The Villain's Sword Is Sharp

"Ha... ha... ha..."

Isaac sat on the floor breathing heavily. He'd beaten the reflection soldier and a passage had opened up in front of him again, but he rested for a bit. He gave himself about half an hour, then headed down the path which seemed to curve towards the right.

As he reached the end of the passage, Isaac saw 7 people sitting and talking next to a closed double-door. Isaac saw Erik and Johan among them and Johan told him they were waiting for everybody to arrive before they opened the doors.

4 people arrived shortly after Isaac, but nobody else came even after they waited long time. Out of the 19 people who entered the passages, only 12 had exited. That meant the other 7 were either dead or too injured and/or slow to be of use to the group. Therefore, everybody decided they had waited long enough and decided to open the doors.

They all entered the circular room which was empty other than an altar in the middle of it. The altar had 5 coloured gems and 2 paragraphs of writing on it, but that wasn't what caught everybody's attention: they were drawn to the elaborate engravings around the room.

The engravings depicted a dying forest. There were bushes and trees without leaves and ravens flying through the cloudy sky or perching on one of the trees' few branches.

A clanking sound from behind stopped Isaac admiring the engravings any longer. The doors behind him had slammed shut – probably on a mechanical timer to shut a short while after opening. Even Erik couldn't get them to budge.

Suddenly, Isaac felt water pouring onto his head. Streams of water were flowing in through gaps in the ceiling and beginning to flood the room. However, nobody panicked. They all stayed calm and remembered that this was a test, so they looked for clues on how to pass it.

Isaac's first thought was to inspect the engravings for a clue. However, Johan had gone over to the altar instead.

"'Walk on the living, they don't even mumble. Walk on the dead, they mutter and grumble.' That's the first paragraph, it's a riddle. The second paragraph is all jumbled up – it's probably in some kind of code."

Everyone contemplated the riddle, but Johan came up with the answer after about a minute,

"It's leaves! Look for leaves in the engravings!"

While most people started searching randomly, Isaac deliberately looked at low areas on the engravings. Since the sect was obviously making things as difficult as possible for them, the leaves might be hidden in a spot that the water would quickly cover.

Sure enough, Isaac spotted a single leaf just below the current waterline in the room. He could also see 2 small circles of letters engraved beneath the leaf.

The outer circle was the Unified Terranese Alphabet, with every letter in order. The inner ring had every letter of the alphabet but in a seemingly random order.

"I've found the key to the code! Somebody read the first word of it!"

Johan waded through the shin-high water to get to the altar. He read a mix of jumbled letters and Isaac looked at the 2 wheels of letters. He found the first letter in the outer ring, then checked which letter it corresponded to in the inner ring. He did the same for the other letters and read out a complete word,

"Twist"

Johan read the next jumbled word and Isaac went to decipher it. The others silently remembered the words Isaac read out as he smoothly decoded the paragraph.

However, the room was flooding at an alarming rate. The water was soon shoulder height, meaning Isaac had to dive down to read the circles of letters.

The higher the water got, the deeper Isaac had to dive and the more out of breath he became. Now he was reading each word in-between gasps of air. That was when Erik stopped him.

"You're inefficient. I'll do it."

Isaac knew it was true so he didn't argue. He wasn't even displeased. He simply swam to the side of the room and held a gap between the bricks in the wall so he didn't have to tread water. Then he asked one of the others,

"What does it say so far?"

"Twist the altar table to open the door into the next chamber"

Isaac nodded in thanks before looking back at Erik. However, Erik wasn't there – he had already dived underwater like an eel.

Erik was undeniable quicker than Isaac and the code was deciphered in no time at all. The complete sentence read, 'Twist the altar table to open the door into the next chamber, then remain close to the door and prepare for the danger on the other side.'

When everybody was ready, Johan dove down one final time to twist the circular altar. When he couldn't twist it any further, there was thudding sound from within the wall, followed by the grinding of gears.

Everyone got closer to the source of the sound, trying to stay close to where the door would appear. Everyone except Erik, that was.

After decrypting the code, he had remained at the back of the group. That was why nobody noticed him dive back down towards the altar.

With even more gear-grinding, a part of the wall was being lowered into the floor to form a doorway. Water rushed over the top of the wall as it got lower, creating a strong current. As this was happening, Erik twisted the altar back to its original position.

A barrier of milky white light surrounded him and everybody finally noticed what he was doing. However, it was too late. They were swept away by the current of water and carried into the next chamber.

Meanwhile, Erik was protected by the white barrier and stayed next to the altar. He had lied about the code as he was deciphering it, keeping the real message to himself and giving a fake one to everybody else.

Now he was left alone in the room as its front wall completely disappeared into the floor, giving him a full view of the next chamber.

It was huge: wide, very tall and half a kilometre long. Several thick stone pillars ran from the ceiling to the floor. At least, Erik assumed they ran all the way to the floor. The chamber was actually filled with unfathomably deep water, which the other 11 had all been swept into.

Fortunately they had all been taught to swim at a young age, since Northern Tundra was a continent of ice, snow and water.

At the end of the chamber was a platform – the only piece of dry land in sight – and a doorway with light streaming through it. All that stood between them and the end of the trial was a large dark blue lump right in front of the platform.

As Erik was looking at it, the lump began to move. At first it raised its head to see what the commotion was. Then it slowly got up, standing on the surface of the water with its 4 hooves.

It was a horse-like beast with dark green eyes and a mane of cyan hair which ran all the way down its back and right into its long tail, which flicked and swayed with a mind of its own. Along the top of its head was a crest of menacing coral spikes and its skin was thick, leathery and a deep-sea blue.

From the way it walked on water effortlessly, Erik surmised that this was a Kelpie, a veritable Rank 2 wild beast. He absolutely didn't envy those trapped in the pool with it.