The girl wakes up laying on her back on a slab of stone, covered with a thin white sheet. She blinks a few times in the harsh light and then looks around.
She’s in a large circular room. No! Larger than a room. The room is at least a hundred yards across, maybe more. The walls and floor are of featureless white stone.
She rubs her eyes and blinks again, looking up. There is a red ramp spiraling around the walls, corkscrewing upwards. The visual effect is somewhat disconcerting; like being inside a candy cane.
Sitting up, she can see where the ramp meets the ground off to her right. Not that right and left really matter here. Inset into the wall there are some panels made of a shiny orange-yellow colored metal.
Only as she casts the sheet aside and sits up does she think to ask, “Where am I?”
She drops off the edge of the stone slab. When standing on the floor, the top of her head is barely even with the top of the slab. That, however, doesn’t mean that the stone bed is tall. For this girl is short. At sixteen years old, she stands at a mere four feet. Four feet; not a smidgen more nor a smidgen less.
“This doesn’t feel like a dream,” she mutters to herself. “What am I doing here?” she asks another question of the empty room.
“You are here for your second Trial,” answers a deep booming voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. She twirls quickly around but cannot spot anyone.
“Who are you? Where are you?”
“I am no one. I am here. This is your trial.”
“What trial? I demand a lawyer! I’ve done nothing wrong!” she shouts, while mentally adding, that anyone knows about.
“Not that kind of trial,” says the voice with exasperation, “A trial as in a test. Please approach the pedestal.” A glowing light appears near the end of the ramp. She moves toward it to see a tall thin pedestal. On the top is a ball made of shiny black stone, like obsidian.
“What am I being tested for? Shouldn’t I know that before I take a test?”
“Part of the Trial is understanding the Trial.”
“That just sounds like you’re too lazy to explain. Do your job!”
The voice says nothing for a while, then the room starts to vibrate, then shake. The pedestal collapses. The black ball falls to the floor and rolls over to the girl’s feet. The tremors subside again and stop.
“Your task is simple.” says the voice. “You must move this petrosphere from the bottom of the ramp to the top of the ramp.”
“This what now?”
“Petrosphere.”
“What’s a petrosphere?”
“Petrosphere means ‘stone ball’.”
“Then why don’t you just say stone ball?”
“Why would I use two words when I can use one?”
The girl licks her lips with a grin. The voice has taken her bait. This is just the sort of torture debate she would put her more annoying teachers through on a daily basis.
“But pet-ro-sphere has three syllables and stone ball has only two. It takes more work.”
The voice grumbles to itself for a moment, before saying, “Your task is simple. You must move this stone ball from the bottom of the ramp to the top of the ramp.”
Curses! The fish slipped the hook. “Why?”
“To show your strength, determination and will.”
The girl almost slips up and lets herself giggle there. So much for Part of the Trial is understanding the Trial. Score is now 2-0! “And what if I don’t want to do that?”
“You cannot leave here without completing the Trial.”
“That’s rude! What if I fail the Trial?”
“Will you allow yourself to fail?”
“Of course not! Duh! I’ma just testing you.”
“It is not for you to test me.”
The girl decides that this conversation is going nowhere. Bending over, she picks up the ball. It’s about the size and weight of a shot put.
“Whoa! Heavy!” She starts walking toward the base of the ramp.
“What are these pictures on the wall.” Now that she’s closer, she can see that the orange-yellow metal panels have diagrams inscribed on them.
“Those may help you with the trial.”
“O———kay…”
“Are you ready to begin the trial?”
“Sure. This conversation is kinda boring.”
“Please state your name.”
“Why do you want to know my name, old man? My parents told me never to give my name to strangers! Are you some kinda perv?”
“Your name must be recorded for the trial.”
“Hmph! Okay then, I’m Kari.”
“Your full name.”
“Karina Saraiva.”
“The trial begins now.”
Kari gives a smirk. This is a weird dream but her kind of dream, being a sporty girl to the max. She clutches the ball up against her chest with both of her small hands and starts jogging up the ramp.
The ramp isn’t very steep. There are eleven revolutions from the bottom to the top. At the end of each full circuit, there is a little landing with a stone chair and a pedestal of stone. These folks really like their rock, she thinks to herself.
