Chapter 57: Aptitude Test (9)
The flickering fire inside the cave crackled and spat embers into the dark, heavy air.
Outside, the sky was still veiled in night, but the first hints of dawn were beginning to stain the forest canopy in shades of deep blue and iron grey.
Inside, the cave was alive with activity.
Lucien knelt by the fire, tearing long, uneven strips from what remained of his already-tattered coat and shirt.
His hands worked with purpose, fingers raw and red as he looped, braided, and knotted them into crude rope.
Beside him, Balt sat propped against the stone wall, his legs still a swollen, bruised mess of black and purple.
Lucien glanced at him, grinning despite the weight of what they were about to do.
“You ready to hear something crazy?”
He asked.
Balt raised an eyebrow.
“Considering I can’t feel my legs and I’m still alive after fighting two sentient murder statues? Hit me.”
Lucien nodded.
“I’m tying you to my back.”
Balt blinked.
“You are what.”
Lucien held up the makeshift rope, the grin still plastered on his face.
“You’re not walking. But you are casting. A barrier dome. Big enough for all of us.”
Balt stared at him in disbelief.
“That’s insane. You want me to cast a continuous barrier while being bounced around like a sack of potatoes on your back? That’s not how barrier casting works!”
Lucien shrugged.
Balt groaned, rubbing his temples.
“Even if I could do that, a dome that big would need to stay anchored. Touching the ground. Otherwise, it’s unstable.”
Lucien’s grin widened.
“You won’t be anchoring it. You’ll be hovering it. Remember the barrier you used as an umbrella? Same principle as that. Just high enough to stay off the ground, two, maybe three inches. Enough to keep it sealed without dragging on roots or rocks, and tight enough that nothing nasty can crawl in from below.”
Balt gave him a look.
“You’re actually serious.”
Lucien nodded.
“Balt. You said it yourself, you can still use magic. And if you can, then that’s good enough for me.”
Balt looked away, silent for a long moment.
Then, finally, he exhaled.
“…I can do it.”
Lucien’s smile softened.
“Then let’s get to it.”
***
Once Balt had been gently, but securely, tied to Lucien’s back with the strips of cloth, they turned to the rest of the gathered examinees.
Lucien stepped into the center of the cave, adjusting Balt’s weight against his shoulders.
The firelight danced across eighteen sets of tired, wary eyes, some sitting, some standing, others curled in corners trying to hold onto the last shreds of sleep.
He cleared his throat.
“Alright,” he said.
“Time for the real madness has arrived.”
The examinees looked up.
Corin, already stretching his arms like he was warming up for a fight, snorted.
“Let me guess,” he said.
“We’re charging down the yellow brick road like some kind of fairy tale army?”
Lucien raised a hand.
“More or less.”
A few chuckles rippled across the group.
One girl, older, tall, with burns scorched along one arm, shook her head.
“That’s suicide.”
Lucien continued.
“Balt will be casting a large dome-shaped barrier. Not fixed. It’ll move with us. I’ll be carrying him on my back to keep him elevated so the barrier hovers just above the ground. That way, nothing crawls in from below, and nothing disrupts the casting from uneven terrain.”
Corin whistled.
“That's ridiculous. I love it.”
Another boy, dark-skinned, with a broken staff still tied across his back, raised his hand.
“Won’t the statues just break through the dome?”
Lucien nodded.
“Yes. Which is why we’re letting them in. One at a time.”
He knelt and drew a crude sketch on the cave floor with a stick.
“We let one in. Just one. We keep the dome closed tight and don’t let the other in until the first is down. Corin and the other close-range fighters will rush the one that gets in and pin it down. Trip it, stagger it, whatever you have to do.”
He pointed to the other side of the circle.
“Then, our mages, everyone with spells, unload everything you’ve got on it. Hit it while it’s vulnerable. We finish one, then do the same to the next. Repeat until we reach the end.”
Silence followed his words for a moment.
Then someone laughed.
A nervous, breathless chuckle.
Then another.
And another.
