“Ready?” Matt asked, breaking the silence that had filled the room for the last fifteen minutes. His tone was business-like and neutral.
“We can rest for a bit,” Tess offered quietly.
“Are you ready?” he asked firmly.
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Then let’s go.” He glanced around at everyone else. When no one argued, he moved into the next room.
They followed him solemnly. Matt touched the door on the right and a hammer symbol appeared. When the door opened, they looked into a huge marble hall with an extremely high ceiling and a large structure in the middle. It was made up of wooden boards, spreading up and out like the branches of a tree. Some were close enough to step across, others seemed impossible to get to. The scaffold-like construction went all the way up to the ceiling where a lever was just barely visible. On the very bottom tier, a man in gray stood ready with a sword in his hand.
Tess couldn’t help her excited grin. “This one has to be mine.”
Ayden nodded as they stepped inside and started reading an information stone. “This test is from Kellum, the god of war. You have to make your way to the top, alone, and you can’t touch the floor once you start until you pull the lever at the top.”
Tess turned to Matt. “This is so mine. You don’t have the acrobatic ability to make it up there.”
He gave a stiff nod.
She sighed, he wasn’t any fun when he didn’t argue or tease. “Can you snap back to normal Matt already? I hate it when you’re all stone like that, it gives me the creeps.”
“Go,” he said, unchanging. “And don’t show off.”
She frowned at him as she took off her pack and pulled her daggers out. “Too much rides on this,” she grumbled. “I’m not stupid.”
“You’re cocky.”
“Like you?”
Another nod.
“Well not today,” she assured.
“Good luck.”
“Don’t need it.”
“My point exactly,” he said flatly.
She rolled her eyes. “Shut up.” Just then, Ayden reached for her hand but she pulled it away before he could touch her. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Tess.”
“Your shield throws me off, Ayd,” she said and turned toward the structure. When her back was to the others, she grinned. She wasn’t being cocky like Matt thought, she was excited, and there was nothing wrong with that.
“How can it throw her off?” Vivyka wondered. “You can’t feel it.”
“No,” Ayden agreed, “but it’d take the first several hits for her.”
“The danger and pain help her focus,” Matt said knowingly.
Tess ran and flipped up onto the first tier. She made quick work of the man, but it was level one, bound to be easy. She ran up a long slanted four-inch-wide beam to get to the next floor and swung at another man in gray without hesitation. He blocked with his sword and swung back. Tess ducked and then thrust, stabbing him through the midsection. When she pulled the blade out, he held the wound but managed another attack. She blocked and then whirled around and sliced his neck. A second later, he fell, then vanished as soon as he came in contact with the ground below.
Without pausing, she put her daggers away, then jumped up to grab a horizontal pole and started swinging back and forth. When she got enough momentum she let go, flipped in the air and landed lithely on the next floor.
An orc’s club slammed into her as soon as she landed. She stumbled to the edge, but she grabbed a vertical pole and used it to swing around and kick the large green humanoid, pushing him back a few steps. She ducked another blow, then pulled out her daggers before jumping out of the way of a strike. She swung and tore two deep gashes in his wide chest. He was just a foot away from the edge so when she kicked him in the stomach, he was pushed back far enough to fall over.
She put away her daggers again and climbed up a pole to the level directly above her. This level ran almost the entire length of the room, about fifty feet long, leaving another five feet of space on each end between the walls and the structure. Tess stood in the very middle next to a thirty-foot vertical beam.
On each side of the long platform a monster stood waiting. They looked like huge, eight-foot tall, muscled humans, but their bodies were covered in shaggy brown fur and they had a bull’s head. She stood her ground and waited, wondering if they would be stupid enough to charge her at the same time. They were. When they got close enough she flip over the right one and they collided into each other with brutal force. She put her hands against the beam and shoved one of them off the platform with a hard kick. It fell onto a lower level.
The other swung his ax. She wasn’t quick enough and it sliced her upper arm. “Ouch, damn it!” she gripped as blood started seeping from the wound. She ducked another attack and pulled out her daggers. She back-flipped out of the way of another swing, then slashed, connecting with a leg, and slicing a good size cut into it. She backed away and ran to the end of the platform. She turned to him with a grin. “Come get me ugly.” She stood her ground as it predictably charged at her. When it got close enough, she dropped off the side and hung onto the ledge. It went over the end, hit the wall, then fell and was gone when it hit the ground.
Tess pulled herself back up and glanced down over the other side at the first minotaur two levels below her. She decided to leave him there, if she had to, she could get him on the way back down. Using her dagger, she cut the sleeves off her shirt and then tied one around the still bleeding gash on her arm. “I happened to like that shirt,” she muttered.
