Many more were called before they got to the S’s and they finally called out, “Jude Summers!”.

  I stepped forward and they asked, “Class and Ability?”

  “I am a Mage and my ability is Barrier.” I said and they said, “Please activate your barrier and stop the blow from him.” As they gestured to the third year student whose turn was up to test me.

  I identified him with my Interface and it gave me a single question mark, ‘?’. He just grabbed another wooden sword from the barrel of practice weapons and waited for me to activate my ability.

  I used Barrier and a slightly shimmery barrier of Mana appeared about an arms length from me and was in a rectangular shape from my belly button to the top of my head. The boy took the sword and swung it down quickly, seemingly without an ability and it stopped for a split second when it hit the barrier before the barrier shattered. The blade was coming down towards my shoulder and I squinted my eyes shut, but the blow never landed. He had stopped the strike before it hit me and I was thankful for that.

  The instructors asked to see how far away I could push out the barrier and I hadn’t really tested that out before now. It turned out I could activate my Barrier ability up to 20 feet away and it still kept the same amount of strength. Any further than that and you could break it with the swipe of your hand.

  They then wanted to see if I could change the shape of it. I had shrunk it to make it less obvious in the grass to trip John when we were training, but I hadn’t really thought of making it a completely different shape than the rectangle. They asked me to make it a circle instead or even a triangle and I tried.

  I tried to picture a circle in front of me and felt a pop in my mind that kind of hurt. I looked and sure enough, a circular barrier had formed from activating my Barrier with that specific shape in mind. The triangle worked as well. I was surprised and it just showed how little I really knew about using Barrier.

  They finally asked to see if Barrier could produce a barrier that would hold my weight or someone else's. Again, I never thought to try and use it like that. I activated a barrier parallel to the ground about 1 foot high and stepped up on it. It held! I looked at my Interface to see how much Mana I had left and noticed it was dropping rapidly from me standing on it, so I hopped off and the barrier dissipated. My Mana had dropped from 50% to 20% in just 3 seconds, showing that while it didn’t break from my weight, it still was a drain on my Mana pool.

  “That worked too, but it drained about 10% of my Mana each second I stood on it.” I said, a little tired at this point

  “Not bad…” one of the Mage instructors said that I had forgotten the name of. I think it was the younger one from the assembly. “Who was that again?” I thought to myself… “oh right, Lilla Cropper, that’s right.”

  “There are a lot of options with that Barrier ability, more than you realize. Please head up to the obstacle course, thank you.”

  As I was being dismissed, I was feeling excited. “They see potential in me, that’s good. I really want to see what else that Lilla Cropper has to say about my Barrier. I also can’t believe I didn’t think about changing its shape or trying to stand on it like that… but I guess that is why I’m here, to learn.” I thought as I headed towards that stairwell that led to the upper levels and the entrance of the obstacle course or whatever it was.

  As I stepped out onto the platform from an exterior door on the third floor of the building, it was wooden, but enclosed with some sort of metal mesh until the actual course started. There was a third year there with a slate and asked, “Name?”

  “Jude Summers, first year.” I said, a bit nervous looking at the first portion of the course.

  “Alright Jude, this is how it will work. There is a platform directly across from us, but you need to either go to the left or right pathways to reach it. The right has more strength intensive obstacles and challenges, while the left is more balance and speed based. You can choose either way and you’ll be timed. If you do end up falling, which a few this year already have and there is no shame in that, you’ll receive a DNF or Did Not Finish listed by your name. Does that make sense?”

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  I nodded and really thought about the options. The first obstacle was a 20ft or so narrow metal beam that you had to walk across to get to the platform where you could go left or right. Both paths worked in a semi circle to eventually get you to the finishing platform on the other side. I know I’m not that strong, but I don’t know how much trust I can put in my balance either… “hmmm” I thought out loud, “I think I’ll go for the left.”

  The student attendant who heard me said, “Alright, it doesn’t really matter which way you choose, just let me know when you want to start.”

  I nodded and said, “Alright, let’s do it. The longer I wait, the worse it will get.”

  The boy counted down, “3, 2, 1… start!”

  I was about to run, but looked at the thin rectangular beam and decided a brisk walk was more appropriate. I stepped onto the beam and made the mistake of looking down. I felt a bit of vertigo take over and squatted down and put my hands on the beam too. I was only a few steps in and already, I wasn’t doing great. I focused on my breathing and remembered that if I fell, there was a net to catch me. Nothing to be afraid of. After a couple seconds of amping myself up, I stood back up and was able to shuffle my feet to the other side and the first real platform on the course. Looking to the left, the first thing I had to do was cross a bouncy tightrope kind of wire that had a very loose handhold. As I stepped on it and grabbed the handhold rope, my body went almost horizontal as I stared straight at the ground. I had to use all of my strength to get my body back to vertical and stand back upright. I almost fell and did the same thing in the opposite direction, but caught it before I went too far backwards. I had to tense my core, bend my knees and worked my way down the line to the next platform. My arms felt sore and the adrenaline was pumping from the close call I just had.

