Hunter's Beginning (Veller) (9 page)

Kile reached for the box, and as she did a rolled up parchment tied with a green cord suddenly appeared on top of it, just under her outstretched hand. There was a time when this would have startled her, but now it was just getting old, fast. She was willing to play along for now, as she carefully picked up the parchment. She removed the green cord and unrolled it on the table as she picked up a piece of toast to nibble on. The lettering on it was written in a spidery hand, a bit on the shaky side, probably one of the older mystics, but still easy enough to read.

“As a Hunter, one of your tasks will be the handling and delivery of vital information. This box is you last test. It is paramount that it reaches its final destination on time, in one piece and unopened. Should it be lost upon your journey you will fail, should it be damaged upon your journey, you will fail, should it be opened upon your journey, you will fail. Should your time run out, and you are unable to complete your journey for whatever reason, you will fail. Once you take the box, your journey will begin and your path will be made clear.”

It
seemed like a strange test as she looked over the parchment again. There was no indication of who she was supposed to deliver the box to, or how long she had to deliver it, or for that matter, how she was even supposed to get there. Currently there was only one door leading out of her room, and that opened back out into the hallway which leads to the classroom. Of course that was yesterday. There was no telling where it would lead to today.

“So, the last test is a simple delivery.” She said, looking at the box. “Why do I have a feeling that this is going to be far from simple?”

She finished off her piece of toast and reached for the box but hesitated. The note had clearly said that once the box was taken, the journey would begin. So, until she actually touched the box she didn’t actually take it, therefore she was still on free time. It might be a good idea at this point to be a little bit more prepared. She scanned the table once again for anything that might come in handy. It was better than going with nothing at all.

The cloth napkin would serve a
decent pouch as she unfolded it and then spread it out on the floor. She looked over the contents of the table once again.

Before you start any journey, you should always get your supplies in order. She took a few rolls, some cheese and an apple and placed the
m on the napkin, she may not be very hungry now, but there was no telling how long this test was going to take. She was just about to tie the napkin up when she grabbed the knife and fork and slipped those into her makeshift pouch as well.

“Never know what you might need in this place.” She said as
she wrapped it up and tied it off with the green cord from the parchment. She then tied her new pouch onto her belt with one of the leather straps she wore to keep her hair back. Once she was sure that the pouch wouldn’t come loose, she was ready to go.

Kile was feeling a bit better as she got to her feet, the pain and the nausea brought on by the strange dreams were all but gone, and she even risked sampling one of the smaller pastries before finally lifting the small ebony box off the table.

She didn’t know what to expect as she held the ebony box out before her like some mystic artifact, waiting for it to do whatever it was it was suppose to do, but the box did nothing. She had expected it to whisk her away to some far off road with a signpost that read “you are here” or some such nonsense, when nothing happened she was a little disappointed.

“Where’s my path you stupid box?” She asked, as she shook it, but the box said nothing.

Fine, she would have to do this the hard way. She tried the door, but it was locked. No surprise there she thought as she looked around the room. What she hadn’t tried was the second door on the other side of the room, the one that wasn’t there a moment ago.

She hated the mystic arts.

“You couldn’t have made a noise of something to let me know about the other door?” She asked the box, but the box still remained silent. This was going to be a long test.

The second door was the same as the first, except this one wasn’t locked, and it opened up into a long dimly lit corridor. She stood
on the threshold for a moment staring out into the gloom. According to the parchment she only had a certain amount of time to complete the deliver, and therefore complete the test. It wouldn’t look good if she failed right from the start. This was an obvious trap. She just wasn’t sure how it was a trap.

Kile held the box tightly in her hands and started to walk very slowly down the corridor. The light appeared to hover around her as it had no visible source and where she had come from was now just as gloomy as where she was going. She made it a point to observe everything since she wasn’t really sure what she was looking for. She had never seen a trap before, let alone experience one, so she didn’t know what tell tale signs she should expect. Unfortunately the only way she would know exactly what she was looking for was if she
actually sets one off, and that wasn’t really an option she wanted to explore.

One thing that did catch her eye was the artwork on the walls. It was a large mural of the streets of Littenbeck that spanned both sides of the corridor. It wasn’t so much the subject matter, or the intricacy of the detail, it was just the fact that it was there. Nowhere, since she had entered the tower, had she seen any artwork on any wall. The place was completely void of any kind of personal touch. So the big question was, why here and why now?

She began to examine the pictures more closely as she walked. It could be that they were here to tell her something, or they could be here just to waste her time. They would be an interesting distraction, and it all appeared innocent enough. The farther she walked the larger and more detailed the images became. It started off with a wide view of the city proper, showing the fields, outer wall, the front gate and continued leading straight down the main street. This was the same path that the carriage had taken to bring her here. She was certain that it hadn’t been made just for her. Everyone taking the exam would have entered Littenbeck in the same manner.

