Nate followed Captain Nyla, the crowd parting before them like the red seas. It only took a few steps for him to realize where they were going. He had spotted the edge of something that was clearly a training arena at the margins of the central square.

  Even as they walked, Nate tried to calm him mind. Find that cool pool of tranquility at the center of himself. It wasn’t working. His heart was hammering, and he could taste the burn of bile on his tongue.

  Combat.

  Nate knew he still had a lot to figure out about this strange world. But he had tested himself enough to know his strengths and weaknesses, and they were familiar. He had always been fast and nimble. Now he was just more so. It made developing a strategy for conflict easy. He just went with what he knew. When in doubt, run away. He was good at running away. Very good.

  There had only been a few times in his life that his skill for running away had failed him. All of them had ended ugly. A talented fighter he was not. His experiences in Farandway had done nothing so far to change that self-assessment. Sure, he had successfully driven off the monitors in the ravine. But he had a cheat, those water orbs, so it didn’t really count. In fact, since his arrival, he had only stood his ground and tried to fight once. When the orc, Grundar, cornered him, he had attacked, lashing out with his dagger. It had almost been the end of him. Only luck had saved him.

  Now he was about to face his first true test of combat, and the stakes were high. He didn’t know exactly what would happen if he failed Omen’s “test.” But he doubted it would result in a comforting pat on the back.

  The arena was oddly familiar, and it took Nate a moment to place that feeling of familiarity. It was a close facsimile of the training grounds at the Traveler’s Retreat. Only it was…fancier. The brown, rocky soil Nate had practiced his knife strikes on was here replaced with clean white sand, the battered practice dummies by gleaming metal mannequins etched with runes that pulsed faintly with power. There were pillars of various heights, and many were decorated with sharp spikes or wide rings jutting out at sharp angles.

  Word must have spread ahead of him, for while he had distinctly heard the clash of people practicing earlier, the square was empty now. Glow orbs set all around the perimeter cast an eerie glow across the sands, with deep shadows stretching out from the various obstacles littering the space. The shadows meant nothing to Nate, though. He was aware of them, but his Darkvision penetrated them easily.

  “Well, here we are,” Captain Nyla said in a loud, somewhat theatrical voice, clearly playing to the crowd as they spread out to find a good spot to watch the fun. “Are you ready?”

  “Ah…” Nate sputtered, not at all ready. “Who am I fighting? You?”

  Captain Nyla laughed, a husky, throaty chuckle that was taken up immediately by the rest of the crowd. Despite his clawing anxiety, Nate felt his ears grow hot with humiliation.

  “This is supposed to be a test, not an execution,” Nyla choked out as her laughter finally died away. “I’m level 10, and I’ve completed the quest for my class upgrade. You wouldn’t last five seconds against me.”

  Nate nodded as though he understood what that meant, although in truth he had only a vague notion. The only person he knew with an upgraded class was Clive, the trainer that had led his team’s excursion outside the city. Nate had never seen the man in action, but he had seen him pretty torn up after he fought some monster in the forest. The sight had left him less awed at the power of these higher level Travelers. Still, he was relieved he didn’t have to fight Nyla. There was something in the woman’s presence that made him nervous.

  “Who am I up against then?” Nate asked.

  “Not who. What,” Nyla said. She gestured him to take his place near her in the center of the arena. Only when he was in place did she continue.

  “We have squads that capture monsters in the surrounding hills and bring them here. We have a Beast-Keeper that care for them in a facility below ground,” she explained. “A combat test is meant to find the limit of your fighting ability. We will start you off with a fight that you should win. If you pass that, we’ll bring in something tougher. We keep going until we see what you can do when pushed.”

  “So, you’ll keep making it harder until I’m up against something I can’t beat,” Nate simplified. “Then what?”

  “It depends,” Nyla said, with a sigh. “If you’ve made it far enough to be considered a pass, we’ll end the combat before you get hurt too bad. If not…well, do your best,” she said, giving him a wicked grin that made his blood run cold.

  Without any further explanation, Nyla turned and moved to the edge of the arena, joining the crowd. There had to be close to three dozen warriors arranged now to watch Nate’s test. He hadn’t thought that many people were awake in the compound. Apparently, this was considered entertaining enough that a wake-up call had gone out.

  Nate breathed deep, looking for the calm at his center. The deep, familiar pool was there. But his consciousness skittered off it’s surface like a well thrown rock. With a tense jerk, he drew his knife and tried to set his feet in something like a ready stance. He could hear several chuckles echo out from the crowd at his clear nerves.

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  The crowd stilled, and an odd hush fell over the arena. Nate waited, feeling a chill as a cool night breeze brushed against the sweat forming on his brow.

  The ground at Nate’s feet lit with a bright, electric blue, forming a circle around him. There was a hum that seemed to pulse through his flesh into his bones, and he almost jumped out of his skin in surprise.

  “Rogue, Level 2. Calibrating.”

  The hollow, disembodied voice echoed through the air. The arena was scanning him. Nate wondered just how much information the circle he was standing in was capable of collecting. Had it seen the things he was meant to keep secret?

