Kaius only had a couple of seconds before the drawing would flash on the parchment.
Everything he had was leveraged towards capturing as much of it as he could. He leaned heavily on Truesight, straining his vision until he could see every pressed fibre of the paper. His Glass Mind was churning, aiding him in recording as much of his sensory experience into memory as was possible.
With his Intelligence, his mind worked twenty-five times faster than baseline — tracking every fraction of a moment with razor acuity.
Black ink popped into existence.
What looked like hundreds of lines cut across the immense board from left to right, stacked close together. They were thin, with slight inscriptions jotted down along their length. Small enough that without his vision, it would have been impossible to make out what they were.
Even with his abilities, he struggled to make sense of them. The first fingerwidth of the first line was clear, but after that there was a constant barrage of symbols both above and below the lines. The ones on top were larger — slightly more detailed. Tiny drawings, he realised.
The first one was a box, covered in smaller holes.
A jolt ran up his back. It was a map. Abstracted, and hard to read, but a map all the same. If he was guessing right, that first box was the obstacle just past the chasm. He switched his focus to the drawings below the lines. Simple dashes, randomly scattered across their lengths.
The location of the hidden traps, perhaps? It wasn’t much to go off.
Before he could study it further, the moment passed, and the drawing vanished.
Kaius frowned — he hadn’t gotten much. Sure, he’d recognised what it was, but there had been no time for him to spend actually memorising very much at all. He’d been too busy simply processing what he was looking at.
Still, he would likely have more opportunities in the future. He just hoped that a closer inspection would reveal more detail than it seemed to have at first glance. Sure, having a general indication of the location of hidden traps would help, but the lines were so abstracted it was hard to guess what the obstacles themselves would be, nor divine any exact locations.
One thing did worry him — the blank section at the start of the map. Everything he had already pushed past was gone.
It seemed if he reached something, the trial expected him to lean on personal experience alone.
An altogether frustrating experience. He’d had his hopes that it would be pivotal to his success, but it seemed he would need to devote time and attention to gain an advantage from this discovery. Kaius scowled, unloading his prepared spells into the course before he started his work on preparing for his next attempt.
Once he was finished, he didn't waste time.
Setting off at a full sprint, Kaius relished in the simple movement and exertion. It helped to drive the likelihood of his impending doom out of his mind — forget the cold kiss that came after a final breath.
Reaching the midpoint between the entrance room and the first obstacle, he threw himself into a dive — flying forwards just a stride above the ground.
A heartbeat later, a bassy twang filled the air. The spinning dart shot across his back, wind tugging at him. It shattered against the far wall, stone shards pelting Kaius as they blew outwards.
Before he could hit the ground, he slammed his hands down — popping himself back up so that he could continue his sprint without a break in his pace.
Another second and he was at the glaive trap. All he needed was speed.
Expedient Shunt detonated directly behind him, as Slip Step caused the world around him to waver and twist. Before, he’d been moving fast enough to be a blur to an unenhanced man — now he practically teleported.
The waist high wall was next. Mid vault, he heard the glaive woosh as it cut through the space behind him.
Kaius leapt forwards as he reached the swinging bars, catching the middle bar as his first handhold. A heaving kip was all he needed to reach the other side.
Every Warhaven he had slammed over the climbing wall. Three Shunts got him over, and a fourth saved him from breaking his legs. Now he just had to cross the chasm.
He didn’t slow down, breath coming heavy and fast as he hurled himself towards the first platform.
Last time he’d almost beaten it. This time he would — it was just that simple. He knew the trick with the quickened drop time, had gotten the feel of the sudden changes of orientation. Unless it had another trick, he would beat it.
Touching down, he vanished in a puff of displaced air. He saw the next platform — waiting in the corner of his eye. There was no thought, only reaction. He jumped.
And jumped.
And jumped.
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Until he stood on the far side of the looming darkness, doubled over as he drew in great gulping breaths of air and smiled in wild pride at his success. He could do this.
He’d push as far as he could, work on his spells and The Veteran’s Edge, and when he died he’d do it all over again. As long as it took, he would do it.
….
Kaius ran his hands through his hair, taking deep breaths to focus himself for his next obstacle.
The last one had been rough to say the least. He might have beaten it, but it had cost him a quarter of his spells and half of his health. Better than his first three attempts, at least.
