Hunter's Beginning (Veller) Page 10

  She followed the room around to a wide door that was already open, the red ruby was sitting silently against the jam. It was still a very tempting item as it sparkled in the shadow of the door. She was starting to think of a way around the enchantment and even began to move toward the ruby when she caught herself. Was she that naive or just that foolish? There must be other enchantments on the ruby, something to make it more desirable she told herself, it was either that or she really was being foolish. She left the treasures behind without looking back.

  No sooner had she entered the next room when she heard the sound of stone grinding on stone which such forced that it stopped her cold. She quickly looked around for anything out of place, anything that looked as if it would fall on her or out from under her. From where she was standing the room looked solid enough, and surprisingly, quiet enough. At first she thought maybe she was hearing thing, maybe she was getting a little jumpy. There was no sound whatsoever, nothing. It was almost eerie when she thought about it. She hadn’t really noticed the silence before now since she was too busy avoiding traps, but now that she was actually listening to it, she found it a tad bit uncomfortable. She took a step and as she did the sound filled the room once again. How she ever entertained the notion that it was a figment of her imagination was beyond her as the noise vibrated through the stone floor. It was definitely something heavy and not that far away With every step the young girl took the sound of the stone grinding got louder, it wasn't until she turned the corner did she find the source of the noise.

  Two of the largest doors she had ever seen dominated the far wall, towering over the room. Each one had to be over thirty feet in height and as wide as three men lying down. They were comprised of the same stone that formed the walls, and had they been closed, they would have been impossible to open. Giving the grandeur of the size, this had to mark the end of the test, she had finally made it. Of course she had believed that about the last two tests and was proven wrong.

  Kile took the small ebony box from her shirt. It was still in one piece, it hadn’t been opened and it looked as if she was going to get it to its destination on time.

  She started toward the opening, and as she did the grinding got louder and the large stone doors began to move. It was hard to see what was happening in the dimly lit room, but it wasn’t hard to figure it out, the doors were starting to close. She must be running out of time which meant she had less time to finish the exam than she had originally thought. Kile began to pick up speed as she ran toward the exit, but the faster she ran the faster the doors began to close. She was about half way home when her foot caught on a rough section of the floor and she found herself sailing through the air and coming down hard on her knees The ebony box sprung from her hands and bounced across the floor, the doors were now about three quarters of the way closed when everything stopped. The eerie silence returned.

  She kept still, waiting for the door to start closing again, but nothing happened. The doors were no longer moving, the box was no longer moving, and she was no longer moving. Kile held her breath and slowly began to crawl toward the box, always keeping one eye on the large stone doors. She was getting closer and still the doors remained silent. It didn’t make much sense but she wasn’t going to question it yet. When she reached the box she picked it up and gave it a quick once over. There didn’t appear to be any damage done, which really didn’t surprise her much. At this point she was beginning to believe that nothing short of a dragon’s breath would destroy it. She clutched the box against her chest, took another deep breath and began to inch her way forward, as she did the familiar sound filled the air and the doors began to close again. When she stopped, they stopped.

  This was starting to get weird she thought as she set the box down, she took a few steps toward the stone doors. To her relief the doors didn’t move. She took a few more steps and still the large stone doors remained quiet. She went back to retrieve the small ebony box, but this time when she advanced forward, the doors started closing again. She quickly retreated. Unfortunate the doors didn’t open any wider. She had to think as she sat on the floor and stared at the only exit from the room.

  The choices were clear but the outcomes weren’t very optimistic. Her first option was to make a run for it. She could try to get the small ebony box past the large stone doors, but the closer she got the box to the doors, the faster they closed. It was her belief that should the box ever reach the threshold, the doors would be completely closed no matter how fast she could run. The doors closed as quickly or as slowly as the box approached, which would ultimately leave her sealed in the room with the box. Therefore, she would be unable to get the box to its destination, which means she would be unable to make her delivery and ultimately fail the test. Option two wasn’t any better. She could take whatever was in the small ebony box out and leave the box behind. That way she could make her delivery, should the doors only be affected by the presence of the container and not by the contents. Unfortunately she would still fail the test, since she would have to open the box to get the contents out, and opening the box was against the rules. The Final option was even more unacceptable, that was where she would have to leave the small ebony box and its contents behind. She would be able to get out, but she would be unable to make her delivery and she would fail, it also lacked any sense of professionalism.

  This was definitely a no win situation. No matter how she played it out, she would fail, which would appear to be how the test was set up. It really came down to what the judges wanted to see. If it was Honor they were looking for, she should get sealed in with the box. Then she would be the Hunter that refused to abandon her task, no matter how hopeless it appeared. Of course if it was ingenuity they were looking for, then she should open the box and remove the contents, that way she would be the Hunter that would do anything to overcome her obstacles, and she kind of liked the idea of that. If it was self preservation they wanted to see, then she should leave the box behind and finish the journey without it. The third option didn’t really sound like something a true Hunter would do. The Hunter that abandoned her task to save her own ass wasn’t something you wanted to be known for. So it really came down to two options. Option one, the choice of Honor, or option two, the choice of Ingenuity. Kile decided to take option “D”, when in doubt, none of the above.

