10th of Season of Air, 80th year of the 32nd cycle

  Fifteen years had passed during which Magmin remained mostly silent, contemplating his past life. Meanwhile, the Sage’s Realm tournament approached. With only a moon to spare, the chaplains had gathered the ten participants Explorer’s Gate intended to send for the tournament and lined them in front of a waterfall, deep in the island’s jungle.

  Along with them stood all old inner and elite students, as well as the most distinguished newly admitted students.

  “Originally, the gatemaster had planned this opportunity for all our elites, and for us to use it as a tool for selecting the participants for Sage’s Realm, while also rewarding those strong enough to endure the challenge.” The Chamber of Instruction’s new chaplain said. The woman didn’t look much younger than her predecessor, who had fallen in the battle against the Blood Cult.

  “After the unfortunate turn of events twenty years ago, we have decided to reward all our loyal students, who bravely fought against the invaders and those who gave their best to restore our grand order. Now, I shall explain the realm’s benefit, and then you will decide whether you wish to enter. The Soul Waterfall will refine the moldable layers of your realm. I will make it stronger and sturdier, but it will also make it more difficult to sculpt. Whether you participate and how much you gain is up to you. Now, those who wish to enter, please step forward and approach the waterfall.”

  Newt stepped forward, and the surrounding landscape changed. A fine, cool mist clung to his skin and blocked his vision while thunderous noise assailed his ears. He sensed no danger, however, and as instructed by the chaplain, he followed the waterfall’s roar.

  Soon the droplets filling the air grew from motes of fog into real droplets, spraying Newt’s face. The noise grew even louder, reverberating in his bones, and a vertical river slamming onto a massive slab of white rock appeared before Newt.

  The first test was plain - to sit beneath the waterfall. Dead at the center. Reaching the destination demanded strength and fortitude. Granite Crust would have brought Newt straight to his goal without resistance, but when Newt tried to summon his defenses, he found his mana sluggish and unresponsive, just like Gatemaster Greenthorn had warned him.

  But that was just the start of his troubles. The challenge’s difficulty scaled based on the strength of one’s body, and at the peak of the fourth realm, Newt’s physique approached the upper limits of the fifth realm.

  Not much I can do about that. He clenched his fists and stepped onto the soft white slope.

  The frigid water bit his flesh. Waves more solid than ice struck Newt’s body, so cold his teeth nearly chattered.

  At first, the water was only as hard as ice, then the pressure increased, and Newt felt like he did when he climbed the tower, rocks falling on his head, but there was no respite. The rockfall oppressed him, pushed him back down the slope, but Newt took another step, then another.

  The gentle incline he climbed peaked, and became a miniature plateau fit for one. Newt sat, fighting not to sprawl on the ground as the water kept pounding him without mercy.

  The second part of the trial was for the students to enter meditation and explore their realms under the assault. Newt failed to understand why that would be a challenge when the gatemaster explained the terms, but remained wary. He closed his eyes, and as expected, he was inside his realm, facing no difficulty while submerging his consciousness into his realm, but then paused.

  He stared at the realm. The heat and the red clouds were gone. Lightning danced in the dark skies while thunder echoed the torrential waterfall. Newt turned around and looked uphill, wondering whether his mind had strayed, but the volcano was there, as was the forest of Magmin Pines towards the peak. The familiar streams of lava flowed down the mountainside, shining bright in the sudden gloom, while the constellations of runic seals flickered, the phenomenon conflicting with their usual steady light.

  Newt’s entire realm held its breath. Then the sky broke. A merciless wind blew from beyond the heavens, whistling, and stoking the fires of Newt’s realm, feeding and strengthening them. The completed spell seal blazed, fueled by the sudden surge of energy, while rock cracked from the wind and the heat.

  Newt focused on defensive fire-attributed spell formations scattered about, trying to cover his realm. They burned and dissipated the heat, making it manageable and allowing Newt to shift to earthen barriers. Such seals were much more numerous, and nebulas of black, yellow, and brown rose to intercept the cutting gale.

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  Newt had spent an entire decade and then some inside his realm, privileged with the best meditation chambers the order had to offer. And yet, he was only half done with his grand work, the realm plotted by him, not Dandelion, but following the same principles.

  The wind of desolation struck and cut, ravaging Newt’s volcano. Faced with the grim reality of it, Newt abandoned the unsculpted patch and focused on the area he had spent years sculpting, drawing extra power from all the underground seals.

