by Bob Dattolo
“Each challenge gets harder. Spell requirements get harder. The puzzles get harder. You will need to pass every one to make it out alive. You cannot use your magic to avoid a challenge. You cannot use your magic to damage the maze on purpose. You cannot use your magic to block someone from a challenge.” His smile adjusted, becoming less cruel. “I have seen the trial passed with literally zero seconds left on the clock. I have seen the trial passed in an hour and nineteen minutes.” He nodded, “Yes, that means that the student spent their hour in the first room, then completed the rest of the challenges in 19 minutes. That student is not the norm. The next fastest I have ever seen is more than three hours. Take that to heart, because that is the next fastest. The average, on the other hand, is slower.”
Holy hell, man.
“Here is my main warning to you all. Watch. Everything. The challenge you feel is simple may have a penalty if you fail. Others that look dangerous may not. And when I say watch everything? That includes everyone. Turning your back to focus on a challenge that you know may kill you if you fail, and you may present too tempting of a target for others.”
He let that sink in before nodding, “Now, as is customary for these trials, you have the right to bow out. You can walk from here without taking part.” He waved to the side and adults held up mortmagi and mallets. “Simply say the word, and your new life as a stricken awaits.”
Stunned looks from the kids around me as they realized just how real this is. Fear starts to permeate the space even more than before.
Terror seizes me as someone steps forward. I haven’t talked to him much, but I know he’s on the weaker side of things. “I can’t do this!”
Oh my fucking God.
Others start moving forward. Slowly. I smell piss and shit from them as they move through the group.
“What the fuck…you’re accepting the mortmagi?”
The first kid looks at me, “If I go in there, I die. I don’t want to die.”
“What the fuck, you don’t have to do that! Just stay with me! I’ll try to protect you through this!”
The girl behind him shakes her head, “Still trying to fuck us because we’re weaker. I just…you’re like all the rest.”
“What! I never said I wanted to kill any of you!”
A third joins them, “Like all the rest.” She’s an ice mage, “If I fail the trial, my parents will kill me. I can’t make it through. If I accept this, then…I’m stricken. I’m nothing. Not part of their family any longer. But I live. They don’t tear me to pieces.”
“But I can help you get through this!”
“You’re just like all the rest.” She spares me another look and then walks ahead of the others to the closest adult holding mortmagi.
He holds them higher as magic pushes his voice out to everyone, “Do you accept these mortmagi of your own free will, becoming a stricken by choice to avoid the trial?”
She nods, “I do.”
“Your memories will be stricken as well. You will no longer be who you are. Your last name will be changed. You will be stricken. Do you accept that?”
“I do.”
“Then sit.” He nodded to a chair I hadn’t even seen. It reclines just a little, with a head rest that tilts your head back.
She sits, but doesn’t lean back as she looks at us, tears in her eyes, “I can’t make it through the trial alive. I know that. Too many of you have already told me that you’re coming for me.” She stopped on me, “And others have already told others that they’ll be collecting us. I don’t want this. None of us do. It’s just that we want to die even less.”
“Don’t do this! You can stay with me!”
She shook her head at me, “Just like all the rest.”
Then, fuck me, but she put her head back. As soon as she did, I felt magic come alive and hold her in place.
The adult above her started pushing magic, and I felt a spell that I haven’t felt in years. The stricken spell. “Get ready for your new life, stricken.”
Piss poured from her as the mortmagi approached, then the screaming started as the blade bit in. Kids around us twitched and the fear skyrocketed as he hammered until the screws started pulling the thing in.
Then he continued hitting again and again.
Her screams got worse as the second went in.
“My name is Jenny! My name is Jenny! No, don’t take that from me! My name is Jenny!” Her screams went up and up as the second one settled. Then her voice faltered, “My name is Je…my name…”
The adult killed the spells holding her down and then grabbed her by the hair and flung her across the floor. “It’s done. Next!”
“Don’t do this!” None of the kids look at me.
The girl formerly named Jenny is on the floor, huddled in a ball, screaming at the pain in her face and holding her head. Another adult moves towards her and grabs her by the hair and starts dragging her away.
“Your name is Jenny! Don’t forget! Your name is Jenny!”
I don’t know if she heard me. She’s still screaming when the laughing adult tosses her through a door that slams behind her.
Seven more kids are in the front of the group. Eight kids chose to accept being a stricken over trying to make it through the trial. Eight.
“Don’t do this! You don’t have to do this!”
The first kid looks back at me. He has tears pouring down his face, “You act like we have a choice.”
“You do have a choice! Not all of us are fucking psychotic murderers!”
He manages a snort, “You can’t even stop lying at this point. You’re so desperate to murder us and drain us that you can’t even stop now. You know what’s in store for us. You described it. Now you want us to skip it just so you can gain even more power.”
“I don’t want to kill you!”
He doesn’t respond as he walks to the next adult in line. His voice cracks as he answers the questions, then sits.
Then the screaming starts.