  She set the small ebony box down at the closest point she could to the stone doors without setting them off again. It was a risk leaving the box behind, but she needed something to mark the location and the box was all she had left. There really wasn’t any danger since the only things she had seen in the past couple of hours was a single mouse and a talking stone head, and she could hardly consider either one of those a threat. She started back toward the treasure room.

  The treasure room door hadn’t closed behind her as she thought it would have, which meant that her plan may work after all. The door was as she had left it, the room was as she had left it. Of course it was only twenty minutes ago. There was only one thing out of place; the small wedge of the cheese was gone. There was a little brown mouse eating well somewhere, but it wasn’t the mouse she was concerned with now, it was the gem she needed. Not so much for its value but for its side effects.

  The ruby sat silently against the door jam and wasn’t as bright as it had been before, nor was it as tempting. She had no desire to pick up, and she didn’t see it as the answer to all of her problems. Could it be that the gem’s enchantment had been broken upon her leaving the room, that would be a problem she could ill afford, and one she couldn’t really test without trying out her plan.

  There really wasn’t much of a choice she thought. This had to be what they wanted her to do, why else would they set it up this way? If this didn’t work, she was going to look like the biggest fool that ever took the Hunter’s entry examinations. There was going to be a lot of happy people pointing fingers saying “I told you so, girls can’t be Hunters, especially not that one.”

  She paced off about fi
ve steps, took a deep breath and ran up to the gem, kicking it with all her might. It was like being struck by lightning, or what she though being struck by lighting must feel like. It was a shocking pain that started at the tip of her toe and ran all the way up to the top of her head, locking up every joint and muscle in her body along the way until she was completely immobilized. It was surprising how much it actually hurt. She hadn’t counted on that, which was going to make the rest of this plan all that much harder.

  She wasn’t able to move, but she was able to see, and she watched as the gem bumped off the jam and slid through the threshold, coming to a rest some distance on the opposite side of the door. Now she just had to wait, it wasn’t as if she had much of a choice. Her first assumption was correct, that there was a delay before the paralysis took hold, it was enough of a delay that she was able to kick the gem across the floor and far enough away from her that she was no longer in range of its enchantment, that strange stasis field. She just wasn’t sure how long it took for the effects to wear off, if the effects wore off. They did for the mouse, but then that was a mouse.

  It started in the opposite direction, she was able to blink her eyes first as the enchantment began to lift. She could feel the movements slowly returning to her joints, and although she was a little stiff when she took her first step, by the third or fourth the immobilization had completely worn off, except for the tingling pain that it left behind. She was going to be sore when this was over she thought as she approached the gem again.

  She wasn’t looking forward to this shot, now that she knew what to expect, although she was developing a bit more respect for that little brown mouse as she lined herself up again. This shot was going to be a lot trickier. In order to do this in as few attempts as possible, she would have to bank it off the left wall to get it around the corner. This would be an interesting game if it didn’t hurt so much she thought as she paced off the five steps and with a running kick, sent the gem flying into the next room. She hadn’t really thought about what would happen when the gem hit the side of the wall at that speed, not until after the paralysis took over and then she could only watch as it flew out into the darkness. She heard it the ring off the far wall, but lost track of it soon after.

  The pain seemed to be worse this time around, and the paralysis took longer to wear off, probably because she hadn’t recovered from it the last time. Her first steps were wobbly and she had to brace herself against the wall as she stumbled forward. Kile shook her arms and rubbed her legs, trying to get both the stiffness and the tingling out, but it was her head the hurt the most. It was like sitting down for a long period of time and having your leg fall asleep, only it was her entire body that radiated the pins and needles feeling.

  As she turned the corner, she found the gem, but it wasn’t where she had hoped it would be. It was far too close to the opposite wall. It must have lost too much momentum as it hit the wall head on. The angle of impact was way off. There was no way she could move it to a better position, not now anyway. There was no way of gauging how far the enchantment spread. She would just have to play it where is lie. It would be a tricky shot but she had no other option.

  Kile took a deep breath and paced the floor, trying to work out the last of the stiffness. She could finish this in one shot if she could hit it just right, and even if she did, there was no guarantee that it would even work, but the theory was sound, she just had to put it into practice. If she thought about it for too long she would start to doubt herself, and if she doubted herself she was bound to screw up. That was how it usually happened. She knew what had to be done and how to do it, but once she started to second guess herself, once she began to doubt her own abilities, once she started to over think things everything went wrong, and this was one time she couldn’t let that happen.

  Without giving herself time to back out, Kile ran up to the gem and delivered one final kick. Unfortunately the gem didn’t quite go the way she had intended it to go, it bounced off the wall, skidded across the floor and hit the small ebony box. What were the odds? On hind sight she realized as she stood motionless watching the disaster unfold before her, that she should probably have moved the small ebony box, of course the box was moving now, as was the gem as was the doors. The only thing that wasn’t moving was Kile.