  Rock shattered beyond the safety of the consolidated defenses. The world was breaking, and Newt dared not imagine what sort of damage his realm was taking.

  “This is madness,” he shouted, focusing all his attention on commanding the seals. “My realm will shatter!”

  He wanted to keep shouting. There was nothing else he could do, as even venting became a distraction. Newt focused, resisted, and the wind grew hot. The earthen defense melted, and Newt realized the element smiting him was no longer air. He focused on the flaming shields, which boosted his defense against heat and cold, letting the solid cloud of earth fall to the ground.

  Just like whenever he suffered fiery attacks in reality, the heat assailing Newt burned, harmlessly dissipated, but it kept growing in intensity. Sweat streamed down Newt’s body, wetting the surrounding rock before evaporating. Newt was stuck inside an inferno, the conflagration consuming his whole realm, burning everything in its wake.

  The rocky ground sizzled, and Newt thought the test of fire would never end, when a fiery meteor slammed against his volcano. A crater bloomed at the periphery, and the ground shook beneath Newt’s feet. He frantically re-summoned the clouds of earth, a sliver of his consciousness noticing that they were stronger and thicker, fed and refined by fire and ash. He would have been overjoyed if not for the meteors hammering at his defenses.

  The world heaved, gigantic rocks jumping and bouncing like balls, and Newt realized he was down on the ground, dazed by the mental impacts of countless tons of stone showering his realm. The fire had disappeared at some point, Newt knew not when, so he dismissed that portion of his defenses once more, but the rocks kept hammering without mercy.

  The falling earth became lighter, dealing less damage, but killing fire more effectively. The heavens rained mud on Newt’s world, it might have lasted a minute or an eternity, but then the mud became rain, which became a pressurized torrent, just like the waterfall Newt had climbed to enter the hell he was in.

  The catastrophic deluge disintegrated rock, surges of water galloped down the volcano, slamming into the rivers of lava, turning to steam and extinguishing them, but the torrent caught the steam and returned it back for another assault on Newt.

  Water turned to boulders of ice, then sleet as the wind picked up and rain drizzled. Newt was already delirious, frantically fighting to preserve the runic seals he had made. He had already abandoned moons of work as water drowned the least important of the fire-attributed spell seals.

  He was panting, then the water evaporated completely, probably carried by the wind into some other unfortunate’s domain. Wind picked up, blowing life into the dying embers of fire, and Newt’s fiery seals lit up once more, blazing with light, but the mountain’s abused, black granite was shattering into fine sand.

  Then fire came, its heat melting the world. The cycle repeated and repeated and repeated. Newt’s mind was stretched to the point of collapse when the final fiery storm grew gentler. No meteors appeared to beat his realm, and as the conflagration died, Newt passed out.

  He did not know how long he had been sleeping, but when he opened his eyes, Newt found himself sprawled on the grass, near a bubbling brook. There was no lavender-scented blanket; there was no sun, only stars in the sky and a huge, brilliant half-moon.

  Newt breathed in the scents of a jungle at night and enjoyed the sight above him. The champions overseeing the trial certainly knew he was awake, but left him alone as he stared at the heavens.

  The calm moment soothed his mind, but then unease crept in. What had happened to his realm?

  Newt closed his eyes and appeared at the base of his realm-volcano. He expected signs of devastation, of a cataclysm survived, but his realm seemed normal. Seemed was the key word.

  The ground no longer had the faintly wavy texture of cooling lava; it was straight and smooth as glass. Newt tapped it with his finger, and the touch told him it was just as tough as it was before, if not tougher.

  “Definitely tougher.” He took a slow, cautious step forward, ready to brace himself in case he fell, but the smooth surface was not slippery. Not for his avatar.

  Newt headed up towards the sigils, but dared not sprint just yet. He was looking around, twisting and observing for any trace of damage, but he found none.

  The imperfections appeared when he reached the first spell seal. Whatever had happened during the trial had straightened some of the curves, made the surface more even, but that was not what Newt wanted. Failure to follow the most perfect runic forms resulted in waste and a drop in the seal’s performance.

  Newt fixed the distortion he had found, noting that he would have to check every single spell seal he had scribed inside his realm, and continued his ascent. Magmin Pines still stood in the distance as Newt entered his third realm.

  Despite the chaplain telling him, Newt sighed in relief. The third realm remained unchanged. The ground kept the pattern and texture of igneous rock, rather than volcanic glass. Still, he inspected the seals, just in case, and found them unchanged.

  All right. I’ve got work to do.