Winfrey

???

Getting teleported around like this is going to make me lose my lunch, I swear to god. Shake it off, Win, where are we?

Well, first thing I noticed is how hot it is out here, wherever here actually is. I'm standing at the top of a dusty slope, looking down on some sort of arid wasteland - not a desert, exactly, but instead looking like a field of grey rock and shiny obsidian. There are trees - or the remains of trees, petrified as they are, and a gaping chasm that reminds me of the one time I went with Uncle Eric to see the Grand Canyon when I was little.

I think it's still daytime, but the thick smog rising from cracks and vents in the earth has created a blanket over the region that blocks most of the light. Overall, I'm getting a serious 'volcano' vibe.

Next, I look down at myself, finding my equipment to be very different - chainmail and green leather wrappings, a shortsword and a buckler. Pinned to my chest is a silvery metal insignia of some kind, shaped like a caricature of a lion. Curious.

"Hey!" A voice calls out from behind me, "Don't wander off, new girl."

Turning around, I see a similarly kitted out older Silva woman with a nasty burn scar pushing up against her left eye, "Wait for the rest of us, or you're off the team."

"Sorry," I apologise on behalf of whoever it is I'm supposed to be taking the perspective of for this test, putting two and two together on how this is probably working. This is like the Legacy Trials Silver was talking about.

"It's fine," She sighs, "I'll admit we're in a hurry, just remember that Lokros and Joham aren't as spry as us."

"Too bloody right," A wheezing young man calls out as he crests over the hill we're stood on, "I can run with my brothers just fine in a footrace, but I'm no mountain climber, Tresky. And I'm the bloody Scout here."

"Stop whining," a calm blue-skinned Quirstic man admonishes, leaning on a tall staff as he trails behind, "It's easier on you than me."

"Maybe if you didn't gobble down a boulder's worth of gravel instead of proper food you'd have to lug less weight around," the Scout comments rudely.

The senior looking woman groans, "Could you two stop it?"

"Yeah, y-" The scout's eyes widen, "Shit, I see them, they're being chased by bandits."

"Where?" The leader's eyes harden, then follow his pointing finger to a moving speck in the far distance, "Alright, let's move, we've got a noble brat to save."

Alright, the system has spoken. Stop whoever that is from being mugged or murdered.

"I'm going," I inform them simply, before jumping into action, sliding down the dusty hill at speed, hopping to avoid obstacles every now and again.

"Damn it, girl! What did I just say about waiting for the rest of us?!" The leader shouts, running as best she can to keep up with my descent, the other two close behind her.

"I really don't see the point when we're on a time limit!" I yell back, "Unless you wanna explain this guy's corpse away as because I was being polite to the rest of you?!"

I don't get a response back, but I can feel her displeasure from here. Lady doesn't like being shown up, does she?

When we reach the bottom, I do my best to keep my momentum going without stumbling and falling, the result being less than graceful to look at, I'm sure, but I transition into a run quickly enough. I can hear my high school gym coach yammering in my ear about proper running form as I go, so I try and do my best to put the lessons into practice. I was never really all that into track and field - I was more of a tennis girl, really.

On the relatively flat open ground now, the leader woman starts catching up to me with a little effort, sparing a glare as she runs past promising future reprisal for my behaviour. As if I'm going to be here long enough to care what she thinks of me - if I'd even care about what she thought of me to begin with, which I wouldn't.

After a few minutes of continuous running, we come upon a group of armed teenagers running for their lives from a large group of Panoplasts and Silva in significantly less fancy clothing, mere rags in comparison - not to say that the teens are spotless, stained with ash, blood and sporting a few rips & bloody tears.

Placing ourselves between the scared teens and the mob of angry demihumans, they slow to a halt, less than pleased to be interrupted in their pursuit. The leader, a tall extremely muscular wolf demihuman steps forward, glaring down at the burned woman leading my group.

"Stand aside or die," He growls, "Your only warning."

The woman snorts, "I don't know what these kids did to deserve this, but we took on a job to bring them home safe and with all their limbs attached."

"You would defend the children of those usurpers? The lineage of those thieves?!" One of the other Panoplasts shouts, incredulous.

She laughs, "Of course. A job's a job, and from the looks of it, you're just taking out a five-century-old grudge you chose to inherit on a bunch of fuckin' kids. Oh, I'm sure yer ancestors are real fucking proud. 'swhy you're out here in Arborstone, acting like a territorial pack o' wild animals."

Incensed, the bandits charge at us, "Take your insults to your grave, traitor!"

Fantasy racial politics, fun. As someone far disconnected from the issues at play this is kinda surreal to be taking part in. Putting that aside, this is essentially a lynch mob and the trial is to protect these kids making my ability to empathise with their assumed plight a little strained.

Also, they're now trying to kill me, so...not on board with that.

Springing into action, I block the Silva coming at me with a makeshift stone club and stab out at another shirtless dude trying to get past me to attack the kids who are too exhausted to be of much use in the fight. Lacking any protective equipment, the man drops dead immediately, and gives me ample opportunity to carve a bloody barrier around me. Any that approach meet their ends in short order, making me question why it's so easy when a bestial roar blankets the area with suppressive force.

