Risens wasn’t fazed as the roar tore through the Roost. The echoes diminished with each repetition, and the departing stone raven circled into the darkness above while the others waited with reluctant forbearance on their perches.

  “Patience,” he grumbled at the remaining birds.

  They merely glared in silence in response.

  The swirling symbols, ones he now realized were frequently used to represent gusts of wind on maps, had reacted to the gentle breeze of the fanning feather. It was the key to his progression. The force of his fingers was meaningless as it was not a task to be completed by the efforts of his hands. Working as quickly as he could, he waved the feather at the swirl on the right. Its movement was immediate, reacting to the push of the wind, no matter how slight, as it wafted from the feather. With a flick of his wrist, he sent a gust at the second symbol as well, grinning as it too began its rotation.

  Risens watched with bated breath as the pair, rotating at different speeds, fell into sync. Now spinning as if they were one connected image, their revolutions sped up until their distinct features were nothing more than a dizzying blur. Subconsciously, he took a step back as a quiet whir filled the chamber. Instinct borne from years of brutal training and lived experience kicked in, sending his hands cautiously to the feathered hilts of the Raven Talons. The swelling buzz was disturbingly akin to the noise of a sentinel’s motor sparking to life.

  The insatiable bloodlust was muted, though the voices rang clear. “If you fear a door, there is no hope for you.”

  Risens clenched his fists as he broke contact with the mocking blades. Their cackling and insults faded as they ricocheted through his mind.

  The solid panel of the doorway began to vibrate, slowly at first, then rapidly, until it rattled wildly against the frame. A sudden, sharp snapping sound, much like stone shearing from stone, ripped through the vaulted hall as the door snapped up from the floor. He ducked, protecting his face against the expected shards, yet he felt no sting of shrapnel against his skin. To his surprise, the door rippled and flapped like a banner caught in the grips of a violent storm. For a moment, it maintained its desperate hold on the upper edge of the frame before it tore from the top, disappearing into the void behind.

  The black face of the portal stared back at him, undulating as it lured him inward with promises of strength. The residual tendrils of power, the true might behind the magic, were thick around the shimmering shadow of the inky darkness of the gate. Risens cast his gaze over his shoulder. The remaining stone ravens all bowed as they perched above their candlelit pools.

  “Thank you, friends,” he whispered.

  The rush of wind through the portal passed, and he found himself deposited into an intimately familiar setting. The walls and ceiling were constructed of the same dark stone he’d come to expect from the Roost. A single meter-wide strip running along the chamber’s border floor was earthen, the hard-packed soil riddled with scars and chips where unseen weapons had gouged the dirt.

  A single training dummy stood pathetic and limp in the center of the chamber. The defenseless mannequin was little more than a set of straw-filled burlap sacks crudely sewn into the rough form of a human’s torso and head, draped over a wooden cross. Judging by its haggard condition, the innocuous feature had seen plenty of use. There was nothing else of note in the room.

  That power, however, lurked somewhere in this chamber, he was certain, though he couldn’t pinpoint its origin.

  His senses tingled with waves of apprehension and caution as he took his first steps into the chamber. Risens stopped as his feet reached the earthen floor, his hands once again sliding instinctively to the Raven Talons at his hips.

  “Now he’s scared of a room.”

  “Maybe I don’t blame him this time.”

  “Quiet,” Risens ordered, and thankfully, the blades appeared to obey.

  There was something off about the room, something he couldn’t place his finger on. His intuition and gut feelings had saved him too many times before for him to ignore the alerted sensations.

  That was when he realized the blades hadn’t obeyed him. They had done as they had in the ravine. Try as he might, he could not pull them from their sheaths, and they remained eerily silent.

  The dummy awaited him at the center of the dirt training floor. He’d spent countless hours in rooms just like this, and from his earliest memories, hours every day had been logged in some form of painful martial instruction or practice. He knew there would be far more to this trial than expected, but its first views had failed to offer any hints of the challenge in store.

  Acting on an impulse, Risens drew one of his castle-issue steel daggers, flipping the blade in hand before launching it at the target. A rotation before it sank into the straw-filled chest, the training dummy vanished as if it had merely been an illusion. As if he were fighting shadows, the blade dug out a small chunk of earth as it skipped harmlessly across the floor.

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  Pain flared in his left side and sent him spinning to the earth. His silent target had reappeared just behind his shoulder, hammering him with one of the weathered timber arms as it rotated wildly. It didn’t press the strike, simply vanishing again, this time appearing in the far left corner of the chamber.

  Risens cursed as he scrambled back to his feet, brushing the dirt off his arms and stomach. He glared at his lifeless opponent, pondering if, with his newfound skills, he could light the stray-filled dummy aflame. Mother Raven had advised that the skills of the magi were now at his command. He desired nothing more than to raze it to the ground, leaving naught but a pile of ashes where it stood. After a few moments of concentration and no incinerating blaze, he gave up the burning thoughts, understanding that just as the Talons would not grant him the favor of their assistance, neither would his supposed magical abilities. Notwithstanding, he neither understood nor had any experience in practicing the art. Just like the mastery he’d earned over a lifetime of training, he understood that the abilities would not come without cost and time.

