by Heath Pfaff
“Those three only personally teach year three students. This year for me. Until then you only see them briefly here and there. Sedth will introduce the physical studies and the Rift again and that’s about it. The year two’s will see him a couple more times, but he spends most of his time with the third year students, or so I’ve heard.” Ori explained, but then she waved us off. “It’s time. Focus. Don’t get distracted. You don’t want to fail.”
Zarkov looked like he was about to say something else, but at that moment a clap of thunder rolled through the room and everyone was silenced as we looked out the double doors at what lay in front of us.
We’d passed other windows on the way here and there had been sun coming through them, but looking out at this courtyard that was surrounded on all sides by high walls, I could see not a single ray of sunshine. The sky was so gray that it was almost black and rain poured down in sheets. It was difficult to see much beyond the doors, but I thought I saw a dark wall rising high up into the sky. I couldn’t make out the other side of the yard at all.
Ori and other more experienced and older looking students moved in quickly, grabbing up one of the packs laying on the ground and putting them on their back as the water seeped into their clothing and began matting down their hair, and then they were moving forward at a jog. The first years looked back and forth amongst one another, but then we slowly began to move forward as well.
I crossed into the rain and found it to be shockingly cold. It was like bathing in a stream and immediately my clothes were soaked to my flesh. The pack that I picked up was heavy, far heavier than I’d thought it would be and as I put it on my back it made me stagger backwards a bit.
“This is shit!” Someone yelled angrily, and before he could get another word out someone came forward and slammed a fist into his face. The man who’d struck him was huge, dressed from head to foot in heavy steel armor that showed not an inch of flesh.
“Move.” He rasped, voice sounding like it was generated by the suit rustling together more than anything living within it. It was horrifying and otherworldly, and I found my legs moving just to get away from it.
I ran forward, thinking I might catch up with those that knew what they were doing, but then I reached what looked like a wall but was actually a hill, the incline so sharp it was almost a wall. The hill-wall was muddy with clumps of grass and rock sticking out of it. I could just make out someone ahead of me climbing upward and I realized that I was supposed to go over this thing in front of me. I took a hold of the clumps of grass and tried to pull myself upward, but the one in my right hand came free and I tumbled backward, carried by the weight on my back.
Others were attempting to do the same, some with more success than I’d had.
“Climb!” That metallic voice roared and someone was thrown roughly at the wall.
I fought my way back to my feet and attacked the wall again. I grabbed for rocks this time, bypassing the clumps of grass, and this allowed me to make some small amount of progress. Even the rocks were slick and hard to hold onto and I found I had to lean heavily into the wall to stop myself from falling backwards. I pushed upward with my legs and pulled with all the strength in my arms, climbing towards a top that I couldn’t see. Looking upward was almost impossible with the rain pouring down into my face.
I heard something tumbling down the wall-hill and glanced up in time for a rock to slam hard into my cheek. It cut me as it went by, gouging just beneath my eye. I let out a scream of pain and surprise, and made the mistake of leaning backwards. The weight of my pack carried the momentum of that lean and soon I was tumbling backwards, rolling down the hill, somewhere between a full fall and a tumble. I hit someone else and then we both fell and smashed hard into the ground.
The air was knocked from my lungs and mud spattered into the wounds on my face.
“‘Fuck off ‘me!” A woman’s voice yelled and someone hit me hard.
It was the person I’d knocked down. She looked furious as she got to her feet and sent a kick aimed at my ribs. It hit hard and it hurt, but I caught her next one on my arms.
“Climb!” The metallic voice yelled, and the woman attacking me was flung roughly back against the wall. “Fight on your time.” It growled, and then it reached down and lifted me by the pack on my back and I was thrown forward into the other woman who shoved me back before shooting a murderous look at me.
“Fucking deady.” She growled as she went back to the wall, he red hair looking almost black with mud as she started to climb again.
I wanted to yell that it wasn’t my fault, that I’d been hit in the face with a rock, but what did it matter? She wouldn’t listen, and I had to climb before the man in the metal suit took his anger out on me. I found another place on the hill and began again. My fingers hurt, and my muscles were already sore, and I hadn’t even seen the top of this thing yet. Others fell around me. I passed a young man who was crying for his mother and simply hanging onto a ledge.
As I passed him something huge and heavy flung up the side of the wall and slammed into him, nearly knocking him back down the way we’d come.
“Climb!” The metallic voice roared from below. I realized it was a pack, thrown all the way from the ground. I couldn’t even imagine the strength that would take.
I ascended for what felt like forever, going higher and higher, ever further into the void. I could see nothing below me and nothing above beyond a few feet in either direction. When my hand finally grabbed onto something different I was shocked. My fingers hurt and were split and bleeding. My arms were shaking badly. I’d been using my legs to push myself up most of the last bit of this terrible hill. Had it been any steeper I wasn’t sure it would have been possible at all.
Somehow, though, I had reached the top. I pulled myself upward, climbing over the jagged lip of the hill. The top of it was rock, slick and rough-hewn, that tore even more at my fingers. I rolled out onto the landing, breathing hard, my heart hammering in my chest. I’d never worked so physically hard in my life. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a breath.