  Next, there were four little discs with poles sticking up from each that you had to hop to and grab on the pole for stability. I jumped to the first and almost rammed my head into the pole, but was able to stop my momentum before that. The next three actually went pretty easily and I made it to the next platform. There were two more obstacles before I was done. The next was a sort of log to cross, but it looked like it could spin. Putting one foot out onto it, I tried to push it to the right to see if it rotated and… it did spin. “Shoot…” I thought, “I probably can’t just walk across it, I’ll probably fall right off. Maybe I can crawl across.”

  Crawling across would most likely work best. It wouldn’t look very manly or cool, but it wasn’t about looks here, I had to get across. I put my hands out on it first and it had already started to rotate. So I planned to do a bit of an ‘inchworm’ technique, putting my arms forward and straddling with my legs and working my arms forward and then my legs, inching forward.

  “I must look ridiculous…” I thought, but couldn’t help but laugh at how funny it was. I was only about 5 feet from the next platform and I lost focus and my whole body started to rotate off the log.

  “I can’t fall here!” I cried out and held on like my life depended on it. Intellectually, I knew I could fall, but I didn’t want to lose. I held on with all my strength and modified my inchworm to get to the end. Getting onto the platform took a lot of energy out of me too because I had to grab it upside down and twist my legs up to get back upright to inch myself onto the platform. Once finally back onto a solid non-spinning surface, I took five or so seconds to catch my breath.

  “One obstacle left.” I muttered as I looked at the last obstacle. There were six ropes equidistant apart with a rubber tube attached at the base. The first one to start was within reaching distance, so I tested the stability of the small rubber base of the first swing and it was very floppy. “I’ll need to make sure my feet are evenly placed on either side of the rope to give me the most stability as I work my way through this one…”

  I gritted my teeth and forced myself to start. If I wanted a completion time that wasn’t completely terrible, I had to get through this one fast. I stepped onto the swing that I had grabbed, held onto the rope in the middle and took off my foot still on the platform, swinging me to the next one, which I grabbed and transferred my feet. I repeated this for the next one and the one after that. Finally, I was on the last swing and needed a little momentum. I grabbed the swing behind me to get a little more tension on my swing to get the pendulum motion right for me to reach out and grab the platform. I let go of the swing behind and I was swinging towards the platform and reached out with my foot and just was able to secure it with the edge of my boot. I tried to shimmy my foot further onto the platform, but I wasn’t that flexible and my leg was really far out from the rest of my body. I didn’t have enough of my weight on my foot to comfortably pivot towards the platform, but I was also losing strength holding onto the rope the way I was. I had to do an awkward half jump to try and get the platform, but right as I thought I was going to get both feet on it, I started falling backwards and my foot slipped, I reached out and was able to catch my body, but now I was hanging onto the platform with my legs dangling. I didn’t have anything to grab onto. The swings were out of reach and I didn’t have enough strength to lift myself onto the flat platform above my pulling myself up.

  “I was so close! I don’t want to fail now, but I can’t pull myself up. I have maybe 10 more seconds hanging here before I lose grip… What should I do?” I thought, desperately trying to find a way to get up.

  Then it clicked. They never said I couldn’t use my ability on the obstacle course, right? With only a few seconds left of strength to hang, I activated my Barrier ability to form a little higher than where my knees were so that I could step up onto it and pull myself onto the platform. Stepping onto the barrier, I saw my Mana drop by 10%, but I only needed a second. I flopped onto the final platform and my breath heaved from my lungs.

  “It worked! I didn’t fail and I used my ability to actually help me.” I already gleaned this nugget of creative usage of my ability from the evaluation and it helped me finish that same evaluation. I looked at my Interface and it showed:

  “Whoa, my Mana is lower than I realized. I guess I didn’t take time to recover after the initial evaluation. I need to pay better attention to my Interface… and look, 9% experience?! I guess pushing my ability really does pay off. I can’t believe it shot up so much. I’m excited to see what other ideas that Lilla Cropper has for me and my Barrier.”

  “Time: 3 minutes 49 seconds.” Another third year shouted out, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  “I don’t know if that is a good time or not, but I am glad I finished. I bet John set a record or something.” I said, with a smile on my face, still elated I didn’t fail.