  No.

  Trini’s voice was soft, as though she was whispering. She didn’t expand, but Nate didn’t have time for follow-up questions. Two blue circles just like Nate’s, only smaller, had just lit up on the opposite side of the arena. He watched as the air shimmered and took form.

  Two creatures materialized, one in each circle. They were small, no more than knee high on him. They were round and covered in spikes, though they weren’t particularly menacing. Nate blinked. Were those…

  His identify activated.

  Nate glanced at the other creature, getting the same message in his identify box. His brow creased in confusion. The screen said these were “Vicious Porcupines.” At a glance, though, they looked like perfectly normal porcupines, identical to ones he had seen on TV back home. The two animals waddled towards each other, making soft grunts as they ambled. Nate looked around at the crowd, who were watching the scene expectantly. Was this some kind of joke?

  Cautiously, Nate took a step forward. His booted foot made a soft crunch as it creased the sand.

  Both Porcupines froze, jerking slightly at the sound. They noticed Nate for the first time.

  There was a staccato popping sound.

  “Holy shit!” Nate choked out, as a dozen sharp quills slashed through the air towards him.

  Nate’s muscles reacted by instinct, and he lurched to the side, diving as the quills tore through the space he had occupied only a moment before. He saw a faint distortion in the air as the quills hit the edge of the arena and rebounded off some invisible barrier, sparing the onlookers from being skewered.

  There was another round of popping. Even as Nate hit the ground, he rolled. He felt sand fly up in his wake as more quills dug into the earth behind him.

  Nate bobbed to his feet and dashed for the closest of the pillar obstacles. He needed cover. More popping came from the grunting monsters, and Nate could hear their spiny projectiles whistling through the air.

  He almost made it unscathed. But, just as he lurched behind a block of stone slightly taller than he was, a tearing pain ripped through his lower leg, causing him to stagger. He dropped to his knees just behind the pillar, kicking up a cloud of sand that stuck to the sweat on his face. He could hear the plinking of quills as they ricocheted off the stone block hiding him. He reached for the source of the pain in his leg. His fingers flinched away from the cold quill jutting from the meat of his calf. It was embedded deep, and the edges of the quills, smooth at first glance, were actually covered in small barbs.

  “Fuck!” Nate growled, gritting his teeth. He could hear more laughter from the onlookers, but he ignored it. Something about the pain, the adrenaline, had finally driven away his anxiety. His leg hurt, but his mind was clear now. And he was pissed. He pulled on the quill in his leg, then hissed as the barbs caught, holding it in place. He didn’t have time to deal with that now. He slashed with his dagger, cutting off most of the quill’s length so that it would get in his way.

  Nate readied himself. He stood. His calf burned like fire, but he ignored it. He had too. He needed his speed.

  The porcupines hadn’t noticed him until he moved, made noise. Maybe he could use that.

  Nate took a heavy copper coin from his belt pouch and whipped out an arm, sending it blurring across the arena. It struck one of the metal rings jutting out from another pillar, ringing like a bell.

  There were grunts, a series of pops, sharp quills peppered the area Nate’s coin had just fallen. Nate dashed from his hiding place, his arm already blurring. But it wasn’t coins flying through the air this time.

  There was a series of sharp cracks at the glass orbs Nate had thrown struck the Vicious Porcupines. The glass exploded, and the acid contained inside splashed out. The porcupines didn’t grunt this time. The sounds they made could only be described as screams.

  Nate hadn’t been able to experiment with these new toys of his much. He didn’t want to waste the glass orbs by shattering them in practice, and the acid was largely untested. All he knew was that a drop on the skin would immediately start to burn. When he’d thrown at the porcupines, he had aimed for their heads, hoping the acid would at least blind and disorient them. He was, therefore, caught off guard by the results.

  Both of the beasts immediately dropped to the ground rolling around and thrashing at the sand. Their piteous wails were chilling, and Nate could see the acid eating through the flesh of their faces, the previously dark skin already red and angry. It was horrifying. But also effective. Nate didn’t think these two would be causing him anymore trouble.

  After a few moments of listening to the animal’s cries, Nate limped over and drew his dagger. Two quick thrusts brought quiet back to the arena. No one was laughing now.

  “Round 1 foes vanquished. Increasing difficulty.”

  The same disembodied voice echoed through the arena. Nate barely heard it. As the porcupines died, he felt a faint rush of heat, of energy, surge into his body. Even as the sensation came and went, Nate noticed a blinking icon in his vision. He had seen this once before. He knew what it meant.

  Gritting his teeth, Nate reached down and took hold of the chunk of quill still embedded in his calf. With a heave, he tore it free, fighting to keep from crying out as blood gushed from the jagged hole in his leg. Then he focused on the icon.

  Nate chose “Yes.”

  Agan there was a heady rush as energy suffused his body, the distant sound of a triumphant orchestra filling his mind. It flashed through him, wiping away the pain in his leg. Then another notification box appeared.