“Move!” A metallic voice growled far too close and I scattered up and to my feet before I even saw who’d said it. There was another of the armored figures up here, two of them in fact, one on each side of this ledge we’d reached. It was wide but not particularly long. Beyond it I could see beams, old timber that was rounded and about big enough in width that I could get two feet on the top of it side by side but they’d both be slipping down the edges. There were twenty of these stretching onward into the haze of rain and misery.
I was shoved hard towards them. “Move!” That metallic voice grated and I did as it instructed even though my lungs were still burning from the climb, and my limbs felt weak and shaky. I approached the beams with trepidation. The one I chose was slick with moss and rain and as I stepped out onto it, it creaked in an unsettling way.
Below this pole were more of them, staggered, and below those it looked like there was a pit of mud. There were people down there, crawling through the mud, having fallen down. I wondered what it took to get out, but I decided I didn’t want to know. I started across the beam in front of me, still unable to see the other side.
I focused on caution over speed, taking careful steps but keeping myself moving forward. After a short time I reached the pillar that this beam was tied into. It was blocking the center of the path and their was only a narrow ledge around it, less than a quarter of my foot wide, barely wide enough to get my toes on. The pillar was square shaped, each face of the square as wide across as me with my arms fully spread out. I couldn’t tell what was beyond it.
I found myself looking down again as I approached this new obstacle. The other boards below were low enough that I wouldn’t be able to climb back up to these if I fell, even if I hit one or two on the way down. It was quite possible I could break something, and if I fell wrong I might even crack my head open.
Someone came flying down the beam next to me. It was difficult to make
out who it was, but they made it to the center beam far faster than I had and began to make their way around it, using the reach of their arms to hold onto the pillar as they went. I slid out to it myself, stepping on the narrow ledge and holding as tight as I could to the pillar. My fingers hurt a great deal. The tips were ragged and torn from climbing the hill, but I wasn’t letting go here.
Mud was caked all around the tiny ledge which made it even more slippery than it would have otherwise been. I managed to get around the first corner, but then found myself stranded on the far side as I found it difficult to keep forward momentum. My hands searched the surface of the pillar for anything that might work as a hold, but I couldn’t find anything. The corners were the only thing to attempt to grip onto. I pulled myself around and towards that next corner, but as I got there the person next to me screamed and it startled me.
I slipped, the toe of my boot coming off the ledge. I had a grip with my arms on the edge, but it wasn’t enough to hold my weight and the weight of the pack. I slowed myself, but splinters tore into my fingers and I slammed into the tiny ledge as I fell downward. I bounced off of it and backwards, hitting another beam that knocked the air entirely out of me and made me lose my breath before I landed in the mud.
I was horrified. I couldn’t catch my breath and my face was covered in wet muck. I was trying to gasp for air, but I couldn’t get it into my lungs. I managed to get flipped over and gasp for a small breath but the sludge in the pit filled my mouth and I choked on it, throwing up and hacking on mud that had tried to fill my lungs.
By the time I was able to get a hold of myself I’d nearly blacked out from lack of oxygen. I climbed back to my knees as someone trudged by me, moving quickly to get through wherever we were. I went after them numbly, looking for the way out of this pit. I was still coughing and choking, my lungs wheezing, and my body throbbing from the impacts on the way down. It was dark here, and looking up I could just make out the top beams over head. I thought I saw someone running back the other way. Had the first runners, those from the other years, made it all the way to the end already?
I wondered how much was still ahead. I had no idea how far we had to go, or even how long we’d been at this. The light never changed. It was dark, and darker still in this pit, and the rain never seemed to let up. I kept marching through the mud which went all the way up to my mid calves, sucking at my legs and holding me down with every step, until I reached a wall that went straight up. It was wooden and there were narrow handholds all the way up its side, only as wide as a nail, jagged and rusty. They were spread out far enough that I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to climb them at all.
To the right of me, and high above, there was a male figure dragging himself up the wall, though I could see there was a lip at the top, something you’d have to go out and around. I wasn’t even sure how that was possible. I shook my head and nearly cried. I felt defeated. This was terrible. My entire body hurt, my muscles felt useless, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get up and over this wall. I wasn’t sure I could do it even without the pack and without being beaten and sore.
Rather than fall apart where I was, I grit my teeth and started climbing. The metal holds were firm. They didn’t bend or move as I grabbed them, but they were narrow enough that they cut into my hands and hurt my feet to stand on. I had to actually jump from one set to the next and then pull myself upward on arms that had almost nothing left. I made it halfway up the wall and then couldn’t pull myself up again.
I wanted to keep going but I couldn’t. There was nothing left. I screamed and pulled, trying to lift myself higher, but my arms had failed me.
“Move!” A metallic voice yelled at me, and I wasn’t even sure where it was coming from.
“I can’t!” I yelled back in frustration. “I can’t do it!”
“Move!” It yelled again, the voice louder, seemingly coming from nowhere, but echoing all around me.