The absurdity of it all, the sheer lunacy of fighting magical stone titans with what was essentially a mobile turtle shell powered by a half-conscious cripple, began to settle in.
But no one spoke against it.
Corin stepped forward, cracking his knuckles and smiling like a man walking into a bar fight.
“Crazy enough to work. And if it doesn’t, at least we’ll go down like legends.”
Lucien looked over his shoulder at Balt, who nodded.
He turned back to the others.
“This is it,” he said.
“You all know the forest isn’t going to cut us any slack. It hasn’t so far. But if we move together, protect each other… we just might pull this off.”
The group slowly began to rise.
Weapons were checked.
Spell components were counted.
Packs were slung.
Teeth were clenched.
Hearts beat faster.
They were scared.
But they were ready.
And as the first light of morning crept into the cave entrance, casting long golden fingers across the stone floor
Lucien took the first step.
Balt’s hands lit up with a soft blue glow.
And the dome shimmered to life.
***
The morning sun poured down from above, fractured and shimmering as it pierced through the canopy where it could.
The barrier dome shimmered faintly, bluish and translucent, pulsing in rhythm with Balt’s breathing as Lucien carried him forward, step after determined step.
Around them, the ground shook.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the yellow brick road, and yet, the group kept moving.
Boom.
Another statue collapsed.
Dust erupted into the air as the mages fired off volleys of flame, frost, and force spells, each timed and tuned to the weakened stone forms.
The fighters surged forward as one unit, pinning the statue down just as its massive limbs began to swing.
Corin’s axe whirled through the air like a silver blur, slamming into the joint of the statue’s leg with a CRACK that sent fragments flying.
“That’s the fifth one down!”
Someone yelled from the back.
“We’re halfway there!”
Another shouted.
“FOR THE CROWN!”
Corin threw his head back with laughter, the thrill of battle alight in his eyes.
He swung his axe up onto his shoulder and jogged back to the center formation.
“Lucien, you mad genius!”
He roared.
“This, this plan! You might be the best damn tactician I’ve ever seen!”
Lucien, sweat running down his forehead and breath ragged, didn’t look back.
“Just keep breaking these stone bitches, Corin!”
He bellowed.
“We’re sending them back to the quarry where they came from!”
The morale among the examinees was soaring, fatigue was there, sure, in the limp of their steps, in the exhaustion weighing their arms, but there was something stronger propelling them forward: belief.
Each guardian statue had grown tougher.
Their stone carapaces were thicker.
Their speed, faster.
But even so, they fell.
One by one.
Trap spells burst like mines.
Fire exploded against brittle stone.
Ice froze moving joints, and hammers, axes, and swords shattered them.
Lucien could feel the strain in his legs, his shoulders screaming from carrying Balt for so long.
And still, he pressed on.
Balt muttered to himself, delirious from pain, but focused.
“Focus the flow. Don’t let it ripple. Let the dome float. Let it breathe...”
They could see it now, the end of the road.
The treeline was beginning to thin.
The air grew lighter.
The oppressive aura of the forest seemed to part, as if they were entering a new domain altogether.
And then they saw them.
The final guardians.
Lucien froze in place.
“Hold formation!”
He shouted.
The examinees stumbled to a stop, their breaths fogging against the inner surface of the barrier.
Two statues waited ahead, towering over the road.
But these were not humanoid like the others.
These weren’t armored knights or spear-wielding golems.
These were... creatures.
Lion-like in form, but their bodies were broader, heavier.
Massive wings of sculpted stone curled over their backs like a cathedral’s arch.
Their jaws were open, mid-roar, but no sound came from their unmoving forms.
Their eyes glowed a deep crimson.
“...Are those Sphinxes?”
Someone whispered.
Lucien’s eyes narrowed.
“No. They’re worse.”
The statues stirred.
The barrier dome rippled slightly, as if it, too, recognized the threat.
Balt gasped from Lucien’s back.
“Those… they’re sentinels. Higher-tier constructs.”
Lucien didn’t waste time.
“Alright! Everyone, listen up! These aren’t like the others! These things will fly, don’t break formation! Keep your mages in the back! Defensive spells first, then we engage!”