  As with any of the trials here, there would be no easy way to victory. Completion and the boon received as a result were granted only to those who proved their worth.

  Keeping his eye on the target, Risens stalked across the training area, collecting his dagger from the dirt. Like the stone ravens, the featureless face and body of his target rotated disconcertingly as it tracked his movement, though it remained grounded to its current position.

  There was no sound here to mimic. Removing the Shadows Shroud would only leave his face exposed. He called the Conspiracy of Ravens, yet he was unsurprised when none answered.

  Within a meter of the stray dummy, Risens paused. His fingers squeezed on the handle of the dagger as he watched and waited. The opponent, in this case, seemed to respond only to his actions, taking defensive measures and doling out its punishment for a failed attack.

  Risens turned his head as if feigning disinterest. His coiled muscles sprang the attack, the blade crossing the distance in the blink of an eye. His dagger passed harmlessly through the air where its mark had been. This time, he had nearly completed his turn when the wooden arm slammed into his chest. He gasped for air as the blow robbed the breath from his lungs, forcing him back several steps, his feet gouging lines across the dirt floor.

  Again, his silent opponent only attacked once before vanishing. This time, it reset itself in the far right corner of the room.

  Frustration threatened to rise as he sucked the oxygen back into his lungs, but he would not let it break him. The blunt attacks were painful, though he understood that they were not meant to be lethal, only a physical reminder of his continued deficiencies. Drawing both daggers this time, he growled and sprinted across the earthen chamber. The lifeless form of his target remained stationary, its expressionless form watching his charge with slumping apathy.

  When his rapid approach was a step away, Risens planted his feet, striking out with the dagger in his left hand while darting to the side. The attack was never meant to connect, merely a feint to spark the action he hoped would follow. As his knife whistled through the air, the target vanished. This time, he was prepared, wheeling around as it reappeared just off his back shoulder. He crouched and redirected his momentum, aiming his lunge at the center of the straw torso.

  In the span of time that it took to confirm that his hastily formed plan had failed, his blade stabbed harmlessly into nothingness. Pain once more radiated from his left side as his opponent shifted positions again. The blow drove him straight down into the hard-packed soil, his hands powerless to diminish his impact. A cloud of dust and loose dirt billowed out from underneath him. Thankfully, the natural filtration of the Shadows Shroud prevented the dirty mixture from entering his lungs, though it stung his eyes nonetheless.

  Risens forced himself back up to his knees, taking a quick survey of the chamber.

  The featureless form of the training dummy taunted him from where it watched silently. Its first few moves had found it repositioned in the far corners of the room, further from the portal he’d entered through. Now it mocked him from the right side of the entrance.

  Each attack, whether it be his initial or secondary, had been met with decisive retaliation. His actions had triggered the shift, though once he ceased, it reverted to its stationary position in the new location. Each time, a different corner. The first two moves he could have counted as random, yet the third confirmed his suspicions of the pattern that it followed.

  “It’s worth a try,” he grumbled as he used his fist, blade still in hand, to force his body off the ground.

  The trials had been challenging, forcing him into unexpected situations. In most cases, the answers were frustratingly simple, though he’d suffered through failures and endured some measure of pain in them all. The pointed message from Mather Raven rang true. Nothing would be given without effort or sacrifice. He understood the premise and the reasoning behind it, though at the moment the guessing game was running its course.

  Flexing his hands on his steel blades, he shifted across to the side of the training floor. He approached the stationary training dummy, keeping the stone wall of the chamber to his right side. Risens judged the distance across the earthen floor to the opposite side. Easily ten meters. He shifted a step away from the wall to negate the need to reverse the grip on the blade in his right hand. If the feint worked, he was sure it would hurt. He hoped the effort would prove worthwhile.

  Stopping a few meters from his awaiting target, he settled his breathing while he coiled his legs and his arms. The absurdity of his action wasn’t lost on him. In a true battle with anyone beyond an amateur, telegraphing your actions would be lethal. This, however, was not a true battle. The generally accepted logic and rules of engagement, though often loosely interpreted, didn’t apply. Exhaling a long, slow breath, steeling his body for the action and resulting abuse he knew was to follow, he darted forward.

  The moment before he reached the dummy, Risens twisted to the side, then snapped back to his right. As he slashed both blades, the dummy vanished. The blades knifed harmlessly through the air, though he released the blade in his right hand, sending it hurtling across the chamber. The blow that descended on him came from his left as he spun off balance in that direction. As if nothing more than a spinning top, the training dummy hammered the wooden plank of an arm into his side, lifting him off the ground.

  His vision went dark as the force of the impact sent him over the edge of the dirt floor onto the stone walkway that surrounded it. His head bounced off the black tiles before he crashed into the wall beyond.