In the world of the ascended, a family's status was determined by a few things: wealth, connections, and magical ranking. Naturally, these three things were tied together, as the highest status was given to the leaders of the Ascendant clans, who were often powerful Archmages and made up the united governing body of all the lands, called the Celestial Assembly.

  Mossbornes, however, were not ascended, and their status was reliant on one thing.

  Pure, brute strength.

  As a clan of powerful, forest mercenaries, their strength as a unit was quite literally the determining factor of how much grain and gold they would be given each year. Each member of the clan had to contribute to that.

  Even for Ari, whose Uncle Brom had been the clan chief, whose parents were senior advisors on the Mire Council, and whose brother was now a Keeper of the Bog, she still had to prove that she could adequately defend the clan if it came down to it.

  That was what the Moat Trials were all about.

  Every fifteen-year-old, regardless of gender or parental status, was forced to complete three trials to prove their strength against the Thornhollow Forest. They would run into the thick overgrowth, bearing the oppressive humidity, and find the path in the dark towards Hachum Hill. At the base, there would be a boulder waiting for them, which they would then have to push to the very top, and receive a totem from the observers there. After receiving the totem, trialists would fight their way through the forest once more, returning to the river edge where the final stage would begin.

  The Moat.

  The official instructions were to find totems hidden in the marshy trenches and get across the muddy water as quickly as possible. However, since there was a limited number of totems, and they were hard to find, the challenge typically turned into an all-out skirmish between the trialists, which was also another test of strength. That was by far the stage Ari found the most concerning, and for the past year, this was what Ari had trained for. She’d needed extra training because she was smaller than most of the Mossbornes her age. Smaller than those younger than her, too.

  Ari bit her lip and tried to fortify herself, but truly, she didn’t have high hopes.

  She scratched the back of her arm as she waited in the subjects' tent, crowded to the brim with about thirty other teens and one member of their family.

  It was all very chaotic. Ari wanted to get it over and done with so she could get away from the noise. Her entire body itched with discomfort, the smell, the heat, the constant chatter making it hard to breathe.

  “Okay." Her brother leaned in to talk in a low voice. He looked around, his eyes shrewdly picking out the competition. "Do you remember everything I taught you? About making a path through the forest and finding the hill?"

  She nodded. "Follow the dragonlillies." Her brother was more knowledgeable about the forest than just about any other person, having spent much of his childhood there hunting creatures he could sell. He'd taken her there every week for the last year and taught her how to track by using the tiny red bulbs that you could just about make out, even in the dark of the thick foliage.

  He'd also taught her how to run quickly without sinking into the marshy ground.

  "Once you get to the boulder, don't stop. Use your momentum to start the push and remember to dig your heel in with every step."

  Ari nodded. He'd told her all of this before, but he liked to repeat himself sometimes.

  "I'm not very worried about the race. You’ve always been fast. It’s the duel I’m concerned about. Every other kid is bigger than you. So you have to be sneaky, especially at the moat. Slow them down in the forest if you can. Don't attack them outright. Sneak up on them, heel to toe, like a cat. And don’t meow this time.”

  “I was going to purr," she said. “It helps with my balance.”

  “Don’t do that either." He grabbed her hand and drew her out of the tent into the corner devoid of trialists but surrounded by observers. Ari felt like she could breathe easier here.

  "Okay, now watch me. See how I’m stepping. Quiet. Controlled. Pretend the ground is made of dry leaves."

  "Why would there be dry leaves on a wet ground?" Ari asked.

  “It’s imaginary. Just try to be the wind. Now, I’m going to turn my back, and you're going to sneak up and grab me, just as I taught you.”

  “Okay.” She took a few steps behind him in the limited space they had and mimicked his steps. “I am the wind.”

  “The wind is quieter than that.”

  “The wind can be loud sometimes.”

  “Stop arguing with me and focus.”

  “What if the wind alerts my enemy?”

  “I'm not your enemy, I’m the target. Attack me. Now.”

  Arielle took a breath. I am the wind.

  She crept up on him while he whistled and pretended he couldn’t hear her. She evaluated his body as he taught her to, trying to find weak points. It was hard. Her brother was a fierce warrior already, a whole head taller than her, with his entire body honed with lean muscle. He also stood with his heels planted and his ear twitched as though listening to the very wind, giving the impression that he was ready for anything.

