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Cold, thin, and a deep, pure blue.

She was a sensory creature, always. Whenever she found herself somewhere new, it was those impressions that came first, and lasted longest. Today was no different. It never could have been.

A soft tamp beneath her boots heralded the young stone beneath, and through it, the story of the world, told in collision millions of years in the making. This wasn’t flat ground— it was just as flat as they could find.

Diamond dust sprayed Selma as the familiar roar of the gunship’s engines began to recede into the winds above, buffeting her tall frame like the ocean tide. The snow crystals were sharp, like needles caught in a storm, but she paid them no heed. Below her, some two hundred meters or so down, the ever present carpet of the smoke that choked the land rolled and bubbled, tossed by currents now rogue and uncharted.

That, too, was beneath register. Academically speaking, it was long known that Nox had a maximum altitude— its density necessitated it sink below a certain line in the atmosphere. This was why commerce and communication and culture held between the Duodecim States— air travel was still viable. Experience had already backed up academia’s theories, too— After all, they’d shipped off in mighty zeppelins to Palmyra to attend the Academy. 

For her and her Kheper, being above the Nox was old hat. However…

It took her a moment to realize that she was alone again; the gunship’s mighty rotaries fading, with a haunting smoothness, into the constant howl of the high winds. She took in a breath, deep through the chest to fill her big lungs… and marveled.

Cold. The air was like ice through her system, a thousand knives into her gullet. Though her blood was primed for the snowfall of winter forests, she was Hastan-born at the end of the day— and the beating heart of fashion, art, and cuisine for humanity could never hold a candle to this. Her garb was practically ski clothing, engineered to hold in warmth beyond all else. It mattered not here. With one gulp of air, she’d chilled her body to the bones.

Thin. Her connection to the earth through the snow. Her shortness of breath as she began to trudge, despite her full lungs. The path forward, a channel of stone carved out of an overlooking bluff, stone and ice cascading down into the Nox beneath at not a sheer angle, but a very steep grade. She’d  heard the tumble of the errant pebbles her stride had knocked over the void— and knew that the difference between those was negligible. One false step would send her to the same ignoble fate, lost in the poison sea.

Yet it was not simply by the frigid paucity of the life in the air that saw her breath catch, as forested eyes instead cast themselves up. Rather…

[color=00a99d]“So blue…”[/color] she spoke, the words already lost upon the gale that buffeted her skyscraper frame. Even for a woman so bold as she, the visage before her was humbling as it was grand.

Indeed, no Nox could survive here, for it would have been wholly swallowed. Cascading as far as the eye could see, the azure was brilliant in the midday sun, an ever deepening curtain of sapphire. It was a clear day, the disk of white hanging upon the heavens burning twice as bright, twice as harsh in the thin atmosphere. Above even it, the abyss yawned as though stygian, but refused to lower itself from its grandeur and change colors. It did not show her the blackness of space above— here, the king was dark, deep blue. Forget Nox. The many hues of ultramarine, unblemished and uncompromising in their purity, their totality… They would swallow anything. Of that, the sapling was convinced.

And yet.

Cut stark against it, and no less imposing, was a wedge of white and grey. Snow and Stone. The summit of this mountain loomed large against the backdrop, soaring impossibly high as though growing with each second she craned her neck up. The face she had been cast upon, yet another stone on the pile, was a massive wall upon which the winds coursed and scattered, rounding and smoothing it just as they parted them. Young in rock years, academia had told Selma, but all the same ancient to her. The snow crunched dully beneath her steel-spiked boots as she walked forward, a palm placing itself at rest upon the supple grays of slate. A break in the wind had allowed this of her— and as she strode, each step thusly was deafening against the sudden stillness.

Time and wind had humbled this mighty rock indeed. It was almost polished beneath her bare, pale skin, but a half-step away from losing that last grit that gave luster to even the dullest pebbles one errantly threw into a stream. It, too, was chilling— but less than the breeze, less than the surrounding remnants of atmosphere. Idly, Selma wondered if it was because this side had caught the face of the sun.

And then the wind began again, almost snatching her removed glove from its temporary home between her teeth, and successfully stealing away the warmth she, just as covetously, stole herself from the rock. Her tall, broad frame did her no favors, and she was all but pressed back into the wall, muttering alarmed swears beneath her breath in German. 

It might have just been her imagination, the product of a gregarious girl thrust into stillness, silence, and solitude. It may have been sheer coincidence, a natural result of the unknowable and at times capricious nature of the alpine and high-altitude air currents, the mighty jetstream paying a visit to carry far-off weather. It may have been, looking back, the beginning of everything.

But she couldn’t help herself. Upon that bracing, stern gust, she felt a chiding air— Like the mountain itself, or that cold, thin, and royal blue atmosphere that cloaked its shape, or both… were reprimanding her.

Idiot girl, the gale said, in the voice unspoken. Do you lack sense, doing this now?

[color=00a99d][i]No.[/i][/color] She thought in reply, drawing the heat-trapping fabric tight against her reddened fingers again with a huff. Though it had been mere seconds of exposure, they stung with the fading chill, as an almost alarming amount of feeling and flexion had to return (!!!) to their digits. Her, the same girl who made sport of the ice baths that Rivka and Chie dreaded.

Unbelievable.

She peered up again, now beneath the same rush that had so buffeted the stone above her. She had learned her first lesson, a pointed nudge along her trains of thought. She was right to be awestruck, she knew now— she was right when she felt so dwarfed by it.

Her long flight away from the Academy was by clear design, cutting her loose from her friends and their tests that dotted the nearby Military Zone. 

Her instructor had full leeway regarding the nature of her examination. In a field readiness evaluation, nothing was by accident. She was here, on this peak, because it was where they wanted to put her.

This harsh land. This was her proving ground.

Where even solid stone, millions of years old, found itself being gradually swallowed by the blue.

The Meeting of Earth and Sky.

Digging in her heels, she trudged forward, leaning her weight against the wind. Up ahead, along that narrow walkway that hugged the mountainside and was carved into the stone itself, the bright orange thread of a nylon guide cable popped against the slate backdrop, beckoning her forward.

Each step was a battle against the wind. A hike that should have lasted no more than a minute had stretched to nearly three. The big girl grit her teeth, all too cognizant of how short her breath was getting. All that conditioning work to further extend her farmgirl stamina… and fifty meters had her panting.

Hostile terrain, wasn’t it? 

Deep breath in…

In…

Gott, okay, in a little more…

… And out.

Closer inspection came in the form of a firm grip and tug against the length of the tightly-weaved synthetics, but the details clarified themselves all the same. The cord was looped through steel pitons every three meters, give or take, and sturdy. It’d handle even an unskilled mountaineer’s weight.

She wasn’t exactly super experienced, in all fairness, but…

All the same, she appreciated that her natural affinities got their due justice served. Bring it on, said her lupine grin beneath the hefty scarf wrapped double round her neck.

[color=00a99d]Selma, Selma, Let’s give ‘em Hellma![/color]

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[b]***[/b]
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As one may have expected, hoarse voices often were caught and shredded by high winds.

[color=00a99d]“Selma… Selma… [i]sucks… like Hellma[/i]..!”[/color]

The same could of course be said for our heroine, whose foghorn bluster normally filled a room on her calmer days, and whose whipping, music-propelled limbs had single-handedly pared poor Chie’s reaction times down further than any structured training program the Imperium’s finest minds could muster.

It was an hour into the ascent, by her measure— and slow going each minute. Her mantra had been incessant, merely swapping between the differing permutations of her classic bit and the more primal, workmanlike [color=00a99d]“hand over hand, hand over hand”[/color], as though the latter were a cadence to pull herself along to. She missed dancing. It was these moments that made her miss it the most.

The orange lengths had proved a sure and true guide, at least, as she inched her way along the path as it wound around to the southern face of the mountain. While her briefing had been sparse regarding the true nature of her examination and examiner in favor of necessary mountainside precautions and gearing up, it was sure to cover the important details—chief of which was that the path she’d seen would be the one to lead her to her proving ground.

Satellite imaging had been provided, as well— apparently there was indeed shelter from the raging tempest and biting cold to look forward to. A stone hermitage, itself too carved into the mountainside as the trail was, would be her place of respite. It was to be a frankly square and rustic thing, all things considered. Not much more than a hole in a wall, only decorated by an archway and a swirling crest overhead as you entered.

But it would suit her fine. As well as I know it, by now you surely know that Kheper’s Jolly Green Giant nestled right at home in “rustic”. If it would give her a solid place to lay her head, then Selma seldomly cared for any more.

She marched on. Logging where she had passed in the journey in her tired noggin was a task in and of itself, but thankfully navigating was one of her stronger suits. An hour down the drain meant a little less than that to go, basing things off of the estimated travel time— but looking at location, she knew that she was getting close.

