The portal was a swirling maelstrom of silver and black whorls. It wasn’t passively sitting in the archway, either, but rather tugging at Olivia and the room's air. When she stepped toward it and reached a hand into the spinning plane, it yanked hungrily at her, and she found herself stumbling into a frigid torrent that pulled her, tumbling, into what felt like a dark, underground river. Subconsciously, Olivia channeled some fire-attuned Energy into her pathways, more than mitigating the freezing substance of the portal. Then she worked to right herself, so she could face the direction in which she was being pulled.

It felt very much like swimming, and Olivia realized she’d been holding her breath when, after a few moments of paddling and kicking, she managed to face the portal's flow. She could see a distant point of light that seemed to shift around, but Olivia realized the light wasn’t moving; the river of portal Energy flowed and surged in a great spiral toward that distant pinprick of illumination.

She wasn’t yet out of wind, but Olivia decided to try taking a breath, more out of curiosity than any perceived need. When she exhaled, she didn’t note any bubbles, and when she breathed in, nothing triggered her gag reflex—it was just like breathing heavy, cold air. Judging by the rate at which she approached that distant point of light, she figured she’d be in the portal for another ten minutes or so. She wondered if teleportation duration was indicative of distance. She’d gotten from First Landing to Fainhallow almost instantly, which had been a journey of more than a thousand miles.

Her estimate of the trip’s duration was off by about half because she started to accelerate shortly after she’d steadied herself and got her bearings. Soon she was whipping through the spiral of cold, thick air in an eye-watering blur, and then she found herself splashing into a pool of nearly freezing water. Olivia was instantly thankful for her Elemental Resistance; what would have ripped the wind from her lungs and sent her into hypothermic shivering in the past was merely a little inconvenient to her now.

She waded through the water and looked around at her new surroundings. The water she was in had a faint blue sheen, and Olivia had a sudden spike of adrenaline as she recalled the blue, frigid water in the Yovashi’s lair. Swallowing a gasp that tried to escape her lips, she carefully swam, breaststroke, to the stone lip of the pool, trying to move as silently as possible.

The blue sheen of the water made it hard to discern any details in the dark space, but she could tell she was in some sort of a cavern. When she scrambled up onto the stone, she was relieved to see that the area immediately around the pool was just smooth, almost polished-looking rock and that it continued to a stone wall where a heavy black, iron door sat, closed. “At least I didn’t get dumped into a Yovashi lair for a welcome.”

Olivia stood and let the water drip from her jumpsuit and squeezed her hair until it was just damp and not soaking wet. She walked over to the door and saw that it was bolted shut—a large, heavy padlock was holding the bolt from sliding. “The first challenge?” She wondered aloud. She supposed popping a heavy metal lock might prove difficult for some, but Olivia conjured a ball of plasma and tossed it at the padlock. A brilliant white flare engulfed the lock, accompanied by a hissing sound and the pungent, bitter scent of metal made instantly liquid. “C’mon, Liv, no waiting around if we’re going to take the lead.” She reached out, yanked the hot metal bolt to the right, and pulled the door open.

Olivia knew that every contender from the various schools would start in a separate location, but some of the paths converged on larger rooms, and there she might run into aggressive, hostile competitors. She figured the best way to avoid those types of encounters would be to make it further than everyone else, faster than everyone else. They could fight over the scraps she left behind. The door opened onto a short stone-walled hallway that led to another, identical door. Olivia walked forward, plasma orb already hovering over her palm, and tossed it at the lock. She yanked aside the bolt when the flash subsided and pulled the door open.

The scene that unfolded before her was shocking in its departure from the quiet, simple stone hallway. An enormous cavern filled her view, and pitched battles were being fought all over the rubble-strewn stone floor. Gigantic spiders swarmed in surging mounds toward Olivia’s open door and several other identical iron doors up and down this side of the cavern.

Olivia realized, instantly, that she hadn’t been the first to break through her locks and that several students had paths leading to this room. Before she could get a look at any of her competitors, though, a mass of clicking, hissing spiders the size of German Shepherds rushed her doorway. They had smooth black carapaces with bright yellow dots all over the backs of their abdomens. Olivia swore their four-inch-long fangs dripped with venom, though later, she might think it was her imagination.

Olivia glanced left and right, then backed up to the first iron door she’d opened, forcing the aggressive giant arachnids to funnel into the short hallway. She tried to hold steady, tried to wait as long as she could, but the primal urge to scream and run nearly overwhelmed her in the face of the tumbling mass of creepy, deadly creatures. When a dozen or more of them pushed their way through the doorway and into her hallway, she couldn’t contain herself any longer, and she stretched out her arm, palm out, casting Magma Ray at the throng of surging creatures.

Superheated magma bored through their bodies, instantly heating their innards to the boiling point, causing carapaces to burst with steamy explosions. Olivia directed the ray of magma around, torching and slicing apart the piled arachnids. The hissing scream of popping spider bodies nearly drowned out the cries of the tortured arachnids, but not quite, and Olivia shuddered at the inhuman sound.