  Then again, Ari knew that in his last raid, a sea serpent had bitten his wrist. It was healing, but it might still be sore. That would be a good place to target.

  When she got close, she lunged at him, but as he turned around, predicting what she was about to do, she tried to change course and grab his leg instead.

  Of course, that meant she tripped, and he kept her from falling by holding the belt of her hose.

  "You went for the cheap shot," Bram said.

  "That's what you told me to do." It was the rule he'd given her. When fighting, always take the cheap shot. Ari liked rules. They made everything simple.

  "Yes, but it was too obvious. You could have at least tried to fake me out."

  "Oh."

  He sighed and righted her up, glancing around to make sure no one had seen. "Your combat skills haven't improved much, but hopefully, there’s at least one person who’s worse than you.”

  “That would be fantastic," she sighed, because indeed it would be. At best, she was hoping to be one of the top twenty so she could pass and wouldn't have to do extra training for a repeat test.

  At worst, she was hoping not to get injured and not to be the final trialist across the moat. She was already enough of a pariah. Being the worst-performing trialist would make that infinitely worse.

  At her enthusiastic response, her brother sent her a sour look.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “Was that sarcasm?”

  “Nooo,” he said.

  "Oh ok. I thought it might have been."

  Her brother's gaze narrowed. "That's because it was. And I was being sarcastic when I said no as well."

  So double sarcasm. That wasn't fair. How was she supposed to know?

  The first bell rang before she responded. That was the call to get ready. All the other trialists began emerging from the tents as well. Her brother was about to be shooed off. He gave her more lectures, but it was hard for her to pay attention. So much was happening all at once. Too much sound, too many smells, and the heat was unbearable.

  Sweat trailed down her back. The noise level made her eardrums feel like they were constantly assailed. She wanted to cover her ears, but knew that would upset people and make them think she was strange. Which she was. But she didn't like to call attention to it.

  Instead, she focused on the spirit orbs floating in the air. Most were broken, but at the sides of the crowd were Greenfinger invigilators observing the trial. They would also be called to intervene if things got out of hand. They each had an EPUQ at their waist, and an abundance of green, red, and brown essences swirling around them.

  "Are you listening to me, Ari?"

  She shook her head honestly.

  “Too many people,” she told him.

  “That’s not important. Look, I don’t want to put too much pressure on you, because I know how you get, but this is extremely important. Do I need to call Celie to give you a talk?"

  She shook her head fervently. She’d explicitly stated that she didn't want her sister here, not even to observe.

  "You understand what's at stake here, don't you?"

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  She nodded, then began to recite. “The Greenfingers will evaluate us and might offer us better positions and more grain if they see we are strong. Less grain if we are weak. Also, Father will be proud even though he's not here and can't see me." Arielle hadn't seen her father in nearly six years. At first, after being deployed as one of the southern border guards, he'd visited home at least once a year. But that had dwindled into nothing, and there had been no contact except for the occasional letter.

  "That’s right. Father…he’s probably somewhere thinking about you doing this. He’s probably watching." Brom took a second to swallow thickly. He cleared his throat and continued, “Anyway. He might get to come home after this.”

  She nodded.

  The second horn blew, and the trialists began to walk towards the front line drawn in the sand in front of the forest.

  Her brother drew her into a brief hug before releasing her.

  "Good luck," he said.

  "Thank you," she responded. She took her stance between Agatha Mooreland and Stavis Dirthand. Both of them dwarfed her, and they gave her individual looks.

  "Good luck," Agatha said.

  "Thank you," Ari responded.

  "She doesn't mean it," Stavis said with a snort.

  "That's fine." Ari shrugged.

  "She doesn't get it," Agatha said. "She's smart with book stuff, but dumb in real life."

  Ari thought she was actually all-around intelligent, but she was tired of arguing with people about it.

  Instead, she focused on the task at hand.

  Her body naturally tensed as they waited for the final horn. She forced herself to relax, remembering her brother's words. Channel that tension into speed. Use momentum to push the rock up the hill. Run back and ambush. Find a token and get across the moat as fast as possible.

  She wiggled her toe in her shoes. She also looked to either side of her, taking in the scene.

  Thirty-eight trialists in total. Ten less than last year. Some had defected from the village, others had simply refused to show up, deciding to bear the punishment instead.