The mountainside dwelling overlooked a fair-sized “front lawn”, so to speak, facing roughly west-southwest. Not quite a [plateau], given that there was still a little much in the way of grade and drift for the weight of a transport craft landing upon its face to go well— but obviously, naturally, undeniably a good space to take the measure of a bruiser like herself.

She had been stealing glances upward all morning— the contour of that bluff was distinct even from her personal “tank controls” angle. For the past ten minutes, she’d been carefully lining up the dossier’s overhead outline with the dips and blades above and to her left, and by now had reached the conclusion of “yup, that’s it”. Her pace began to climb, even as her lungs burned.

Her eyes had now begun to strain as they fully glued themselves to the strata above, arms and legs yanking her along on automatic. If her hunch was right, and they always were, then soon enough she’d see her destination.

A minute passed of this.

Then two.

Three…[color=00a99d][i] There![/i][/color]

On the far end, a spot of orange against the gray revealed more than wall melting into wall— it was the end of the line, tied in an intricate, almost woven knot along the the fluid spokes of the crest adorning a low stone archway, revealed from beneath the surrounding ice and shale only by eyes that knew what they were looking for.

The finish was in sight. Which meant… so was the start.

Against the depths of the ultramarine, a glimmer of emerald shone.

[color=00a651]May the World Quake![/color]

Aching legs drew in arcane fuel, and the sluggish trudging gave way to a mighty LEAP as the conifer girl soared through the air, nox reactor heart brimming with anticipation. It carried her high as her patchwork leather and plate burst into brilliant life, a second skin infinitely more warming than any amount of winter coating. Her lungs held within them twice the strength, perhaps even more, and her mind thrive as clear thanks to them and the euphoric transformania both. Compared to all the crap before, to the written exam, to the trudging along in a one-woman Souran dance, this above all else was living!

One issue arose, though—

[color=00a651]“Gah Wait Crap C[i]rap Crap![/i]”[/color]

The wind had taken her at her zenith, changing a ballistic arc that would terminate in a stylish three-point landing into an uncontrolled corkscrew, a diagonal tumble through empty space.

She hit the ground hard, tossed aside by the dismissive gale and precariously close to going back over the edge.

Hell, she just may have, if not for Kleinbruder, coalesced in her palm and biting deep into the rock of the western cliff. Another three meters, and it’d be her contending with the sheer face below.

[color=00a651]“Beats walking…”[/color] she muttered all the same, drawing herself into a rather undignified crouch. Good a time as any to survey the landscape. [color=00a651]“Least she didn’t see that…”[/color]

All told, it felt bigger than the dimensions listed suggested, at least 60 meters in any direction from its center point no matter how you sliced it. Cozy for a spar between Ars Magi, perhaps, given their superhuman abilities and how they all correlated with distance-chewing, but plenty of room to work her magic. The snow layer stop the stone, to speak of that, was thankfully thin— no more than an inch between her and the rock she knew and loved to manipulate. There was but one outlier in that regard.

Atop the archway, seemingly beneath the runoff of the summit above, the accumulation of frost and ice had formed a tall mound some 5 and a half feet or so high, characterized by a long and thin blade of an icicle that was glacier blue. Above it, though, was a curtain of black that hung at its peak, framing a pair of deep sapphires that shone with judgement in the brilliant hues of the overhead sky as they looked her shoddy trainee’s half-baked landing posture up and down and—

…

[color=6ecff6]“Hello, Rosmarie.”[/color] Intoned the woman, belatedly cluing Selma into the sudden stilling of the winds. There was little humor upon her tongue. [color=6ecff6]“Your examination has already begun— And you would be wise to believe I am [i]always[/i] watching.”[/color]

[color=00a651][i]Scheisse.[/i][/color]

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[b]***[/b]
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[color=6ecff6]“Drink.”[/color]

She sat in the passable [i]seiza[/i] that Chie had managed to teach through a hard-fought week early into their rooming together. In front of her, a lightly steaming cup, pressed forward by her instructor and carrying less invitation than command. Selma eyed it a touch warily. Her proctor, almost picturesque by contrast, loosed an exasperated sigh.

[color=6ecff6]“I said your examination has begun. I didn’t say it was every little thing. Drink. You’re still my guest, even if I’m grading you.”[/color]

Her internal concerns immediately sniffed out, addressed, and urged against. Not the lady’s first rodeo with this reaction, was it? As she plucked the ceramic mug from the stone floor and brought it to her lips, Selma regarded her host again as the floral, comforting warmth of the tea flowed through her chilled bones. She was never one to be too concealed, but…

[color=00a99d]“It’s good… Thank you, Miss Kazebayashi.”[/color]

As warmth returned to miss Rosmarie’s body, so too it returned to her voice. Hospitality told a thousand tales sooner than a speech could rope you through one, to be frank— this was heartening.

She had gleaned early on that the examiner she had drawn carried with her a reputation, noticing the hushed whispers among the flight crew and the few students that had overheard. They carried tales of long, distinguished service high in the Duodecim chain, of harsh assignments and harsher verdicts as Ars Magi instructor. Apparently, it had gotten to the point where it was a rare candidate that was even offered, let alone accepted.

An honor, to be sure— that kind of prestige was as much a reflection on their expectations of her as any. That she was chosen by her all the more so. A stringent, curated field of examinees was worthless if they [i]all[/i] flunked out, by anyone’s metrics. What did this matching of student and master mean, if not that the latter saw worthy potential in her thus far?

These thoughts, and the warmth of the tea, gave her heart to shake away her momentary trepidation at being read so easily. The latter in particular was vital— for all the stone walls had done to trap the heat of the inhabitants and counteract the seemingly ever-present gale outside, they could do nothing for the ice in the older woman’s gaze.

[color=6ecff6]“You will need the strength and warmth.”[/color] her counterpart explained, bringing a similar cup to her own lips. Her movements were fluid to the exemplary degree— as though her being simply carried itself through the paths without effort. By contrast, Selma was deliberate in the extreme. This was where she’d get to as a veteran? So coordinated, coordination ceased having need? [color=6ecff6]“You have already failed.”[/color]

[i]Hwa—!?[/i]

And the winds shift again on the poor mountain, struggling to keep pace.

It was that same deliberation that held Miss Rosmarie back from sputtering, choking, spewing her tea all over Kazebayashi-sensei in that moment— instead, her eyes contented themselves with three blinks before going wide.

Slowly, she swallowed her tea, the calming jasmine within stifling her oncoming outrage. She wasn’t smart, but she could read people fairly enough in her own right— and for all that the truth was her wanting to rant…

[color=00a99d]“The hell? I just got here, what’s the other shoe about to dr—“[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“I [i]will[/i] explain, Rosmarie.” [/color]

The woman coughed lightly, vibrations less resonant to “clearing her throat out of need” and more “I’m taking the floor, this is me being polite about it.” Nonetheless, Selma settled down— so far, her instincts hadn’t been wrong when it came to this demeanor of hers. She really wanted to get to the exam already, to be honest.

[color=6ecff6]“You have failed at multiple junctures. You have made choices that would get you killed, choices that would endanger your charges on a mission, choices that endanger your peers. Even so you sit here in my abode before me— this isn’t by accident.”[/color]

Okay.

Okay.

She’d really scared her with that one, yeesh…

The glacial blues behind curtains of onyx flickered with something Selma couldn’t quite recognize. Kazebayashi held forth a lone finger.

[color=6ecff6]“The examination period is one week. I intend to make full use of it. My criteria for approving you are personal, and they are specific. To that end, you have failed, and continue to fail, many times. But you will only need to pass [i]once[/i]...”[/color]

Selma loosed the breath she hadn’t realized she’d held. Almost lost on her was the fact that she’d pulled it in with about the depth her body was used to. Right! Here we go, this made sense!

So to say, that the puff of air that was tousling the very end tips of her mossy locks carried more oxygen than normal. The tree smiled— harsh reputation or not, she [i]was[/i] being taken care of. The same had to be true of everything else.

It was like auditioning for a play, a musical, a dance number— they [i]wanted[/i] you to be great. They wanted you to be right, fit for the job, easy to find the right answer within, so why sweat so much? She was in good hands, no?

They weren’t enemies, merely collaborators. Teammates. She and Kazebayashi-sensei wanted to see the same goal reached— to see Selma Rosmarie rise to the occasion, as she had every time before.

For a moment, the woman regarded her as she nursed the tea. Then, in a quiet voice as the winds outside halted,

[color=6ecff6]“Rest a while. You have had a long journey here. I can’t test your strengths if you have none. Your weaknesses would outshine everything else.”[/color]

With all the breathing room in the world, a whole week to log one win, Selma did just that. She’d tangled the latest technology one-on-one and sent Eradicator back to the movies. She’d pitched slabs of concrete the size of her head at Voids from across the gaps between skyscrapers. She’d been fighting the enemies of humanity since before that gem had even touched her abs. She was strong and beautiful, the mighty vanguard of Kheper, the team that’d go down in the history books.

