Except.
Except I don’t. I need to get out of here.
I pass out from heat exhaustion.
I need to get to Suyai, Mare, and Yanami.
Trial Two
I race through the enemies. I kill every single one before they can get to me. It’s done in minutes.
I close my eyes before I’m blinded and welcome the next trial.
Trial Thirteen
There’s a spring of water bubbling from the mountainside, but I do not recognize these mountains. I do not recognize the unnatural cerulean tint of the lake.
The siren that greets me is beautiful, and that angers me. But she displays her soul jewel and doesn’t fight me when I ripit off her neck. As the soul jewel disintegrates, I know I will not have to do the prior trials again. Just like the first soul jewel, it promises safe passage.
I bathe in the sacred water, and my wounds heal.
Trial Eighteen
I see my mother. I see my aunts. I see my tiny childhood home in the mountains.
Then I’m attacked, my mother’s blows a familiar comfort, but my aunt’s scratches, my aunt’s desperate howls, break something I didn’t know I had.
I stop fighting back, and I don’t think about anything else but that.
Trial Thirteen
When I die next, in Trial 14, Trial 18, Trial 20, Trial 28, I come back here. The siren is gone, but the power of her soul jewel hangs in the air. I bathe in the sacred water. I drown myself in it. I cannot die here even if I tried.
Again and again and again, I return.
As I begin to understand the trials and its cruel rules, the cyclic nature of this timeless place I’m in, I say one thing like a prayer.I need to get to Suyai, Mare, and Yanami.
Trial Thirty
It’s when that thought
I need to get to Suyai, Mare, and Yanami
Becomes more than just an afterthought, more than a want or a need, more than the Sun Staff and glory itself. It’s when it becomes my purpose that I get the Sun Staff.
End of Trials
The island isdense with forest growth. There are no more enemies, no more pain. The island is just an island, and I am once again a mortal girl. I have no wounds on me other than my injured shoulder, as if the violence I remember so clearly was just a dream. It’s a cruel twist of fate, the games that were played inside my mind, but I have nothing in me left to fight.
I walk deeper into the trees and out to a clearing. On the other side, a sunray lights up a carved rock in front of a cave. When I kneel before it, I see that the carving is nothing more than the primitive image of a sun.
There, I pray.
The voice that whispers in my ears is not the Guardians’ nor is it my own thoughts. It is not human nor is it animalistic. The voice is warm and all-encompassing, and I have no choice but to listen.
A warning for the hero: no one will ever pass these trials again.
I nod once, fast and definitive.
