The third hour of the trial lay heavy over the Verdant Abyss, the air tasting of copper from spilled blood and the acrid bite of spent mana. Aleric moved through the undergrowth like a draft of cold air-quiet, unseen, utterly detached from the panic gnawing at five hundred souls. He'd earned a passing grade with the obsidian relic and the Shadow-Stalker's black band, and for a moment he stood still in the shadow of an ancient cedar, weighing his next move.
He paused in the hush, head tilted downward. Satisfied that the thicket was thick enough to mask him from prying eyes, he checked to see if anyone was near. He let the psychological dampeners in his core ease back. The dull brown of his eyes vanished, replaced by a predatory crimson. In an instant, the world sharpened. His deeminently fit sight fed off the raw intensity of his true nature, and the forest read not just as energy signatures but as a living lattice of heat, intent, and structural flaws.
He remained in the forest, considering the variables still in place. The playing field of the forest was very wide, and the points he held were a starting point rather than a pronunciation of results. He chose to stay, not out of a hunger for glory, but because the five-hour window hadn't closed yet, and there was more data to collect.
His red gaze traced the infrared glow of the undergrowth, following the crystalline tremor of Caspian's aura at a precise distance of fifty paces. Through leaves, he saw a scene of calculated tyranny in a sun-dappled clearing ahead.
Caspian of House Mourne hunted differently. He wasn't digging through the dirt for relics, nor courting danger from the wilds' more unpredictable beasts. He sat atop the trunk of a fallen cedar as if upon a throne, his mana-blade laid across his knees; beside him, tied to a branch with a strip of golden silk, hung the grotesque trophy of his labor: the Hostage Bundle.
Approximately four dozen blue wristbands, nearly stripped from the wrists of the weak and the defeated, seemed to be clustered together. Caspian hadn't disenfranchised this group of students nearly as much as he'd managed to make their existing circumstances a hostage situation. A dozen or so students milled around the area with a somewhat hysterical look to their movement, a purple hue to their auras, exhibiting the tell-tale signs of coercion. They served as Caspian's hunting dogs, pressing beasts out into the open and rooting around the earth for treasures to bring to their master in exchange for their own blue wristbands.
"My patience wearis," Caspian's voice boomed out, sharp and musical, like a tuning fork struck in mid-air. "The sun moves, and my collection grows thin. Bring me the black bands of the forest, or your place in this Academy ends here, in the dirt."
Next, the brush on the opposite end of the clearing erupted outward. Nearly two dozen students, primarily commoners who'd been pushed to the brink of failure, charged forward in a general, unorganized assault. They hoped to win possession of the parcel by sheer numbers.
"Give them back!" cried a boy, who flared into a jagged, unstable orange. "Thou canst not hold us all!"
Aleric stood motionless in the shadows of a broad-leaved fern, his back against the rock. From his crimson eyes, the fight in the clearing was like a slow motion ledger of energy expenditure. His hostage students, the ones whose bracelets hung on golden silk, chose not to acquiesce to the uprising. They had too much to lose. Driven by the fear of failure, they turned on their own kind to protect the man who kept them held. The clearing was insane with chaos and disorder. Earth spells of the lowest tier and flickering fireballs met in the middle, in a messy expenditure of magic that made Aleric's internal sense cringe.
When a rebel broke through the line of hostages, Caspian would react. He didn't stand, not even slightly. He merely flicked his wrist. A crescent of silver mana shot out, hissing with a surgeon's exacting skill. He did not kill, but instead "cleansed" the battlefield with a snap of staff, a numbness of limb, with the absolute minimum energy required to maintain his hold. Efficiency through proxy, Aleric observed. He uses the fear of the victim as a guard for the thief.
The skirmish ended as quickly as it had begun. The rebels lay scattered and groaning, their mana exhausted, their hopes shattered. Caspian did not even look at them as his "hounds" dragged them away. He signaled to his group, and they began to move deeper into the forest, toward the high-value relic zones.
Aleric stepped out from behind the fern once the clearing was silent. He looked at the spot where the bundle had hung. His mind performed a rapid calculation of the variables.
Engagement Analysis: Caspian. Current Mana Density: 88%. Support Staff: 12 Coerced mages. Risk of Injury: 62%. Reward: 40+ blue bands.
The cost of direct confrontation was too high to pay currently. He gazed northwards, where the mana density of the forest was thicker. As Caspian concentrated on the concentration of existing wealth by theft, Aleric saw an alternative. He chose to gather further items to further solidify his position. His crimson eyes pulsed as they recognized a specific vibration, one most mages ignored in their hunt for beasts: a low-frequency vibration inherent in the earth itself.
He walked in the opposite direction, his eyes scanning the spectral world for the faint, golden pulse of hidden items. He found the first in a hollow log several miles away from the clearing: a silver compass pulsing with a steady rhythm. He found the second buried beneath a patch of glowing moss: a vial of crystalline sand. These were points of data, safeguards against the unpredictability of the final hours.
As he walked, he sensed the "void" again. Jax.
The commoner was close by, though not visible. He sensed the lack of mana where Jax stood, as if there was a hole in the atmosphere. Through his crimson eyes, Jax did not appear as a mana signature but as a void in the heat of the forest. Jax was also gathering, and his movement was as silent and efficient as Aleric's. He did not meet Jax, though; Aleric recognized the man's presence by changing his path by precisely three degrees to prevent a collision.
Two hours remain, Aleric thought, his hands closing on a third item: a jade key. He had his relic. He had his points. He would continue his trek, his coat heavy with trophies, his mana core as calm and cold as a frozen lake. His crimson eyes burned in the darkness, guiding him through the dark as he hunted for the final secrets the forest held.