“Case you kids didn’t pick up on another obvious thing, this is a return bell. You can ring the bell if you want to swap out. Make sure the person ringing it is the one that wants to leave.”
I’d guessed most of that, but it was good to confirm. A question occurred to me, though. “Any limit on the number of swaps we can do?”
“Nah, just going to cost you a headache.”
That was good, but, “Do we lose points for switching people?”
“Can’t tell you how you’re scored.”
“Does the bell stay with the person who rings it, or does it stay in the room?” I could tell she was getting annoyed, but it was worth it to push for as much information as I could get.
Unfortunately, she had reached the end of her patience. “So many questions!” she griped. “It’ll drop where you used it. There’ll always be a return bell in the test room.”
I looked across the room at Sera. “Do we want to arrange pre-set times to switch and share info?”
The older student wasn’t having that. “Cute idea, kid, but you’re out of strategy time. Test starts in three... two...”
Oh, resh!
“One... go.”
We opened our doors. The inside of my room was pitch black, so I hesitated to step inside immediately — but that turned out not to matter. An unseen force yanked me inside the moment I processed the black. I heard an amused, “Have fun!” echoing from somewhere behind me as I stood amidst the dark.
***
So, I wasn’t afraid of the dark exactly, but I admit I was more than a little concerned.
Yeah, concerned. That’s a good word.
Once I stopped shaking, I took a deep breath and considered my options. I didn’t have any kind of light magic available, but Patrick could probably illuminate the room with fire... assuming there wasn’t anything combustible in the air.
They wouldn’t do that, would they?
I held off on the suggestion, just in case the teachers were feeling particularly malicious with the room’s design.
I also wasn’t even sure Patrick was still with me.
“Patrick, you there?”
There was a brief, disconcerting pause. “Uh, yeah, sorry. I can’t see, can you?”
“No, but I’m working on it.”
Maybe I could see something with my attunement enabled?
I concentrated for a moment, activating my attunement.
The light was nearly as blinding as the darkness.
The whole room glowed brightly under my enhanced vision, which shouldn’t have surprised me. The test was probably being constructed from a whole bunch of illusions and enchanted objects, meaning practically everything was magical.
The luminescence of the objects in the room didn’t extend to anything around them, so I wasn’t exactly getting a clear image of the whole place, just glowing outlines within a canvas of black. It was enough to let me pick out some key features, though.
The room itself was rectangular, and I was near one of the corners, standing on solid ground. A man stood next to me. Presumably, that was Patrick, but I couldn’t actually see that level of detail. All I could make out was a glowing person’s outline. He had something in his right hand. A dueling cane, maybe?
No door behind us, but I could see outlines that might have been doorframes on two of the walls.
The center of the room was obscured, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what I was looking at. There was a dome-shaped cage, with some light leaking through the bars, making it look almost solid.
There was a humanoid figure standing inside the cage, arms uplifted toward the ceiling. Completely immobile. That was mildly disconcerting.
I saw something that looked like a box on the floor near a corner directly across from where I was standing. The glow around it was vibrant red, indicating some kind of destructive magic. An explosive, then? Or a trapped box?
A rectangular wedge jutted out of the floor in front of the cage. It was too thin to be another box. It looked like a wall segment that was out of position.
Finally, there were small, rod-like objects attached to several of the walls. It took me an embarrassingly long moment to realize what they were.
“There are unlit torches on the walls. Can you make fire?”
I hadn’t disproven the presence of flammable gas, but my attunement wasn’t picking up anything obvious, and the presence of torches pretty strongly implied they were meant to be lit.
“Uh, yeah, but I only know attack spells. They’re not really meant for light.”
I nodded, belatedly realizing he couldn’t actually see my response. “That’s fine. I’ll guide you to a torch, and hopefully it’s got some kind of material on the top you can ignite. If not, we’ll try something else.”
I wasn’t big on touching other people, but it couldn’t be helped. It was easier for me to tolerate when I was the one initiating contact, at least. “Going to grab your hand and lead you. Follow slowly.”
“Got it.”
His skin felt weirdly clammy. Maybe that was normal, though... it’d been a while since I’d held anyone’s hand. A long while. I guided him to the a torch on the wall nearest us and set his hand on top of it.
“That’s it. I’d recommend trying something weak.” I pulled my own hand away, taking a step back.
“I could have figured that one out on my own, Corin.” The wry observation was tempered by Patrick’s natural geniality. “Okay, lemme see.” He took a breath.
“Extinguished fire in the night,
I beseech you to Ignite.”
A sphere of flame manifested in Patrick’s hand and blasted through the torch, right into the wall behind it. I winced at the scorch marks left on the wall, but the spell succeeded at serving its purpose. The torch was lit, but not without consequence.
The chime of a bell sounded in the distance. I frowned, looking around the room, but I couldn’t see the source of the noise.
I could see the rest of the room a bit more clearly, though, even with only one torch lit.