“You should be worrying about fixing your fluctuation,” Stormsong rumbled.

“I’m more worried about making it to the end of the trial, if I’m being honest,” Caen replied.

“Walls are nothing to a storm,” the sword said.

Caen braced himself. His mana reserves were much less than he’d have preferred. And his eyes were not fully functional. In fact, he’d barely repaired some of the damage done to his left eye, and his vision through it was rather blurry. The right eye was still unusable. But that would have to do for now.

He Mimicked Stormsong’s primary enchantments, pairing it with Dream-guarding. The primary enchantments were not active right now, but he knew how to locate them in the sword’s soul structure. Sight from his speculon was cut off, replaced by the blurry vision of his left eye.

Caen was immediately filled with a restless energy. The urge to act was nigh overwhelming. The crackling explosion of force that rippled out of the sword didn’t quite energize him. This gave him pause. He hadn’t been paying too much attention to what was happening within him during his fight with Dilino. But now, outside a combat situation, his mind picked up on something.

He reverted his soul, deactivating the primary enchantments. Then he split his mind in three, sped up his processing, and Mimicked the enchantments again, pairing it with Dream-guarding.

A shock wave rippled out of Stormsong. But at the same time, a rush of energy filled Caen. These were two separate events occurring at the same time. It wasn’t cause and effect. The shock wave was not empowering him.

While a portion of his mind kept track of his environment and the approaching dome, he flared the power within him and plunged the sword into the wall. It punched nearly two feet into the rough crystal surface.

With his heightened processing and directed attention, Caen felt the power within him grow agitated and swell to bursting, seeking out an avenue for release. That same moment, a shock wave rippled out of the sword, causing the surrounding crystal to rupture and fissure.

Before his single blurry eye, the cracked and fissured wall began to repair itself. He quickly extracted Stormsong from the wall with far more force than he’d intended to use.

His mind began to churn. Whenever Stormsong struck a target, it released a shock wave of electrifying energy. For Caen, however, striking a target was what filled him with energy. And that energy needed to be expelled. These had to be related.

Every time he’d been empowered by a strike, he’d expended the resulting surge of energy by simply doing something, and the energy had fuelled that venture, but—

Caen felt a presence approaching from above, accompanied by a bone-chilling squawk. He connected to it. One of those large flying creatures he’d seen in the sky. It was diving at him with preternatural speed, but thankfully, there were no other presences approaching from above.

He sharpened his focus, holding an image in his mind as he swung Stormsong at the creature. He let the instincts from the ability guide him. The moment the sword made impact with its target, Caen felt that surge of power. He pushed it into the sword, even as Stormsong let out a rippling shock wave that was twice as strong as any of the shock waves it had released so far. It ripped through the creature, bathing Caen and the wall in blood. Monster parts fell around him. With his bad vision, he could see that the creature had bat-like wings, rubbery skin, and several horns on its head.

Stormsong rumbled with palpable glee. “This is more power than I’ve seen in decades.”

“It’s just a Kinesis spell,” Caen lied.

The sword rumbled again.

Caen had gotten his solution. He briefly considered swapping out Dream-guarding for Body-ehancement, but he needed the heightened mental processing to be able to expel the surge of energy quickly enough. Also, the other portions of his mind were keeping track of his surroundings.

He flared the power within and, in the span of a second, struck at the wall three times. He directed the surge of energy into Stormsong each time. The sword blasted a hole big enough for him to move through.

Stormsong cackled.

Caen darted through the hole, even as it was starting to close.

He made it to the other side of the wall, and not even a second later, the wall had repaired itself. He rushed straight to the next wall, but he could already sense several presences diving down towards him, squawking shrilly.

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Caen sighed. Foolish of me to think it’d be so easy.

***

Senju Erehsta'al watched the projection with mounting concern as Herb Mask executed moves and techniques that appeared achingly similar to Ro’s.

She kept casting worried glances at Hera, who sat in an ornate armchair within the luxuriously decorated private viewing compartment they’d requisitioned an hour ago. The compartment floated several hundred feet above the arena with a clear view of the carefully designed labyrinth and projected images on the glass screen, with highlights of the ongoing trial.

Since the trial began, Senju had been paying attention to Hera’s reaction to all this. She had seemed unimpressed when Stormsong’s primary enchantments had been activated.

When the enchantments had been deactivated, however, the room had suddenly grown just a tad colder, and Senju had felt the slightest spike of foreign alarm. She knew Hera well enough to know that the woman almost never lost control of her aura. Senju was very worried.

