The identifier necklace, which Caen had been given at his registration, was tucked beneath his armor. The small bead pendant grew warm.

  Caen Mimicked resilience, and the next instant was wrenched through space and deposited on a patch of wet grass.

  Resilience helped him withstand the discomfort of spatial transit far better than he could have without Spatial passive augmentations.

  Lightning lit up the dark, rumbling sky overhead for an instant. Heavy rain pelted his armor as a raging wind blew. In mere moments, the bandages beneath his mask and his clothes underneath his armor were soaked through by the downpour. The air here was painful to breathe in, and each inhale carried small jolts of electricity into his lungs. Caen stood in a vast swathe of uneven land, low hillocks and mounds surrounding him and littering the rest of the terrain. Participants were strewn about, and in the distance stood a great, glowing wall of fog. That was the exit point for this zone.

  Strange creatures populated the terrain: quadrupeds of various sizes with vicious teeth and claws, cloud sprites with lightning crackling in them, and floating eel-like monstrosities.

  “What a pleasant environment,” Stormsong noted appreciatively, hovering beside him. Now that Caen wasn’t Mimicking the sword’s lightning affinity, its voice sounded distant and faint in his head. He was still connected to Stormsong, though.

  Caen began his run towards the wall of fog in the distance.

  A low-floating cloud sprite zoomed past him, throwing faint blue lightning bolts around. All of the lightning was drawn towards Stormsong, who hummed in satisfaction as lightning danced over its scabbard. Caen didn’t slow down.

  A pair of Body-enhancers bearing the emblem of the Blood Birds factions ran towards him. One held a sword, the other, a glowing axe. The axe wielder shouted something indecipherable over the storm.

  What is it with this faction? he wondered as he empowered his body with Body-enhancement spells.

  “Feel free to chip in whenever you like,” he said to Stormsong as the pair reached him.

  Caen was already flickering Soul-sense. He dodged a sword thrust as he slammed his weapon into the axe wielder. The man stumbled backwards on the slippery terrain but regained his balance quickly.

  “Hmph. No brutality, then?” Stormsong noted, even as many of the creatures nearby began charging towards them.

  Caen and the sword wielder clashed swords several times in a breath. The man couldn’t keep up. Stormsong took him by the neck, slamming him to the ground, where he lay groaning. The axe wielder lunged forward, weapon glowing ominously. Caen viciously smacked him aside before he covered the distance. Another devastating strike to the downed swordsman caused him to bow out of the trial. The axe wielder followed suit once his friend departed.

  The creatures arrived. They were reptilian quadrupeds with long snouts and glowing red eyes. Each one was the size of a large dog.

  He made quick work of them. He pummeled with the sheathed sword, kicked a few, and blocked pounces midair with Chasma. Resilience lent little speed to his movements, but it allowed him to resist force and damage excellently. It even granted him a better footing on the slippery grass.

  “Where is your decisiveness?” Stormsong queried. “You need to use more speed.”

  Caen cast Body-enhancement spells to hasten his movements and lend more heft to his strikes. He twisted out of the way of darting reptiles with preternatural speed, bludgeoning them without mercy.

  “You’re not using enough power!”

  So Caen dropped resilience. His thread clusters reverted in an instant as he prepared a Kinesis spell. In the very same instant, he Mimicked Stormsong’s Lightning affinity to prevent the shocks.

  “Much better,” Stormsong said before Caen had even cast the Kinesis spell. “Stop fluctuating. Be decisive with your strikes.”

  Caen dispatched the last of the creatures, breathing a little heavily. He resumed making his way towards the wall of fog in the distance. The zone’s afflictions were quite unpleasant, all the more so now that he’d dropped resilience.

  His mind gnawed at a problem. In order to utilize their full potential, awakened weapons needed to have high synergy with their wielders. This was what Caen was trying to achieve by listening to Stormsong’s ‘instructions’. Mimicry allowed him to have some level of synergy with the sword, but he would undoubtedly have to sacrifice that synergy for the benefits resilience could grant him in this trial.

  Caen smacked aside an eel while running through the zone. At the moment of impact, electricity was pulled from the eel into Stormsong. The weapon had enchantments that allowed it to take in nearby lightning and store the energy for whatever purposes. Some of the lightning, unfortunately, flitted along the sword, crawling up Caen’s arms. Fortunately, Stormsong’s passive augmentations were enough to let him weather these.

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  “When you said to be decisive with my strikes, what exactly did you mean?” Caen asked.