After all that? Whatever this test would be was gonna be a cinch.

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[b]***[/b]
[hr]

Nighttime. 

For a creature that hailed from the outskirts of Hasta’s neon-drenched streets, the cozier outlying neighborhoods holding enough room for agriculture, Selma had long grown accustomed to admiring the light shows of places far away. Those sights weren’t for her, not after a hard day’s work had passed and another’s was on the way.

She never begrudged the distance. It was just the way of things. By the time she might have learned to envy her friends for bathing in the pinks and blues and oranges of 2049th Avenue, living in the vibrant city that Norban Noir flicks always had a poem to wax about, she’d already understood that it’d all be a little much for her sensibilities. Raw night took a softer hue in her eyes— the only one she’d known it to, content to gently blanket where the city strobed, thrummed, and burst out into the surrounding dark.

Along the snow-covered half-mesa, the black dots of two figures let soft hues of their own shimmer forth from the silhouettes they cast on the white. The taller one, rolling her shoulders and craning her neck high, naturally, had hair and eyes of a charged green. Her mouth was agape as she drank in the rebuttal to the old understanding of the girl she’d been, whose world was so very small.

In its true form, night dwarfed the world man had created.

The thin air, the staggering altitude, the remote locale— all until this moment outside her grasp. All outside this moment, hiding a greater scene than any even the beating heart of human culture could forge. No amount of Neon or Noir or New Wave could truly hold their single candles to a massed billion, painted in manic bands and shapes, a feverish canon of myth. Orion here. The mighty Bear there. It was hard to imagine her breath ever not being taken.

It was as though she could reach out and touch the moon from here, hanging low in the sky— high above the clouds of Nox like this, it felt the only logical place left to go.

As if trying to act upon that sensation, carried by the impulse of intrepid daring, her hand reached up to meet the silvery-blue rays of moonlight, catching them upon gauntleted steel.

The smaller one, highlighted by the blues of summer sky, stared in the direction of her counterpart, eyes narrowed just so. There was an uncharacteristic stillness in the air of this moment— as though the jet stream itself was hanging on, waiting with her.

The needle of ice in her hand shifted, her stance lowering at the knees. The trial for tonight had been a simple one, as far as any went. One-on-one combat, student and master. A test of ability, [color=6ecff6]“feeling her strength for herself”[/color], or perhaps [color=6ecff6]“seeing things with her own eyes”[/color]. The goal was first blood for victory.

How classic.

A rush of air from afar fills the void in wind. A burst of motion. Drawing close like a rocket, like loosed arrow, like the many bullets that bounced off her throwback hides and plates in all the trials before now.

Selma’s eyes were still pulled high by the endless splash of starlight, at the opposite end of the arena. The beauty, the drama, the flow of those lights as the night spun them in a world-scale waltz, immeasurably slow to her eyes but known nonetheless… captivating enough that she had to reach out and [i]touch[/i] it. The uplifted hand flexed as if to grasp, even as a surge of wind tossed that alabaster line of her scarf into the painting—

And wrenched down, as the heft of [i]Kleinbruder[/i] knocked aside the tiny, puny stinger that went for her jaw. Her expression had warped— admiration and awe for the world and its beauty replaced by feral, primal laughter. Right for the throat with no warning? [color=00a651]“Frau Kazebayashi, you’re one [i]hell[/i] of an examiner!”[/color] she crowed, emerald eyes gleaming with the stars they’d captured. Mars brought War. Jupiter, Jollity. Mercury, their messenger.

The Earth, the stage of their symphony. What else was there to do but dance, but revel in the sound?

The big girl was, as ever, the taller of the two. She knew well to abuse the fact— especially in close here. At distance, her opponent’s weapon more than equalized the disadvantage of reach brought about by that disparity in frame. A stabbing rapier versus a hewing axe— already, the latter was physically shorter, but the linear thrusting attacks meant that her instructor could blade herself along that same narrow line, drive the force behind that diamond point from a stance that extended her further still. She could dart in and out, harass Selma in between and in the middle of her powerful arcs. Death by a thousand cuts, that. Swing herself into exhaustion if she tried to play the game.

So she didn’t. Her left hand shot forth, reaching for the smaller woman’s outstretched arm before it could retract, before that dart back out far could happen. In this close, there were two options— try and regain distance beneath the shield of her frame’s length… or close in further, invite the brawl, and rough the smaller one up with the physicality. Really, only one of those choices mattered— it didn’t matter how storied the foe, Selma wasn’t here to back down. That would be wilting, and she was here to rise to those lofty expectations of that first thrust. Pull her into a knee to the jaw, wrench her around with an arm drag, make it messy, hold and hit, never let the woman escape…

Kazebayashi was stoic. Unfazed by the parry, by the mania, by the play for a dominating clinch.

[color=6ecff6]“Whimsical and revelrous.”[/color] she noted, almost feather-light against the booming echos of Selma’s foghorn. Where it not for the tinge of ice that brought sharpness to pierce, it would doubtless be swept away.

Selma’s hand reached the distance, closed—

And Kazebayashi was gone. As though Selma had grabbed at naught but smoke on the wind.

The tree blinked, cursed, and tried to spring back, but was slow on the draw in that momentary shock. The sudden slam to the side of her lead shin confirmed the suspicions that had brewed in the moment, that her examiner’s speed was prodigious, but belied the fact that she’d not gone far at all.

Selma’s eyes flitted downward. A wall of wind from behind halted her retreat in her tracks, the weaponized breath of the mountainside

[color=6ecff6]“Carefree, too. Lazy.”[/color]

The words, impossibly, brushed Selma’s ears from behind, carried upon the gust. For a half of a half-second, part of her couldn’t shake the urge to turn and hunt for it—

Erupting from the cloud of powder that the foot sweep had kicked up, a line of azure glass aimed for her cheekbone. Close! She was off-balance, extended weird— Had to catch the edge on her gauntlet!

And falling. [i]Scheisse[/i], alright—

A trio of granite spikes shot up from beneath the snow, an impromptu barrier to cut off the frontal attack long enough, at least, for Selma to catch herself upon the earth, stamp down proper footing and balance again. Kazebayashi wasn’t gonna be hit by that, obviously, but it’d ward her away.

Palm slamming against the stone, the deciduous trainee knocked herself into a whirl lead by Kleinbruder as her feet found [i]terra firma[/i], a bearish swipe that would take out every angle of atta—

[color=6ecff6]“And laziness [i]fails[/i] you.”[/color]

A bar across her windpipe stopped her dead halfway through, and her eyes followed its length down to the downright delicate grip beneath the swirling basket hilt. Kazebayashi’s stern gaze, again, was unchanged. Nor the tone, blunt as it was paradoxically sharp, pointed. 

A deliberate turn of the wrist. A gust of wind, all but indistinguishable from the needles of her climb—

And the rapier was pulled away, its tip faintly tinged with red. 

[color=00a651]…”Okay, pretty metal…”[/color] Selma breathed, half-numb. Had her blood not turned to ice, it would have doubtless lit on fire at the accusation. Baseless as it got, she was nothing if not hardworking— but the results were undeniable. A finger across her throat bore a light sting. By the time she had rubbed it, gingerly, the Nox in her system had sewn the scratch closed beneath new skin. That shallow a cut, placed that precisely… The tall tales failed her.

[color=6ecff6]“Yes. It is made of that.”[/color]

Any other time, and the conifer might have laughed. Any other person, and it might have been a joke.

In those glacial blues, our protagonist found little humor.

[color=6ecff6]“Your file was quite the read, little sapling. You have a knack for being caught up in surprise attacks. Your familiarity with that pressure shows. It will serve you well.”[/color]

Another burst, and the red stain on the blue line is gone. Kazebayashi’s free hand continued to rest upon her hip, turning a duelist’s posture into a pose for lecture.

[color=6ecff6]“This doesn’t mean you should start inviting them. No matter how comfortably you improvise on the spot, no matter the value of thinking on one’s feet, giving away initiative is irresponsible. Voids will take every moment your lollygagging gives them, no matter how strong you are. They will sprint with the moment. You’ll need to catch up with them.”[/color]

The wind resumed on the mountaintop, as a turn on the heel saw the victor stride away, back towards their humble abode. Dignified, measured steps, each softly crunching the snow in a manner Selma heard as gunshots.

On the winds, the last words Kazebayashi shared that night.

[color=6ecff6]“Another failure. Ruminate on this. As I said, you’ve a week. I am not lazy. I will be thorough with you.”[/color]

The tree’s gaze narrowed, the corners of her lips pulling back. She was looking to the sky again, even as her verdant locks were tossed again in those resurgent gusts.