Even now, Hera-Lienixur tapped a finger on the arm of her chair, a thoughtful and almost imperceptible crease on her brow. She rarely showed much emotion, but this past week, she’d been unusually expressive. Senju could count on one hand the times she’d seen Hera fidget.

On the projection, Herb Mask danced through a crowd of practicians, twisting unnaturally to deliver disastrous strikes to his opponents. His movements were so uncanny. Senju had seen other wielders bumble their way around while using Stormsong. Even Herb Mask had seemed to struggle at first. But as the minutes wore on, he’d started to fight more and more like… well… if she didn’t know better, she’d think that Ro himself had come back from among the dead and put on a mask.

After ridding himself of foes, Herb Mask used Stormsong to puncture yet another hole in the labyrinth wall, and Senju winced. “Is it okay for him to keep… doing that with the sword?” she asked quietly.

“Stormsong is meant to be used as a weapon,” Hera said in a dispassionate tone. “This much is fine.” She turned to Senju. “I’d like you to do something for me.”

“Anything you need,” Senju hurried to say.

The ancient woman was silent for a moment. “Reach out to Fenendis and the others. I have to be on that panel when they bring this participant before them.”

Senju nodded and departed promptly.

***

When Gebda Ereshta’al had been eliminated from the fourth round, he did not feel frustration or anger. Even though he hadn’t made it to the center, he felt proud of himself.

He’d finally reached the fourth round after nearly a decade of preparing for and participating in the Patronage trials.

Unlike the four other times when he’d fallen short of his goal, he wasn’t transported to the Oust hall. Instead, he found himself within the labyrinth, surrounded by its crystalline walls. There were many others here with him, hundreds even.

“Undaunted Participants!” an announcer declared. A different voice than the one that had welcomed them into the trial. “You have toiled well, though victory was out of your reach. You may depart the arena now, or you may continue contributing to this challenge. Doing the latter will grant you the chance to still earn glory and favor. You will be marked as the Returned. The monsters of this trial will not harm you, and for every one of the Aspirants you eliminate, you will receive half a point.”

The announcer droned on about the rules, but Gebda already knew he would be staying back. He had earned a hundred and fifty-five points in the trial, which was the highest amount of points he’d ever accrued, but even still, the steep redemption fees would leave him with less than thirty points.

Several of his fellow eliminated participants vanished in pillars of light, rejecting the offer.

“Death to the Aspirants!” one of the Returned screamed, holding up his sword. Limp cheers rose around the man as people formed into groups.

A few members of the Faithful Decent faction walked up to Gebda, and he smiled.

A while later, the world was drained of all color. It startled Gebda, but it was the signal that the announcer had asked them to look out for.

The next few minutes saw him and his team of seven threading through the labyrinth and eliminating Aspirants. It was much more thrilling than he’d expected. Cathartic, too. The monsters worked with them, though there was the occasional instance of accidental attacks from both the monsters and the Returned.

Aspirants, for the most part, tried to navigate the labyrinth, which, in Gebda’s opinion, was a lost cause. A few brave fools made for the skies or ran atop the walls, but were attacked by the flying creatures and Returned. He encountered a trio of Aspirants who had been working tirelessly to break through a wall. It was smart, but the walls were incredibly tough and were enchanted to repair whatever damage they sustained. His team and a group of nearby monsters dispatched the Aspirants quickly.

The labyrinth shifted immediately, and they were suddenly in a corridor with ten other Returned, most with the Emblem of the Blood Birds faction.

Gebda had not seen Fahptis yet, but he knew the young man had made it to the center. He hoped that the lad would complete—

Something exploded out of the dense crystal wall behind him. Gebda turned to see a man in wretched-looking armor slipping through the already closing hole. He only realized a moment later from the glowing and crackling sword in the man’s hand that this was Herb Mask.

“He’s using the primary enchantments!” someone in Gebda’s team voiced needlessly.

Monsters swooped down on Herb Mask as the members of the Blood Birds faction and a few badgers nearby charged.

Herb Mask moved like a fiend-possessed savage, spinning, twisting impossibly, and tearing into the monsters and Returned around him with such vicious physical maneuvers. Each strike caused explosive force to erupt from the sword to devastating effect, and Herb Mask matched the weapon’s bestial rhythm.

Gebda had never seen anyone use that ridiculous weapon so naturally. It was almost mesmerizing to behold.

He hurriedly steered his team away from the massacre. They were here to make points, anyway. Better to find less terrifying Aspirants.

No one could fault them for that.