by Jada Fisher
Good.
In addition to Ain and the Yacrist fellow, there was someone else a bit unusual. A small, dark-skinned girl who looked to be little more than a skeleton. She was even shorter than Eist, and her black, curly hair looked like it had been cut haphazardly with a rusty dagger.
However, Eist didn’t have long to study her, or any of the other participants, because there was the sound of a horn that reverberated through the air and everyone was off.
Well, Eist was almost off, but then she felt two hands on the small of her back give her an incredibly sharp shove, and the next thing she knew, she was toppling forward.
“See what I mean? Should have taken the blue path.”
The words barely registered as her arms pinwheeled, her body rushing toward the black patch in front of her, but try as she might to grab onto the air, she crashed into the dark floor with a smack.
All of her dreams shattered around her as she laid there. She had just started and already she was out. Her destiny was fracturing in front of her and there was nothing she could do. Her heart squeezed in her chest, binding, painful, and all of the dark thoughts that she had been warding off for so long set in.
She was never good enough. She should have known. She was broken, and no dragon would choose her anyway. She was a failure, and—
No.
This couldn’t be it.
Taking a deep breath, Eist turned and looked to see that both of her feet were caught in a rope, twisting her ankle at an unnatural angle.
…her feet hadn’t touched the black.
She glanced over to the shirtless man, almost not daring to believe that what she thought was happening was actually happing, but he just took in her shocked expression and gave her a nod.
She was still in.
Laughing almost manically to herself, she pushed herself backward until her shins were off the black. Then, reaching behind her, she untangled her feet and let them fall to the regularly painted floor. From there, it was just a matter of wiggling far enough that she could stand without any threat of her feet touching the darkness.
But once she was finally upright, she realized how much time she had lost. The entire group was far ahead of her, and her ankle was throbbing viciously.
Oh well. She’d been through worse.
Taking a running leap, she launched herself at the ropes, wrapping her arm around one and swinging herself to another that ran diagonally across the space. Wrapping her legs around that, she used her hands to propel herself down the length until she reached another tightly-knit tangle.
She recognized this. Her grandfather had called it the bramble trap, if only because he specifically made it out of thorny brambles. The challenge was to find the least congested path to escape with as little damage as possible. She could see that several others were caught up in the red, woven mess.
Including Ain.
She gave a whistle, which she was sure was quite shrill, and it caught the boy’s attention. Eist took specific pleasure in his eyes widening in shock, before jumping up into the closest gap.
Perhaps she should have been nervous that she was clambering through a mass of ropes at least twenty heads above the ground with no safety below her, but there was no time for fear. She had things to do and a point to prove.
Her hands flew, gripping and pulling her from here to there, while her feet supported her, hooking in to make sure that she didn’t topple to her death—or worse, disqualification.
It didn’t take long before her head poked out of the top of the mass and she was looking at her next move. There was a bridge in front of her with wide gaps between its slats, but that couldn’t be it. There was no way the grand finale to the harder path could possibly be a dinky little expanse of wood. And that was right about when she realized that there wasn’t a drop of red across its polished surface.
A trick?
How cunning. If she had been a bit more careless, Eist knew she could have fallen for it. No, she needed to be calm, cool, and observant. Just like grandfather taught her. What was around her? How was it placed? This room was built with a very specific intention, and she needed to keep that in the front of her mind.
The finishing platform was just a short bit away, but it was too much of a jump and there were no more red ropes to take her there. Surely, they didn’t intend for her to leap…
In looking around, the movements of the initiates below her caught her eye. Despite her delay, most of them were only just reaching the spinning posts, and it looked like they were getting properly trounced. What they needed to do w—
Her thoughts cut off as she spotted the top of the whirling posts. There, in the center of the flat wooden tops, was a hand-sized circle of red. That was her path. She wondered how many people had missed that.
But other people didn’t matter. Only her finishing did. Clambering the rest of the way up the mess of ropes, she took inventory of the distance then leapt to the first spinning post far below.
The impact was hard, the shock of it going through her knees and making her tumble forward. But she was able to keep her wits about her enough to grab onto the next post and hug it for dear life as it spun.
The only problem with that was if she lingered too long, she would grow dizzy, and that would help no one. Steadying herself, she used the pegs to climb upwards, trying not to be thrown each time the pole abruptly shifted directions.
After what seemed like an eternity but was most likely only a few breaths, Eist managed to shimmy her way up the pole and crouch on top. Making sure to relax her eyes and let them drift over the room as she spun, she mentally marked where the next pole was and leapt.
Only to land promptly on her stomach.
It drove all the air from her in a huff, and she felt herself wheeze gratingly, but the important thing was that she did indeed land, and she hurried to get herself back into a crouch.