It wasn’t even that it’d be rude to argue. It wasn’t that she couldn’t find the fault because she was dumb…

[color=6ecff6]“When you are ready, return for rest. We start early tomorrow.”[/color]

Sometimes, when you looked at the truth, that was all it was— even when it was a pain to admit.

[color=00a651]“Yes, ma’am.”[/color]

The moon looked distant now.

***

The third day on the mountain was, again, disquieting in its stillness. This high up, winds were supposed to howl and tear at anything higher than your kneecaps. The plateau was no different in that regard, and for much of the second, Selma’s mountaineering exercises had seen her combat the free flow of the intercontinental jet streams, fighting to keep upright in inclement conditions. Balance, Miss Kazebayashi had noted, was the least of the many concerns raised in the planning of this testing period…

[color=6ecff6]“… But a concern nonetheless.”[/color] came the other shoe, dropping blunt as you liked. [color=6ecff6]“It [i]is[/i] important, just as any other attribute.”[/color]

It wasn’t of much chagrin to Selma, at least. A girl who’d walked the fine line between dancer and brawler with legs as long as hers was bound to become sturdy and stable early on, far sooner than she’d truly excelled in either of the pursuits. 

After the first day’s skirmish dumped a bucket of ice water onto her noggin, and the constant dervish had worn down her frame thoroughly by the second, the jolly green giant was getting miffed— for all her confidence, being a leaf in the ever-changing eye of the storm meant fronting every bit of capricious idea behind that insistent, focused composure.

And on the third, the whirlwind that had assailed the mountaintop had shown its whimsy again. Not in the uncharacteristic reprieve it was giving the stone, but…

[color=00a651]“Where’s his carrot nose?”[/color] The girl murmured to herself, ruefully eyeing her reflection in the polished black beads that stared back. Coal from the hearth, pilfered the night before and arranged in an unmistakable pattern to anyone who had lived through a Christmastime—

Three balls of compacted, shaped snowdrift, stacked some meter and a half high in descending order of diameter. Through the edges of the powdery thorax, a pair of pilfered twigs from god knew where— it was obviously farr too high for any vegetation to naturally survive. Upon the topmost orb, a black smile was dotted along the face, composed of the selfsame anthracite, precious in these temperatures. At either side of the sculpture, forming a goofy delta that had to have taken up a solid half-hour of [i]somebody’s[/i] time, a pair of comrades protected his flanks. They were a stalwart formation, made of the most indefinite material.

As far as snowmen went, Selma had to admit that they were pretty cute. Frau Kazebayashi was such a serious person in the three days she’d known her, composed and strict. If it weren’t for the fact that anyone else being up here was roundly impossible, she’d never have believed her examiner to be the culprit. But it couldn’t have been anyone else— Selma, exhausted as she was after any day of work back home, had slept like a log.

[color=6ecff6]“Carrots are for eating. I would not waste one on a nose.”[/color]

Hold on.

Was that a tinge of a [i]blush[/i] on her voice? What, like she didn’t have them and was miffed?

By the time Selma had turned to face the senior Ars Magi, a fullbody whirl that kicked up powder into the still air, all she was greeted with was that same composed mask, as folded arms uncrossed to rest a hand on the hip, and point the other towards the motley group of four. Selma clicked her tongue, knowing the opportunity to latch onto a little levity gone now. Whatever she’d cooked up involving something like snowmen… 

[color=6ecff6]“Enough on that. Rosmarie.”[/color]

She stiffened. [color=00a651][i]Here we go[/i][/color]. 

[color=6ecff6]“Do you believe in your teamwork?”[/color]

[color=00a651]“Absolutely.”[/color] like snapping jaws, Selma’s answer came sharp and quick. Maybe even too much so— but she couldn’t help that she [i]really[/i] didn’t like the angle this was taking. [color=00a651]“Kheper are the best girls I could ever ask for on my side. I wouldn’t trade ‘em for the world.”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“Good, good.”[/color] A sage nod, but no sway. [color=6ecff6]“But not the question. I’m asking about [i]your[/i] teamwork. [i]You[/i] are the examinee here— and your ability to work within a unit will be paramount in the coming years. With all that in mind, then…”[/color]

The stilled breeze began to flow again, as though a small harbinger of things to come. A pressure release valve. The tip of Kazebayashi’s finger drifted in a lazy circle pattern, sweeping over the almost-monochrome quartet as she laid out her terms.

[color=6ecff6]“Those three are the teammates you say are so important— Crystal, Rivka, and Chie. The ones you’ve been with longest, with no disrespect to Aoife. I’m going to be going after them the way I’ve gone after you.”[/color]

Selma’s stance dropped, weight falling onto poised springs as the step outward found the stone beneath the snow—

And jagged spires of mountainside tossed the powder beneath Kazebayashi’s feet into the air, as they smashed into the place she’d promptly disappeared from. Her voice, disembodied as the clouds that ringed the peak began to roll in, kept the explanation going, only colored by a small note of pride.

[color=6ecff6]“Not letting me walk right up to them with my sword, are we? Much better than last time— let’s just start from here, then. Remember that if I take them out…”[/color]

[color=00a651][i]You take ME out.[/i][/color] she finished mentally, grip on the haft of her axe white-knuckled beneath the layers of Parma. She backed in close to them, straining at the ears to pick up a direction from her continual adversary… But nothing came.

Another moment.

Selma held her breath, straining her magnified senses to their utmost limit. Her eyes scanned the field, finding only opaque grey.

Another moment.

Her ears searched to pierce the flowing winds, searching for the shift against the current, the crumple of powder. The only rhythm was her beating heart.

Another minute.

Her skin, now accustomed to the ripping cold, governor of touch and all its subtleties. Hers was uniquely gifted through the soles of her feet, however numbed they may have been to the rigors of temperature, of sharpness— all that painful sensation they had traded. All that response to things one feared, they exchanged for a second sight.

Nothing still. Her grimace was plain now upon her face— the trial having begun in earnest, Selma could only assume that Kazebayashi was utilizing the full extent of her Elementum. That meant that any trace of her movement, potentially, could be dampened by a cushion of air. That the very same boiling cauldron around her, the thick soup of foggy cloud and swirling atmosphere… It could be turned around on her.

Another minute.

If it came to life and death, she was confident that the woman holding a solo-act court over her future could even suck the breath from her lungs.

More.

The winds continued.
[hr]
[b]***[/b]

[i]…
…
…[/i]

[b]***[/b]
[hr]
She began to wonder when the attack was coming in the first place… But she knew it was coming. It had to be.

She’d heard of horror movies doing this. The lack of stimuli letting the mind wander, forge foes out of the shadows and void. In a certain respect, their eternal enemy was a reflection of that tendency— from stagnant, stale, choking death and silence, nightmares spawned.

A swirl in the breeze sent emerald curtains over her field of view, forcing the young trainee to hunker down beneath a forearm. She spun, as though to locate the source of what felt like discrepancy… then, finding nothing, pivoted a 180. It would have made a classic feint, pulling her attention one way to strike from the opposite. She stomped, shaking loose a pebble from the ice that had entombed it.

Her eyes still locked onto the grey haze, Selma bent down to scoop the freed stone into her palm—

Wrenched herself to the side, facing her threefold protectorate—

— and [i]hurled[/i] it into the distance, over their heads.

…

Nothing. [i]Nothing,[/i] save for a tickle of icy cold on her cheeks that felt like a far-off chuckle. She fought not to fume— no tunes to speak of, and yet here she was, dancing like a monkey for her disembodied audience.

[color=00a651][i]Breathe, girl. We came here to prove ourselves. Not to get caught up in the moment.[/i][/color]

Letting her shoulders hang slack as though forcing tension free from her raised hackles, she inhaled deeply, and scanned the field anew.

The four of them were on, by necessity, a pretty flat slice of the mountainside. Normally, that’d make for good visibility, but with the inclement weather obstructing even her supernaturally enhanced vision, Selma had to admit— this essentially left only the bad bits to work with. Namely, the exposure of the position. The last thing you wanted was to be stuck, blinded, and in an open field.

She wouldn’t be getting out of this test with her instructor’s approval by just sitting and waiting. If she relied on reaction at this stage, it’d be the first night all over again. At the very best, stuck playing catch-up through defense.

Proactivity. [i]Proactivity[/i] was what Kazebayashi sought. [i]Initiative.[/i] If she had no target, she couldn’t steal it— but there was something she could do.

Lowering a palm to the snow, digging through to stone, she let the Nox reserves within her flow down from the Armagus at her core, passing bone, muscle, nerve, out through the palms and into the million-year collision of continents beneath.

The face of the mountainside that this yard had been cut against counted as one wall. If she made two more, that’d cut off different lines of attack. Reinforce the flanks to the point where they’d be impossible to get through— or at least obstruct her enemy, force them to make themselves known. A large section of unsteady rubble had kept the winding path above from being remotely safe for a while now, so she could rule that out.