No matter what I said, none of them listened to me. Most of them didn’t talk to me. They looked catatonic. The stench of terror and piss and shit filled the room as the last one was thrown from the chair. Each was treated like garbage once it was done. They went from student. Classmate. Child.
To garbage.
All due to the mortmagi and stripped powers.
“Any more students wish to avoid the trial?” The fucker on the raised platform flared power again. “No? In that case? The doors will open. Descend the steps. When the door closes, the trial has started. One hour later, the doors will open, and you may choose your path.” He smiled again, completely at ease with the fact that ten percent of us willingly accepted torture and becoming nothing in the eyes of everyone they know to avoid this. “Good luck to you all. Who knows, maybe you all will surprise me and each of you will emerge having passed the trial. Then again, since I have never seen that happen? I won’t hold my breath.”
The doors opened, dark maws of terror that managed to drive the scent of it straight up my nose. I smell death. Lots of death.
And we have to walk right into it.
Chapter 38
The stairs descend into darkness. I can feel the magic around us as we walk. Kaylee is huddled at my side, stinking of terror and something else I can’t place. The deeper we get, the more I smell death. I can tell that the other dragons are picking up on it too.
“This is a fucking nightmare. I can’t believe we’re being forced to do this.”
Levi laughed, although it’s pained sounding, “Don’t even. We all know you’re a bloodthirsty fucking monster. You killed my parents, now you’re after everyone else.”
“You’re a lunatic, Levi. All I want to do is get the fuck out of here. This is fucking barbaric. No adults should do what they just fucking did. They dragged them out by their fucking hair!”
“They were useless stricken trash!”
“They were people! Your fucking classmates until ten minutes ago! How much of
a callous fucking monster do you have to be to have no feeling for them!”
The same voice that called me out in the caf reached me, “And you’re still pretending. Still pushing that we can all make it through this. We want to live. We all want to. Too fucking many of us know we’re gonna die here, but we want to have the chance of making it out alive. We’re too afraid to have said yes to having those fucking things pounded into our skulls, so we just…we hope to be alive when the timer ends. We lose our power, but we’re not dead. Some of us have no hope of making it through. Maybe we can make it through with our power. Maybe. Except with people like you? We’re just batteries.”
My response died as we reached the room. It’s huge, being an easy 100 feet across. The roof goes up more than 200 feet, telling me that it’s that high so that any dragons that manage to shift can get into the air. There are perches high up along the walls in various places.
“What the fuck? They expect some people to shift?”
Samantha shocked me by responding, “Anyone that tries to shift will get killed by anyone close to them. Even allies.”
“What the fuck?”
“A dragon in here will fuck up almost everyone. We can’t trust that anyone that shifts won’t come after us. So…yeah, anyone that shifts? They die.”
“This is an absolute nightmare.”
I was closer to the front of the group, so I headed out across the space. There are various weapons all over the place. Axes. Knives. Swords. Machetes. Bats. Maces. No distance weapons. Wait, brass knuckles. I see some in places on the walls, but more are across the floor in various places.
Kaylee grabs a bat and huddles at my side, cradling it. I don’t take anything as I turn and continue walking, staring backwards towards the stairs. Angelica, Kynal, and Gage aren’t all that far away, although they’re not heading towards me. They each have a weapon as they jog at the wall and stop, putting their backs to it.
Every other kid has a weapon of some sort.
Levi’s got a huge sword leaning up against his shoulder as he heads across the floor, looking up. Wes and Shane are doing the same thing, probably wondering if they can shift and get up off the ground before someone kills them. Ryan’s watching everyone around them, which isn’t shocking. He can’t go high, which means the space up there doesn’t matter all that much.
Kaylee huddles at my side as the 80 of us reach the floor and start walking. There are a couple stragglers towards the back that grab random weapons from the floor that others skipped. Some that already reached a wall are ditching the weapon they initially picked up and grabbing one from there.
I can’t tell if those are better or not.
There’s a creaking sound from up the huge expanse of steps, then the doors bang shut with a crash.
And one of the two kids in the back goes down with a blow to the head, with his ally standing over him as he grabs at his magic and drains the kid dry as he rams the sword into his chest where he lay on the ground, gasping up at him in shock.
Everyone’s staring at him in shock as he laughs and heads for the wall closest to him. If I remember correctly, he was kinda middle of the road.
Now he’s stronger than that.
Three more screams fill the room, and blood’s flying in different spots as everyone whirls to watch.
A girl goes down holding her throat screaming something incoherent as blood pours down her front. That knife got her deep, there’s no way she’s healing from that as a mage. Then her powers start draining into her former friend.
Closer to me along the side, another kid is down, a hand axe buried in the back of his neck. His former ally crouches and yanks the thing free, then drives it into the back of his head as he drains power.
The last has a girl holding her arm where it’s mostly hanging off from a sword stroke. She’s crying hysterically, trying to crawl away, “You said you loved me!”
“I loved your power!” He straddles her where she’s crawling and yanks her head up and slits her throat as he drains her.
Out of the four attackers, he’s the only one that doesn’t get to gloat, because a metal mage comes in from the side and hits him with a small spike of metal and then another spell that makes him scream, then there’s a machete stuck into his ribs that I can tell is a death blow.