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 13 Elemental Archon. You have gained 10 Intelligence, 10 Will, and have 8 points to distribute.***

The surge of Energy from the defeated spiders caught Olivia by surprise, but she didn’t waste time. She trotted forward to her doorway, kicking aside the spiders' smoldering, smoking, steaming corpses, careful not to accidentally kick her shin into any fangs. When she reached the doorway, she saw that she’d been the first to vanquish her arachnid horde. Screams, flashes, clangs, hisses, and scrabbling erupted and echoed around the other doorways. Olivia briefly contemplated helping the other students, but then she remembered Oylla’s admonishment to make haste and not interact with other students unless forced to. She glanced further into the chamber and saw the far wall and a doorway, maybe two-hundred paces distant. No spiders were between her and the distant exit, all of them having chosen an entrance to attack or defend. “Not very heroic, but here I go!”

She set off running over the open cavern floor. As she sprinted, the sounds of combat grew louder at first but then faded as she put more distance between herself and the swarming masses of spiders. Olivia kept panning her vision left and right, then up and down, ensuring she wasn’t ambushed by more spiders.

While studying the cavern's vaulted ceiling, she noticed thick webbing that stretched in long, billowing arcs between rocky imperfections and the cavern walls. When she was more than halfway across the cavern, she spared a glance behind her and saw that none of the doorways were yet completely free of spiders. She had a good lead on the other academy students.

With renewed determination, Olivia refocused on the far door and pumped her legs into a sprint. She was less than thirty yards away when a massive shadowy form descended from the webs in the upper reaches of the cavern to hang before the door. Olivia gasped in shock and skidded to a halt, only fifteen paces or so from the huge spider.

Slowly, the monstrosity uncurled its long legs, releasing the strand of webbing it had descended on and transitioning to the cavern floor. Part of Olivia wanted to stand, dumbstruck by the massive arachnid and its sudden appearance, but another, more primal part of her screamed in disgust and unleashed a Magma Ray, hitting the creature dead center and carving away half of its abdomen. The spider convulsed, its legs catapulting it into the air like massive hydraulic pistons, and steaming magma and ichor sprayed in an arc as it flipped onto its back, thrashing in death throes.

Olivia didn’t slow, running straight at the iron door and hurling a ball of plasma at the lock as it came into focus. She was just crossing the threshold when the golden motes from the dead spider queen slammed into her, filling her with Energy and thrilling euphoria. She’d entered another short hallway, and before she inspected the far door, she turned and pulled the one behind her shut, summoning a ball of magma to force into the seam between the iron door and door jam.

She pushed and pressed until the magma had filled a good ten inches of the gap, and then she let it cool, hoping it would harden and make it difficult for the other students to follow her. “How many rooms is that? Two? Does the starting room count?” she wondered aloud. Olivia turned and walked to the next door, noting that it was the first one she’d encountered without a heavy padlock. She pulled the latch, and it swung noiselessly open on well-oiled hinges.

Beyond the door, she found a small, dark room bordered by smooth stone walls. When she advanced, she realized she was badly mistaken—it wasn’t a small room; it was a small ledge that hung over a vast, black abyss. Olivia summoned a regular orb of fire and tossed it out into the abyss. She watched it flare out into the darkness, revealing nothing other than how large the chasm was. As the orb fell, flickering into the darkness, she observed its flickering progress into darkness. Maybe three hundred feet down, it finally hit a stone floor with a burst of flames, briefly illuminating jumbled rocks and boulders.

“So I need to descend three hundred feet into the darkness?” She would have been dismayed if it weren’t for her training with Oylla. Seeing as she hadn’t been allowed to bring any belongings into the place, she didn’t know how she’d have overcome this obstacle without her magic, and maybe that was the point. She concentrated, feeding air-attuned Energy into her channels, and then cast Elemental Form.

Olivia felt a surge of energy and potential as her physical being lightened, and her flesh became translucent with swirls of air and electricity pulsing and flowing around her limbs. Knowing how costly the spell was to maintain, Olivia didn’t waste time, stepping off the edge of the cliff into the abyss. She fell, but she fell slowly, and when she held her arms out, she fell even slower.

The little arcs of lightning that flickered along her limbs gave off just enough light to reveal the stone cliff behind her as she descended, allowing her to mark her progress in the darkness. She was falling at maybe five feet per second. She knew, from trial and error with Oylla, that her form would last about a minute before fading unless she poured more Energy into it.

Olivia held her arms in close and allowed herself to fall a bit faster, keeping alert for any other threats that might come out of the darkness. She took a moment to look at her status sheet, taking note of her Energy—so far, her passive recovery plus the Energy she’d gotten for killing spiders had almost kept up with her expenditures; she sat at 1403/1865.

The minute of her descent stretched into eternity in her mind, and then it was over as her air and lightning-wrapped feet touched down on stone. Olivia had held her knees slightly bent, and her air elemental form was very light, so the landing was gentle and produced little noise. Still, as the currents of air-attuned Energy suffusing her body drifted away, a tremendous roar and the clacking, crashing sound of boulders skittering over the rocky ground echoed out of the darkness. Something big had noticed her arrival.