Once she was perched again, she saw it. The ending platform was just in sight. All she had to do was make a jump and land away from all the black.
Taking a deep, deep breath, she put all of the energy she had into her legs and launched herself forward. Her feet landed solidly and threw her hands up to make sure she didn’t topple forward again.
There was a moment where she thought she might lose it and pitch to the side, but then her balance evened out and she slowly stood.
“Congratulations,” the shirtless man yelled, suddenly much closer to her. When had he crossed the room? She certainly hadn’t been paying attention. “You passed the second trial. Line up with the others.”
Eist’s gaze followed his finger to see a wall of just fifteen individuals standing and sitting against the wall, most of them covered in sweat and breathing hard. She joined them and noticed with interest that neither Ain nor his musclebound friend were there.
Interesting.
But she only allowed herself a breath of wasted thought on them before returning her thoughts to herself. She had made it. She was one step closer to being exactly where she needed to be.
She remembered her grandfather told her that they preferred to keep the trials between three and four stages, which meant that she only had one or two more tests to beat before she was finally accepted as an initiate.
Just a few more steps. She could do it.
She had to.
4
Riddle Her This
When Eist walked into the next area, twenty-five or so initiates around her, she wasn’t sure what to expect. But nowhere in her mind had the possibility of a small room with about a dozen different tables set up with quills, parchment, and seats been present.
And yet that was exactly what she was looking at.
Following the lead of the rest of the confused hopefuls, she found a seat and settled down, the room seemingly silent. Much to her chagrin, Ain was only a few seats away from her, and she could feel his heated glare upon her.
Unfortunately, it seemed both him and his mountain of a friend had gotten through. Eist
supposed that it would have been too good to be true to have them fall to their own failure, but reminded herself that their path didn’t matter. Only hers did. Focusing on others would only distract from her own path, and frankly, they weren’t worth it.
The doors slammed open behind her, their collision with the walls traveling across the room like a shockwave. Eist looked behind her to see a tall, slender woman standing in the now very open doorway.
“Greetings and congratulations on getting this far,” she said, taking slow and purposeful steps forward. Her eyes were almond-shaped and set above a hawkish nose, making her look even more severe than her tone implied as she walked down the center aisle. “You can rest easy knowing that there are no sudden eliminations here. No brutish measures that you have to complete.” She reached the front and turned to look at all of the initiates gathered in front of her. “This is simply a test to see how you would solve problems as they are presented to you. Not very thrilling, I know, especially after you’ve spent much of your morning flinging from ropes or climbing up walls, but nevertheless, I request you take it seriously. How you answer could influence who is worthy of a dragon, and who isn’t.
“You may begin.”
And with that, everyone was picking up their quills and dipping them into their ink. Eist followed suit, narrowing her focus to the paper in front of her. It was blank, and for a moment, she was worried about her missing some sort of obvious question, but then the woman pushed a cloth map out of the way, revealing a smooth section of wall that had been painted black. With a flourish of her hand, she gestured to the ten scenarios that were already written along the dark expanse and Eist got to work.
There is a runaway carriage going down a road. If it stays on the path it’s on, it will crash into an elderly couple, most likely killing them. You see a way to divert it but doing so will cause it to collide with a group of beggar orphans and most likely kill them.
What would you do?
Eist thought for a moment. She knew that technically the question was asking her to state which life she thought was worth more, but she didn’t believe in equating a human’s value by age, or health, or social status. In fact, she didn’t believe that the scenario only had two possible outcomes. There was always another way, if someone tried hard enough.
Licking the tip of her quill, she dipped it in her ink and began.
Sitting atop my dragon, I would take inventory of the situation. Judging from your situation, there are actually two other options. One being I dive with my dragon and it grabs the carriage’s roof with its feet, lifting it from the ground and helping end its momentum.
However, should the carriage not look sturdy enough, and there was absolutely no time to whisk the elders or the children away, I and my dragon would place ourselves in the path of the oncoming vehicle. Most likely, we would come away relatively unscathed, and if we somehow succumbed to our injuries, it would be a worthy death for protecting our citizens.
A bit wordy, that was for certain, but Eist nodded with approval. It got across what she meant and solved the problem. So, onto the next one.
You encounter a peasant who tells you that a dragon rider is pillaging her village, hoarding their goods, and terrorizing anyone who stands against them. You have known this dragon rider since childhood, and they have always been a close friend to you.
What do you do?
This was easy! It was like they weren’t even trying.
If I have known them since childhood, then I know all their weaknesses. I shall first appeal to their reason and demand they face the consequences of their actions. Should that fail, I will use all of my knowledge to make sure that they come to face justice.
