The darkness only gripped Olivia for a few seconds because a sudden surge of Energy brought her back to wakefulness. She opened her eyes and scrambled away from the smoldering, disgusting mess of the partially obliterated rhino-man. Her chest, stomach, and legs were covered in smoldering gore, and as she scrambled out of the stinking mess, she retched, dry heaving over the stone floor. While she heaved, she continued to crawl away from the reeking mounds of gore, finally breaking free enough to get a breath of air that wasn’t tainted by the putrid innards of the monster. When her spasming stomach finally settled, Olivia noticed she had a notification waiting:

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 19 Elemental Archon. You have gained 10 Intelligence, 10 Will, and have 16 points to distribute.***

She waved it away, vowing to deal with her pool of attribute points before leaving the room. She staggered up to her feet and stumbled further away from the noxious corpse, approaching the far door. When she got close, she saw that it was slightly ajar, hopefully triggered to open when the monster died. She looked over her shoulder to ensure she hadn’t missed anything in the monster’s lair. Not seeing anything, she pushed the door open and looked out.

A short hallway opened into a circular room with a descending stairwell. Sitting at the top of the stairs was a large, white chest with no visible clasp or metal tooling. “Alright, just a minute.” Olivia pulled up her attributes:

Strength:

10

Vitality:

50

Dexterity:

10

Agility:

10

Intelligence:

131

Will:

122

Points Available:

16

She felt like her mental attributes were doing just fine. Still, she could probably use a little more speed on her feet, and more vitality never seemed to hurt, so Olivia decided to put eight points into agility and Vitality. That done, she took a deep breath, savoring the rush of Energy that flooded her body, and then she walked toward the large, white chest.

At first, Olivia thought the chest was painted white, but the wood was finely grained, and she could see that it had that color naturally. There was no clasp, but she could see the seam where the top met the bottom half, so she gently lifted it, and it smoothly opened on hidden, interior hinges. Folded neatly within the bottom half was a black, shimmering garment embroidered with borders of fine, silver thread. Olivia lifted the garment, and when she held the dense, rich cloth out in front of her, she saw that it was a multi-layered set of robes, complete with a silvery silken sash.

Curiosity left no room for caution, and Olivia sent a trickle of Energy into the robe, bonding with it:

***Robe of Shielding - This robe has been artificed by a master craftsman to mitigate the effects of physical damage that would otherwise harm the wearer. Additionally, this robe has powerful enchantments for self-repair and cleaning.***

Olivia looked down at her soiled, charred, stained white jumper and began to peel it off. She kicked off her new boots to complete the process and then began to wrap her fresh robes around herself. The black, silken inner layer was form-fitting, the outer layer with the metallic silver threading hung more loosely around her arms and torso, and when she pulled the sash tight, she couldn’t imagine a more comfortable garment. Olivia pulled on her black boots and nodded, smiling at the improvement.

“Well, I don’t know if they want to collect this when I get back, so…” She bent to stuff the filthy jumper into her storage ring. Olivia looked down at the empty chest and once again admired the beautiful craftsmanship. On a whim, she tried to put it into her storage ring, and it worked, vanishing into the container without a trace.

Nothing else keeping her there, she started down the dusty stone steps to the sixth floor. She strode down the steps confidently; she’d never been attacked in one of the rooms with stairs, and she’d stopped worrying about someone following her. If they planned to move against her, they’d have done so when she was knocked down by the undead rhino thing. So, she hurried down the shallow steps, two at a time, until she came out into a well-lit, white marble room.

The light seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. Nothing was present in the perfectly square room, not even a door. She saw something on the far wall, and took three strides into the room, to look more closely; a small white crystal shaped like an eye was mounted directly in its center. The white crystal was perfectly carved into a classic almond-shaped eye, with fine lines delineating the iris and pupil. Olivia took another step to peer more closely at the eye. It started to glow and sparkle when she did so, and she felt a warm tingle in her own eye.

