The twelve deans of the frozen moment academy towered over us. I recognized a few of them. Dean Gibbons, Dean Harper, Dean Windermere, but most of them were complete mysteries to me beyond their names and titles. Still, I could FEEL the power radiating off them. Like the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for a storm to descend. Dean Gibbons was the first to speak.
“Welcome, students,” he said coldly. “To the final exams. As I’m sure you’re aware, this event is one we hold every year, and one that involves every major. Your teams are your own to select, by whichever criteria you choose, but graduation will be decided based on individual performance WITHIN the team paradigm, rather than by collective victory.”
Dean Harper snorted. “He means that you can still fail if your team passes, so bust your asses or get left behind.” Dean Gibbons glared at the other man, and he shrugged. “What? You beat around the bush too much.”
“Enough bickering,” came a quiet, almost whispered reproach. The figure who spoke was a shadow against the bright morning light, somehow completely impossible to make out despite being fully exposed to the sky. “For those of you who don’t know, my name is Dean Kell Drave. I represent the Department of the Lost. The two previous speakers were Dean Samuel Gibbons of the Department of Temporal Dynamics and Dean Wallace Harper of the Department of Atypical Physicality.”
“Right,” Harper muttered. “Introductions. I always forget that not all of them know us yet. Yeah, I’m Wallace Harper, they call me the Monstrosity. Kell is the Silent Seeker and Sammy over there goes by The Hourglass Bodach.”
The other Deans introduced themselves, most of them briefly and with very little enthusiasm. When Dean Windermere finished the roster, she gestured to the field around us. “Now, some of you may be wondering what exactly this exam entails. It’s different every year, but is usually fairly consistent. Challenges span the gamut of what Ascendants are capable of. There are five of them, each worth two points, with bonus points available for meeting certain goals.
“Today’s challenge is called ‘Castles in the Sky’,” she gestured up above us. “If you look up, you may notice that the sky is mostly empty. But, if you look more closely, you will see that high above us, there is a layer of illusory clouds. On those clouds are a series of illusory outlines of simple buildings. Your mission is to ascend to the cloud layer, find an outline, and create a building that matches it. You have twenty four hours. Begin.”
Her voice cut out, and after it did, the Deans all just…vanished. There was a pause, like the universe itself had stopped to buffer, and then all hell broke loose, everyone surging forward and scattering to try to find a spot under a castle to begin their climb.
“We need to BUILD something?” sputtered Abel. “How is that a finals category?”
“Well, considering we have like three different crafting majors,” I said dryly. “It makes some sense to me. The tasks need to be a good spread across all the specialties, otherwise crafter heavy teams are going to be at a disadvantage. Combat heavy teams might fail this one, if they manage to pass all the others they can still get as high as eighty percent as a unit. Not to mention the best teams can get extra credit on this, so the crafters can pad their score to prepare for less suitable tests.”
“Can we focus, guys?” Benny said grimly. “The why is nice to know, but the HOW concerns me more. Forget the building itself, we’ve got some tricks for that, what we need to worry about is getting the hell UP there.”
I glanced at Abel. “I figured we’d ask our resident travel agent. Or Callie. Or hell, I can give you all WINGS and let you fly up there if you really need it.”
“Yeah, that might work,” Benny said with a wince. “Except you apparently missed where she said it’s an ILLUSORY cloud layer. The test isn’t just building a castle. It’s building a castle in the SKY. And the thing about castles, in case you’ve forgotten, is that they require foundations.”
I shook my head. “Well, most of the people here have Domains. Not all of them will be suitable or large enough to use as a base, but mine and Bethy’s would have the room. Not to mention the rest of Gehenna would be around to help.” I paused. “But the projections will leave us vulnerable. Which means the teams building on Domains will need to assign guards.”
“Some of them aren’t going to bother,” Callie said grimly. “Like that guy,” she pointed to one of the closer teams, led by one of my classmates, and one I specifically recognized from the midterms. Desrick Flint, the guy who could condense time into amber, was currently doing so, snatching blocks of temporal energy from the air around him and tossing them to his teammates. Because of the nature of the material itself, their actions were faster than they should have been, warping time around them.
Desrick’s team was laying the bricks down in a square pattern, building out a solid staircase heading up towards the cloud layer.
He wasn’t the only one, either. Several other teams had taken that tactic, deciding to begin their foundations from the ground and build up, leaving all Domain users open to apply their Domains more fluidly. Some had on solid pad of foundation, some had built multiple pillars based on varying abilities to act as footers of a kind.
I grimaced. They might not have known this was coming, but apparently we weren’t the only ones who saw the logic in having a crafting segment. Most of the teams anticipated something like this, at the very least, that was the only way to explain the distribution of Ascendants with material manipulation specialties across teams.