The path has no railing or curb, just an immediate dropoff back to the bottom. It’s going to be a long haul, though. She starts mumbling to herself, “Okay, if the distance across is a hundred yards, that means one trip around would be … formula is ? times the diameter so about 314 yards. Yeah, baby! Kari is smart and sexy! Then eleven times around, times 314 is about…” She looks up at the distant ceiling for a moment, “3,454 yards. Okay. One mile is 5,280 feet. Divide that by three for yards is … rrrrrrrrrrrr … Why didn’t I learn the metric system like Saki told me to? Okay. 1,760 yards in a mile which means the total distance to the top is … more than two miles?!? That’s just mean! Hey! Is this ball getting heavier?”
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Kari originally estimated its weight at about ten pounds. While she’s jogging up the ramp she starts shifting the ball back and forth from hand to hand (working that dexterity and hand-eye coordination!), but that’s getting more and more difficult.
Kari finishes the first round of the spiral, staying close to the edge to help push back her fear of heights while she’s still relatively close to the ground. Reaching the landing at the end of the first circuit, she sees that the pedestal next to the chair has a dimple in the top: clearly meant to hold the ball. She tries it out, setting the ball down and then sitting in the chair, which has the number one carved into the back, big and bold.
She studies the ball for a moment. Definitely bigger. Not by much. Maybe an inch bigger in diameter? But a small change in diameter is a big change in volume which means an equally big change in weight which means … Dude!
The ball is definitely feeling like it has doubled in weight. Oh crap! Kari makes another circuit on the ramp, all the while thinking about how the ball is getting heavier and heavier.
Kari sits down to think in the chair with the number 2 carved into it. Setting the no-longer-shotput-sized-but-closer-to-volleyball-sized-ball down in the indentation to think.
Kari is sporty but that doesn't mean she isn’t a good student. To the point, she recognizes a geometric sequence when she sees one. In this case, the ten pound ball is doubling in weight and volume every round. It will be difficult to carry it the whole way round the next circuit.
And so it goes. It’s at the end of the third circuit that she drops the ball. Literally - not a metaphor. Now weighing eighty pounds and almost the size of a basketball, it’s hard to carry. And Kari is getting sore and tired. Her forearms in particular are screaming.
So she stumbles - just a little bit - as the road transitions from the slope to the level platform. The ball rolls out of her hands, narrowly missing her toes as she frantically kicks her legs out and away from where it lands with a thud and (of course!) begins to roll.
Turns out that the platforms have a slight grade as well. Toward the open well of space. Kari screams in frustration as it rolls right off into the abyss.
Diving to the edge, she’s just in time to see it hit bottom. She expects to hear a heavy bang, but what she hears, faintly, is
There is a stretchy sort of pause, followed by a flash of light, and Kari finds herself once again lying on the stone bed at the bottom of the well. With a frustrated shout, she throws off the sheet and stomps off to start over.
###
Kari lies on the stone bed. She wants to cry. This is her sixth time waking up here. She’s never made it as far as the sixth platform. The ball has rolled off thrice more. One time she dropped it and it crushed her ankle. She pushed it off the edge herself that time, hoping that when she woke up back at the bottom she’d be healed. Thankfully, she was right.
The last time, she had desperately chased the ball to the edge and ended up following it to the bottom. That had really sucked. Really really really sucked. REALLY! SUCKED!
She couldn’t emphasize that enough. Diving a hundred yards head first into a solid rock floor really sucked. Really.
And getting healed was excruciating as well. The best analogy she could think of was like being put through a paper shredder backwards while simultaneously being baked in a microwave. Not! Fun!
But at least she’s still alive.
“Well, Kari, you know what the definition of crazy is,” she says, talking to herself being a newly developing hobby of hers. “It’s time to try something different.”
Throwing off the sheet, she rolls off the slab and goes over to read the stone panels next to the end of the ramp. As she passes by, she cheerfully flips off that damn little ball where it sits on its pedestal with a stupid smirk on its stupid little round stupid face.
###
Kari sits in the lotus position, fingers intertwined in a complex knot, breathing in a measured rhythm. She’s been in this position for over an hour.
Mimicking what she learned from the first tablet, she has been cycling her energy through her muscles to increase her strength. This is what she has decided must be ‘body enhancement’ magic.
Another twenty minutes pass before she opens her eyes and stands up. She flexes her muscles, which appear to be bulkier and more defined. Like a statue of an ideal Kari Schwarzenegger. Heck yeah!
