Duster Exam (2)

Rosalind shrugged and pulled the lever herself. There was a rumbling in the stone room for a moment before a slot on the wall to their right opened, revealing a stamp sitting in black ink. “I guess this is the mark?” Rosalind picked up the stamp, which depicted the symbol of the Aegis Guild. She grabbed Ataru’s right hand and pressed it onto the back of it, before doing the same for herself. “That’s one!”

“Hell yeah!” Ataru held up his hand, Rosalind simply looked at it.

“Am I supposed to do something?...”

“W-well, yeah yo–” Rosalind reached up and gave him a high-five, laughing to herself.

“Oh you think you’re so funny don’t you?” He said, before laughing himself.

The wall with the lever attached to it suddenly swung open like a door on hinges, revealing the grassy plain. The floor of the room morphed, launching them outside. “Well that was rude.” Rosalind said, rubbing her backside.

Ataru looked around, noticing that there weren’t many entrants on the other side. He did spot Rune along with their partner, however. “As expected of the Hero.” Rosalind scoffed.

They waited until the time limit expired, at which point a few more entrants were suddenly ejected from the stone structure before it sank back into the ground. The examiners approached those that remained, with Rhopal clapping. “Congratulations! It looks like a whole…” He put a hand above his forehead and scanned the decimated crowd. “Thirty four of you made it through!”

“Much more than I was expecting…” Strix said with a smug nod.

“Now then.” Rhopal said. “No more time to rest, your next test is right in front of you!” He motioned towards the mountain behind him. “That’s right, I hope you’ve got hiking boots on, because you’re gonna be scaling this mountain. There are two marks for you to find. One somewhere along the middle of the mountain, and the other right at the peak! But be careful, we’ve prepared a few surprises for you in the forest.” The fairy laughed, stopping only when Strix let out a cough. “Oh, right! You’ve got twelve hours, your time starts now!” The remaining entrants dashed forward.

“This looks like it might take a while, we should pace ourselves.” Ataru said, looking up towards the peak of the mountain.

“Right, at the very least, this forest won’t be as bad as the last one we went through.” Rosalind said, jogging alongside him. He let out a dry chuckle.

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be fine to just burn that place down?”

“Very sure!”

They began to scale the mountain, each group of entrants silently choosing to go their own ways. “It’s going to be dark soon, we should try to at least find the first mark before the sun sets.” Rosalind said as she stepped through foliage.

“Yeah, the one at the peak shouldn’t be hard to spot, just hard to get to.” Ataru said as he walked beside Rosalind. “So I’ve been wondering, does this mountain have a mine or something?”

“Ironvein, it makes it pretty obvious, right?” She answered, still keeping her eyes sharp in their surroundings. “There was an iron mine around five hundred years ago. Apparently work had to stop due to constant cave-ins. I suppose now it would be possible to mine this mountain from the top down, but iron isn’t exactly in short supply, and people have grown fond of the view.”

“It is a nice piece of scenery.” He looked around, and couldn’t help but think back to a field trip he’d had in high school. It was before his injury, and he was still friends with the baseball team then. Why did he stop talking to them? It wasn’t as if they would push him away just because he couldn’t pitch anymore. Did he think he had no place among them, or was he ashamed? He shook the thoughts out of his head. There was no point in thinking about his world anymore.

“Hey Ataru, do you hear that?” Rosalind stopped, and he did the same.

“No? What do you hear?”

“Something’s moving, just barely.”

She scanned the forested mountain, before finally looking up too late. A large snake fell from the tree above her, rapidly coiling around her body. Ataru ran over to her, only to trip over something, another snake. It coiled around him as well, binding his arms and legs. The snakes were spotted, with a pattern that perfectly matched the scenery of the forest. “Damn it, let me go you oversized belt!” He struggled, but could hardly budge the muscles of the snake.

“Ataru, don’t struggle.” Rosalind coughed out. “These are snuggle snakes, they–”

“That is NOT their name!” He yelled in defiance. Prickle pup, bully boar, snuggle snake, who the hell was responsible for this?

“Just listen, they don’t have the strength to kill an adult with their constriction, so the most they can do is restrict someone until they die of thirst, though usually the snake gets tired before then.”

“And how long does that take?”

“Maybe two days?”

“That’s way too long! You can’t cast a spell?” He asked. Rosalind shook her head.

“There’s a special organ in their body that can absorb mana. With it this close, any spell I cast will fizzle out before it goes off.” She said, Ataru let out a groan.

“I bet these are the ‘surprises’ the guild manager mentioned, this is way too inconvenient.”

“Most likely, we’ll have to think of something else. These snakes don’t like the cold, maybe if there is a stream nearby, no, that would take too long, and we may never find one… Perhaps we could get help from another group? But that might disqualify us?”

“AAAHH” Ataru let out a scream. This was bad enough to make him develop claustrophobia. “You wanna eat me so bad!? How about I eat you!?” He opened his mouth and chomped down on the snake. The creature quaked in pain, Ataru bit harder and harder, until the snake finally uncoiled. It attempted to slither away, only for him to grab it by the end of its tail. “Where do you think you’re going!? Tell your buddy to let her go too!” He slammed the snake into its brethren, knocking their heads together. The snake coiled around Rosalind slumped, knocked out cold.

“Ataru…” She stood to her feet after grabbing her staff. “I don’t know if that was genius, or insane. But thank you.” She let out a tired laugh.

“Hey, whatever works, right?” He shrugged.

After their bout with the invasive wildlife, the two of them continued through the forest, until eventually they spotted a flagpole. A flag bearing the Aegis Guild emblem waved in the wind at its top. They ran up to the base of the flagpole, and saw a stamp enclosed in a glass case. “Finally!” Ataru ran up to the case and flipped it open. The stamp had the same design as the last, but used blue ink. They each stamped their hand. Rosalind held up her hand this time. Ataru went to give her a high-five, only for her to move her hand out of the way.

“Too slow!” She said, laughing.

“H-How is that a thing here!?” Ataru said in disbelief, laughing as well.

“Aren’t you two cute?” They went quiet as they heard a gravelly feminine voice. A woman dressed in a brown robe stepped out from behind a tree, Rune’s partner. Ataru looked around.

“Huh? Where’s the Hero?” He asked.

“Oh, right here.” The woman raised her right pointer finger and twirled it in a circle. Rune walked out from behind a tree on their flank, their shoulder’s slumped forward.

“That magic…” Rosalind looked to the robed woman, stepping forward.

“Stay away from me!” she screamed. “S-stay away.” She let out a discordant laugh. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so glad to see you. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you in the city, happily flirting with some human.”

“Claire?” Rosalind said, breathlessly. The robed woman raised her head, fully showing her face.

“Yes, that’s right, did you think I was dead?”