by Jakob Tanner
The kid’s eyes widened at that before he full-on guffawed with smug laughter. He held his stomach theatrically as if what Max had just said was so funny it was hurting him.
Cyrus wiped a tear from his eyes. “Oh man, that’s too good. I guess both my mates and myself were wrong. Slice! The most common trait there is. What a loser!”
Max was shocked. Slice wasn’t considered a good trait? Sakura was a slicer and one of the strongest climbers he knew.
“And look who he’s mates with,” Cyrus laughed, pointing then at Casey. “A commoner and a fake-vein. What a match! It’s too much.”
Casey bristled at the boy’s comments.
There was that word again, thought Max. Fake-vein.
What were they all talking about?
He was about to retaliate against Cyrus’ condescension when the academy doors swung open and a man stepped out.
The whole crowd of teenagers went silent.
The man had spiky matte hair and wore an unzipped black parka with a white undershirt beneath it. He wore a necklace with a silver dog tag. A burning cigarette hung between his lips. He looked to be in his mid to late thirties. He had a gold badge with the letter C engraved on it pinned to his jacket.
“Good morning,” said the man. “So you lot are all here to become climbers, are ya? Well, let me tell you what it means to be a climber. To be a climber is to face some of the most ruthless monsters and even deadlier warriors—fellow climbers from other floors, other worlds, and, of course, rogue climbers from Zestiris. You need to be willing to kill. To be merciless. They call this the climber academy with an exam at the end. Make no mistake: the whole term is an exam. Starting right now.”
24
The group of students was stunned.
“The exam starts now!?” said a nearby voice.
“I thought you were supposed to learn stuff at an academy and then get tested! What the heck is this!?”
Max looked around in shock. None of the students had been prepared for testing to begin so soon; but they still had no idea what exactly the current test was. In fact, the instructor’s words could be just a bluff, a bit of showmanship before the start of the school year.
The crowd of students was quickly turning into an angry mob as they murmured and complained amongst themselves.
The instructor at the front shouted, “SILENCE.”
The crowd of students quieted down, but a feeling of discontent still lingered in the air.
The instructor grinned at the power he held over them all.
The students could complain all they wanted, but they still had all come here with the goal of becoming climbers. In the end, they would do as the instructor told them.
“Beyond these doors is a battle chamber,” said the instructor. “Each and every one of you will have to fight to the death. By the end of the day, this year’s class of student climbers will be cut in half.”
A fight to the death!?
None of the students around Max were yelling any more. A foreboding silence overtook them all. Had any of them honestly woken up that morning with the expectation of killing someone? Or dying themselves?
The instructor crossed his arms. “If you have qualms with this form of testing, you can stay here and formally rescind your place from the academy. You have ten minutes to make your decision.”
The man lifted his wrist watch to his eyes.
“Tick-tock,” he smiled.
Someone at the front of the crowd shouted at the instructor. “This isn’t fair! What kind of test is this!?”
Max looked up to the clock tower of the academy building. They had ten minutes to make a decision.
He wasn’t sure what to do. After the attack from the assassin last night, he’d resigned himself to doing what he had to do to find his sister, even if it meant getting his hands dirty. But this did feel a bit extreme. Then again, if after ten minutes, no one went through the doors—Max could run through and win by default.
One climber strutted up the steps of the academy. “Ha! I’m not afraid of a little fighting. Bring it on.”
The boy was the first to step into the building. A whole slew of students then followed behind him.
After two minutes, the crowd of student climbers had been cut in half.
A boy sighed at the back.
“I give up. I’m going to do as my parents told me and become an accountant,” he said. “Climbers still have to pay taxes after all.”
With that, the boy dejectedly walked away from the school.
The faces of the other students were full of anxiety. Some were pale with shock, others red with stress and frustration.
There was five minutes remaining to make a decision.
To enter the building and take another step towards becoming a climber and searching for his lost sister.
Or to stay out here and let all those goals fall out of his grasp.
Max observed the climbers who remained. Casey was standing beside him. She was shaking, clearly wrapped up in her own head on what decision to make.
But then Max noticed something unexpected.
Cyrus and his goons were still waiting outside the doors. Same with Sybil Westley.
That didn’t feel right, thought Max. If anyone had a thirst for cruelty it was that group over there. Unless, they had been all bluster and were actually scaredy-cats on the inside, but that didn’t seem right either.
Cyrus Archer’s father was a powerful man, who presumably expected a lot from his son. He wouldn’t be above cheating or dropping hints to his son about what to do at the academy in order to graduate.
All of which meant, Cyrus knew something the rest of them didn’t.
Max took a deep breath and replayed the events of the last ten minutes in his head.
What had the instructor said exactly?