At first glance, it looked like an empty stretch of the course. He’d been suspicious of course, but nothing could have prepared him for the invisible blade that had cut through the back of his calf only two steps in.
As far as he could tell, there were dozens of them, slashing at random — with no way to sense where they were. Truly diabolical — yet another trap he would have to learn through bruteforce memorisation and spilt blood.
He wasn’t there yet — he’d know he’d beaten it when he could consistently pass through uninjured. Still, he was past it.
A new challenge for him to throw himself at.
This one didn’t look too bad — a series of pillars rising out of yet another chasm. They shifted and adjusted in height regularly, while moving around. If there weren’t any traps, it wouldn’t be too deadly. Sure, sometimes one of them would slam into the ceiling, but it was infrequent, and he should have the chance to Shunt to the next one if he was fast enough.
He took a step forward.
The paving stone beneath his foot shifted, clicking slightly.
FU—
The thought was cut off as a cone of black shot out from the wall next to him.
…
Kaius ground his teeth together, focusing even harder on the canvas that lined the wall in front of him. As best he could, he engraved the locations of every hidden trap on the line of the course he was still stuck on.
At least he’d made it past the first — now nothing more than a blank line.
The second the map vanished, Kaius rushed towards the stack of papers on the desk, jotting down everything he could remember.
After he’d inscribed, he’d study them — make sure that every scrap of detail was engraved as deep in his memories as possible. It was straining, to try to remember so much, but it was a good strain. The kind where he knew he was progressing on his way to escape.
Memorising the entire course in abstract would be tough — but it would be the perfect thing to train Mentis. Already he thought that he could almost feel the weight of the Aspect — a ghost of connection, and an authority on the world around him. At least, he hoped that was the case, and that he wasn’t going mad.
How long had it been? A few days? A week? More? Hopefully his friends wouldn’t be too worried. Xenanra would tell them he was fine, right?
He shook his head, finishing off his final note.
Still, he’d been making progress. That single cleared line had been a titanic effort, representing nearly thirty obstacles. Unfortunately, it was still only a fraction of the course. He hadn’t wasted any of his extremely limited study time counting the number of lines on the parchment, but there were a lot of them.
The parchment was taller than he was, and each line of the map was packed tight, with less than a finger width between them. Easily fifty, if not substantially more.
That wasn’t the only issue. The pace of his progress had slowed the moment he’d hit this second mapped section. Every trap and obstacle was more complex, more physically demanding, and more lethal. It took time, effort.
He worried that if they kept to a similar pattern, it might reach a point where he was simply physically unable to progress — regardless of how often he got to practice.
Sighing, he shook the thought out of his mind. Ultimately, it didn’t really matter. He’d keep going until he broke — it wasn’t like there was anything else to do.
Kaius made his way to the start of the course, ready for his next attempt.
…
Slowing from his sprint, Kaius came to a halt as a spray of acid detonated behind him.
A new section of the course waited for him. Thin metal poles joined the floor to the ceiling like a sparse copse of bamboo, moving through a section of the path at break neck speed. They wove between each other, sometimes leaving clear open paths for a heartbeat, and others skimming within a hairsbreadth of each other.
Dangerous — he’d be ripped apart the second he misjudged an opening.
He wracked his mind, desperately trying to remember if he’d recorded a hidden trap for the next obstacle. It was tough — there might have been, but he was only human. Keeping every scrap in mind he could after so many hours of lethal traversal was almost impossible — even with the assistance of his Glass Mind.
Still, he was certain he could feel a resonance there. A weight, reaching out in connection with him and the world. It was ephemeral, and hard to read or ponder — but it was there.
He was making progress.
Kaius grinned, and ran into the swirling poles. He slipped through the gaps, Slipstep helping him glide across the course.
Halfway.
Gravity switched by a few degrees, pulling him just slightly to the left of down. It wasn’t much, not enough to make him trip, or lose his grip on the ground.
It was enough to break his pace, and throw off his timing — he’d sunk too deep into the flow.
One bar slammed into his thighs, another pining him behind the knee. His bones snapped before his limbs were torn off. Blood sprayed. He gasped, snatching the limbs with both hands and vanishing them into his storage rings.
Force bloomed behind him — a desperate attempt to move forwards to safety.
It only threw him into the embrace of more spinning beams. Ribs crunched, arms snapped, and blood flowed free.
The pain ended when two bars slammed together, crushing his skull.