Luckily, I had one of those too. Grinning, I reached into Gehenna, Calling out an old friend, and pushing him up a rank with my staff as I did. Agares appeared beside us, power radiating from the demon as he was pushed to A-rank. He grinned at me as he appeared. “Hey boss,” he said cheerfully. “You rang?”
“We need some help,” I told him, gesturing to the various spread out teams building towers into the sky. I explained the details, filling him in on the basics even as I called him some help. Beelzebub emerged, also pushed to A-rank, allowing his twelve clones to manifest Agares’s powers themselves, as they had so many times in the past. They weren’t as powerful as Agares himself at A-rank, given they were only tapping into his abilities secondhand, but they made a fantastic work crew.
Dantalion appeared next. I couldn’t bump him up a rank, but his environmental analysis and data management made him an ideal foreman for our budding construction efforts. “Huh,” Benny said as he watched my demons spread out. “I kind of forgot hot bullshit you actually are. Man, being on the other side of that must be REALLY frustrating. Hell, being on the SAME side of it is frustrating sometimes, but at least you’re not trying to kill me.”
“Give it time,” I said dryly. “Now, I don’t suppose there’s anything you can add to the proceedings? You ARE a crafter.” As we watched, Agares got to work dissolving the ground around us into dust, to condense into blocks. Rather than take it all from one spot, he took a huge layer off the field in every direction for about a mile. The field itself was huge, and due to the size of the castle outlines above, the groups had spread out quite a bit, so we had more than enough room to spread out.
He nodded. “My necromantic engineering has some potential applications here. I can use shadow stitching to put together some of those soul containers. Dayna could use them to tattoo the blocks like living beings, reinforcing them as we go. What about the rest of you? Do you have ways to help with construction?”
I shook my head. “Not this time. Domain based castles will be dealing with attacks during the construction itself once they get up there, but they also have a headstart. The rest of us will be dealing with attempted sabotage on the way up.”
Callie nodded grimly. “You and I can fly up ahead of the build and stand guard. The others can just climb alongside the tower itself, since the top will be the most vulnerable spot.”
“Fade, I want you and Alanna on offense,” I instructed. “Sandbag our closest neighbors, it’ll be harder for them to take shots if they’re trying to rebuild. Crell, try to slow them down without direct intervention. Bethy, you’re on air support with us. Jessie, you’ll be keeping everyone going. I want life force boosts whenever any of the demons or defenders starts to flag. Finally, Abel, you’re protecting Jessie. Someone is going to take a shot at our healer, guaranteed.”
Everyone nodded, and I called up Sammael, pushing myself just that little bit extra to boost him to A-rank as my wings burst from my back. This exam was only freshman, but several of the first years had been A-rankers themselves, so we were far from in the clear, even with the boost. Still, given my current stats, a push to A-rank from Sammael would keep me on the cutting edge of combat power near here, even if it wouldn’t exactly make me invincible.
We took off, speeding up into the air to take position above our friends as they began construction. Without a direct attack, we began to circle slowly. Reaching out through the bond, I contacted Callie. “Be careful,” I told her worriedly. “I’m positive we’re going to get attacked during these finals. I doubt they’ll try anything this early, but the Void spawn won’t let this chance go. Deveskane is around here, even if he’s probably disguised.”
“I know, love,” she said soothingly. “You’ve said. I’m on my guard, so don’t worry so much. Did you warn the others? Chelsea and your cabinet are all in a different group. Are they in danger?”
I shook my head before realizing we were talking mentally and verbalizing my response. “I don’t think so. Deveskane isn’t local, and I don’t think our people are on his radar. Hell, I don’t think WE’RE on his radar. I’m not sure he cares about us as individuals. He came after you to get the lantern shield, not as a vendetta. At least I think so. Not that it makes up for it,” I gritted my teeth. “I’m going to tear that bastard apart when I get my hands on him.”
Entering this place meant he had to be below S-rank. You couldn’t get in with a completed Chronicle, which meant A-rank was the limit. That was part of my reasoning for striving so hard to get stronger. I might not be A-rank yet, but between all the preparations I made, I was confident that I could hang in a fight with anyone below S.
“Don’t borrow trouble,” she said worriedly. “If we can get through this without fighting him, do it. Report to the deans and let them handle it if you can. Your safety is more important than some petty revenge.”
“Of course,” I reassured her. “I won’t pick any fights I don’t have to.” Left unsaid was the fact that I was sure I’d have to fight Deveskane. This whole thing was coming to a head, and there was no way he didn’t have measures in place he at least THOUGHT would assure his victory. In the end though, only time would tell. Maybe I would walk out of this without a fight. It was a sign of my growing maturity that I didn’t physically burst out laughing at the idea. The fight was coming, and I was ready.