There. Surely, they would understand that one. Feeling her confidence grow, Eist moved on to the next question, then the next, then the next.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take her long to fill out all of them, even though she felt like she was certainly giving lengthy answers whenever she could. When she came forward to place her parchment on the stack in front of the hawk-nosed woman, there were only four in front of her.
“You know that no additional points will be awarded for finishing quickly, correct?”
Eist nodded. “I said everything I needed to say.”
“Oh, really now?” The woman raised her eyebrow and held out her hand. Eist handed it to her, and she looked over it quickly. “I look forward to reading this at length.”
Eist didn’t know what to say to that, so she just nodded and returned to her seat.
The moments ticked by arduously, initiates finishing their questions one by one. Some of them seemed quite stressed by the queries written on the board and Eist wanted to remind them that there wasn’t a particular right or wrong way to answer them, but she knew it wasn’t her place. Besides, her grandfather had told her that not everyone had the same kind of access to the tools needed to learn how to write and read Common. It was possible that some of the folks in the room were struggling more with the literacy part than the actual situations posed.
Now that Eist thought of that, it wasn’t particularly fair. There were three main kingdoms in Aithris, why was everyone expected to learn the language and script of Rothaiche M’or and not Margaid or Baeldred? What made Rothanchian words common, and all others foreign?
Eist didn’t know, and the answer didn’t come to her as the rest of the hopefuls finished. As the hawk-nosed woman was finally handed the last test, the quandary flew from Eist’s mind as she exited with the same flourish she had entered with, the doors banging shut behind her.
And then the initiates were alone.
“Well… What now?” the boy named Yacrist asked, looking around to the rest of the participants.
Eist just shrugged and sat herself quietly in her seat. If she was going to be forced to interact with these people, she supposed she should observe them now.
After all, dragon riders often had to cooperate to get certain tasks done. There was a very good chance that she was looking at her future partners in protecting the hopeless and defending the weak.
Her eyes went to the Yacrist fellow, who was currently talking to a gaggle of folks. He was tall, which she had already noted earlier, and had an easy sort of smile that made Eist nervous in a way she didn’t understand. His hair was on the longer side, but it curled atop his head in a style that didn’t quite seem possible, but suited him quite thoroughly. Thick lashes surrounded his bright, blue eyes, making him look even more dashing than he would have otherwise.
Then there was the mountain of muscles who seemed to shadow Ain. It was impossible to tell his hair color because his head was freshly shaven, and his eyebrows were so light that they almost looked as if they weren’t there. He might have had a chance at being handsome—not that that mattered—but his face was screwed into an almost constant scowl that actually made him quite intimidating.
And then of course there was Ain. Eist’s dislike for him was already solidly formed within her and she tried not to spare him a moment’s thought. However, that was easier said than done with how he was sitting atop a table, flirting with two girls who seemed utterly enamored with whatever story he was telling them.
Eist would never understand that. Flirting was stupid. As were most of the other silly romantic entanglements that people liked to get caught up in. Sure, while her mother and father had found love and died protecting each other, true love was so rare, it was a waste of time to try to intentionally find it. If it happened, it happened, but Eist doubted it would ever be a possibility for someone like her.
Of course, it was just as she was thinking about the futility of romance that Yacrist looked away from his audience and his eyes caught her own. Eist felt her face flush instantly, but she was saved as the doors banged open again and the hawk-nosed woman was there again.
“Come, all of you. We have finished reviewing everything and have graded you accordingly, and you have been ranked. Congratulations, you made it through the very first admittance
trials, but I must remind you that there can only be as many accepted as we have dragon eggs slated for hatching. So those of you who scored the lowest may be asked to leave, despite your successes in the tests so far.”
That jolted everyone, and Eist could feel the whispers crawling through the air around her. But it wasn’t as if they could object to that idea. There were only so many dragons and there was a chance that too many people had passed the admittance tests. There wasn’t much that could be done about that. So with that, everyone stood and began to file out. Eist couldn’t believe it.
She had really done it. She was sure that she wasn’t in the bottom percentage, which meant her position in the academy was pretty much guaranteed! She was going to become a dragon rider!
She just hoped that she scored higher than Ain.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
5
Rankings
Eist shifted uncomfortably in her seat, her heart going so fast she feared that it would leap out of her chest. Her stomach was bubbling and churning like a witch’s potion, excitement rushing through her limbs.
By her guess, there were close to two hundred folks in this large hall, with small stools available for everyone to perch on.
The energy of the room was palpable, with each person no doubt praying that they wouldn’t be the lowest of the low. For what it was worth, the test proctors and the council let them ruminate in it. Eist wondered if they were even aware of the nerves filling the room or if the whole process was mundane to them. After all, with their proximity to the dragons, it was easy to conclude that most of them were at least a hundred years old, which meant that they had seen plenty of newcomers full of hopes and dreams.
