The waves crashed into the cliff side, sending sprays up unto the ledge that smelled of all the freshness of the Alavrian Ocean. The elven woman stood there next to her cohorts of classmates within the shelter of a cave exit in the wall, awaiting their final trial.

A young human woman stood behind them, her blonde hair waving in the crushing wind. Her brown tunic, cloth pants, and sandals did not carry the same call to action as the rest in the cavern dressed, instead as if she had simply got out of bed. She pulled aside her faded red scarf and shouted over the stampeding waves.

"Movement is key in subduing Titans. You won't just be moving across flat plains or rocky terrains. Sometimes, you'll have to move across the Titans themselves." She pointed across the small bay within the gulf of Titan Gate where another cave marked by flickering torches was visible on the cliff face opposite. "Reach the other side and you'll be officially regarded as Titan Rangers."

One of the students piped up, "Miss Lucinda,"

"That's Miss Baerrinska to you."

"R-right. Miss Baerrinska. How are we going to do that? We don't have anything to scale the walls with."

"You're not scaling the walls. You're crossing a bridge." A hand shot up in the crowd and Lucinda sighed. "Yes, Adelaide?"

The young elven woman had hair of forest green and eyes of blood red. Her face was tomboyish, with freckles of dust. A smirk proved her attitude, which matched the dirt stains on her green tunic and brown vest.

"Ah! That's Miss Wiltkins, to you."

"No, Adelle. I am not calling you that."

"Well, Luce, that's kind of a double standard, isn't it?"

Luce sighed and mumbled, "I hate you."

"What?" Adelle joked. "I can't hear you over the waves. Speak up!"

The rest of the cohort looked around nervously. Only Adelaide Wiltkins could get on Lucinda's bad side and not find themselves on the bad end of a rifle butt.

Luce cleared her throat. "I asked you what your question was."

"Can't I just teleport over?"

"No, you cannot just teleport over. That defeats the whole purpose of the test. Like I said, you'll be crossing a bridge."

"What bri-"

With dramatic timing, the cavern shook, dirt falling off the walls. They turned to look out as the water of the gulf began to churn haphazardly, crashing into the bay walls with all the symphony of battering rams.

Water in the middle of the gulf began rising diagonally out, bulging out from the larger sea like a mountain being raised from the ocean. The water around it began to dip, pulling back and revealing the battered steep shoreline of hard stone and corals.

As the bulging water fell aside the rising mass, raining down droplets and aquatic life, the giant creature began taking form. With each step forward into the bay, it displaced the water in tsunami sized splashes that rocked the cliff side.

Double the height of the high walls of earth, the creature towered from cliff to cliff. Broad shouldered with navy stone armour smoothened by underwater currents, the giant creature's bulbous arms slowed its swing as it decelerated, just the shin of its oblong legs still stood within the water. Its armour shifted as a clockwork piece of mail that fitted perfectly with each joint. It's long shoulder pauldron protruded like an overhang, dripping water across it. Then, the creature stopped moving, standing up straight and proud towards the light of the Twins with a warrior's stature.

One of the younger student exclaimed, "What is that?"

And an older student muttered, "It's the sentient Titan. Leviathan."

Luce began walking away towards the darkness of the cave and the exit. "That's you bridge," she shouted back. "Bag of rope's on the ground. Use them. You have an hour to cross it. This is a solo test. If someone else had set up a path, you are not allowed to use it, but you can copy. If you fail... well, better luck next year. I'll see some of you on the other side."

Adelaide looked over the edge of the cave as the water below slowed to a manageable wave. Small steam boats motored their way into the gulf, stopping all around the Titan, lining the cliff face in the crescent equidistantly apart.

Someone behind said, "No way I'm doing this."

Adelle informed, "Looks like they have people below to catch us."

"Even so, if they make a single mistake, we're done for."

She unslung her bow. Spirale had eight green reijidium cable tied at various point along the spine of the bow. The dark caraco wood gave the bow an onyx glint as the cable ran down its spine into the gears within the grip. A rubber roller next to where arrows were notched helped give the projectiles fired an extra spin.

She took a coil of rope - which was a hundred metres in length - and cut it to a pair of short and long halves. She tied two arrows together with the short rope and cut another rope in equal halves. She tied the new half to the two arrows, and finally those two to the longer cut rope to form a 'Y'. As she worked, her peers discussed their options. Those who were retaking the trial after the previous year's failure were particularly less afraid. The year's newcomers - herself excluded - felt the fear of the jump.

"Well, you're all free to be cowards here, but I'm going over there," she jested while tightening her line.

"Easy for you to say. If you fall, you can just teleport."

She stuck her tongue out as she tightened the longer rope to her waist. "You heard the boss lady. No teleporting."

Raising her bow to a higher angle than her target and setting it horizontally, she fired the two arrows together without hesitation. The projectiles arced through the air, splitting apart in a V in tandem as the rope between them taut and they dropped to gravity. The arrows landed aside Leviathan's shoulder and the middle rope slid off its front and back before catching itself in the notch of the shoulder armours' edge. She pulled the 'Y' rope to taut it before clipping her bow to the back of her belt. Waving goodbye to her cohort, Adelle jumped.