Max closed his eyes to try and remember it more clearly.
There was only two minutes left on the clock.
“This whole term is an exam. Starting right now.”
That was the first thing the instructor said. He said all of that before getting into the fights to the death and the cruel decision he was forcing upon them.
That was it, thought Max. The test was never the battle to the death beyond those doors. The test was the decision in and of itself.
Max grinned with confidence. He was going to stay and wait for the remaining time to pass. He had made his decision.
One minute remained.
Casey was still squirming beside him. Then, with tears in her eyes, she took a step forward. She was going to go beyond the doors and fight.
Max reached out and grabbed her wrist.
She turned around, her bright eyes were red with tears, and she looked shocked to see him grabbing her wrist so boldly.
“What are you—”
Max still didn’t know the full parameters of the current test, so he didn’t want to say much. He just shook his head and then said, “Stay. Trust me.”
He let go of her wrist and Casey took a step back and stood beside him once more. She sighed and watched the final seconds of the clock run out.
The instructor looked at his watch.
“Time’s up!” he shouted.
Everyone waited with bated breath to hear what the man said next.
Max’s heart pounded against his chest.
This was it.
The stern man suddenly smiled brightly.
“Congratulations! You have all passed the test. Welcome to your first day at the climber academy.”
25
You have all passed the test.
With those words, all the student climbers in the courtyard sighed with relief.
The only student who didn’t was Cyrus Archer, who had a big smug smirk on his face. He wasn’t relieved because he had known all along the exact parameters of the test beforehand. Max had no doubt in his mind that the boy would have happily gone into that battle chamber to kill another student if it had been legitimately encoura
ged.
“What happens to all those who entered during the test?” asked Casey.
“Each and every one of them will be handed the paperwork necessary to remove them from the school,” said the instructor. “There are times when climbers need to make quick difficult decisions and then there are other times when they truly don’t.”
Everyone nodded along and listened to the instructor closely. Even in this stressful test lay a lesson.
“The ten minutes on the clock was a false pressure added by me, but there really was no need to do anything other than stay put and let the situation unfold on its own,” explained the instructor.
“Doesn’t it still seem a bit harsh though?” said Max. “All of those who went in might have become great climbers.”
The instructor nodded and crossed his arms. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “But here’s the thing: those who climb the tower can grow in strength and ability that defies imagination. It is my duty—as with all the instructors at the academy—to make sure the opportunity to gain such power goes to those who will wield it the most responsibly.”
The instructor started to shake with anger as he continued to speak.
“Someone, whose desire for power is so strong they would be willing to kill another student simply because of arbitrary rules set up by me, has no right to become a climber.”
Casey’s head fell to the ground in shame. She had almost walked through those doors during the test.
They all had.
It had taken Max great strength to stay back and risk his goals for what he thought was right.
He gulped. He’d never felt the sheer weight of what it meant to become a climber until that moment.
“But,” continued the instructor. “You all showed the fortitude and resolve to stay right here on the grounds. Good work all of you. Now we can go ahead and start today’s actual first lesson. One last bit of housekeeping. I’m Blake Cedarwood. I’ll be your instructor for the year here. Now, how do you all feel about going to the second floor of the tower?”
Everyone stood up straight at that.
They were going to enter the tower!? So soon? On their first day of classes no less?
“Follow me,” said the instructor, walking through the crowd of students and towards the front entrance of the academy’s courtyard.
They followed behind the instructor as he took them to the climber’s guild entrance and through the back hall to the entrance of the tower.
There were defense climbers guarding the entrance as well as a clerk standing in a glass box with filing cabinets and other information.
It was the last checkpoint between the tower-zone and the tower itself.
“I’ll be taking this group of student climbers with me up to floor-2,” said the instructor. “We’ll be back by the end of the day.”
The clerk eyed the crowd of students and then handed the instructor something to sign.
“Try coming back with all of them this time,” said the clerk.
Max’s stomach sank when he overheard that.
The instructor laughed. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try.”
The instructor’s words didn’t make him feel that much better about what was about to happen.
The man turned back to the group of students. “Well, don’t just stand there. C’mon!”
They walked up the gravelly road towards the giant spire shooting into the sky.
It was even larger and more foreboding up close.
The entrance to the tower was an open passageway of darkness and shadow. It loomed ominously before them.
After years of dreaming about it, Max was finally going to get the chance to enter the tower.
26
It was very dark in the tower.
Max couldn’t see a thing.
Then suddenly light appeared in the form of blue flaming torches attached to the walls.
There hadn’t been a switch or anything. The torches had just turned on automatically.
Was this the magic of the tower on display?
He felt a sharp painful pinch in his side. “Ow.”