  “Have you never used a sword before?” Stormsong returned derisively.

  “Stormsong, I don’t have a sword,” Caen sent, communicating his sincerity to the Awakened weapon through their connection. “Respectfully, I’m functionally wielding a club right now.”

  “How dare you?!”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s true. Swords cut, hack, tear into. That is decisiveness. That is power.”

  Stormsong huffed. “If you think you can trick me into letting you use my primary enchantments—”

  “No tricks,” Caen said. “No enchantments. I just need a blade.” He’d asked it earlier if it would be okay with him taking on an unenchanted arming sword—which he could use to do real damage—but Stormsong had vehemently objected to that.

  Stormsong was quiet for a long moment.

  Caen felt a clear and distinct impression from their connection. An impression of ‘impatient hopefulness’. There was a grumpy and restless eagerness within Stormsong. It’d been too long since the weapon had been drawn. Too long since it had sung its tempestuous might. It wanted something. And so did Caen. There was a… synergy between their desires.

  This was Ardor.

  But… Caen had no idea how to use it in this situation. He couldn’t very well Impassion the sword.

  “I only ever permitted Ro-Hexur to unsheathe me without activating my primary enchantments,” Stormsong finally said. “The others whom I deemed worthy to wield me were not granted this honor, and they were all more worthy than you are.”

  “How many of them spoke so clearly with you?” Caen asked, already knowing the answer. The two surviving wielders of Stormsong had given significant hints about their experience with the awakened sword. They received strong impressions of the weapon’s intent—sharp and sometimes very crisp emotions—but not much else beyond that. “What better indicator for compatibility could there be than how easily we can communicate?”

  Stormsong’s only response was a reluctant grumble that sounded indistinguishable from the rumbling clouds above. The connection between Caen and the sword grew stronger by an almost imperceptible fraction. Its soul structure felt a tiny bit more distinct, but the sword remained silent.

  All around Caen, participants vanished in pillars of light as the zone’s monsters and afflictions assaulted them. Caen rushed past a pair of participants who were surrounded by those red-eyed reptilian creatures. As they fought, even more streamed towards them. In this trial, the beasts were drawn to groups of people, which made collaboration all the more costly.

  “Do not think that this makes you worthy,” Stormsong said sternly. It hesitated. “You may draw me. We shall see whether or not you deserve to hold a weapon of this caliber.”

  Caen felt a weight lift off his shoulders at those words. He gripped the darkened scabbard around which snaked engravings of glowing lightning.

  With awe, he unsheathed Stormsong, and a low rumble echoed around him. He let go of the scabbard, and it hovered beside him.

  The blade was a pure white that stood in stark contrast to the world around it. One edge was frightfully sharp while the other was vicious and jagged.

  Caen hardly noticed as a nearby participant stared at him agape and, the next instant, vanished in a pillar of light.

  An eel darted towards Caen. Without even slowing down, he slashed, and the creature was cut cleanly in half.

  He let out a breath. Finally, a blade.

  ***

  Mubu of the Faithful Descent faction tore into the occasional reptile as he and Fahptis jogged downhill towards the wall of fog up ahead. Mubu was breathing heavily, and the grass beneath him was slippery, but he had his enchanted armor on this time around, which helped quite a bit. He'd received an earful for his stunt in the last trial.

  Then he spotted someone below them. Herb Mask. Fahptis slowed down.

  “Fahptis,” Mubu hurried to say. “We shouldn’t attack him without the others. If we get Gebda, we’ll—”

  “No. This isn’t a Flora zone. We can take him. Come.”

  Mubu suppressed his frustration and nodded as they began orienting towards Herb Mask. Gebda was the only one who could reason with Fahptis. No point arguing and getting in trouble.

  “A simple apt bident tactic,” Fahptis said. “You flank him, and I’ll take point. He—”

  Herb Mask unsheathed Stormsong. He unsheathed it. Mubu almost tripped from shock, and Fahptis faltered beside him.

  But… nothing happened afterwards. The sword did not shine as it always did when drawn. No artificial storms either.

  Still, whatever this was, it wasn't normal.

  “Fuck this,” Mubu said. “I’m out.”

  “It’s just another trick!” Fahptis roared, starting to run again, but Mubu didn’t follow.

  He turned in the other direction and began running for the wall of fog. Several of those present in the ambush suspected that Herb Mask had only used a Lightning spell to startle them in the last round. Mubu wasn’t sold on that.

  “Where are you going?” Fahptis shouted from behind.

  Mubu kept running.