Suzanne was sweeping the grounds of the church and humming to herself when Beth made her way inside. The broom clattered to the ground as she spotted Beth and rushed towards her. Beth mirrored that action till they met in the middle. There they both had a short pause where they were unsure what to do with each other before Beth took the initiative and swept her mother up in a hug. They held each other tightly for a moment or two before they released each other.

“I was so worried about you!” Suzanne said fiddling with Beth’s hair as she did so.

Beth resisted the urge to pull her head away from Suzanne’s fiddling as she responded. “I was worried about you too! I missed you so much while I was away.” Beth said. While not strictly true it was the right thing to say and Suzanne perked up noticeably.

“Go on then Beth, tell me about it while I sweep.” Suzanne said, picking her broom back up.

So Beth did, well almost she abridged the story significantly to make it seem like she was in little to no danger at any point and to lessen the negativity of her leaving the others behind to finish the trial. She still told herself she had done the right thing and didn’t feel too guilty but she also didn’t think her mother would understand and would have made her feel bad or expressed disappointment in her.

Most interestingly, when Beth came to the end of the story she was completely unable to discuss anything about reaching level 5 of what happened then. It was like she simply forgot how to speak when it came to that part of the story.

Beth really didn’t appreciate this having already had her memory messed with mere hours ago. She attempted a variety of ways to convey the information and even got some paper to attempt to write something down but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t convey the information. Suzanne wasn’t blind to her daughter’s struggles and seeing Beth get increasingly worked up attempted to appease her and calm her back down but Beth wasn’t interested. Beth wasn’t willing to be appeased but recognised that complaining now wouldn’t help anything. Instead she resolved to brainstorm and prioritise working on her mental strength in the next Trial. Something that was only a week away.

It made sense to do so anyway, with her Trial Taking skill Beth was best off taking either completely new skills or improving her best skill in these ‘official Trials’, as otherwise she was retreading ground she could do with her skill.

After telling her mother the story she chatted to her mother for a while before finding herself more than a little tired of their interaction. It was still slightly strained as they couldn’t just erase all the years of tense stress that existed between them and Beth found interacting with her mum would tire her out fairly easily. Asking after Pete her mother er hadn’t seen Pete in a while but Beth wasn’t too worried. After all they didn’t exactly have much in common and they didn’t interact very often anyway. She resolved he was out there pushing his skills far so could extremely easily be off on a Trial of his own.

She knocked at Pete’s door just in case and getting no response slipped him a quick note to say she was home and looking for him. She didn’t worry about it further though and took herself home. She spent the rest of her day sat on the porch, people watching and generally enjoying being home and back in a community again. A couple kids came up asking if she’d be around to play games again which she assured them she would. It was barely a full day of doing minimal before Beth found herself feeling antsy once again. She was quick to set herself back up in the back yard to train her half-staff steps she hadn’t even been back two full days before she decided she was ready for the next Trial.

As much as she missed home, without Pete being there and with her mother busy at the church she didn’t have much to keep her busy. They were still rich enough that she didn’t particularly need a job after all. She still hadn’t seen Pete and decided she’d give him two more weeks then she would explore the new shop options alone. After all otherwise they might never bump into each other. She already had twitchy fingers for exploring the option anyway.

To distract herself she pulled up her list of skills she could use Trial Taking on:

Skills:

Traversal (uncommon)

5 (25 Trial Credits)

Trial Taking (ultra-rare)

1 (8 Trial Credits)

Half-staff (common)

1 (7 Trial Credits)

Communication (common)

1 (6 Trial Credits)

Bartering (common)

0 (2 Trial Credits)

Busking (common)

0 (1 Trial Credit)

The first choice was an obvious one, the better the Trial Taking skill was the better the effect would be. At least that’s what Beth hoped. Then she wanted her half-staff and bartering. After that came Communication and at the bottom came busking. Something she wasn’t really fussed about. It did remind her of the perks of a sponsored Trial. Unfortunately it wasn’t like Beth knew how to force such a thing. But it had given her two extra skills for development skills she had used too rather than just being assigned randomly.

Unfortunately she wasn’t quite high enough in Trial Taking to get it to the next level. Fortunately it didn’t take up a lot of time taking barely 2 hours. She considered prioritising the skill to try to give it a boost as she was far from struggling with the associated tests, but decided to table that thought while she had more pressing concerns to deal with. Half Staff took even less time and was fairly doable considering the training she had received previously. It was the same person providing this Trial as it had been the previous time which Beth found surprising. She was pleased however that she managed to convince him to tell her some of the steps she would be expected to know for the next Trial.

