There is a mad scramble to find partners. Most people are already standing next to people they allied with in the first trial, but many of those groups have odd numbers, leaving the unfortunate extra wheels to go running around to try to find someone else. A few of the more solitary people look toward me as if wondering whether to try to get me on their side, but only one makes a move.
“Bella!” says Vanessa as she runs to me.
“Vanessa?”
I didn’t expect her to want to talk to me.
“Let’s work together!” she says.
I look over at the homeless man, worried he’ll be left alone and die before I can get answers, but the gloved man is already shaking his hand. He looks over and winks at me, making me scowl. He clearly thinks the homeless man means something to me and is trying to get in my good books. He’s not entirely wrong, but his true motivation is so obvious it’s disgusting. At least he’s competent though. He made it through the first trial without a scratch.
“Alright,” I say, turning back to Vanessa with a shrug. “Are you sure you want to be with me though?”
“We’ve worked together on projects before,” she replies.
“That’s completely different.”
“Is it?”
I don’t respond. The answer is clearly “no”, but based on the look in her eyes, her question goes deeper than the differences in circumstances. She almost looks like she’s pleading. After a few seconds, I shrug and look away.
“Do what you want.”
After another minute or so, the energy level in the hall settles down except for one man, who’s running around, weaving in and out of the crowd, trying to find a partner. I don’t recognize his face at all from the first trial, which means he must be truly unremarkable. It seems the rest here agree, since no one wants to be his partner.
“Looks like you’ve all settled in,” says Ganyu.
“Wait, please!” shouts the lone man. “This isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” replies Ganyu. “Do you have any last words?”
“I- I-” He glances around one last time, then sets his jaw. “Fuck you, and fuck this fucking Tower.”
“How eloquent.”
One flash of ki later, and the man collapses, his head rolling away as the empty stump paints the ground red. The entire group is silent, most looking away from the gruesome sight. Vanessa, however, stares directly at it, unblinking, and with an unreadable expression.
“The second trial is a maze,” says Ganyu, bringing everyone’s attention back to the front. “Your goal, of course, is to escape. There is only 1 exit. You will have eight hours. Failure will result in death.
“You must pass through the maze with your partner. If your partner dies, you fail. If you exit the maze without your partner, you fail. If you attempt to trade partners during the maze, you will fail.
“Killing is prohibited, but not strictly. Killing another person will not result in immediate disqualification. It will, however, remove an hour from your time limit. If you wish to kill within the maze, it would be best not to go overboard.
“The exit is not the only thing you will find in the maze. There are a number of random encounters including enemies, traps, and treasures. If you’re lucky, you may find something even I would be willing to pay well for. If you’re unlucky, you may die before you even know what killed you. Caution can save you from the latter, but only bravery will increase your odds of the former.
“If I may offer one piece of advice, it would be to trust your senses, even the ones you don’t understand. Especially the ones you don’t understand.
“That is all. If you have any questions, keep them to yourselves. Now, everyone, line up in a double-file line with your partners! Each pair will enter at one minute intervals. Your 8 hours start the second you enter. The first group enters in two minutes.”
Vanessa and I end up at the back of the line. I was already far behind everyone else, and Vanessa ran back to join me. It’s a bit inconvenient, since if there’s any hidden treasures, the other groups will have a better chance of reaching them first, but my concerns are partially alleviated when the second pair enters.
When the first pair entered, we could see inside, and there was a dimly lit hall that ended in a T intersection. The second group’s hall made a sharp right turn just a couple feet in. The third’s turned left. I don’t know how it works, but it seems that they’re sending us all in at different points in the labyrinth. The earlier groups will still have an advantage, since they’ll have been in longer, but we’ll probably at least have a chance of being in uncharted territory.
Other than the treasure though, it seems that this trial will actually be quite easy. Ganyu’s not-so-subtle hint made it clear that ki– or rather “Oum”– will be the key to the trial. Only a few people here have even begun to sense it, so I guess this is a way to find the truly talented ones who can already sense it, but for someone as experienced as me, it will be a non-issue. Traps might be a problem, but unless they’re actively trying to kill as many people as possible, they should be pretty easy to detect too. Then again, I can’t exactly rule that out after the first trial.
