mountain. An unscalable barrier — at least on first glance.
Behind it lay the end of the course, a solid wall that rose hundreds of longstrides up. He could see the exit — an arch holding an impenetrable black plane. Unfortunately for him, it wouldn’t be easy to reach.
It sat on a ledge just below the far off ceiling.
Staring at the obstacle that he’d have to best to get there, Kaius was worried it might take just as much time to get there as it had to even reach where he now stood!
He shook his head.
A dizzying field of a hundred thousand platforms, each just barely large enough he would be able to stand on them with one foot. They swirled in a dizzying storm — each one whipping up and down, curving back and forth, and lurching from side to side. They corkscrewed and looped, and did far more besides.
Damn things looked like migrating birds that had been caught in a hurricane, thrown about without rhyme or reason.
There was no doubt in Kaius’s mind — not even for a single heartbeat — that most of the platforms were trapped. A single misstep would see him dead, he was sure of it.
That alone would have been enough — an ever shifting maze that stretched for hundreds of longstrides in every dimension. To his dismay, there was still more.
Seemingly at random, violence would explode from the walls around it. Bursts of erupting magma sent glowing sprays into the centre of the obstacle, while winds full of half visible blades would swirl and gust across hundreds of platforms; an endless storm of spikes shot from a hundred hidden holes, striking a staccato beat as the unending salvo cracked against stone — and dozens of other hazards.
They came from every direction, at all times in a cascade of nonstop lethality.
Seemingly at random, points of pure arcane would appear at random points throughout the shifting platforms. For a heartbeat they would pulse, growing brighter before they exploded with a hissing crack.
By the bloody gods, it looked like even the gravity changed at random. The constant rain that fell from acid and ooze traps didn’t seem to always fall down — sometimes sliding sideways or up until the affected zone changed location.
No matter how lethal it looked, Kaius still smiled at it hungrily.
He was here. The end was within sight, and it was only a matter of time before he got through this trial. What was one more, after so many others before this?
After runs unending, he’d gotten much better at crossing the course. Even as his mind and memory burst at the seams, he’d optimised his route to the point that most of it was easy now.
Once he had the trick, he rarely needed to rely on heroic physicality or overwhelming magic to progress. There was always a route — a path of safety he could practically stroll down.
After so long, there was nothing left to distract him from his purpose. Every skill he’d used organically had hit some kind of artificial wall, and he had little interest in waiting around practicing irrelevant abilities when he could push himself towards what was truly important.
Rotten roots, even the dreamlike way he drifted from moment to moment, and run to run didn’t bother him anymore.
Not when he’d succeeded at the true goal of the Trial — had seized an Authority that oozed from every facet of his mind, an insight that led and directed the weight his will imposed on the world around him.
Kaius could feel The Veteran’s Edge like a second skin. It was a cloak of individuality that wrapped him tight, bound him in armour that strengthened with every battle. It was ineffable — unexplainable — but he felt connected to his Aspect like he never had before.
Previously, his Glass Mind had felt separate from himself. Just another tool; an odd Skill-like thing he called upon when it was needed, or a strange other that lay within his mind. He’d been an utter, slow-witted fool to think that it could ever have been as such.
It was an expansion and development he could never have achieved without the mysticism of his Aspect, but at its core it was still him. His mind, his thoughts, his soul and his will — only ever separated when viewed from one perspective. The one that was unused to focusing on more than a single stream of thought. That’s all it was. A split in his focus, one tuned to learn, remember, and grow wise — one that helped him plot a course forward to achieve his goals.
So too was he The Veteran’sEdge. Battered, but never broken. He lived and he learned, and he kept living — always assessing what path was best, based on the others he had walked.
The final obstacle was unreasonable, and he would beat it all the same. No longer how long it took — how many days or years or however long it had been! No matter if it required a thousand deaths, and agony unending! He had set his mind to victory, and he would find the path that led him there.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Time might seek to crush him; wear him down under its grindstone. He would reject being diminished and embrace the experience all the same. He now recognised it for what it was: a simple polish. A boon of refinement, to grant him what he needed for the greater tribulation that always lurked on the morrow.
His spells were ready, having long since been inscribed.
For an occasion as momentous as this, he’d picked only his finest fair. Expedient Shunts by the dozen, to help him leap from platform to platform when all else failed him. Yellia’sSlip Step, to lengthen his stride and phase through what would otherwise be unavoidable. Bound Maelstrom, to be his aegis in the face of the unceasing deluge of arrow and spell that waited for him, and had saved him more than once in the past.
His heart beat hard, and his song screamed through his veins: he was ready.
Reaching to the glyph sitting above his heart, Kaius willed a Maelstrom into being. Slaved wind swirled around him as motes of light buffed free of his chest. It spun, a typhoon that left him untouched in its eye — a ripping violence that was visible to the naked eye, drawing dust in its wake.
He leapt.
