Ashborn's trials began with a searing heat. He had yet to regain consciousness, but he could already feel it, like it had risen to a million degrees inside that glass cube.
He felt his skin sizzle, heard a pop like something had melted, and smelled the unsettling scent of roast meat... which was likely his own flesh.
That last thought shattered his sleep state and pulled him awake with a loud gasp.
"Eughhhh!"
Ash sat up, heaving relentlessly as he tried to reclaim his own mind. However, the extreme temperature made that impossible.
Why was it so hot?
He looked beyond his bare feet and shock-stared at what was in front of him. And beside him. And behind him.
Ash was on a river. A river painted red and orange, as hot as the sun that had failed to illuminate Eryndal for decades.
Ash was sitting on lava.
...
Specifically, he was sitting on a small flat-faced rock that sat in the lava. Thank the Trials for that; the rock was the only thing that separated him and a very hot death.
Covering his nose with his plain shirt, Ash rose to his feet, testing the rock and its balance. It didn't react to his weight or to the torrent of the lava, which meant it wasn't a floating rock.
Ash's suspicions were correct. It was impossible for a rock to float on lava; it should have long sunk by now, joining its forgotten friends in the fiery sub-element of lava.
So, Ash concluded that he was on an outcropping. A long pillar of rock that stemmed from the lava's crust. Ash raised his head and gazed into the ash-filled sky, then looked around at the distant rock faces that surrounded him.
His hand plopped down as he came to his second realization, his eyes wide but looking at nothing in particular, only the hopeless situation he'd found himself in.
This wasn't just a river of lava. Ash was in a volcano.
Ding!
A loud bell rang in the space, echoing within the volcano and in Ash's frantic chest. Then a feminine voice followed. It would have been a sweet sound if not for the context.
[ Aspirant, welcome to the first Challenge of your Beast Trial ]
[ Name : Ashborn | Given Name : Unknown | Starting Skill : Heavy Claw | Soul Dominion : 0% ]
[ First Challenge - Survival : Survive the searing heat of the volcano for 30 minutes ]
[ Rewards will be allocated according to your performance ]
For emphasis, the loud bell rang again before silence returned, the rising steam and boiling river simmering in its wake.
Ash cursed and lay back on the hot rock. "Survive this heat for 30 minutes. Well, I'm astronomically fucked, aren't I?"
He knew that goal was a fat lie. Beast Trials worked that way, from what he read and what the starchy official told him.
The true conditions to complete the Challenges were hidden and left to the aspirant to figure out. They were usually things that tested the attributes the Beast's Soul was looking for in a bearer. And they were also much more difficult than the original goal.
In Ash's case, it was far too obvious that the goal was a misdirection. They had just slapped on a generic objective, barely even trying to make it believable. This led Ash to assume that his true challenge was going to be extremely difficult.
It was best to figure out what it was right away.
But first, as he had read and been advised, he thought to check his properties.
'Just think of the word 'properties' in your mind,' he recalled what he'd memorized. 'Like you're calling someone, except in your head.'
The moment he did that, a burning parchment unfurled in front of him. It was a crimson, translucent scroll with burning torches as rollers and glowing orange text that displayed his properties.
Admiring the theatrics for a second, Ashborn continued with reading the content.
[ Vessel : Ashborn Drayton
Given Name : Unknown
Stage : Bearer
Rank : S
Attributes : Strength : 014 | Agility : 034 | Constitution : 020 | Intelligence : 050 | Perception : 045 | Control : 003 | Essence : 007
Skills : Heavy Claw
Soul Dominion : 0%
Beast Rank : Paragon X
Beast Soul : Primordial Dragon ]
Ashborn heaved a sigh as he looked up at the smoke-covered mouth of the volcano. "You were never going to make it easy for me, were you, you mad dragon."
—---—
He rose to his feet a moment later, forcing his eyes to stay open despite the stinging, sulphurous air. There had to be something around him that pointed to what the hidden objective was.
He looked down at the lava. It was boiling and steaming as usual, but Ash noticed that the color had changed. Only slightly, but Ash could see the difference.
There was barely any red left. It now glowed with a brighter orange and yellow color. He didn't know what it suggested, but for some reason, the lava was changing. And it was getting hotter.
Ash narrowed his eyes, looking around his feet at the edges of his outcropping. A worrisome thought troubled his mind, but he had to certain.
Ash lowered to his knees again, searching for a reference point. He found one; a jagged, dark protrusion below the edge of the outcropping. It was currently three inches above the licking orange surface of the lava river. He counted his breaths, timing the movement. By his twentieth gasp, the liquid had swallowed the mark.
Ash's head snapped backwards in shock. Fuck.
The lava was rising.
He used the plain shirt the Trial had clothed him with to cover his nose once again. Breathing had suddenly become even harder. The volcano smelled like a river of rotten eggs and charcoal, and the smoke thickened to dark gray.
He heard cracks and snapped his head toward the sight of small rocks falling from the rock face. Slowly, he rose to his feet again, watching stones fall into the boiling lava with silent splashes.
Then, beneath the skin of his bare feet, he felt a tremor.
It was silent enough to go unnoticed, but Ash had noticed it, and he knew without a doubt what was about to happen.
"Survive the heat, my ass!" He cried to the earlier voice. "This volcano is about to erupt!"
Pouring out his frustration with that yell, Ash focused on his predicament. He carefully placed himself at the center of the outcropping where he knew the pillar would be firmest, as he scanned the rest of the volcano for a plan.
By now, he had figured out what the hidden objective of this Challenge was. His Starting Skill was what finally gave it away. [ Heavy Claw ].
[ Description : Dragon-like claws that serve offensive purposes, causing relative damage and Bleed. Can also be used for climbing ].
The only reason Ash would be given a Skill like that for his first Challenge was because it was the only Skill that he absolutely required.
Hence, he deduced that the objective wasn't just enduring the heat alone. The Challenge's true objective was to escape and survive the volcano eruption.