She grabbed nothing, and pulled, as though ripping out a fistful of grass—

And as though carved by graniteworkers, the magic pulled forth the barrier her mind desired, the rumble of the shifting stone resonating and casting, through her seismic sense, the entire peak into uncharacteristically sharp relief. Striking the earth with Kleinbruder in her opposite hand as her eyes continued to scan ahead, she mirrored the landscaping, forming a nine foot high ring around her protectorate, herself the dazzling emerald beset in the front.

[b][color=00a651]“I know you’re out there.”[/color][/b] spoke the mountain, in the grumble of ultrasound.

[i][color=6ecff6]“I might be closer than you think.”[/color][/i] laughed the swirling eddies of the sky in return.

For a moment, their standoff remained in the realm, that of their elementa.

And then, the winds shifted. 

It was kicking off.

Selma heard the change, took [i]Kleinbruder[/i] in hand, and whirled—

Smirking, as the wall of wind slammed into her back. An array of stones burst forth from beneath the snow, smashed loose by the strikes and seismic events moments prior. Welcoming the tailwind, they sailed into the gloom—

And a shape appeared in the fog, darting sideways the instant she felt a Kazebayashi-sized weight touch down to terra firma. Little more than a hazy silhouette, but that was all she needed. Savoring the heft of here axe, the big girl stepped forward—

And [i]dropped[/i] immediately, as a distortion in the fog ahead became a lancing jetstream that would have taken her head off, compressed into a needle-like point. The tip of that rapier of hers, it had to be—

More on the way!

Snarling, Selma tore out of the crouch into a dead sprint, on course to cut the older woman off. Her prodding seemed intent to harry Selma off, at this point— 

But who the [i]hell’d[/i] she think she was dealing with!?

If those were supposed to be her girls in trouble, there was no way in the world where that wasn’t a front row seat to Hell in a Selma! 

She juked, weaved, and refused to let the blur of her instructor out of her sight as she tore around to the left flank, churning through the powder. Nicks and scrapes tore into her nox-infused skin, rivulets of blood nearly freezing in the icy wind. 

Not even a bargain, that little for the sake of her teammates was a steal. 

She drew closer, all but three paces from cutting the advance off entirely— and brought her hands together, eliciting a grind of rock on rock from her side as Kazebayashi’s gambit revealed itself.

The lack of cracking or chipping in the polished face of those granite slabs had proven that there was no way her wind, even concentrated into invisible lances sharp enough to wound Selma, was going to get [i]through[/i] the walls.

So what was a magician of the wind to do… but [i]fly[/i]?

A burst of air, pooled at the silhouette’s feet, blew away the fog that had been so damned vexing, the cloud having nominally passed them by at this juncture already— revealing a rather unruffled, but noticeably focused proctor sailing above the top of the wall, arm and rapier cocked back like a piston.

Her blade flashed, catching the newly-returned light on its azure edge as a lance of air… hit stone again. She blinked. The cloud retreated further.

[color=6ecff6]“A dome?”[/color]

[color=00a651]“You said to start using [i]mine[/i]!”[/color]

Now Selma’s was revealed, as a length of impossibly sturdy white cloth wrapped around the wind elemental’s leg and [i]yanked[/i] downward, sending a sapphire comet down to terra firma as Selma brought her back into range.

The arc was wide, and terminated in a plume of diamond dust near the edge. Tearing through the distance, Selma Express was at full steam, axe raised high.

Her foe, instead, gave ground, handspringing back and firing off another lance of wind in Selma’s path. Perhaps due to an uncharacteristic moment of imbalance, it went high— not like Kazebayashi at all. She pressed forward.

Regaining her footing, the instructor felt her heel’s dig into the frost… and the felt the frost fall away, into the void. Cornered.

She looked up. A wolfish grin on the redwood’s face greeted her gaze, the menacing glint of a heavy axe blade catching light close by.

[color=00a651]“Got you, ma’am.”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“Hm. Was that the goal?”[/color]

[color=00a651]“Gotta take out the threat at the source, right? I’m dumb, but I’m not stand around and get cut up from afar dumb.”[/color]

Kazebayashi’s eyes flickered to something behind Selma.

No.

Wait.

They’d [i]never left[/i]—

And they descended, until a heavy, evil, and doubtlessly bone-and-snowman crushing CRACK filled the once again dead air. The sound traveled through Selma…

[color=6ecff6]“Do I need to tell you?”[/color]

Slowly, the girl’s axe lowered, wilted by the turnaround. She didn’t— at the moment of impact, Selma had felt it happen, and instinctively known.

Numb grimace on her countenance, she looked back over her shoulder. Not at the messy, snow-flavored crime scene beneath the rubble, no… but at the newly cleared eyrie on the face above, where that same damn boulder had convinced her to rule it out of her consideration.

[color=6ecff6]“You betrayed a sound plan and smart principle today. For all that prep, why did you chase me so far out? Why is it that you, constantly, separate, and become separated in turn?”[/color]

The mechs. When she’d gotten herself into a contest of strength with them, and been unable to do anything for a Crystal at terminal velocity.

[color=00a651]“I had to. I had to field the biggest threat. We could win if we just… go heavy hitter for heavy hitter. It’s always worked out.”[/color] 

The words were bitter on her tongue. Hollow. 

[color=6ecff6]“And prove how tough you are? Dummy.”[/color]

As counters went, this was less venomous than usual. An experienced veteran at dealing with people she had failed, Selma reckoned Kazebayashi to have clued into her thoughts already, no matter how petty the phrasing.

[color=6ecff6]“Being bulwark and vanguard both is one thing, Rosmarie. But remember: a shield is [i]useless[/i] for defense if it’s thrown off the arm. If you seek to protect… if Kheper [i]needs you to[/i], you can’t stray.”[/color]

A brush of wind dusted the pair of them off. Through the soles of her feet, Selma felt her instructor return to solid, sure footing, coolly striding away from the edge.

Selma’s gaze held on the void below.

The steps paused. She heard behind her a shift in cloth, the mild clinking of the rapier in its sheath. Only so much clarity came from her magic, as it was now. She did not know what expression had turned over a shoulder to regard her.

She imagined it not to have changed overmuch.

[color=6ecff6]“I know the stories you grew up on. Mine were much the same. The legends you get in our profession don’t change much, but…”[/color]

Selma took a half step, letting the walls in the yard sink back beneath the snow. Her examiner watched them, the window Selma had to meet her gaze gone.

Kazebayashi looked high next, folding her arms. Were it not for her fine control of the air around them, Selma wasn’t sure she would have heard the point. 

[color=6ecff6]“There’s a common thread between them all— they’re told by people who [i]came home alive[/i].”[/color]

Something intangible colored those words. It wasn’t enough to be captured and identified, even by keen ears, but it was enough to give the disappointed conifer pause, as she absorbed the message long understood between them.

Another failure. Ruminate on this.

[hr]
[b]***[/b]
[hr]

The days rolled by.

With them, more time under the exacting microscope, more time with every thread that weaved together to make the Verdant Moss Emerald being pulled apart and checked for quality. As a whole, they seemed more run-of-the mill benchmarking exercises than those major peaks and synthesizers from before— but no less grueling, no less taxing, and no less thorough.

Strength and Endurance work, measured by laps up and down the same path she’d trudged over for what had previously felt like an eternity on the first day… only now with something akin to an Atlas stone, hoisted onto her shoulders. Five laps of that would even have [i]her[/i] feel it.

There too was speed, always suspected to be her weakest link in the athletic chain— big and strong meant more weight to move, the lifestyle of consistent and constant workrate prioritizing its demands over what she needed for explosive bursts of movement. Naturally, it had folded in with agility and reaction times— a big, grand game of keep away, trying to avoid Kazebayashi at full tilt with a well-inked calligraphy brush. It had taken hours to get the stains out afterward.

Of course, technique and leverage of all that athleticism was paramount, too. While there existed an appreciable amount of cross-pollination in the two realms of her ringen and Kazebayashi’s judo (as she was later lectured on being true of all grappling), the finer mechanical details of the latter made notable differences to overall impact— to the point where Selma was amazed to rank her instructor’s graceful [i]uchi mata[/i] as [color=00a99d]“probably worse than that time my brother powerbombed me when we were in middle school”[/color]. Given the relative scales at play in the comparison, it was about as top-shelf as praise could get from the much, much bigger girl, formerly so confident that she could have just muscled her way through if she really, really needed to.

Her propensity for throwing rocks around as a ranged option hadn’t gone unnoticed. A gauntlet of targets (snowmen again, but with fewer names and effort put into them) was set at the end of their proving ground, to be pitched at with projectiles drawn forth and molded into shape by way of her Elementum. Simple at first, but once she’d gotten comfortable at aiming… Variables had emerged.

Targets swinging in a sudden breeze.

Crosswinds to take into account while aiming.