  The trialists were arranged shoulder to shoulder, a few inches from each other.

  Ten people away from Ari was Greta Mistflower. She was looking right at Ari.

  “Hey,” Greta said.

  Ari hung back. A cramp struck her stomach. She avoided eye contact.

  “Hey,” she said finally.

  “Good luck." The other girl said.

  “Thank you,” Ari said. “You too.”

  Greta looked like she wanted to say something else, but she faced forward.

  The pang stung even more.

  It was hard to believe that just a few days ago, they were having much longer conversations. Greta had been her only human friend for the longest time. Losing her had been…she didn't know how to describe the feeling, but it made her never want to make another friend again.

  Then the final horn blew.

  Ari jerked, and by the time she noticed, they were already ahead of her.

  Shoot.

  She started running immediately, trying to close the distance between them. She could already feel her brother's disappointment at her back, but she heard his voice in her head. A weak start doesn't have to be a weak finish. Just follow the dragonlillies.

  The spirit orbs chased her, whispering their words of encouragement. Well, not whispering words so much as humming, but Ari chose to take it as motivation anyway. She sighted the dragonlilllies, keeping her eyes on the path, picking her feet up through the marshy forest.

  Her breath got tight. The sound of her own labored breathing bothered her. She wished she weren't doing this. She wished she were doing just about anything else, but she had to pass this test for her family.

  The mud sucked at her boots. The ground shifted with every step, with slick roots, puddles that looked shallow but sank her to her knees, mats of moss that collapsed under her weight.

  The feeling was unpleasant, but she relied on muscle memory to get through it.

  I am the wind, she thought. Light, airy. Wind.

  Finally, she began to see the light at the end of the forest. She spotted the boulders that were nearly as big as she was. There were already trialists pushing them up the hill, but thankfully, not all the trialists had made it yet. Some might still be stuck in the forest, which meant Ari was no longer in last place.

  She picked up her speed and charged at a boulder, transferring all the force she could onto it. For a single scary moment, it didn't move. It was slightly heavier than the ones Brom had had her train with, but they were manageable. She simply held her breath, dug her feet in, and pushed, and finally it shifted.

  The hill above her stretched into the horizon, but she paid no attention to it. One step at a time. One breath at a time.

  She pushed. The boulder rolled an inch. She dug her feet in, made sure she was stable, and pushed again. The boulder rolled another inch.

  She had a system, reciting the steps in her head. But around the midway point, it got harder. Her breath felt shallower, her shoulder screaming with agony. She sucked in her belly, clenched every muscle, and kept going. She thought of her father. Of Brom, who'd spent every free moment he'd had training her instead of finding more Glowfrogs to sell.

  Of her sister, whom she desperately wanted to prove wrong.

  Ari heard sounds of people tumbling down beside her, already done with this portion of the trial.

  As well as people rushing past her, moving faster than she was.

  She blocked it out and kept pushing, every step harder than the last.

  Eventually, the pressure eased.

  She was on flat ground at the top of the hill.

  "Finally." She released a breath of relief and stared at the invigilator in front of her. It was Wilhelm Sars, who was their arithmetic instructor at the schoolyard. He often praised her because she got perfect scores. He also used her to set the grading curve for the rest of the class, which made them angry at her.

  "Here you go, Ari." He grinned as he handed her her totem, and she took it. She wanted to take a break to rest before the rest of the journey, but she couldn't. She was very nearly behind again.

  She took to the totem and ran.

  She plunged into the dark forest once more, the muscles in her legs aching. She was slower now; she knew it. The forest felt colder too for some reason, and she was so much more aware of the insects flying onto her skin, the smell of rot and wet leaves. She leapt over a fallen log, landed hard in a splash of brown water, and nearly slipped.

  Luckily, she caught herself on a twisted cypress trunk and shoved forward again.

  She kept going. She was nearly at the final stretch. The buzzing around her got louder, as though the essences were trying to give her speed. She didn't know if it worked or if it was more of a mental thing.

  But it worked at distracting her from how much pain she was in.

  Ari burst through a curtain of hanging vines and slid down a muddy slope into waist-high water.

  Cold shock stabbed up her spine.

  She waded through, forcing her legs to move faster, every step dragging through thick mud beneath the surface. Reeds slapped her face. A frog launched away with a startled splash.

  "Yes!" She heard her brother yell above the crowd that surrounded them. "Go, Ari!"