She turned her attention back to the structure, looking between the beam in the middle of the tier and the level above it, which was a platform hanging from the ceiling by chains so that it rested another ten feet above the top of the beam. “Ayd, give me your rope,” she called.
“It’s only about twenty-five feet now, maybe a little more,” he called back.
“I think it’ll work.”
“Do you want me to just tie an end to one of the chains?”
She shook her head. “No, I think that would probably be you helping, and only one person’s supposed to do this, right?”
“Yeah. Maybe me sending the rope will fail the test,” he worried.
Tess studied the structure again. “I don’t think so, and I don’t see another option.” She hummed in thought for a second. “Can you send it coiled?”
“No, but I can wrap it around you.”
“Okay, do it,” she told him. “But make sure you don’t touch anything else, I don’t think the rope should touch the structure while it’s under your spell.”
“Okay, stand still,” he directed.
She put her daggers away, then stood straight and held her arms out to the sides. He moved his hand and the rope slid out of his bag. He threw out his arm and sent it flying. When it got to her, he guided the rope around her by making circle motions in the air before him. She waited until he put his hand down and nodded before she started pulling it off of her. She cut a five-foot piece off one end with her dagger and then coiled the rest of the rope so she could sling it over her shoulder. She picked up the small rope and put it around the beam, then wrapped each end around a hand twice and gripped it tightly. She moved the rope up a few feet at time and used it to climb up the beam.
When she reached the top, she stood on the six-inch square end, keeping her balance fairly easily. After all of her time in the jungle, she was good at balance, especially when Tikki always found it funny to try to push her off when she was up in a tree, or throw things at her.
Tess tied the small rope around her waist and took the long one off her shoulder. “What’s up there?” she asked the group without looking at them.
It was Matt who answered, “A man with two daggers.”
She laughed softly. “You think these tests are tailored for the person doing them?”
“Yes,” he answered without doubt.
“Is the lever above him?”
“Yes.”
She held one end of the rope, threw the other up around the chain, then caught it. Holding both together, she started to climb, her weight causing the platform to sway on its chains. The man hurried to the edge and sliced through the rope, but Tess was fast enough that she was able to grab the chain. She swung herself up onto the platform and immediately rolled out of the way of an attack. The floor on this level was only ten feet long and five feet wide, and now she was about seventy-five feet above the ground.
She pulled her daggers, then dodged another attack. Quickly, she looked around for the lever. It was a foot long wooden handle in the ceiling, about five feet above her head and unreachable by climbing up any of the chains.
She turned her attention to the man. He was skilled with his weapons and it took her a while before she was able to disarm him. She dodged a punch as she put her daggers away, and then ducked another. She kicked the man in the stomach, making him bend over slightly, then jumped up onto him and hit the lever.
She fell back to the platform as the man vanished. The minotaur on the lower level was gone too. She heard the sound of the door unlocking and grinned at Ayden who came to stand next to the structure.
When he nodded, she ran and jumped off the end of the tier, flipped once and then fell toward him. He raised his hands and when she was about twenty feet from the ground she slowed until she landed on the floor in front of him with the impact of only a five-foot drop.
“I can’t decide if your feather fall or your rope spell is my favorite,” she said.
He grinned and pulled her into a hug.
“Can I do it again?” she asked.
Ayden just laughed.
“Impressive,” Korin told her.
Tess smiled at him as she let Ayden go. “Thanks.”
“You were awesome,” Vivyka said.
Ayden smiled. “She always is.”
Tess grinned widely. It was times like this that she felt proud of all the training and hard work she had put in over the years. “I can’t wait to tell Tikki about this. She’ll be so bummed she wasn’t here to do it herself.” She walked over to punch Matt’s arm. Though her hit wasn’t at all soft, it didn’t faze him. “Come on, I deserve at least a smile.”
“I already knew what you’re capable of,” he told her.
“So? You can still be awed by my greatness,” she teased.
“Not cocky at all then.”
“Course not, I’m extremely modest,” she said and they both laughed. She reached up and poked one of his dimples with a finger. “Yay, he’s smiley again.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said lightly, batting her hand away. “Let’s go, Your Greatness.”
She smiled happily and followed him along with the others.
“Sure you don’t need to rest?” Matt asked her.
She rolled her eyes. “Please. I could do that five more times and still not be tired.”
“Really?” he asked with a mock awe. “Wow.” He gave a casual shrug then. “I could do ten.”
She smacked his arm. “Shut up.”
He just smiled.