Most vexing, finely-tuned headwinds that came in [i]after[/i] she’d launched her projectiles— any imperfection in her finish would see them falling short. Time and again, she’d beat her head against the wall of delicacy, letting hours of incremental refinement push her forward— of all the exercises, polishing these felt the most like that first hike up the path that had lead her here. Even when she switched to “shaped charges”, the aerodynamic form factor was no silver bullet— instead, the whittling process would begin anew.

Were it not for the fact that the accumulated familiarity made the second go around much smoother, the jolly green giant might have torn her god damned locks out. She half suspected that to have been an unspoken test, too.

And so came the late afternoon of the sixth day, painting the drifts upon their crucible a mellow orange as the sun fell towards dusk. Their morning had been spent splitting a shipment of firewood at the landing zone, most of the early afternoon ferrying it and other supply up the path to camp. This one was less a test, and more necessity— though in a rare spurt of wry humor, her teacher had noted that if either of them [i]did[/i] manage to hunt down a failure on this bit, they’d both be in a hell of a lot of trouble.

[color=00a651]“I’d be [i]pretty mad[/i] if you graded me on basic survival stuff,”[/color] Selma had chuckled, manifesting her trusty log-splitter. 

Kazebayashi offered a shrug that hid shaking shoulders. [color=6ecff6]“Every day’s a test, isn’t it?”[/color] 

[color=00a651]“[i]Gott[/i], you sound like my Dad.”[/color] her eyes made a show of rolling.

It being near on a week now, Selma knew she’d have no trouble in getting things organized in the interior of the humble abode she’d been guesting at— not like it was terribly large to begin with. Larder, hearth, a small library next to the futons, it was all pretty spartan. Hard to get confused by. When Kazebayashi had gone and taken the vegetables and meat up first, leaving her the rice bags and wood, she’d thusly paid little heed, still paring down the last few spears into good kindling and whistling a short tune.

Now, as she’d begun to suspect when bundling everything together, it was indeed clear that was just pretense.

The big girl folded her arms at the scene before her, and wondered how, even with the time Kazebayashi had squirreled away, the woman had gotten all this set up beneath her nose. 

A procession of carved stone tiles across the breadth of the potrero, all polished to a reflective enough sheen to catch the light as it begun to wane. The arrangement was one of classically descending order from this perspective, beginning with a slab the size of Selma’s whole torso and gradually reducing down to that of her palm, edging upon the realm of looking like [i]shogi[/i] pieces. All told, there were roughly fifty of them. Whatever their purpose, this setup had taken a good bit of care.

Seriously, what was the magic trick she’d pulled to hide it from someone who could sense vibrations at their feet? They’d both spent so much time transformed together that it seemed roundly impossible. More accurately, Selma should have had no excuse to miss it.

[color=00a651][i]Which is why, if I were a betting girl, that’s what she’s testing me on today.[/i][/color]

Her eyes slid over to her esteemed counterpart, perched again atop the roof of her abode and clearing her throat. Given that her voice carried on the winds if she choose, Selma wondered if it was really necessary for the woman to project— but listened regardless.

[color=6ecff6]“Alright. You’re nearing the end of the examination period, as I’m sure you’re aware, and this will most likely be your final exercise, Rosmarie. If you expected another spar with me, I’ll have to disappoint you.”[/color]

Selma took the allowance where she got it after the past five days, and was disappointed for a moment.

[color=6ecff6]“The goal of this period has been to highlight your strengths and weaknesses by putting them through equal rigor. I’ve been grading you on how well you can leverage all the lessons you’ve learned ever since you were accepted by our program— including your very beginnings. Those, I’d argue, are more important than any others. They were foundational to your skillset and experience.”[/color]

The tree swayed with the breeze, cocking her head forward. This was an awful long lead-in compared to the last dozen or so… Was it signifying crunch time, or something else? Either way, important stuff.

[color=6ecff6]“You remember the night of your journey to the Academy, yes?”[/color]

[color=00a651]“Don’t think I could ever forget, ma’am.”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“I would hope not— it’s full of all the lessons I want to teach.”[/color]

Selma blinked. Kazebayashi’s presence loomed over her, looking down the nose as she regarded her student with an unbroken gaze.

[color=6ecff6]“Do you know what your most valuable ability was, in those first moments?”[/color]

On Sunday morning, she would have smirked and answered blithely with [color=00a651]“Belly-to-back suplex”.[/color] It was what had changed the direction of the encounter right in front of her, it was what she’d done with the most impact by far.

Now, though, after carefully being picked apart and shown the details of where she had truly made her craft work…

[color=00a651]“Communication, right? Teamwork and keeping track of Chie, Captain Wei…”[/color]

The wind sighed. [color=6ecff6]“...Not quite. I’m glad you’re cognizant of the importance that rapport between yourself and Miss Sokolov had, but I mean more fundamental… Let me rephrase.”

“The most valuable thing [i]you[/i] brought to the table.”[/color]

…Sssss[i]suplex?[/i]

[color=6ecff6]“This skill was the root of that communication, in actuality. That which fostered it, gave you something useful to communicate.”[/color]

Topic of communi… Yep, that’d be it. Her instincts were right.

[color=00a651]“Ah.”[/color] Selma tapped her foot, fifty echoes of solid rock behind her. [color=00a651]“I get it now, you mean the tremorsense. That’s the focus?”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“Yes, it is.”[/color] as usual, her finger was jutting out again, over Selma’s left shoulder and sweeping across the field. [color=6ecff6]“You’ve been diligent with using that sixth sense reactively through our time together, reading my movement when I can’t be seen. That's praiseworthy. However, you did it differently in that encounter, as I’m told— you used that sensitivity as a bat would echolocation, no?”[/color]

The big girl nodded, curious as to where this was going to go now. They both knew she could feel those already… though if she’d not just checked a moment ago, she just might have believed that this inevitable twist.

[color=6ecff6]“I’m going to have you develop that further— reading the resonance of the world around you is a gateway to the mind’s eye the likes of which few can hope to grasp. It will be invaluable if you can use it with intent, as you did prior. To let it reside in the realm of the ancillary would be wasteful.”[/color]

[color=00a651]“I agree, but… what’s the game here, then? I can read their size and position already with just by stomping. Like this.”[/color]

She demonstrated. Still 50.

[color=6ecff6]“'Read', you said? Pick up that tile behind you.”[/color]

Selma obliged, ready to get to the bottom of the little mystery. She didn’t care for getting too roundabout with matters like this, and much preferred a task be plainly put to her ears. No matter the consistent effort made by both parties for her to value using the ol’ noggin a little more when she could, the girl was a hard-nosed worker. That preference was never going to leave. She flipped it over…

And everything clicked into place, as she beheld a pair of words engraved upon the stone in precise, almost artful lines, crevasses in the otherwise unmarred face. The shogi comparison was more apt than she’d guessed.

[color=6ecff6]“Upon the underside of each of these stones is an engraving in this manner, little tree. Together, they form a favored saying of mine. For your sake, this tile and the knowledge that they are arranged by size, not necessarily order; those will be your only hints from me. Everything else is up to you, and your ability to focus on the specific resonances that each carving brings. They will ring differently, of that I can assure you.”[/color]

The instructor turned her head to the west, glaring into the oncoming dusk in a moment of thought. Selma spent the time placing the tile, her Rosetta Stone, face down where she had hoisted it. The impression it had made, and the warmth it had gained from basking in the afternoon she’d spent unaware of its existence, had done her a solid here— most of that seemingly omnipresent layer of rime had melted away beneath. Things would have been fuzzy if it hadn’t.

[color=6ecff6]“Dawn.”[/color]

[color=00a651]“Ma’am?”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“You have until dawn to decipher it with your abilities.”[/color]

She nodded, foot beginning to tap against the earth. Just to start, she’d feel out the etchings she knew were there, looking to get the basic sensation down…

[color=00a651]“What if I peek, ma’am?”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“I’ll still be watching for a while yet. I’d have to commend you for doing so beneath my notice—”[/color]

But those deep sapphires saw through her, every time. How annoying.

[color=6ecff6]“But you wouldn’t, would you? You’d hate to take the easy path. You hate to lie.”[/color]

Selma’s response to that was to exhale, and tap her next ping a little firmer. Just to try and find greater fidelity with greater volume, of course— more amplitude meant more range for the different frequencies to warble and reveal themselves. Probably.

...

...

Truth be told, this was a damn sight removed from anything she’d done with the ability before— even the example she’d been directed to during the subway attack was nothing close to this intensive. That, really, was just looking for things that weren't rubble— this was detail work, the bane of any bruiser. On some level, she had to make an allowance to admit that as something she was— were she not, she wouldn’t have tried to go kick for kick with a four-story mech. She wouldn’t have her first thought be “suplex” when grilled about her inherent skillset.