Olivia felt like something was being measured; she wasn’t sure what, but it seemed like she passed because the wall suddenly sank into the floor, allowing further progress. When the wall was completely gone, she saw that the room had simply doubled in size and that another wall barred her progress, this one with a flickering red archway in its center. Olivia walked up to the archway, and as she got close, she saw that the shimmering red light was hanging in the air. Looking through the red haze, she saw a short hallway between this room and another. “So, what am I supposed to do, walk through this red light?”

When she passed one hand under the arch and into the red light, terrible pain exploded in the limb, and Olivia yanked it back. Shaking it and wincing, she saw that no damage had occurred; it had been pain and nothing more. “Some sort of pain tolerance test?” She wondered what exactly that would accomplish, perhaps some sort of test of her will? Olivia tried to peer through the red haze to see if the next door was locked or had a handle. She was relieved when she managed to pierce the haze for a moment and saw that it was just another open archway.

The pain Olivia had felt in her hand had been bad, like picking up a hot frying pan bad, but it had faded almost instantly. Still, could she bear that kind of pain all over her body? What would it feel like in her eyes or her head and organs? She scratched her chin and shook her head; she was looking at this the wrong way. If they wanted to test her will, they wouldn’t give her a simple pain tolerance test. This place wasn’t run by Commander Grobak, after all. No, she needed to think about this like a spellcaster. “Is that red stuff Energy?”

Olivia reached out with her will and pushed against the red haze and was immediately rewarded by a large eddy moving through the haze, carrying away some of it. She grinned and redoubled her efforts, but this time she shoved a torrent of her own unattuned Energy out through her pathways and against the heavy haze of red, painful Energy. She created a void big enough to step into, so she did, and then she pushed out more Energy, making a capsule around herself to keep the red Energy at bay. Safely surrounded by a bubble of her own Energy, Olivia strode through the short hallway and into the next room.

Once again, Olivia found herself in a square, brightly-lit room with an archway on the far wall. She approached it and saw another short hallway, but this one had a half dozen giant axe blades swinging like pendulums across it. “Oh, very action VR-like. How exciting!” She imagined this test was meant to see if she was agile and dextrous enough to slip between the blades as they swung at different times. “No, that’s too obvious. Well, maybe there is meant to be more than one way to solve these little obstacles.” Surely all great spell casters weren’t meant to be as nimble as cats. No, she could think of a few ways to get past these blades.

Olivia summoned a stone globe and hurled it against the closest axe blade with her will. With a deafening clang, the stone smashed into the flat, swinging blade, and it swung back and forth along the wrong axis, causing it to crash into the blade next to it. The two blades got caught up together, and something in the ceiling started to grind, and then they stopped moving, hanging together against the left-hand wall. Olivia smiled and began to hurl more stone globes at the other axes. It took her eight or ten shots to damage all the axes enough to allow safe passage, but the stone globes were easy to summon, and she rather enjoyed the effort.

The next room opened to another hallway with another test; this time, she had to walk through a veritable inferno with jets of scorching flame randomly spraying the walkway from the ceiling, the walls, and the floor. Once again, Olivia thanked her luck with the Core and class combination she had; she cast Elemental Form, took the fire form, and strode through the hallway without any difficulty.

When she emerged from the fire-filled hallway, she stood in a huge garden complete with a blue sky and a green, grassy hill. Rather than walls, the grassy knoll was bordered by tall hedges covered with blue and white trumpet-shaped flowers. Olivia stood on the grass before the hill, looking around with wonder and enjoying the fresh air and warm sun. As she started to wonder what she should do next, if she should climb the hill or not, a gust of wind, accompanied by a heavy, deep flapping sound, began to stir the leaves of the hedges and make her long dark hair swirl out behind her.

Olivia covered, held her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun, and glared into the sky. While she peered into the blue sky over the hill, a dark shape swooped into the garden from behind her and landed on the slope in front of her. Olivia staggered as the ground shook, and the colossal creature turned to regard her, folding its immense, leathery, green wings on its back. Extending a long, emerald-colored, shimmering neck, the dragon peered at Olivia with an enormous yellow saucer of an eye.