Kaius crouched low, desperately wheeling his arms through the air as he did his best to keep his balance as he stood one-footed on the closest platform.
A heartbeat later, it shot up — right into the path of a tongue of flame that burned as hot as the sun, and stretched halfway across the immense trial-hall.
Throwing himself to the side, he aimed for another closeby platform that drifted lazily through the air. He landed — only to be forced to drop into a crouch and grip the palm-sized disk with both hands as it accelerated.
He shot upwards at an angle, approaching the far wall of the trial. Kaius couldn’t stop himself from grinning in exhilaration. Gods, it was a rush. Still, his streak of success wouldn’t last, and he did his best to engrave the dizzying flight patterns of the platforms into his mind.
The disk under his feet slowed once more, drifting down again.
Kaius wasn’t ready to begin his descent. Jumping to his right — he reached out his arms and snagged another ride — this one rising straight up. Dangling freely, he looked up just in time to watch a sparkling black plane of what looked like celestial mana pop into existence right above him.
It was a force he hadn’t seen in person before, only had described to him — but he did not want to find out what the trap might do first hand. Kipping back out towards the centre of the field, where the platforms flew thickest, Kaius landed on a platform that was drifting lazily through the air.
There was no warning before it exploded, only the sudden agony of having one leg pulverised completely, and the other minced beyond recognition.
The force of the blast sent him flying — his blood spraying in a red mist that was quickly lost in the chaotic swarm. Every few strides, Kaius violently collided with yet another platform, the pain of cracked bones melding with his splattered limbs.
Kaius grinned in acceptance; he knew it wouldn’t last.
The last thing he registered was the crack of his head smacking into a floating disc, quickly followed by an impossibly loud bang.
….
Kaius stood on a platform, snapping his head from side to side as he looked for his next target. There! A couple dozen strides away — he thought he recognised that platform zipping away from him. It might have been the one that would shift into a slow, diagonal loop — the next step on his path upwards.
Shunt summoned a burst of explosive force right behind him, sending him sailing towards his target.
Whooping as he sailed through the open air, Kaius landed on his target.
If he was right, he still had a couple of seconds before it armed itself and became a lethal explosive.
Every repetition, he focused and he learned — slowly unravelling the secrets of the final obstacle in his way.
The platforms had a pattern that they stuck to, a flight path that repeated. Some were simple — a tight circle or a short line that they travelled on back and forth. Others were more complex: hours long circuitous routes that took them through every inch of the swarm of discs.
Speed wasn’t constant, but it was consistent. Sometimes platforms moved so slow they seemed almost still, others they zipped so fast he could barely keep his grip — but always they moved at the same pace at the same section of their loops.
If that was it, it would have been easy. Annoyingly, every platform seemed to have points on their loop where they would become explosive. Sometimes as short as a handspan, other times for dozens of longstrides. There was no guarantee for an extended moment of safety either — a platform could become safe for only a heartbeat before it retriggered again. It was hell to memorise, considering there were thousands upon thousands of the gods’ scorned things!
Worst was the fact that, for the first time in this entire bloody trial, not everything was predictable. The traps? The unending hail of tearing blades, searing energy beams, and spouting caustics? They were random — a path that might have been safe one life, might take him straight into the path of a hail of ice shards the next. It forced him to adapt — to try and memorise as many repeating pockets of safety where he could manoeuvre freely and wait for as long as it took for his path forward to reopen.
Still, the direct damaging traps were actually among his favourites. It was the intangible dangers he hated most — the invisible zones where gravity would suddenly change, or his balance would flee him, or he was forced to deal with his sense of touch or sight being cut off.
Another platform cut down through the swarm right on schedule, heading right for him. Kaius grinned — only to baulk as he saw a shimmering edge of woven severance affinity shoot right for him out of the closest wall.
He leapt, just barely snagging his target with an outstretched hand as felt the energy blade skim the top of his head. He breathed a sigh of relief, his heart pounding in his chest.
Barring any sudden surprises, this disc would level out quickly, before rising up the far edge of the obstacle that faced the rest of the course. It would take him almost to the very top — meaning he would only have to cross horizontally to reach the arch, and his freedom.
That was as far as he’d gotten. A route that had taken him dozens of tries. Thankfully, it only took him a few hours now to reach the final obstacle — as his two embodied Aspects had melded closer and closer together, he’d gotten better and better at optimising his route. He could practically pass the rest of the obstacles at a full sprint! Given that the track was at most a handful of leagues, it wasn’t that far with the speeds he could sustain.
The improvement couldn’t be pinned on physical and mental improvement alone. As his Aspects supported and enforced each other, they synergised — compounding each other's effects. A benefit of both being so closely focused on improvement and mastery of the self, he supposed.
His platform started to rise, and Kaius hauled himself up to perch on its surface — a maniacal grin plastered across his face.
This might not take as long as he thought!