“Affliction specialist is a niche role,” Jason pondered out loud. “Just the thing to deal with a certain flavour of monster, but against ordinary ones, I'm just a slower version of any middle-of-the-road adventurer.”

He glanced over at Vincent, whose expression gave away nothing.

“If I want to pass then,” Jason reasoned, “it isn’t about beating the unusual monsters, because that’s basic stuff for my ability set. It’s about showing I can dominate the ordinary ones as well as any other adventurer. Am I close?”

“You’ll find that out when the assessment is over,” Vincent said.

The door from the common room burst open.

“Jason,” Humphrey said, striding out onto the terrace. “We were never meant to fight the trap weavers, we were meant to refuse! The whole thing was a test of leadership and judgement.”

Shock and disappointment crossed Jason’s face.

“Is that true, Instructor?” he asked, turning on Vincent. “Is something that devious even ethical?”

59. Falling Short

59

Falling Short

The adventurer accommodation had a dozen bedrooms, with three bathrooms shared between them. Jason found the bathrooms strange in their familiarity, tiled surfaces and magical plumbing. Jason was fresh out of the shower, with a towel around his waist. He was standing over a basin, looking into the wall mirror as he washed cream off his face.

“Stash!” Humphrey’s voice yelled from the hall outside. It was followed by the door handle turning, and the bathroom door opened from the other side by some kind of chimp-like creature. It then turned into a bird that flew up and perched atop Jason’s head, chirping triumphantly at its reflection in the mirror.

“Sorry,” Humphrey said from the door.

“No worries,” Jason said. “Just so long as the bird he turns into is a small one.”

“What’s that on your face?” Humphrey asked, standing outside the half-closed bathroom door.

“Shaving cream, kind of,” Jason said. “You just leave it on for a few seconds, then any hair washes right off with the cream. An alchemist friend gave it to me. You want to try?”

“I have a magic crystal that you rub on your face,” Humphrey said. “Anyway, I shaved yesterday. I don’t need to do it every day.”

Jason frowned. In the midst of a monster-hunting expedition, it was easy to forget that his fellow candidates were all sixteen or seventeen years old. Jason was only a half-dozen years their senior, but the idea of killing and dying at that age made him grateful he wasn’t forced to grow up young.

“Seems like it would be easy to accidentally take off hair you wanted to keep,” Humphrey said, oblivious to Jason’s thoughts.

“I have some ointment that causes hair to grow,” Jason said. “That’s the one you want to be careful about applying. It works everywhere, whether hair is meant to grow there or not.”