With a ‘hehehe’ that sounds more than a little deranged, she steps up to the pedestal, grabs the marble, and sprints for the ramp.
She carries it five, six, seven circuits. then sets it down and rolls the now beach-ball sized, one-ton ball up the ramp toward the eighth level platform. She almost makes it before she loses control and it drops.
Try again. This time she makes it to the eighth level. Weighing more than a ton, the ball is incredibly hard to keep control of on the ramp with both a downward and inward slant fighting her. Unfortunately, she can’t make it any further.
###
Kari sits on the ground floor once more. Pondering. According to the tablet, increasing strength consumes Qi (whatever the hell that is) and she’s losing it faster than she’s gaining it. She needs to increase her Qi pool.
She goes back to consult her magic primers. Does a double-take. When she’d consulted the tablets before, only the first tablet had words written on it. Now there is writing on the second tablet as well. She sits down in front of it and begins to study.
###
Roll, roll, roll. Kari is almost there. The level ten platform is in sight when she hears a small crack. Looking down, she sees her left leg bowing outward in a most disturbing fashion. Right before it breaks.
Now with only one leg to stand on, the damn demon ball deliberately rolls over her and then pulls her over the edge. She spends some long cold moments pondering the value of pain as a negative motivator before she hits the bottom.
Back to the drawing board.
###
Kari has lost track of time. Lost track of everything, really. She can no longer remember how many times she’s started up the ramp. How many times she’s dropped the ball, been crushed, fallen from the heights, been broken in any number of imaginative ways.
How many times she’s thought some variation of this sucks, or wanted to throw in the towel. She’s learned the techniques printed on each of the yellow tablets. Learned how to use Qi to enhance her physical body in every possible way.
It’s almost an anticlimax when she does reach the top. She's been working toward the goal for so long that it doesn’t really register when she actually gets there.
Not that there is much to see or much time to see it. Just one last push - crossing the threshold - a blinding light - and gone.
What is Primal Magic? I still don’t know. It seems to be related to space-time and includes gravity as a main component. I cannot figure out how Fate fits in there yet, but it does. Not many people have any sort of affinity for Primal Magic. Which makes the fact that both Kari and I do a little disconcerting. Why is it necessary?
Which would have seemed a strange question to me a week ago. But now I’m starting to jump at every shadow. There is an agent or agents working behind the scenes here. I’m sure of it. Call them Gods or something else, strings are being pulled.
Using the last of my chalk, I draw another line on the floor of the Great Hall where we were summoned. It has taken me a lot of time and effort to piece everything together. Who was where and when. What they were doing and why. How they were doing it.
Fate Magic has some utility here. Not only can it help you divine the future, it can show you the causes of a set of outcomes. In other words, you can work backwards as well as forwards. Some restrictions apply, insert standard disclaimer here.
So I talked to a lot of people. Three things stand out. First thing is that there was absolutely no reason for everything to fall apart with a bang. Let alone three big bangs. None of the experts have an explanation.
Second thing is that there were sudden temperature drops in parts of the room. As in, someone was standing in one spot where the temperature was uncomfortably warm while a person two meters away was so cold that frost was forming on his beard.
And finally, someone else died. Or should have. Someone got blasted hard, got broken and battered in ways that normally lead to the condition of dead, then stood up and walked away. Right out the door and disappeared.
That’s the one that freaks me out the most. Because I saw them when it happened. Didn’t see their face but I definitely saw their head at an angle only possible if the neck is broken.
So much going on at the time that I forgot about it. Which is strange in itself because I just DO NOT forget stuff. It was only when I was doing maintenance on my Mind Palace later that I came across the memory. Nothing more scary than that for me.
Some people are scared of spiders. But spiders are nothing compared to a misplaced memory in my opinion.
I hold my hand over the small cut in my forearm. Channel Spirit energy into it and heal myself instantly.
Of the five of us, I seem to have the biggest cheat skills. I can heal myself. I can bring my paper constructs to life with a thought. I can see in ways no one else can see. I didn't put in any work to get those skills. They just happened.
I can channel Spirit energy like a fire hose, but I haven't yet learned what I can do with it.
I believe I’m a Summoner. Able to contract with Spirit beasts. This is an incredibly rare skill. But I don't have any Spirit beasts to test it on right now.
So I study. I learn magic. I learn the methods and techniques of summoning. I'll be ready when the time comes.