Noctis
AlmostEternity
Legend
Festive
AtomicNut
Sky Blue
Vertigo
LimeTime966
Rhona W
Expendable
The test was at eight-o-clock sharp. Not a second before, not a second after. Well, technically many seconds after, as well. Regardless, it began at eight-o-clock. 0800 hours. Two hours after Crystal woke from her barely functional and highly disturbed slumber. The girl awoke, ate a balanced but filling breakfast, got dressed, grabbed her pre-packed bag of food and other supplies, said farewell to her roommate, and began the journey to the place she would be tested. Except... one thing was off. Her medication, specifically the fast-acting ones, were not where she had put them. She realized this only after she ate, as they were to be taken with food, and given the location of the test she didn't have time to go get more. Sure, it was possible that her supervising Ars Magi would understand the delay, but there was an equal possibility that they would immediately fail her for being late. Eight-o-clock sharp had been drilled into her head the past week. So she put on her headphones and began towards the testing area. Which was not, surprisingly, where most of the Ars Magi in training were being tested.
Had she not had a mouthful of gum and her headphones blaring music on her travel, she might have been overloaded by her disorder. Though she may also have overheard the rumors of a certain senior Ars Magi who had been seen going the direction that she was now headed. Rumors that said Ars Magi was a sadist, had failed out several of Crystal's peers the week prior, and that most of the girls spreading the rumors were terrified of their subject. But she didn't hear any of that. She only continued on her way, slowly rising anxiety and hyperactivity growing in her mind and chest. Perhaps it was for the best that she didn't. It may only have made things worse for her.
After a half-hour walk, she arrived at the stated location, a large dirt field with a nearby waterfall. There were three levels to the terrain with the waterfall coming from a river on the top level, creating a river on the middle, and falling into a small lake on the bottom. Crystal checked her MP3 player. 7:45. She was early, and that gave her a chance to look around. There were no trees, but there were rocks, rather large stone and boulders, all around the area. It was rather serene, actually. But her test giver was nowhere to be found. So she found a rock to sit on and decided to wait, taking her headphones off one ear to listen for her.
The minutes passed, slowly but helped by her music, and turned into hours. Soon it was midday. She had just eaten a snack from her bag and refreshed her gum (now cherry flavored) when her senior arrived. Crystal heard a cough from behind her and turned to face it as she stood up and put her headphones down. Before her stood a twenty-something girl with white hair and a scar across her left eye. She went to open her mouth to greet her when the girl interrupted.
"Glad to see you made it in one piece! Too bad you got here too soon, gonna have to dock you points for that."
What?
"But you'll have plenty of chances to make those up. This is a multi-day test, after all. And you've only gotta get a hundred points to pass. Oh, and you can quit at any time, if you want."
"Wha-" Crystal began before switching thoughts. "Wait, how many points did I lose? How many do I start with?"
"Oh, you start at zero. So you're at negative three right now."
This was ridiculous. Was this girl really allowed to do something like that?
"Test begins now, by the way. Good luck, you'll need it, Caelestis."
Well, that wasn't a good sign.
"First things first, we're testing your mobility."
The next three hours were spent by her senior testing Crystal's ability to move across the lake. She was told to freeze only the minimum amount of water to stand on. The next portion was having her jump from place to place, freezing the water beneath her so as to not touch the lake's surface. Both of these Crystal managed to do sufficiently, granting her a total of six points, according to the white-haired girl. When it came time for a break, Crystal asked the girl's name.
"Not important. But you can call me Cascading Azure Pearl, or any variation thereof. Since you're Frozen Blue Sapphire, I'd normally call you by that title, but being a Caelestis... You get special treatment."
Really not a good sign, Crystal decided. But there was no more time to talk. As soon as she finished speaking, CAP started the next portion of the test.
"I've personally reviewed all of the data on you that they would let me, so I know your abilities and weaknesses. You can form ice on a surface to make footholds, but can you do it on a moving surface of water? You got a taste of moving water with the lake, but now your task is to climb from the edge of the lake, across it to the waterfall, and up to the very top of it in as few steps as possible. Get going!"
CAP smacked Crystal on the back and watched as she began towards her objective. Jumping from one ice floe to the to-be-created next ice floe, she managed to cross the small lake in five jumps. The fewer steps, the better, after all. Next came the first waterfall, about fifteen feet high. Based on what she had been told the test was, she figured she couldn't just make a platform parallel to the falls and go up it, so she formed a small platform from the waterfall and watched as it fell into the lake, gravity preventing her from using it. She'd have to be quick. She jumped up and touched her foot to the water, freezing it vertically a few feet and horizontally just as much, her foot landing on this small foothold. She began to jump off it but slipped, falling backwards onto the platform she had jumped from, cracking it and almost breaking it entirely. After reinforcing it she tried again, managing to get a good jump from this attempt, but pushed too far backwards with her foot and once again landed on the ice floe below her.