The group shifted.
Weapons raised.
Hands began to glow.
Spells hummed in the air.
Corin cracked his neck and stepped forward.
“Big kitties, huh?”
He looked back at Lucien.
“You think your barrier boy’s up for it?”
Lucien smirked.
“Only one way to find out.”
Balt, despite the pain, forced his hands up again.
The dome shimmered.
The two winged statues stepped off their platforms, stone paws shaking the ground as they moved, each movement strangely fluid.
Then, with a crack of their wings, they leapt into the sky.
The final test had begun.
And the last battle on the Yellow Brick Road was about to be written into legend.
***
The observatory tower was more crowded than it had ever been.
Invigilators, supervisors, and scribes lined up shoulder-to-shoulder against the viewing platform’s long arc of enchanted glass, all eyes locked onto the swirling display projected above the Ruby Sector.
“Look at them go…”
“They just took down another guardian- clean! That’s the seventh!”
“Seven? Are you mad? That was the eighth. They’re keeping formation, rotating positions, like they’ve trained for this!”
Someone whistled.
“I haven’t seen coordination like this in an exam group in years. You’d think they were already graduates.”
“A barrier dome on the move? Who came up with that? That’s some siege-level strategy, who’s the tactician in there?”
“The pale one. The one carrying the cripple. What’s his name…?”
“Lucien Crowley,” one of the senior invigilators said, flipping through his roster.
“No recommendation. Came in through the written exam. Mid-range scores, but nothing notable…”
“He’s carrying the barrier caster- literally carrying him! And they’re using his shield like a mobile fortress. That's just... It’s insane.”
“Insane? It’s bloody brilliant.”
Speculative chatter rippled through the gathered staff.
Some were already scribbling down notes.
Others whispered with furrowed brows, unable to reconcile what they were watching with any known strategy used in previous exams.
“So, what, we’re just letting this happen?”
One skeptical invigilator said, arms crossed.
“They’re brute-forcing it. Shouldn’t someone step in?”
“We never said they had to sneak through,” another countered with a shrug.
“They’re passing the test. Just... unconventionally.”
“I’ve got fifty coins that say they make it to the final gate.”
“You’re on,” another smirked.
“They’ve got what, two statues left? But those things have wings. You saw what the last year’s gryphons did-”
“They worked together,” someone interrupted.
“That’s the difference. They’re not just surviving. They’re a damn unit.”
More nods.
More murmurs.
The Ruby Sector’s display was now center stage, every pulse of the barrier dome, every spell cast, every maneuver, studied with hawk-like intensity.
But not all eyes were watching.
Administrator Vaencel stood a few paces away, his back half-turned to the vibrant, crowded projection.
His arms were folded.
His brow furrowed.
His eyes, not on the Ruby Sector, but cast downward, toward a separate panel displaying the other four sectors.
His gaze lingered on Emerald.
Then shifted to Quartz.
He didn’t blink.
A tremor went through his fingers.
One of the junior invigilators closest to him noticed the distant, grim look on the Administrator’s face and gently approached.
“Sir?”
Vaencel didn’t respond at first.
Then, without taking his eyes off the lower displays, he finally spoke, his voice lower than usual.
“Once the Ruby Sector concludes, I want a full report on Emerald and Quartz.”
“But, Administrator-”
“Everything,” Vaencel cut in.
“Mana readings. Invigilator notes. Scrying logs. I want everything archived and brought to me.”
The young invigilator nodded quickly, unnerved by the uncharacteristic edge in the Administrator’s voice.
Vaencel turned slowly.
His shoulders were tense, his usually immaculate posture subtly slouched.
As he walked past the murmuring crowd toward the Ruby observatory window, his steps were unsteady.
Like he was walking against a rising tide of dread.
The invigilators continued their noisy observations, speculation, awe, and adrenaline high in the air, but Administrator Vaencel’s mind was no longer in the Ruby Sector.
Because whatever he had seen…
Whatever he had glimpsed down in Emerald and Quartz…
It had left him shaken.