Most reassuringly he didn’t ask any questions about the fact she appeared again before she should have. But Beth wasn’t about to question him on that and draw his attention to the very thing she had been strongly encouraged to keep secret.

Communication failed to improve when she got round to it causing her no lack of irritation. Fortunately there were no adverse effects of failure beyond the Credits wasted and the time and opportunity that was no longer available. She had better luck with bartering though. In the end she decided not to waste the Credits on busking. She still couldn’t quite afford the waste. In the mean time she continued to practise with her mana, having it go through to her feet over and over so she continued to get use to how it felt and how she activated it.

She made herself spend most of the day before the proper Trial with her mum, who was not attending the church for similar reasons. She still hadn’t seen Pete in that time but she chatted with her mother and generally they enjoyed each others presence for as much time as possible. Suzanne was supposedly on kid duty so her job was to race through her Trial as quickly as possible so she could get back to watch over the kids.

They had apparently had a big experiment where everybody took on a different entry level Trial and raced to complete it as quickly and safely as possible. This allowed them to find the best Trial for an assigned child keeper to minimise the time the kids were left unsupervised. This wasn’t a problem with newborns as it was found for the first yeah of a child’s life neither of of their parents would partake in the Trials. However these people were normally focused on their own child and there wasn’t enough of them in the town to look after all the kids. Again it was a problem that would vanish as the 12 year olds started getting unique Trial times meaning there would be people with the kids at all times once more.

The winning Trial for lack of a better term had actually proved to be swimming, something that reminded Beth of the merwalfs. After all somebody only really had to display an ability to swim in this case corresponding to swimming 25m. Something that could be completed in minutes The most interesting thing about this was that it suggested that Trials were standardised, something Beth had seen evidence to the contrary to, but didn’t know enough to disprove. The town were aware of the risks of a Sponsored Trial popping up that could take longer and had back up people working at speed. Beth suspected it was still more complicated than that but she didn’t have the desire to investigate it further. At least not at the moment. Something to keep in mind though as she explored her Trial Taking skill though. After all that asks many questions about the nature of Trials themselves so they could easily involve such a thing.

What she was focused on though, beside enjoying her mothers company, was the proper way to trigger the Trial she was looking for. She knew which type of Trial she wanted that was easy, she wanted to be able to better resist effects on her mental state. Her time in Hepterel had really affected her and she didn’t want something like that happening again. Between the mountains effects and the weird dream inducing pod she was well and truly over being affected. Unfortunately she wasn’t completely sure how to practise fighting it. The town wasn’t exactly filled with books on all relevant topics and the only effect she had felt had been magical or at least supernatural in origin.

Fortunately she wasn’t existing in a vacuum and was surround by people who had a wealth of experiences. Asking around she’d found the vicar, James Fitzroy, had made the most sense.

He was an elderly gentleman who had worked for the church for twice as long as Beth had been alive. When Beth explained her concerns he quickly linked it to his own fears as a young man of being influenced by the devil and to otherwise make decisions that weren’t his own. As such he had much practise of analysing his thoughts and getting to their origin. Not dissimilar to the way one might want to learn more about themselves.

Beth bought easily into this explanation so when Trial day rolled around, something that was currently recognised as a sort of unofficial community day. They ate together in the morning and where possible all started their Trials in the same point, The system had cleared had some thought to it with most carrying a recognisable trinket that the leave in the square while away to let people know when they return. A system that had sprung into place while Beth had been away.

Beth didn’t exactly have a dedicated trinket, nor did she currently have the imagination to think up something on the spot. As such she went with the most boring possible option and scratched her name into a rock. It would drop when she left to go to the Trial and she could just stick it in a corner in the house between Trials. She considered finding a more appropriate indication of herself but the thing that seemed most apt would be her half-staff but they wouldn’t drop and also she didn’t want to leave them behind. Obviously there was another object she was associated with by many however she was staunchly against having that resemble her. She had left her life of churning butter behind. Hopefully forever.

Beth felt nervous joining the square. Pete still hadn’t returned and her mother was with the kids and so wouldn’t be attending. Many people smiled or nodded at her and she returned all the gestures but while many were grouped and chatting, meanwhile she stood off to the side alone. She found a place to settle down to start to get in the zone. Eventually the chatter quietened down as everybody got into position themselves, but Beth barely noticed she was trying to focus her mind on ignoring those external distractions. Once again the town didn’t know exactly when the Trials were starting having no methods of telling the time but eventually Beth found herself somewhere completely new.