Damnit! She didn't have enough water to work with from the waterfall, so she was having to form some ice in the air and connect it to the water, taking much more effort than it should. She jumped again, this time angling the foothold, and managed to jump from it before it fell and make a copy above it. Repeating this, she soon found herself running up the waterfall as if on an elliptical machine, or climbing stairs. She wasn't getting enough height from each foothold to make much progress, but she eventually made it to the top. Crystal followed the river to the second waterfall, this one much stronger than the one it led to. It was also much larger, about thirty feet high. There was no way she'd make it to the top the way she did the previous. So she tried a new approach. She made her foothold and forced the ice beneath her upwards, launching her upwards about a foot and a half. Repeating this managed to get her to the top, but she was exhausted.
"Bravo!" CAP said, having already been at the top for quite some time. "You managed to make it in one-hundred and fifty-two steps! That's ten whole points! Out of a possible forty, but let's not dwell on that."
Crystal wanted to throw up. She had only made it to thirteen points so far? She could have been almost halfway done already!? She wasn't given much time to think as CAP gave the next order.
"Go back to the lake. Then we'll start the next phase."
So she did. She made her way back to the lake, turned around, and was hit in the face with a blast of mud, barely closing her eyes in time.
Oh no. SHIT! SHIT SHIT SHIT SHITSHITSHITHSTISHTISTHSITSHTISTHSTISTHISTHSSHIT! That was not okay! Her skin was crawling, her mind was reeling, her chest was thundering; even with her medication as directed, mud would have set her off. But now? Now was worse. Her mind short-circuited, and the only reason she didn't start screaming madly was that there was mud on her lips. She quickly tried to wipe it off, and as soon as she did she was hit by more. It was liquid-y and gross, practically just water, but the dirt in it was definitely there. She wiped her eyes and looked around to find CAP standing on the area above her, across the lake where the waterfall was, and she was smiling.
"Did I forget to mention that I know all of the data they would let me have on you? You can purify water you freeze, right? So all you have to do to stay clean is not let it hit you as water. Should be easy. If you can't preform under pressure, then you don't get field ready status. The world isn't going to cater to your disorder, and there may be times you don't have access to your medication. I figured that now would be a good time to drill that into your head, rather than letting you get out there and find out where lives are in danger. Oh, right. I took your medication. Couldn't get away with taking the long-term stuff, but getting the fast-acting ones should suffice."
With that, CAP flung further dirty water at Crystal, who barely had time to react. She managed to freeze it before it hit her, but then it was a spire of ice that slammed against her face. Ice that was made from almost pure water, thanks to her, but it still hurt.
"Remember, you can quit at any time!" CAP shouted to Crystal. The next thing she knew, Crystal was assaulted from behind with a huge splash of muddy water, coating her back from the chest down. Shuddering, she realized what her real test was. She tried her best to focus, but it was hell to do and hell to be in this position. The hours dragged as slowly as they could as Crystal continually spun around, trying to freeze the water that CAP flung at her from all sides without relent. One thing was certain: CAP had developed a very powerful training technique for Crystal. She was moving quicker than she had ever moved before; already being covered in dirt didn't stop her from fearing more in the slightest. The damage she was taking from the ice was building and Crystal was covered in bruises.
As the sun began to set, CAP shouted to her again. "Good news! You're managing much better than I expected! So you've only got to make it through the night, and then we get to start the real fun, the combat portion!" She paused her assault and smiled. "You're not about to quit, are you~?"
"I..." came as a whisper from Crystal's lips.
"Hmm?"
"I..."
"You...?"
"I... I..."
"I, I, I... Stop stuttering. What are you trying to say?"
"I..."
"You... quit? Is that it?"
Crystal's eyes burned with hatred as she glared at her tormentor. "Am going to murder you."
An eager grin grew across CAP's face. "That's the spirit."
---Hours later---
The night passed with Crystal managing to avoid getting much dirtier, even with CAP raising the tempo of her attacks. She did, however, think that her arm was broken in a few places, and maybe a rib as well from the blocks of ice she was forming. Finally, CAP gave the word that the test had moved to the next phase.
"You're free to come at me whenever, by the way! If you can even get to me..." CAP smirked at her victim.