But that was all the more reason she needed to throw her all at the problem. For a while now, the many lectures she’d received from the woman that had taken a seat on the edge of the roof above were spinning over and over on the inside of her head, the detailings of the many limitations she had picked out of the young conifer whenever she’d let herself remain in that comfortable realm of “brawler” and little else. 

If she wanted the glory, that was fine. If she wanted to continue crushing her demonic foes, that was good motivation. If she wanted to enter the halls of history… she had best do it the right way.

She needed to be all-terrain. Not just the one thing she’d taken a shine to. The core of that would be adaptability, the core of adaptability would be, of course, to know the field.

Maybe twelve, maybe fourteen hours to figure out how to make that happen.

This would be tough… but that would be what made it worth it, right?

She dropped to her haunches and focused further, controlling her breathing as she began to shut all other noise out. 

Her finger tapped against her arm.

Her kicking foot, restless and uncomfortable with not being set to some kind of work.

Her heartbeat.

These were all leaking into the earth below. She could feel that. Anyone could, thinking about it— how many times as a little girl had she felt her own heart thudding into the cushion of her bed?

The theory was sound— a fact of nature, really. Architects needed to account for this. When her head had been spiked into the earth after the Leg Press from Hell, she could discern the creaking of old, worn foundations from the impacts around them, from the shifts in rubble. Even, if she thought about it, the better preserved buildings shifted differently too.

This was definitely possible.  The test lied in whether or not she could tune it even finer than that under normal conditions… Getting nailed into a surround sound headset was out of the question. She needed to figure it out from above.

So she listened.

She shut more out. The howling winds that dashed against the mountainside faded into undertone. The light from the sinking sun was shut out beneath closed eyelids. Errant concerns and worry of inability to complete the trial, inability to secure a passing mark, fell to the wayside. She had a job to do.

She focused.

She focused.

She focused, clicking her tongue within a tight jaw and feeling it run through the bones of her face. Shutting everything out. Feeling for the lines she knew existed there, in front of her. In her mind’s eye, they were almost showing. The shape of the stone was clear, she could register which face was which… she could feel the discrepancy. She could feel that the ground-facing plane had something [i]off[/i], that material was [i]missing.[/i]

She just needed to find the resonance that told her its shape. Find the detail that drew the lines in her head… then she could begin.

The evening dragged on into night.

She continued to toil, sending pulse after pulse into the earth below. The time that had passed was lost to her— only vaguely was she aware of the dark overhead by way of the change in the temperature gradient of her skin.

Progress was slow.

At times, she would slam her palm into the earth, and note that it had reached further than before. Others, she would snap her fingers in the air, and feel how the echoes rang, dimly, subtly, through the stone that surrounded her.

She continued.

Night continued to pass.

Slowly, more revealed itself. Her process was refining. Her strength was growing. Her mind’s eye opened further.

She continued.

[hr]
[b]***[/b]

[i]…

…

…[/i]

[b]***[/b]
[hr]

She stood high, watching the stars. With her enhanced vision, the first tendrils of blue had begun to creep forth from the east. 

She closed her eyes, a sabaton charged with Nox colliding with the earth. Behind her, a scrambled mess of single or paired letters had been given order. Writ into stone, it made a hell of a lot of sense why she’d been given this one.

She continued to look up, though, eyes tracing a path that wound in a spiral towards the summit of the mountain she had called her proving grounds, where Earth and Sky made their eternal exchange of force. 

The boulder that had fallen onto her snow-made comrades had been cleared ages ago.

She took a deep breath, looking back to the house, to the stones, to the filaments of dawn creeping from below…

And began to climb the steps, towards the revelation that waited for her.

[hr]
[b]***[/b]
[hr]

I awake early, as I have done for a decade. On the mountaintop, there is no better alarm clock than the warming rays of the Sun. I’ve long held this belief. My joints are stiff in this matter, my muscles aching— but at least, I will have a little rest soon enough. Even though I’m still very much in fighting shape… I have days where the first person I need to be strict with is me, let alone that Sequoia-chan I took on this semester.

Home is a small place, and as I float to my cozy little washroom I’m a touch concerned— my charge is usually impossible not to hear, in some respect. Today is a quiet morning. It [i]shouldn’t[/i] be— if for no other reason than her snoring reminding me what semi-trucks sound like when they downshift. Idiot girl, what is she getting up to?

A splash of cold water, filtered snowmelt, wakes me fully, and for a moment I stare into the eyes of the woman in the mirror.

[color=6ecff6]I am Kazebayashi Fumiko.[/color] At no point have I been anything more. I have had names attached to me by others, true— [i]nom de guerre[/i] make for good propaganda, after all. The sanctum cities have a vested interest in lionizing their protectors. I get it. The Jetstream Witch, the Diamond Hurricane, The Ghost of Ganryujima, all the classics the tabloids attach to a career they deem distinguished. I’ve gotten my share of those. So have my peers. Something invoking your home (Japan), something invoking your Elementum (Wind), something invoking your Armagus (Surging Cyclone Diamond, [i]yoroshiku[/i]). Old hat, but it gets the job done if you shoot down the TV Deal.

At least, “Proctor from Hell” is a funny one, if a little much. I’ll get into that soon.

Really, it’s a rare day where I get to hear the names I treasure.

[color=0072bc]Fumi-chan.[/color]

[color=a2d39c]FumiFumi.[/color]

[color=8882be]Kaz.[/color]

A breath escapes me, in a manner that tells me I’ve held it. The woman in the glass looks pretty good for her age, if you listen to those that hardly know her. The mountain air does feel healthier than Calcaria ever did. Perks of the hermetic lifestyle.

But those in the know see things differently. She can’t lie to me. I can’t lie to her. So, stop looking so haggard. You’ve an example to set here, wherever that kid is.

Moving quickly, I get myself together into presentable, official looking shape again, and begin to brew a couple mugs of tea. My mind’s long used to every step, and my underling hasn’t gone and misplaced my restocking of [i]hojicha[/i] on me— my mind’s free to think things over, as the body sets to work.

That underling, six feet tall and every inch of it talented. Selma Rosmarie, my one part understudy, one part guest, and one part victim for the past week.

I’ve had a lot of kids come up this mountain over time, ever since I decided to start giving back to the system that had brought me up. But I’m not certain any of them have been quite this damn [i]big[/i]. As a candidate for a future career that went in the vein of mine, earning all those accolades and titles and whatnot, she looked a frontrunner in every regard.

Strong as an ox went without saying. The girl’s the perfect storm for raw horsepower, hailing from a family of fellow giants and growing into a life that demanded she leverage every ounce of that potential strength from the time she could walk until now. If I hadn’t seen that much coming, I’d have to rip the gem out from my navel and throw myself off the cliffside to get any kind of dignity back.

Her love of dance was an almost unheralded supplement to it, granting her a coordination and agility, if not outright speed, that belied her long frame. Oftentimes, growth spurts like the one she must have undergone imprinted gangly, awkward movement patterns into the kid’s body, but the balancing test proved her capable of being almost catlike, the judo lesson a testament to her flexibility in technique. Being able to learn the physical skills so readily would make any developmental program jump for joy.

She was one of those Hard Workers— not people who [i]could[/i] work hard, in as much as those that prided themselves on their ability to. Not once had she balked at my tasks, be they inane or entirely comprehensive, even in the face of the mounting frustration I could sense from her. It was little wonder why her reviews coming into this were practically glowing. Even I’m not immune to being impressed: the exercise of the third day showcased that raw ability very well, even in some of her weaker phases.

That was why I had picked her to come here.

Often, too often, there are Ars Magi who are gifted in many of the ways she is. They swim through the oncoming current of the program like sharks, as though made for it by destiny. They’re young, but well aware of their own talent. There’s nothing young people are better at than measuring themselves against their peers.

There is nothing worse for a prodigy. Nothing will ruin them faster than their own explosion of ability, than letting that unrefined talent run wild. They think they’re invincible.

We aren’t. We never were.

I look down at the empty cup in my hands, and over to the full one I had set aside.

Still quiet. My journey from the washroom to the kitchenette spans the length of the house, so I know for a fact there’s nowhere in here the girl could have crammed herself where I wouldn’t have seen— not at her size.

In that case, she’s still out there, pumping ultrasound into the earth. It’s my duty to put an end to it— her dedication was always admirable, but she would benefit from the lesson this would instill.

I get asked pretty regularly whether or not my methods are too stringent, my judgement too arbitrary, or my lessons too cruel. If, beneath the window dressing of those terms and lead-ins, I’m not holding back promising students out of some sense of perfectionism, an adherence to an ideal rather than practical benchmarks for their relative experience. I can see why— I’m usually saddling myself with wide-eyed first years, still very much growing into themselves as empowered warriors, let alone Ars Magi.