"Shit, a Bortosi cub! It must have smelled all the blood!" The Scout curses, wrenching his shortsword from out of a lion demihuman's neck, "New kid, we can handle this, keep that thing off of us!"

The Bortosi, as he called it, is a truck-sized furless feline with rhino-like hide and red glowing saliva dripping from it's maw. It bounds toward us at high speed from about 60 yards away, and will probably be here in a few seconds. Not precisely eager to take the hulking creature on by myself, I set my determination and charge to intercept with the aid of Rush, dashing past the lynch mob.

Meeting somewhere in the middle, I get it's attention by leaping and smacking it's jaw with my buckler, it's hide too thick for me to penetrate with the accompanying thrust of my shortsword. It barely even flinches, but I definitely secured aggro.

Growling, it lopes around me, calculating in it's approach. I turn with it, keeping my shield raised and ready, daring it to try attacking.

Either sensing an opening or losing patience, the Bortosi pounces with a loud roar that rattles my bones. I dodge as best I can to the right, blocking the wild swipe of it's forepaw as it lands, and feeling my arm damn near wrench out of it's socket from the sheer power of even a casual strike.

I grimace, recognising that taking a full-powered strike from this thing is guaranteed to be lethal. A line from where it's claw gouged the metal has appeared in my buckler now, and I feel my forearm stinging from the laceration. As it resets, I spare a glance to the ongoing brawl - now reaching a conclusion with only six of them left, the real fighters of the mob as the only survivors.

Cognizant of my impending reinforcements and my inability to penetrate the hide of the Bortosi, I shift my mindset to a purely defensive approach to the fight, focused on avoiding it's attacks as much as possible. I can maybe survive a few more glancing blows, but I'm liable to lose my arm like that.

Defying my expectations for another pounce as it rears back, it spits a soccerball sized gobbet of saliva at me. On reflex, I dodge out of the way and almost get my head taken off by it's powerful jaws when it follows the projectile with the pounce I was expecting. Stumbling, I stick my hand out to the floor and fall into a roll, barely managing to stay safe.

The stone-ground where the spitball landed hisses, smokes and bubbles, I note grimly, glad I didn't try to block it. That shit would melt my arm off, buckler included. My observation is cut short as the creature presses it's obvious advantage, fully confident in it's ability to end me with no resistance.

Getting desperate, I call out to my erstwhile allies, "I can't hold this thing off much longer! Some help would be appreciated!"

It swipes down, I dodge back. It lunges forward to bite and I fall down into a backwards roll, grunting from the impact and the digging in of my chainmail, only to roll again to the side when the Bortosi retches up more of it's magmatic sputum. My inner biochem graduate is wondering how this creature isn't cooking in it's own skin, but the answer is magic probably. Kind of a catch-all excuse, really.

The Bortosi's next pounce is interrupted by a ball of ice materialising above and crashing down - shattering on impact but doing little visible damage, only stunning it momentarily. Standing hastily, I glance to the side and see my teammates rushing over to help, finally done clearing out the lynch mob. Our protection targets stay where they are, which is one less thing to worry about.

"This thing can shear through armour like a knife through butter," I advise as I retreat towards them, "Don't let it so much as breathe on you."

"Well aware kid, good job holding it off, we'll take over from here," The leader woman whose name I still don't know pats me on the shoulder with a blood-soaked glove and runs in with her sword and shield set, the scout circling around to it's rear and the mage starting a new incantation.

If they're confident they can take care of it, I can only choose to believe them, but leaving our charges alone like this doesn't seem like a fantastic idea, and there's no telling if more of these things will show up for a free meal, so after informing the mage of my decision I grit my teeth, take a deep breath and run over to the kids.

"Hey, we need to get you all somewhere safer quickly before more show up, come on," I instruct them forcefully, waving my sword in the direction of the hill we came from for emphasis.

"Who d'you think you are to talk to us like th-ow!" The lone girl of the group starts off trying to say something hoity-toity about my attitude before taking an elbow from a more contemplative looking young man in tattered leathers.

"Knock it off, Julip, now isn't the time for that crap - sorry miss, after you," He bows his head politely. Hm, good head on this one.

I look back over my shoulder, "What'd you do to piss those guys off anyway?"

The conscientious boy shakes his head, "Nothing I know of. We just came out here to get some Lesser Charwood as part of my mother's Solaceday gift. Those lunatics ambushed us when we were making camp."

"That it? You didn't kick over some sacred shrine or anything?" I query.

"Nothing of the sort," The prissy girl sniffs, "Those savages just take exception to anyone of Firm heritage for atrocities long-buried - that we wear the heraldry of nobility just makes us more attractive targets for their sick grudge."

"Indeed, such tribes are infamous, but we thought them little more than rumour. To run afoul of one, we can only curse our luck," the third member of the group remarks, "The Panoplast Accord was more than two centuries ago, and yet, here they remain."

As the trio further discuss racial politics in a slightly condescending manner, I find myself mentally checking out of the conversation to such an extent that I almost don't notice the end of the trial.

IdleFancy

That's that done. Regular chapters again for a little while - not sure if I'll do a 'Their Paths' for Jupiter's First Step. Depends on whether it fits with what's going on at the time, which I doubt it will.