Holding tight onto her rope, she dropped at high speed before the rope fully straightened and swung her towards the Titan's arm.

At the apoapsis of her swing, she drew her axe and timed the closest possible moment as she decelerated between her and the arm. As the swing angled up, she cuts the rope and flew towards the arm of Leviathan. Switching her axe head to the pick side, she slammed the point into the creature's arm as she hit the stone.

The impact of her body smashing the wall of a Titan knocked the wind out of her, but she held on tightly to her axe, dangling for half a minute while gathering her breath.

She drew her second axe and inhaled deeply. Again switching to the pick side, she punched the tool into the stone. Moving her lower body against the mossy, slippery smooth surface, she found a foothold on the edge of the 'gauntlet' of Leviathan's elbow.

Slowly, she shimmied around the gauntlet. Left leg, left pick out, left pick in. Right leg, right pick out, right pick in. Left leg, left pick out, left pick in. Right leg, right pick out, right pick in.

As she repeated her actions, slowly rotating around the arm, she watched as the holes left by the pick glowed a faint brown before slowly closing over itself.

Over the past few seasons, she had learnt much of Titans. But none of the other species fascinated her as much as the sentients. The golems were creature of dirt and rocks, fused together by earth magic. And while she had never seen a mech outside of drawn images, she knew roughly they were of technologies. Machinea given life through complicated, almost magic-like systems.

But sentients? They were something else. They stood over mountains and climbed cliffs as if they were a single stair's step. Even The Tower, the tallest building on the continent of Eltar paled in comparison. They also healed their own wounds - though some had this functionality of theirs wane with the eons. Still, it was fascinating. Magic circuits embedded deep within the stones allowed the sentients to exists. To move. To refuel. To heal. It took decades to excavate a single body through the armour, and there was still much left unanswered on the creatures operated.

Adelle's train of thoughts were ended by the sound of splashing water. She looked over her shoulder and down to the clear waters below. A pool of churning water conjured up by water mages to slow the fall was where the one of her cohorts washed up, gasping for air. The nearby boat slowly rowed over to retrieve the fallen.

Others had managed to cross, using grappling hooks, rope bridges, or athletic vaults with spear cannons, launching or climbing across the long distance.

"Squishy," Adelle muttered under her breath before continuing her slow shimmy.

By the time she reached the underside of Leviathan's arms between the body, she was panting. Traversing a sentient Titan was no easy feat. They were hundreds of metres tall and wide. Just crossing their arms alone took an inordinate amount of time.

She leaned back and pulled out her offhand axe. Turning her head and body as far as she could, she aimed herself at the notch above the waist. There was a convex slope where the the upper torso and lower torso separated. All she had to do was land there and would have a walkable path around the belt to Leviathan's back, and finally to the other side of its body. And that was what she planned to do.

Raising her leg against the arm, she prepared a leveraged position to jump. When she was comfortable with her foothold, she pulled out her last remaining axe and launched herself off, turning midair to face her landing spot. For a moment as she dropped through the air, she thought she had missed. It looked as though she would land just off the waist and tumble into the water, hitting every single stone on the way down. But it was merely her eyes playing tricks as she soon pulled her legs up, using them as springs to soften her landing into the body as her picks dug in a foot above the waist. She pulled herself out and after finding her footings on the belt, grinned.

"Alright," she said to herself.

She began moving around the waist towards the spine, picking in whenever she felt the stone too slippery or her footings too loose. It was slow movements, but not 'shimmering around the arm' slow. Soon, she reached the spine, where the armour split between the left and right, running an opening straight down the middle, a gap the width of two man into the silvery stone beneath. It was in that crevice that she finally stopped to take a breather.

"Halfway there," she noted.

Looking out to the ocean as the wind rustled her hair, she breathed the cool air that battled the Searing heat.

She heard a whistle. From behind.

Turning, she was faced with the back of the Titan, which reminded her of standing before the closed giant gates of the dark elf citadel, a structural marvel that towered.

The whistle again.

It was like like a wind blowing through the gaps of a cavern or the smooth wind through the forest trees. But there was nothing visible amongst the giant back to make such a sound. Nothing, safe for a small hole the size of a finger right within the spine.

"What the..."

With the light of the day at her back, Adelle looked through the hole. An arm's length away, she could see what looked to be a chamber. Her curiosity was piqued. She had never heard of an empty chamber within sentients before.

She set her pick into the walls and held on as she pulled out an arrow from her quiver. Looking through the hole again, she felt the arrow disappear from her hand and teleported into her sight within the chamber along the familiar puff of brown smoke. As gravity took over and the arrow dropped, she counted the seconds until she heard the soft clank of the projectile hitting the floor. There was enough height for a person to stand at least.

She looked to the left and right. Then up to the shoulder of Leviathan. With her back facing the water, no one was in sight, and she was sure there would not be enough time between reporting her findings to Luce and Leviathan returning back into the water to investigate.

So she looked back into the chamber and visualised where she wanted to be.

In a puff of dusty rust, she teleported and disappeared, leaving her axes embedded behind.