Then that kid sucks down everything his victim had.
There’s no one close enough to attack them, leaving the rest of us spread across the room, warily watching everyone. Our allies included.
“What the fuck…what the fuck is wrong with all of you?!?” Eyes turn to me, “Why the fuck would you go after your allies like that?!?”
Samantha doesn’t laugh, she’s too scared for that, “It’s like we told you. That’s our world.”
“It doesn’t have to be our world! This is fucking bullshit!”
Levi pushes away from the wall, with his lackeys following him. “Oh, would you look at that? The clock’s started, stricken. I thought I hated you before. You were one of them. One of the inhuman scum that hurt my family. That took my parents from me. Turns out not only are you one of them. But you’re the one. The one and only fucking stricken that killed my parents.”
I don’t want to back away from him, but I think I need to get in a better position. Kaylee stays behind me as I slide down the wall. There isn’t anyone within 20 feet, but then we’d have to stop before we push ourselves into another circle of potential murderers.
“You’re right. I did. They were raping me. Should I have let them do it?”
“You’re not even an animal, stricken.” He sounds so confident as he continues walking. “You deserve everything we do to you. Which is anything we want.”
“Those kids upstairs weren’t stricken! How could you turn on them like that?”
“How could I? It’s easy. You see, once stricken, always stricken.”
“Not in my case.”
“True. True., not in your case. You managed to cheat your way out of being vermin. You killed my parents. Now you’re here with us. With your entire class. And all of us want a piece of you.”
That has me pushing away from the wall, leaving Kaylee back by herself as I move a good ten feet away from her, “Hmm, you’re right. That does leave me here with my class. It also leaves you here with people that want you dead as well. What’re you gonna do? Kill me and try to drain me? Here? In this room? Please, don’t make me fucking laugh. If you manage to take me down, who do you think will the first to attack you? Will it be Shane? He’s powerful. Will it be Wes? A strong ice dragon? Or…no, it won’t be either of them.” His steps slowed, “Want to know who it’ll be?” He cocks his head but doesn’t say anything. “It’ll be Ryan.”
“The fuck you say!” Ryan sounds indignant.
“Don’t even, Ryan. I see you there. We all see you. As soon as Levi is distracted with me and takes me down, maybe even before he drains me, you’ll be ramming that axe into his head and draining him before the other two can react. That’s the only way you can be remotely sure none of the dragons you hitched your wagon to will be able to turn on you. You get his power in you, then you’ll have more magic than either of them. And that’ll be what takes you through this as long as you don’t turn your back on them. If you don’t do that? One of them will kill you. I can smell it on ‘em. Somehow, you’ll end up in the back of the group. I’m not sure how, but it’ll happen. Then one of them will slip back to be with you. After all, you can’t let your ally be on their own. Then…then you die. I’m sure they’ve been talking about it. Which of them gets to drain you. Which gets to beat in your skull. Suck you dry. With Colin gone, you no longer have two and two against Levi being the most aggressive. Now you have two and you against Levi. And you, my friend, have an expiration date stamped on your ass that’s less than six hours away.”
Samantha laughed from the side, “Holy shit, she’s right!”
Levi stopped walking, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Noise
in the back of the group gets focus shifted there, as two more kids die. They’re about 30 feet apart, but it looks like they had the same idea and tried to shift while attention was on our little conversation. In one case, the dragon with them was probably supposed to protect them.
They looked out for themselves and ended them with a bat to the skull that killed them as they were drained.
The other is a girl that I think had been on her own. She tried to shift, and a group of three got to her before she could make it and she gurgled out her death.
The three that got to her started fighting, and no one got to drain her. They stopped fighting once they saw that their window had passed.
“What do you say, Levi? You want to go now? With 72 other people so close to you? You come to me and maybe you kill me, but then Ryan goes for you. Or anyone else we’re near. Then you die no matter what happens to me. As for me killing you? Who knows, maybe I let someone else drain you instead of me. I’m perfectly fine with people making it through this fuck-up. As far as I’m concerned, no one else needs to die here. We all make it out of here. We all graduate. We all move on to year two. Sure, maybe people bow out next year, but at least they leave with 25 percent of their power instead of being shoved into a box and buried somewhere. Sucky, but better than the alternative. Way fucking better than having blades driven into your eyes. Way better than failing here and having all of your power stripped.”
Power flowed out of too many of my classmates as I spoke up to the rest of the group as I moved into a quick circle, “I don’t have a fucking clue what happened this past week. I don’t know why people think I’m going to attack everyone and kill them.”
“Maddie!” Kaylee’s yelp made me spin to the side, catching someone moving her way. It’s a guy that I don’t recall the name of, and he has a strange look on his face. I can feel magic around him like he’s trying to push her down, but that doesn’t stop me as I ram him into the wall with my shoulder. His scream is aborted as his ribs crush, and his spell dies as I pick him up by the face and bash him against the wall, draining him the way I have been so that people can’t tell that I’m doing it.