Even with short, 1-minute intervals between entries, with 98 groups, it still takes quite a while for Vanessa and I to get in. Neither of us say a word during this time. She clearly wants to say something from the way she keeps staring at me, but evidently, she’s waiting until we’re alone. I already regret teaming up with her. I don’t really want to deal with whatever emotional spiel she’s about to give me.
Oh well.
The line moves steadily forward, each group getting a different starting point than the last, and after an hour and a half of boredom and silence, it’s finally our turn. Ganyu nods at me as we enter, which is more than he did for the other groups.
Our hallway goes straight for about fifty feet, then ends in a staircase going down. There’s a trail of ki going straight in front of us, confirming my theory about ki. Out of curiosity, I turn to Vanessa to see if she notices it as well, but evidently that was a mistake.
“Bella?” she says, taking my eye contact as an invitation to start a conversation.
“Yes?” I sigh.
“You’re still… you, right?”
“What do you mean?”The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“You didn’t, like, change when you went into the Tower, right?”
“...I’m the same as I’ve always been.”
“Then we’re still friends, right?”
I pause. That’s not what I expected her to ask. I expected questions about my ki abilities, and how easily I had killed. I need a few seconds to think.
I’ve known Vanessa for five years since we took freshman biology together. That’s nearly a quarter of her life, but a fraction of a percent of mine. In a thousand years, I probably won’t even remember her. Well, I won’t think about her. I don’t really have a choice on the memory part. I let her stick around because she was observant and smart enough not to bother me, but that’s all. I’ve never considered her a friend.
However, there’s no point in making enemies with her.
“I suppose,” I reply.
Her concerned expression turns to one of unbridled happiness.
“Great!” she says. “Then let’s climb the Tower together!”
“What?”
“I promise I won’t hold you back! You know how fast I learn!”
“Vanessa, wait,” I say, nonplussed. “Why do you want to climb the Tower with me?”
“Well…” she starts, her smile fading. “We’re friends, right?”
“Vanessa…”
“Wait!” she says, holding out her hand to stop me. “Before you say anything else, I know you’re different. I’ve known ever since I met you.”
“What?”
“No point in trying to hide it,” she says, shaking her head. “I already suspected on Earth and now that we’re here, you basically confirmed it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her expression turns uncertain, but she sets her jaw and continues.
“You were always mature, even when you were 18. When we met in freshman year, it felt more like I was talking to one of my mom’s friends than someone my age. And then you had all that weird knowledge, and you sometimes talked funny, and you didn’t know how social media worked, and you never made friends with anyone but me. Even with me, you never got close. You never ever told me what you were feeling. It was like you were completely uninterested in anyone else.
“I mean, yeah, you could have just been weird or autistic or something, but then you basically proved that wrong. Remember when we went to that career fair in freshman year? At that time, I just thought you were antisocial, but then when you were talking to the representatives, it was like you were a completely different person. You were smiling and laughing, and using just the right amount of flattery. For a second, I honestly thought you were possessed, or something.
“And then just now you killed that guy who was attacking me, and then you killed the scary guy, and you basically proved it. I know you never did any martial arts or anything. Your mom said you never did any kind of sports growing up. And I didn’t even know magic was real, but then you just used it like it was nothing.”
I sigh. She’s too observant. I shouldn’t have gotten so close to her. There’s no use in denying it anymore though. Not to her, at least.
“Fine,” I say. “You got me.”
“I knew it!” she exclaims. “So what are you? Are you like a secret agent, or a superhero or something? Ooh, or maybe a shapeshifting alien! Or maybe you’re the product of a secret government experiment designed to create super soldiers! Or maybe-!”
“Enough,” I say, cutting her off. “None of those are correct.”
“Then what is it? Are you a vampire? An ancient queen who reincarnated? A ghost possessing a human? Are you from the future? Are you stuck in a time loop? Are you-?”
As she speaks, I tune her out to have a brief internal debate with myself. Revealing my true nature has never led to good things in the past, but if I let Vanessa’s imagination keep going, that might get even more annoying. Besides, I’ll probably have to reveal something eventually. At this point, I’m sure everyone knows I’m not normal. Ganyu certainly suspects something.
“-an alternate dimension? Did you visit another world and come back? Did-?”