“I can’t move! I have nothing left.” I shouted the first part, and whimpered the second.
Something grabbed me from behind and suddenly I was ripped from the wall, torn from my hold, the metal grips ripping bloody lines in my hands as I screamed in agony. The pit fell away beneath me, and then the ground and I realized I was being carried into the air. I barely had time to register any of this before I was plummeting back towards the ground.
The world appeared through the haze of rain and came flying up at me unbelievably fast. I thought I was dead, and then I jerked to a stop suddenly, just inches from the ground, and then was dropped. I turned over immediately, looking up at what had just taken me through the sky and saw one of the armor clad men there, though this one had massive wings that looked like they were made of metal banded with strange, black string, and webbing stitched from old, tanned skins. It lifted into the air and vanished into the rain again leaving me stunned and staring up into the downpour after it.
“Move!” A voice of metal screeched and I swung around to see another of the things, which I was beginning to think were not people at all, standing over me. I staggered up, pushing myself up with bloodied hands. My legs were shaking now from a combination of terror and exhaustion.
I turned, trying to take in my situation, and I saw that I was at the foot of the hill again. I’d been brought back to the beginning. Something inside of me broke and I began to cry. I had to start all over again.
“Move!” The voice bellowed and I was shoved towards the hill. I started moving, stumbling up the hill-wall, though it was almost impossible to move my limbs at that point. Someone went running by me with two packs on, charging up the hill with surprising speed. It seemed impossible. This whole situation seemed impossible.
I began the climb again, though this time I wouldn’t manage to make the top.
2.2
By the time they let us out of the Rift there wasn’t one of us who wasn’t exhausted and beaten. There were broken bones, bruises, split scalps, cuts and pains that didn’t even seem to have sources. We were summarily sent to a public shower and told to make ourselves clean, though the process was difficult beyond measure. It didn’t matter that there were men and women slammed together in a small space, naked and in close proximity. If anyone was thinking about sex or pleasure then it was beyond me how they managed.
After we’d finally finished cleaning up, the healers, the Fel Clerics, came in and repaired only the worst of our troubles, the broken bones, torn ligaments and any gouges that might become seriously infected. They left us with bad bruises, soreness and the discomfort of skin rubbed the wrong way in wet clothing for far too long. They seemed to take a certain grim pleasure in the process of healing us.
For my part I couldn’t take my eyes off the man who looked me over. His eyes were dark as the woman’s had been, but it was his neck that I paid close attention to. The way his collar dug into his flesh was horrifying. His wounds were open, like doors into his body that didn’t even bleed anymore, though the flesh was red and angry around them.
“It’s called a gate.” He said, voice dark, dispassionate but not cruel.
I looked away immediately. “Sorry.”
He smiled thinly. “It is the way of people to be curious. We have our secrets, but this isn’t one of them. The gate keeps the flesh reaver spore from crawling into our brains and killing us. It will happen eventually anyway, but for now every day is trial of agony.”
I shivered a bit. “That sounds terrible.”
“It is.” He answered.
“Then why?” I asked him, my curiosity getting the better of me despite my exhaustion.
“I want to be powerful, and I am.” He answered. “My Goddess, Kerrigona, grants strength to those who suffer in her name. My healing gift comes from that, and there are other things we get as well, things I cannot talk to you about.”
I nodded briefly. “Is it worth it, the power?”
“I would never give it up, not for anything in this world.” He answered, a fervor to his voice that was s
tartling. “You’re finished.” He said, and with that I moved on. He hadn’t healed anything. Nothing on me was bad enough to warrant healing. Still, I was terribly beaten and broken.
I limped all the way back to the barracks, not even bothering to go to the kitchen and grab whatever food they had for us. I was done. It was night out and the day was over. In the morning we would have our first day of martial training, our first real day of learning, though I was certain there was much to learn from what had happened today. Time in the Rift had never seemed to move at all. It had gone on and on for multiple eternities, and now even though it had stopped, it still played in my head, a nightmare I couldn’t shake.
I never made it back up the wall, though I restarted it several times. Only a few of the runners had managed to go the entire day. By the end of the day most of us had been thrown back on the hill and were just struggling to make it to the top. None of the first years made an entire circuit of the course, and only three of the senior students kept going with any real consistency to their runs. Ori was among those three.
She was incredible. She wasn’t much taller than I was, and fully dressed she didn’t look any stronger, but I’d seen her in the showers. Her body was almost entirely muscle. She was lithe and perfectly formed. There was no waste on her anywhere. She didn't come out of things unharmed. She had a bad bruise across her lower back and the straps from her pack had cut into her shoulders leaving torn segments of skin, but she was sitting up straight and not complaining at all when I got back to the room.
Zarkov didn’t look as good. He was laying in bed when I got there, completely undressed. He had bruises up his front spreading from just beneath his sex on his inner thigh and up to his chest. There were cuts and lacerations all along it and his testicles looked swollen as well, though I was no judge of such things. He saw me looking and pulled a blanket up over himself to account for some semblance of modesty.
“Sorry.” I said, apologizing for looking.