  The gem outpaced the box, which was a good thing, as it slid toward the opening, but the box was moving at a fairly good speed and so were the doors. They came together rather abruptly with a horrifying noise that sounded as if the stone was screaming. As the left hand door swung, it caught the gem and dragged it along for a few feet before it took hold, but the enchantment field of the gem wasn’t large enough to affect the entire door, just the bottom right hand corner which eventually caused the door to crack. The hinge mechanism protested this obstruction, and with a shriek of its own, that sounded a lot like a cat’s tail being stepped on, it exploded. The thirty foot stone door, now severely damaged, shifted enough to pull down the left door jam as well as a good section of the wall. The right hand door, which was still closing, caught the left hand door which was now completely out of alignment. This only made matters worse as the tops of the doors shattered on impact.

  All this time, Kile could only stand motionless and watch as the left hand door began to fall, the entire door as well as the rest of the wall, was coming down… towards her. Kile willed herself to move as she felt the effects of the paralysis slowly start to wear off, but all she managed was to fall to her knees. She began to crawl, pulling herself toward the exit, trying to work out the last of the stiffness in her legs as a large chunk of the ceiling over the door gave way. It came down with a loud crash, shaking the floor and filling the room with dust and debris making it harder for her to see the exit

  “I hope they don’t make me pay for this.” She said a she staggered to her feet.

  She spotted the small ebony box beside the right hand door, still ten feet from the opening, which mean she would have to carry it ten more feet before she was out of the room, and there was no telling how the doors would react to that. With the last ounce of will she possessed, she forced her legs to run, grabbing the small ebony box without breaking stride and aimed for the only opening she could see through the dust cloud. As the box neared the threshold, she could hear the doors move, or at least they tried. The left hand door was the first to go as it finally collapsed under its own weight that sounded as if the entire mystic tower was coming down around her ears. The right hand door was soon to follow, and Kile didn’t wait around to see where it would fall as she threw herself through the opening. There was a loud explosion behind her and the hallway was choked with dust as she hit the floor. She quickly got to her feet and stumbled blindly forward, as far away from the destruction as she could get. The dust was too thick, she was finding it hard to breathe, and her mouth was full of dirt. She had to get out of the hall as quickly as possible. Unable to see where she was heading she walked into a dead end. Cursing herself, she felt blindly around the walls until she found the knob of a door. She quickly threw it open, not caring what was on the other side, and threw herself into the room beyond, pushing the door closed behind her as she tried to catch her breath. She laid on the floor clutching the box against her chest as she coughed up the last of the dust. When she was finally able to see she risked looking around the room. She was back in her cell, with her cot and her short legged table. She was right back where she started from.

  ***~~~***

  6

  Erin Silvia clutched the stack of papers she was carrying as she walked through the dark halls of the mystic’s tower. It was quiet now, and the hallways appeared to be deserted, but she new appearances were deceiving. The tower was never deserted, there was always somebody there, always somebody watching, waiting to step out of the shadows, or through a wall, or even out the thin air itself. This was not a place for the paranoid or those with a weak heart.

  It had been a long time since she had last visited these halls, back when she
took the entry examination nearly eighteen years ago. A lot had changed since then, but not the tower, not the test. She hated the examination, hated the little surprises, the little twists and turns that were inflicted upon her when she was trying to become a cadet. She was never able to tell what was part of the test, and what wasn’t. What was reality and what was all in her mind, and in the end whether or not it really mattered. She had come to terms with a lot of what the test had taught her, about herself and about the people around her, but that was now, now that she was a Hunter. Back then when she was just starting out, none of it made any sense, and she could see the same looks on the faces of those kids. They were as confused and as scared as she was when she took the exam, well… maybe not as scared, not all of them anyway. Only one could really know what she had gone through, because she was going through it now, and it hurt Erin to know what was in store for Kile. Like Erin, Kile had the added burden of being the only girl taking the exam this year. It was definitely a boy’s only club and she was the interloper, but that wasn’t the only thing Kile had going against her. Unlike Erin, Kile’s negatives were more numerous, even if she didn’t realize them all. Things were changing in the guild, some would say the changes were long overdue, some would say they were for the better, but not Erin. She saw the changes, and she didn’t like the direction the guild was going, and this new order, this new guild was someplace someone like Kile would never fit in.

  If only she could talk to the child, give her some support. Let her know that she wasn’t alone, that somebody somewhere understood what she was going through. It would have meant the world to Erin if there was somebody like that; somebody she could have talked to back then, but the Guild had forbidden it. Erin was not to have any contact with Kile Veller during the examination, or her stay at the academy, assuming she was able to pass, and assuming that they would let her pass. It was the Guild’s policy that all cadets, regardless of status, race or belief, would be treated equally, and if Kile was going to make it as a Hunter, she would have to make it like any other cadet… but that was the problem. It wouldn’t be like any other cadet. She would be carefully watched, her every move would be dissected, her every decision would be questioned, and when the time came, they would find a way to get rid of her. They would either find a reason, some loophole to expel her from the academy, or they would force her to take the walk, either way they would get rid of her. They had tried it with Erin when she first started as a cadet, but she was able to keep up with the boys, she was able to match them blow for blow, run them mile for mile, there was no way she was going down that path. Although there were moments she had wanted to, moments she had seriously considered it, but she held out… could Kile?