Crystal didn't waste any time. She formed ice under her feet and launched herself halfway across the lake, freezing as she flew over, and landed on an ice floe that she effortlessly skated across. She was about to do it again when the platform was shot into the air; CAP had created a geyser underneath her and both shot Crystal several yards up and destroyed the ice floe, leaving her to fall into the lake. A similar pillar of ice shot from the bottom of the lake to the top, forming a new place to stand, but Crystal was hit with a tidal wave from the side and tumbled once again into the lake. She clawed her way back to the top of the platform, using her Gladius as a climbing pick as she held her breath, but as she stood up the platform was sliced free from the pillar and fell away, Crystal tumbling into the lake once more.
If this audacious bitch was going to keep this up, Crystal was going to pay back her torture two-hundred-fold. She formed another platform from the side of the pillar and launched herself out of the lake and into the air, where she was hit with a large blast of water that sent her flying to the side. This time, however, she managed to freeze the lake beneath as she hit the surface, causing quite some pain but giving her the chance to bolt upwards and launch herself from below towards the waterfall. As another blast of pressurized water came towards her to stop her momentum, she sliced through it with Hiems, splitting it and freezing it at the same time to create a path through the center for her. Crystal had no thoughts as she did this; her mind was filled with only despair and hatred, her body moving on instinct alone.
As she landed in front of the waterfall, she tried to launch herself upwards once again but was stopped by a downpour of water that almost tripled the output of the waterfall itself. And it didn't relent, making Crystal turn her head downwards to barely breath and putting a lot of force against her head and neck. So much so that she fell to her knees under it. It took a moment for her to acclimate before she formed a dome of ice over herself to give her some respite. But that was short lived when another tidal wave hit from her right and back simultaneously, slamming her head against the ice dome, breaking it from the force of the collision. Crystal pierced Hiems into the wall behind the waterfall and held on tight to avoid falling back into the depths of the lake again. She wasn't given time to breath as the downpour continued unabated, forcing her to throw her head away from the wall to gasp for air.
"You doing okay down there?" CAP asked, not a hint of sincerity in her voice, poking her head over the ledge of the fall.
Crystal took a deep breathe and threw her head back under the deluge, forming ice from Hiems outwards until she had coated the wall and made a horizontal bar out under the falling water. She withdrew Hiems from the icy rock and hooked it against the bar by its flat side, freezing the water pouring onto it until the waterfall began pouring from the edge of the ice rather than the edge of the ground as it normally would. Another wave blasted against Crystal's body but it wasn't able to dislodge her from her grip on Hiems, nor did it dislodge Hiems from the frozen waterfall. Crystal quickly pulled Hiems free just as the wave ended and began to jump up the ice via small footholds. Finally, she'd made it to CAP. She was ready to slaughter her. CAP smirked at Crystal's expression, taking her own Gladius that she had stabbed into the ground and pointing it at her.
"You're gonna have to hit me pretty quick. You're running low on juice, I-" was all she managed to say before Hiems came slicing through the air at her neck. She was able to almost effortlessly parry the attack, knocking Crystal's Gladius back over her head, but still in her grip. She turned this position into a vertical slice, though this was also parried. Training began to override instinct, and Crystal's flurry of furious blows slowly began to push CAP onto the back foot. Finally, CAP jumped backwards, creating a blast of water from the tip of her sword and unleashing it against Crystal, who sliced through it as she froze it, resulting in an opening. She lunged forwards, and nearly struck CAP. CAP's sidestep was textbook. It was perfect. It was the exact way a fighter would be trained to dodge. And that is why Crystal was able to predict it. As she lunged, she was already setting her footwork to let her spin counter-clockwise, straight into a vertical slash aimed right at the space CAP had just occupied. The next few seconds were a blur of motion, and Crystal would not remember them. Several blows were exchanged, water shot in all directions, ice falling to the ground under gravity's command. And by the end of it, Crystal had managed to nearly pierce CAP's throat, stopped by the water Magi's Gladius, but barely.
Crystal could no longer stand, she could no longer move. She could no longer maintain her transformed state. She fell to the ground, barely conscious as she de-transformed. The last thing she heard before she fell asleep was clapping.
---The next day---
Crystal awoke in a sweat, jolting upright. She looked around frantically only to find that she was in a bed in the hospital. There was a note on the table beside her. She took a moment to catch her breath and stabilize herself before reading it.
'Hey there, Frozen Blue Sapphire. If I'm being honest, your test was supposed to take several days. But, given the circumstances, I think I'll count your recovery time as part of it. Congratulations on scoring 194 points on your field readiness test. You passed.'
'P.S. I power washed you pretty well with purified water while you were out, and your meds are back where they should be. The hospital should have them too. Sincerely, Mara a.k.a. Cascading Azure Pearl'
Crystal read the note several times over. She had passed? Thank the gods. She had passed. And then, she fell unconscious once more.