Olivia stood transfixed, her legs quivering and a voice in her head screaming at her to run and hide. Suddenly a husky woman’s voice sounded in her head, echoing and booming as though it bounced around in her skull, “You’ve made it to the final room of the Proving Grounds. It’s time for your final challenge! Are you ready to face me?”

Olivia’s mind was racing in a hundred different directions. Half of her mental faculties were trying to figure out how to flee, but enough of her was cognisant of the question posed to her, and she tried to calm her mind and think about the creature’s question. Was she ready to face it? Before she could think about it any more, Olivia blurted, “No!”

Suddenly the palpably thick fear that hung around her faded away, and the dragon lifted its head to gaze down at her with both eyes. “Correct,” sounded the enormous voice, and the wings flapped; the dragon was gone, and Olivia could breathe again.

She leaned over, resting her hands on her knees, and took a few deep breaths. She’d never been in the presence of anything so palpably powerful; she’d felt like she was standing next to a nuclear reactor on the verge of melting down. Had it been real? Was there a real dragon here in the Proving Grounds, or was the dungeon or System playing with her mind?

When she straightened up and looked around, she saw that the path she’d taken to the weird garden was gone; another tall hedge rose behind her. Seeing no other option, Olivia started walking up the grassy slope to the top of the hill. As she gained the crest, she could see down the far slope and, there, shimmering in the shadow of the tall hedge, was an oscillating, mirror-like portal. A small pedestal stood in the grass before the portal with something small sitting atop it.

Had that really been it? To her, the sixth floor seemed like the easiest of all the levels, just a few tricky hallways to traverse and a dragon asking if she wanted to fight. What if she’d said yes? Would it have killed her? Maybe it would have rewarded her for being brave. It had said, “Correct,” though when she’d said she wasn’t ready to face it, and that had been the honest truth. She couldn’t imagine being able to harm something so massive, so dense with power. Was it a lesson in humility? The final stage of the Proving Grounds was meant to show the young mage powerful enough to get there that they were like an ant compared to some things in the universe?

Olivia walked down the slope to the pedestal, noting the shapes of a round, purple fruit and a silver-embossed scroll case sitting atop it. She reflexively reached toward the fruit as she caught a scent of its cloying, spicy, sugary odor, but she yanked her hand back before touching it. She leaned closer, sniffing it, and feeling almost intoxicated by the aroma. Then, she closed her eyes, steeled her will, and looked at the scroll case. It looked to be made from a polished black horn and tooled fancifully in silvery whorls.

Was she being offered both prizes, or was this another choice? It almost felt like another test of will; she’d nearly grabbed the fruit reflexively; was it meant to tempt her away from the scroll? Perhaps both prizes were fantastic, and it was an honest choice, but she couldn’t help thinking in terms of tests. If the fruit was like other powerful natural treasures that she’d been given as awards at the academy, then it probably did something to improve her physically; perhaps it would advance her race or improve an attribute. The scroll, on the other hand, undoubtedly held knowledge. Which did she want more? Olivia stretched out a hand, and, as it started to sway toward the fruit, she jerked it to the scroll case and grabbed it.

As she’d feared, the pedestal and fruit faded into glittering blue smoke, and she was left, standing before the portal with the scroll case in her hand. Olivia slipped a thumbnail under the clasp and opened the case, revealing a tightly bound, ivory-colored roll of paper. She took the paper from the case and unraveled it, stretching out a sheet about a foot long packed with System runes. As she stared at the runes, they began to shift and move about, and then they slowly started to lift off the paper and float toward her eyes. As the first characters seeped into her mind, Olivia was aware of vague notions and ideas, though she could never focus on one long enough to form a concrete perception of what it was. The runes moved faster and faster, and then, with a stream of light and firework-like bursts, it was over, and the sheet was blank.

***Congratulations! You’ve gained deeper perspectives about your chosen path, and, at your next class refinement opportunity, you’ll have at least one selection from a higher tier.***

Olivia let her hands drop to her sides, and she reached up to scratch at her head, “Well, shoot. What comes after epic?”