“Alright,” I say, shutting her up immediately.
She looks at me eagerly, waiting for me to continue, and for a moment, I reconsider my choice. Should I really tell her? Is it safe? Maybe I can trust her, but what if there’s someone else listening in? I can’t sense anything, but that means nothing with someone like Ganyu around.
“I’ll tell you the truth…” I say slowly. “But not now. Later.”
“Awwww,” she says. “Why not?”
“It could be dangerous. And we need to get through this trial.”
“You’ll tell me later though, right?”
“I will,” I promise. “For now, let’s just finish this trial.”
“Right!” she says, turning to join me as we walk down the hall.
She seems to have forgotten about her insistence on joining me in the Climb. That’s fine with me. Ideally, she’ll continue to forget until it’s too late. She’s not incompetent, but compared to me, she’d just be dead weight. I’d have an easier time on my own.
As we walk on, my curiosity returns, and I fall a half-step behind Vanessa, letting her lead. I had underestimated her observance before. Let’s see if that extends to ki.
At the bottom of the stairs, the hall takes a sharp left, and then a sharp right, and then her first test appears. We emerge into a square-shaped room with a hallway leading out of each side. The ki trail leads to the one straight ahead, while I can sense a spot of more sinister ki down the left tunnel.
“Which way?” she asks, turning to me.
“I’m not sure,” I lie.
She frowns, and narrows her eyes in suspicion, but looks back at the tunnels, studying each one in turn before pointing to the middle one. A lucky guess, or did she actually sense it?
“That one?” she asks, looking back at me for approval.
“We can try it,” I say, shrugging.
“Alright.”
She walks down the tunnel, though with a lot more caution than before. About forty feet down, the tunnel makes a sharp right, and about eighty feet after that, it opens up into another room, this one circular with six options. The correct one is the second from the left, and all but the far right have the same sinister ki as the wrong option from the previous room.
After another minute of hesitation, Vanessa once again selects the correct tunnel. I try to keep my reactions as vague and neutral as possible, but I suppose my lack of protest is confirming her choices a bit. So long as her first choice is the correct one though, that’s fine.
With a bit more confidence, she continues down this tunnel, but as it curves gently to the left, I sense another spot of dangerous ki approaching. At first, I’m worried Vanessa won’t notice, but as we get closer, she slows down before eventually coming to a stop just ten feet away from it.
“I think there’s a trap here,” she says.
“Is that so?”
She frowns at my non-answer and looks back at the trap. The ki is almost a perfect square, right in the center of the path, though only about half as wide, so sticking to either side of the tunnel appears to be safe. About a minute later, Vanessa comes to the same conclusion, and gingerly sticks her foot out, touching the ground right on the edge of the hall. Nothing happens, so she continues to slide past, her feet almost parallel with the wall, taking up as little space as possible. Her approach is way overkill, but it works, and soon, she’s past the trap.
“If you do that, you can get past it,” she says. “Though I bet you already knew that.”
“Perhaps,” I say, walking calmly along the other side on the ample walkway the labyrinth creators left.
She frowns seeing how much space I had, but the frown soon turns into a proud smile.
“See?” she says. “I’m pretty good.”
“A bit.”
I have to admit, she is a prodigy. Not to the point where I believe catching up to me is possible, but she’s almost on the level of the dark-eyed boy.
Out of curiosity, I turn back and gather a bit of ki in my hand before tossing it onto the trap. As soon as it makes contact, the floor disappears, revealing a seemingly bottomless pit. A few seconds later, the illusion of solid ground returns.
“Oh,” says Vanessa with a nervous chuckle. “Good thing we noticed it. Will the other groups be okay?”
“If they’re lucky.”
“I hope they’re okay. Some of them are pretty nice.”
We move on, and Vanessa continues to lead the way. The ki trail gets more subtle as time goes on, as do the traps, but she only gets more confident and decisive the further we get. By ten minutes in, she’s barely hesitating at all when we get to new branches, and diagnosing traps in seconds. However, as talented as she is at sensing ki, she still has no combat experience, meaning that when we encounter the third kind of obstacle, she freezes up.
At the end of the hallway in the biggest room we’ve seen yet, there’s a giant black wolf waiting for us.