Page 559

"AAAAAARRRRGGGG!!"

While Hauke celebrated his escape from the prison of his mind, Ollie roared in anguish and frustration as he experienced the pain of burning to death in the searing flames of the Inquisition’s sorcery... again.

The world of the vision shifted around him, returning him to the very beginning as he lay in a curled-up, fetal position on a grassy hillside outside of a quiet village that overlooked rocky hills and a dense forest of cypress trees.

The village in his vision wasn’t exactly identical to the one he had helped to construct in the Vale of Mists, but it was similar enough to feel hauntingly familiar, especially when he realized that it was populated by many of the same people.

"Well, Ollie," Ashlynn’s voice called while the aspiring knight and witch shook and trembled on the ground. "Do you accept your results as the best outcome you could achieve?"

"No!" Ollie spat as he struggled to rise from the ground. Each time he failed, the trial reset, but the memory of the pain and suffering lingered with him for several minutes until his mind caught up with the changes.

"No," he repeated as he regained his footing and slowly pulled himself upright before the vision of Ashlynn who had become his personal tormentor for... for more days than his pain-addled mind could recall.

Ashlynn had told him that the trial would end within nine days, one way or another, but it had become very clear that in this vision, time moved much, much faster than it did in the real world and he had already spent dozens of days struggling against the devilish scenario that the Ashlynn in his vision had devised for him.

"If I cannot save my people," he said between ragged breaths. "With all the gifts and knowledge you’ve given me. And all the powers at my fingertips. Then I don’t, I don’t deserve to be the Cypress Witch."

"Have you ever considered that this might be a test that you cannot pass?" Ashlynn asked, perching on a nearby stump and giving Ollie a careful, evaluating look. "That this might be about learning the limits of a witch’s power?"

"That, that can’t be right," Ollie said as he thought back over the loop that he’d been stuck in for what felt like months on end.

In the beginning, the vision of Ashlynn had guided him in unlocking the power of a witch, using the energy of the world to help plants to grow.

He’d learned to draw the life out of weeds and provide it to vegetables that could help sustain the ever-growing village.

The magic had been so immediately relevant to his struggles over the summer that he applied himself with vigor, practicing until he could easily maintain whole fields of crops, though Ashlynn was careful about teaching him that at a certain scale, there wouldn’t be enough ’weeds’ to sacrifice and he would have to make choices about taking some away from the grove of Cypress trees to sustain the crops.

She had even let him find out firsthand that some levels of abundance could only be achieved once before the sacrifice he required of the trees was too great for the mighty guardians to recover from.

She had told him in the beginning that he might one day need to choose and that he would have the power to make decisions that impacted an ever-increasing number of lives.

.. and she hadn’t been wrong. The first time Ollie watched one of the mighty cypress trees crumble under its own weight as the heartwood rotted from within, it became obvious that, while he could create great boons, the power to do so had to come from somewhere.

In the end, when he had completed the lesson, Ashlynn had asked if he was ready to face his trial. And then, with an abundance of confidence, he had agreed to undergo her devilish test.

The instruction she’d given him was simple. "Take care of your people." Nothing could be more fundamental to Ollie’s existence after the months he’d spent working to help the refugees from the outlying villages build a new life. But nothing was as simple as it seemed.

His first night in the strange village, a second sun had blossomed in the sky, turning night into day and bringing with it the scorching heat of summer at midday.

The new sun, according to Ashlynn, was a powerful act of sorcery by the Inquisition, one that would suppress the vampires who watched over the nation, keeping them confined underground during all hours of the day and night.

It was a nightmare of unending day. Within a matter of days, crops began to wilt and die, the irrigation channels emptied, and even the pond that the village relied on began to recede.

There was no rain and no respite from the endless, scorching heat that blanketed the valley as far as the eye could see.

Ollie tried to fight back, to use what he had learned to salvage the crops and sustain the village, but as five days turned into ten and ten turned into fifteen, he began to run out of sacrifices to make.

Worse, the villagers themselves couldn’t work in the heat, and many in the village, especially the weak and infirm like Old Nan, had faltered, succumbing to the heat when their frail bodies could no longer endure the strain.

"Do you accept your results as the best outcome you could achieve?" Ashlynn had asked when Ollie knelt beside the dry, dusty grave in which they’d buried Old Nan. "Did you do everything you could do to take care of your people?"

"Of course I did everything I could!" Ollie raged. "But no, I can’t accept this," he cried, slamming his fists into the bare, baked earth. "How can I accept that this is the best I could do?"

"If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?" Ashlynn asked in a voice that was carefully neutral.

"I sacrificed too much too early," Ollie said. "I, I wasn’t willing to be hard on the villagers because I thought we only needed to hang on long enough to be rescued. But... rescue didn’t come in time. If I were more careful, if I was less wasteful, I know that we could hang on longer..."

"Then try again," Ashlynn said, gesturing to a village that had returned to the way it was on the very first day of the trial. "Use what you’ve learned and do better this time."

As painful as it had been to see the results of his failures firsthand, Ollie was grateful for the lesson.

At least this way, he could learn without risking the people he cared about.

Ashlynn had called this both a trial and a lesson, and he was beginning to truly understand what she meant.

It was a trial that he had to pass, but failure had already taught him many things.

Next time, he promised himself, next time the village would hang on long enough for rescue to arrive. In hindsight, he’d had no idea how wrong he’d been, or how much worse things would become...