  She forced her head under, searching for the token through the green oily films. Green murk swallowed her vision. Something drifted past her feet, and she froze. Probably a fish. Probably.

  I hate this she thought as she came up. Her eyes burned, and she closed them when she went under again. The world went silent. Pleasantly so. She used her hands to feel around the base, ignoring the touch of weeds on her face, and fumbling through rocks, sand, and debris.

  Finally, by some miracle, her fingers closed around a cool circular coin. A totem.

  Finally. She was free. She had done it.

  She only had to get to the other side of the moat.

  Just as her head came up, she heard the scream.

  She wiped her face quickly and opened her eyes to find that the crowd had been distracted by the sight of someone, Agatha by the looks of it, getting dragged away by the current.

  Except there wasn't supposed to be a current in a moat.

  It clicked in an instant just as someone yelled, "Bog Worm!"

  Chaos immediately broke out.

  The warriors and Keeper of the Bog chased after Agatha, trying to snatch her from the escaped bog creature, but they were too slow.

  As some launched arrows and spears, others were screaming at the children to get out of the moat.

  Someone, a Greenfinger, yelled "[Call To Hand]" and waved his wand. His red, yellow, and brown orbs raced ahead of the fighters to wrap around Agatha. Yet when they made the pattern, it struggled to hold her.

  Ari identified the problem immediately. The silvery bonds between the essences were shaky. So shaky that one of the red essences, characteristically more excitable than the rest, started to pull away from its neighbor.

  This caused the whole structure to break apart.

  She knew what would happen if it did. It would cause blowback on the mage.

  She didn't want that to happen.

  So she held out her hand and pointed at the wayward essence. She felt the connection of mind, of thought, of core.

  "Go back in place," she told it.

  It moved, but too slowly. The bonds completely failed, and the particles were pushed away from each other, blasting toward the source.

  Ari stopped the explosion.

  She didn't know how.

  She just ordered it to stop, and it did.

  The orbs froze, and then she quickly rearranged them back into the shape that the mage had been trying to make.

  This time, the bonds formed firmly, and the magic wrapped around Agatha, yanking her from the tentacle attached to her leg and sweeping her to safety.

  She landed in the mage's arms and wrapped her arms around his neck, sobbing.

  Ari nodded in satisfaction.

  That was the last thought she had before someone jumped on her from behind and punched her square in the eye.

  ***

  Archmage Elric Earthbinder had just arrived back at Stonewarden when he was summoned back to the Ministry.

  He resisted the urge to groan. Mostly, he enjoyed his work, but it had been a long week. A long year, as a matter of fact.

  Becoming an Archmage, far from making his life easier, had made it infinitely more complicated. He'd been looking forward to some rest, but duty called once more.

  "[Close Teleport]," he said and disappeared in a wind, appearing back at his office.

  "Oh," Mycella said. "You got here quick."

  "What's the problem?"

  "I just thought you might want to see this complaint. An incident happened in Fenway yesterday. A bog creature attacked during the Moat trials, and one of the invigilators had a faulty wand."

  "Who was the wand maker?"

  "Wandwell."

  "Order a full recall."

  "We have. There's something more, though. When the mage first said the spell, the wand failed to complete. The spell didn't fail, but it took its sweet time to work, and backlash was imminent."

  "A delayed reaction?"

  "That's what we thought at first. But look at this. [Surveillance Review]"

  A black screen drifted up, and a video started to play. It was a top-down view of a chaotic scramble as a girl was being dragged through waves with half the onlookers chasing her.

  Elric saw the mage trying to hold on, but Elric was experienced enough to know that the spell was about to fail. Spells typically had a six-second maximum activation time, and anything beyond that meant failure.

  He counted six seconds, yet no backlash happened. There was simply a slight ripple in the atmosphere before the spell activated.

  That was odd to say the least.

  "To your left," Mycella said, and that was when he saw it.

  Amidst the chaos, there was one person who stood still in the middle of the moat. A girl. She had her hand outstretched, pointing at the air. When the ripple happened, she spread her fingers apart. Then she formed what seemed to be a spell shape.

  "[QUICK ZOOM]" he ordered, and the image became clearer.

  His heart stopped. She was older. A little taller.

  But he knew those eyes and that focused gaze anywhere.

  Arielle Blacksoil.