The view was taken from a considerable height by some
one who had a working knowledge of the layout of the city. As she followed the images down the corridor, it became more personable, more detailed. Faceless blobs were now people, boxes were now stores. It was a strange artistic perspective, but it never looked awkward. The further along she moved, the closer the view became until she was able to count the bricks in the winery, the hairs upon the little girls head, she could even make out what the woman was carrying in her basket. What forced her to stop and stare was the image of the young guard with a silver helmet in the king’s colors, standing beside the clothes shop. The detail was so eerie that she had expected the guard to ask if she was lost. She pulled herself away from his face and moved on down the painting until she came to where she knew she had to, the mystic’s tower. This was the focal point of the image. She could now see the Tower in all its twisted splendor, its rooted structure spreading out in some bizarre perspective coming to a full sized image of the Oni door, the black courtyard that stretched out around the base and back into the streets. It was so highly detailed that she would have sworn she could see movement behind the tower windows. Finally the tower gave ground to the city streets again and as quickly as the detailed heightened, it started to fade. Soon the definition was lost, the details became blotches again, the stores were no more than simple squares, the people no more than smudges on the wall.

Did she miss something she wondered as she reached the end of the corridor which ended in a simple wooden door?

“That was a complete waist of time.” She said a she pulled open the door and walked into the wall behind it. She stumbled backwards and fell on her ass.

It took her a moment to register what had just happed as she got back to her feet.
She slapped the wall, not that she really needed to, she already knew it was solid. The wall was real, no illusion here, of course it didn’t explain why the wall was hidden behind the door in the first place. She searched around the edges of the threshold for some clue, but didn’t really expect to find anything. Was that the test, did she take too long to get down the hall? Were the pictures a distraction? If it was it was a stupid test.

She sat down and starred at the city streets of Littenbeck. Why the streets she wondered. Why these images? The majority of the cadets were fourteen year old
boys; they wouldn’t be distracted by these pictures. She could think of other topics that would have a greater effect. It had something to do with the picture, and the picture’s focal point.

She got back to her feet and backtracked down the corridor to the center of the mural. It was so simple she had completely overlooked it. The focus of the entire mural was the mystic’s tower, not by coincidence but by design. The focal point of the tower was the oni door.

She hammed at the painting with a closed fist which cracked under the impact, and a large section of it flaked away. Behind the painting of the door, was another door, a real door. It had been spackled over in some manner to conceal it from sight. She pulled at the thin wall of spackling which now crumbled under the lightest touch. When she was able to expose enough of the door she tried the handle. Sure enough, the door swung in leaving an opening large enough for Kile the squeeze through. She dusted the last of the wall off her clothes. So far so good she thought as she looked down the new corridor. She had no idea if she was making good time or not, she wasn’t even sure how long she had, but she still had the box and it was still in one piece, so two out of three wasn’t bad.

The new corridor was just as poorly lit as the last corridor. She wasn’t sure if it was to set the atmosphere or the mystics were just too cheap to get decent lightning. Kile set off again, clutching the small ebony box tightly against her chest and walking very slowly. She was scanning the walls for some new clue, when the ground suddenly tilted out from under her.

It had half to do with her fast reflexes and half to do with the fact that she was smaller them the average cadet, or it could have just been dumb luck. The trap door was built on a counterweight system, and when an unsuspecting person of sufficient weight stepped in the door, it would simply dump them down into a hole and then close again, trapping them into whatever pit they were unfortunate enough to land in. Kile wasn’t of sufficient weight.

She felt the ground give way, but it didn’t give way fast enough. She was too light to set off the trap
in the way it was intended, and she had enough time to throw herself backward onto more solid ground. The trap door quickly resealed and was once again invisible to the untrained eye.

“Are you kidding me?” She exclaimed as she crawled to the edge of where the door should have been. “I’ve heard of pass or fail but this is ridiculous
.”

She stood up and cautiously tapped the floor with an outstretched foot, trying to find the trap door again, but it was no use. While the door was closed it was indistinguishable from the surrounding floor. The only way she could find it again was to put her entire weight on it, and that was not an option.
She looked down the corridor, but wasn’t able to see the far end. There was no telling how long the corridor was, or just how many of these trap doors were scattered about the floor waiting for her. What she did find, was that some sections of the floor were of a different color than other sections of the floor. They weren’t going to make it easy, but on the other hand, it didn’t appear that they were trying to make it impossible.

Kile took a few steps back to get a better look. She had been paying so much attention to the walls, it never occurred to her to look at the floor. If she had, she would have noticed the lines painted down the center of the corridor. Nothing as elaborate as the last puzzle, these were but four simple lines in four basic colors. One she could rule out automatically, the blue line ran right over the trap door that almost got her, or at least where she thought the trap door was. She should have really marked that one. Maybe she shouldn’t rule out the blue line so quickly. There was also a red line, a green line and a yellow line. None of them stood out over the rest, they just twisted and turned overlapping one another like snakes. One of these lines must be the safe path, the problem was, which color.

It was a matter of reasoning she thought, but even reasoning had to start somewhere. She couldn’t think of any connection with any color that made any sense. The only colors she had seen since the test started were the colors of the mystic’s robes, and they were all different. Alex had told her that those in the purple robes were historians, but there were no purple lines, the closest to that would have been blue, which she wasn’t really sure about, and what would a historian have to do with trap doors anyway. There was that mystic that tested her for her sphere of influence, he was wearing yellow, and there was a yellow line.

It appeared to be the strongest connection she could think of, even if it was the only connection she could think of. Kile followed the meandering yellow line.

It was easy enough to navigate, as with the other corridor, the light without a light source appeared to be hovering around her somehow, so she could see the line without difficulty. She was also able to make out the far end of the corridor. Her reasons for picking the yellow line may have been slim, but they appeared to be right. Of course there was always the possibility that all the lines were safe and it was just another way to slow the cadets down, not that she was planning to test that theory or had to. The ground suddenly titled out from under her again.