A blow to motivation and self-perception can indeed severely inhibit their growth, yes… But we’re humanity’s front lines for defense against existential enemies. There’s no room for kids who can’t handle someone who tells them they aren’t ready—

[color=6ecff6]“Rosmarie?”[/color]

I open the door to a field that isn’t quite empty. There’s no splotch of green in sight, but the stones are still in their place.

—Because if they go into missions believing themselves invincible, tragedy is only a matter of time.

My eyes flicker across the stretch of my crucible yard, narrowed and alert. I should have seen it coming, with how self-reliant she forces herself to be!

There’s little to go off of. Having let the winds flow unabated, I hadn’t seen a need for allowing any tracks to be preserved— it’d be useless for trying to determine whether or not that hypothetical cheating ploy had actually gone down. I still don’t think she would, but dammit, of all the times to get careless! After all the work I’d done, trying to beat overconfidence out of [i]her![/i]!

I force my nerves to calm with a deep, full breath. There really wasn’t many places she could have gone, and even if she had run out of Nox to burn with her Armagus, she had survived the majority of the climb from the landing zone here just off the back of being bundled up.

She wasn’t going to freeze to death. Not unless something had gone majorly, majorly wrong.

I feel the corners of my mouth pulling back into a grimace regardless as I crane my head around the corner of my abode. It’s a cold comfort, knowing she ought to have been alive— I’m still her teacher. She’s still my responsibility. I’d told her I was always watching, sure… but to hell with my [i]word.[/i]

A rumble from above draws my eyes towards the summit, where winds have without rest torn at the rock that touched the heavens. There is something up there… but not once had I directed her that way.

That was [color=6ecff6]my cross to bear[/color].

And yet, I had cleared the boulder I’d set there to cut that path off from any would-be snooping dogs in that teamwork assessment— And for days, I had left it, focusing on my task. On being the thorough teacher I aspire towards. She had respected it without thinking… but I had given her the option.

Do the winds always know why they change?

From atop the roof, guided by the wind at my feet, I can make out the Landing Area on a clear day. Any day is clear if I will it to be.

I find it barren, save for a few twigs that numbskull had dropped.

Another thump from above, traveling up through my feet as it shakes a few sprinkles of powder free from the ledge that overlooks mine.

Process of elimination meant that she had to be up there, and my scowl softens into a frown. This stunt is still stressful, and I’m mad at this, but…

A sigh again, as my shoulders slack. Face the music, FumiFumi. She’s seen it.

As I still the winds that would inhibit my flight, my grip clenches around the mug in my hand, now lukewarm in the alpine air of morning.

I had earmarked Selma Rosmarie for the examination under my watch due to her talents, because in reading over them I’d gained a hunch. As I narrowed the pool of my candidates, I dug a little deeper into the dossiers given to me— and as I tacked on each of my usual criteria, I found something she’d done to fit the bill.

From the stunts she pulled in her first transformation test, to the footage of her exercise against the mechanized cavalry, to even her encounter under Captain Wei’s escort, her valor had proven itself time and again…

But scratching that surface showed me a girl who believed herself immortal. Someone who had known victory, after victory, after gutsy, impressionable victory— and gotten away with being more and more ridiculous each time.

It rocked. I felt invincible, unstoppable. Nothing in the world could beat me.

Those were the words she herself had used, and I’ve seen it, time and again, over the course of this week. For all her savvy when she uses her brain, there’s an arrogance that comes with it— a conceit that needs addressing. It showed in her spar with me, in her sudden decisions to singularly attack the biggest and scariest threat that faced them, in the way she was comfortably allowing herself to pigeonhole into being a bulky melee berserker. None of these things on their own were wrong, per se… but they were bad signs, signs that I needed to ensure that she shake off the idea that she can handle [i]everything[/i] now…

I crest the summit.

[color=00a651]“‘The purpose of today’s training is to defeat yesterday’s understanding’.”[/color] She begins, reciting the answer I’d hoped I would wake to hear.

Before me, a tall and strong girl, wrapped in steel, leather, and furs that belied all the prodigious protection a well-developed Parma could provide. She’s not facing me, though, but I can read her tone well enough. She’s never this quiet on her own. Never solemn. She’s already put the pieces together. She rubs a gauntleted hand upon the oblong structure of stone before her, and I watch its edges sharpen.

The winds had really given this cenotaph a beating over the years.

[color=00a651]“Musashi, right? My brother was a fan.”[/color]

It hasn't looked so polished in a long time. There’s a lump in my throat I’m forced to swallow, as my student now turns to face me. Her eyes are a little baggy, and I suspect she powered right through to dawn, but the eyes themselves betray far less fatigue. Instead, they search me. The answer’s as far from her mind as it is mine.

[color=00a651]“Kazebayashi-sensei… the names on here,”[/color] she begins, glancing back for a moment before pinning me anew.

[color=f7941d]Iseult Brighton.[/color]

[color=0072bc]Asahisa Rindou.[/color]

[color=8882be]Siduri Fakhreddini.[/color]

[color=a2d39c]Ophelia Monte-Blanc,[/color] whose gaze was a warm meadow. You remind me so much of her sometimes.

[color=00a651]“They’re your old team.”[/color] 

It isn’t a question.

[color=6ecff6]“They were, yes.”[/color]

And mine’s far from an answer. It’s painful to look upon these names, even now. Looking at what time and wind, which I should have so much governance over, have worn them to. The engraved letters are slowly, carefully, being carved anew with her Elementum. The detail is exacting.

I shift my gaze to her, and speak. I have to know how we got here.

[color=6ecff6]“I never told you this was up here. The past three never knew of it.”[/color]

[color=00a651]“Hm?”[/color] she blinks, glancing back to the stone to check her work. [color=00a651]“You kind of did with the last exercise, if I’ll be honest. Forcing me to get down to that detail, and read the small carvings… yeah, it did open my mind’s eye. I felt these up here, too. When I’d put the quote together, it felt natural… Like you were leading me here.”[/color]

…Maybe I was. Maybe I was leading me.

[color=6ecff6]“Well,”[/color] I breathe. [color=6ecff6]“Here you’ve been led. What do you make of it?”[/color]

[color=00a651]“It’s a memorial.”[/color] her answer is blunt as her arms fold, satisfied with her restoration. A small smile graces her face. Wistful. It mirrors mine as the memories flood back to me. [color=00a651]“I don’t want to pry into what happened, but I know you were looking this way when you told me to make sure my girls come back alive.”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“[i]You[/i] have to come back alive, too. If you get yourself somewhere where you can’t… You might pull more people in than you thought.”[/color]

…

A silence passes between us. In the distant eddies of the atmosphere, I hear rotaries spinning, as her ride home to Palmyra makes its approach. Neither of us move for a while.

She’s shrewder than she lets on. Watching her face, I can tell those emerald eyes see straight through me. How annoying.

[color=00a651]“That’s the lesson you wanted me to learn, before it was too late.”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“Well,”[/color] I begin, turning out to pick out the glint of the chopper from the pale morning blue. [color=6ecff6]“I do also have a job to do as your ‘Proctor from Hell’. Everything else still counts.”[/color]

[color=00a651]“What a [i]dumb[/i] name.”[/color] Selma breathes with unexpected frustration, folding her arms. [color=00a651]“Seriously.”[/color]

I raise a brow. Wasn’t this the girl who had just been telling me she was [color=00a651]“about to rip her god damned hair out”[/color] yesterday?

[color=00a651]“A proctor from Hell wouldn’t take me into her home and feed me. Wouldn’t care so much whether or not I got something right. Wouldn’t give me so many chances to get through getting things wrong.”[/color]

[color=6ecff6]“Maybe I enjoy tormenting you?”[/color] I offer.

[color=00a651]“Maybe. But that’s fine. I have four brothers and three sisters. I’m used to a little torment,”[/color]

When she turns, it’s towards the cenotaph again. She isn’t admiring her work… I see the names on her tongue, in an unspoken recital.

[color=00a651]“And you put me through it for [i]their[/i] sake. So that I don’t end up on one of these… or end up carving one.”[/color]

She turns to seek the chopper, same as me. The solemnity still gives her face serious lines…

[color=00a651]“Compared to that, the rest of it’s a breeze.”[/color]

But a smile worms its way from beneath.

Maybe they saw in her what I needed to see, when that rock fell.

[color=00a651]“So thank you, Ma’am. For bringing me back to earth.”[/color]

It’s my turn to smirk, now.

[color=6ecff6]“If you want to thank me, let me see Kheper [i]soar[/i], little sapling. Avoid my mistakes. Pass my heights. And remember, I am—”[/color]

[color=00a651]“[i]Always[/i] watching.”[/color] she finishes.

Mirth rolls down the mountainside, out on the winds. The hovercraft's drawing close now, kicking up powder at the LZ. She should get going— I've done all I ever could. The rest will be her.

[color=6ecff6]“I expect big things.”[/color]