“Stop looking so impressed,” whispered Casey. “Everyone knows about the blue flames. It’s probably one of the most mundane yet magical properties of the tower. Everyone knows that except for you for whatever weird reason. Stop sticking out like a sore thumb, newbie!”
They stood in a chamber with a fountain at the center.
The instructor slowly walked around the fountain and through a tunnel towards another chamber.
“Have you been here before?” Max asked Casey quietly.
“Of course,” she grumbled at his annoying question. “Everyone has. This is where kids are taken to see if they unlock a profile. That was six years ago. I was ten. I haven’t been back here since.”
Max looked down at the fountain as he slowly walked around it. The water looked clear and normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, according to Casey, it was this water that unlocked a person’s profile?
Max had no recollection of being here in this room, which made him very uneasy. He had no memory of bathing himself in this magical water either. So, if he’d never been here before, how come he had an unlocked profile and trait like the others?
Max kept the question to himself. Sakura had warned him: he needed to be cautious about who he talked to about his history.
Max and Casey walked around the fountain and followed the instructor through a small foyer that led to another chamber.
This chamber had a glowing bright white circle in the room’s center.
The light was all-encompassing. Max felt a strong draw to it.
The instructor stood in front of it, stopping the students from getting any closer.
“This right here is a teleporter,” said the instructor. “Think of it like a magic elevator. If I stand in the center of it, I can ascend to many floors of the tower above this one. But—I am I, and you are you, and that’s important to remember here. Since none of you have gone to the floor above this one, you can only ascend up to the second floor.”
“But why does that even matter?” Max asked. “If we can go up to the second floor teleporter, couldn’t we then just choose to ascend to the floor above that one?”
The instructor smiled. “If only it were that easy. Unfortunately, every floor of the tower functions like a test or a level in a video game. You need to prove to the tower that you’re strong enough to ascend to the next floor. How does the tower achieve that test? By having two teleporters on every floor. The one we’ll enter at is known as the floor-2 arrival teleporter and the one that will take you all to floor-3 is called the floor-2 departure teleporter. You can only visit floor-3 once you find that second teleporter. Then, when you’re on floor-3 you’ll need to find the floor-3 departure teleporter to ascend to floor-4. And so on. The good news is: once you’ve reached one of those higher floors, you can ascend to their arrival teleporter from any other arrival teleporter you visited. Pretty nifty, huh?”
“You said that was the good news,” asked Casey. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is: many climbers have died while searching for a floor’s departure teleporter. Some floors are as vast as entire worlds and finding the departure teleporter can take months to years, sometimes even longer if it’s a floor so high up that no Zestiris climber has ever discovered the departure teleporter’s location.”
“You mean a floor that our climbers haven’t climbed beyond?” said Cyrus.
“Oh believe me, kid,” said the instructor. “There’s a lot to this tower that even the best of us still don’t understand.”
The instructor flicked the butt of his cigarette to the floor and rubbed it out with his boot.
“Now,” said the instructor. “Wait right here.”
The man suddenly disintegrated in the white light, disappearing entirely.
The whole group of students gasped.
Thirty seconds later, he reappeared
in the white glow.
Casey nudged Max. “See? That’s a lot more impressive than the blue flames, right?”
The instructor took a little bow. He then stepped to the side. “I went up just to make sure there were defense climbers on duty guarding the teleporter and that there were no roaming monsters in the immediate vicinity. Now, if you could all form a single-file line and one by one, ascend to the next floor.”
27
Max wasn’t sure how it happened, but all the other student climbers had ended up behind him, making him the first in line to enter the teleporter.
“Looks like you’re the guinea pig,” giggled Casey.
Max shook his head, disappointed with the other students. Were none of them brave enough to face the teleporter first?
Sure, they’d all seen their instructor do it, but it was a totally different thing to watch someone teleport than to do it yourself. Was he really going to voluntarily walk into the light and then willingly let himself disintegrate?
I guess I am, gulped Max, taking a step forward into the light.
He expected to teleport as soon as he stood in the glowing light of the teleporter, but nothing happened at first.
“Close your eyes,” said the instructor, “and think to yourself: ascend to floor-2”
Max did as he was told. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He then thought to himself: ascend to floor-2.
SWOOSH!
Max felt his stomach lurch and then settle within the span of a millisecond.
Was that it? Had he teleported to the floor above?
He kept his eyes closed. He didn’t want to disrupt the teleportation process.
His nose twitched. He could smell pine trees and dirt. He then heard laughter.
“You can open your eyes, kid,” said a voice.
Max opened his eyes and found himself standing in the middle of a forest. The glowing white light of the teleporter was still at his feet. He swerved around to see two defense climbers with E-rank badges standing guard.
“You might want to move?”
“Huh?” said Max. “What do you mean?”