Chapter 6.2

"Congratulations, you completed the exam with five minutes and thirteen seconds left." The girl spoke, echoing throughout the clearing like an intercom.

Ronan shook off the pile of rocks and sat up. The whole maze melted away, revealing a grey undercoat that enveloped Ronan and his cat. Small details and colors tinted the grey, morphing it into a bright room. The same grey room he'd been forced to enter by Red.

"Thank God..." He sighed.

"Unfortunately, I am having troubles in giving you a proper rank. So am I permitted to ask you a few questions?"

"Rank?" Ronan's tone twisted to caution, still shaking with fear. "Sure..."

"How much experience with lumience do you have?"

Ronan took a moment to remember what lumience was. "I jumped off a cliff without going splat... And I turned a purple stick translucent..."

The girl chuckled cynically, continuing with her questions. "What is your fighting style?"

"Fighting style?"

"Yes, I found yours odd. In a sense of your recklessness and extreme panic."

Panicked? He thought. What reason did he have not to panic?

"I was being chased by half a dozen giant stone wolves, what did you expect me to do? Smile cheerfully while running for my life?! Those things were trying to kill me!"

"Kill you?" The girl said through choked laughter. "You thought they were trying to kill you!?"

"Well... Yeah. The sign said eliminate, and that last molve was...." He scrunched up his brow in confusion, thinking about the gooey purple tongue that had nearly violated his face for all eternity. "That last molve was pretty freaky..."

It was his assumption that when a giant ferocious looking creature starts chasing you, it wants to kill you. In terms of common sense, it was a pretty good one.

She finished her laughing fit, then cleared her throat. "The molve was trying to lick you, that's how you get eliminated. We do not allow our molves to attack any of our applicants with fatal intent, that only happens when hiring some of our staff or elites. Any bodily harm sustained during this test was caused by your actions alone."

Ronan open his mouth to protest, but no words came out. Looking back at the exam, the molves hadn't caused him any harm, and the licking would explain why the last molve decided to snake its tongue out and drip its saliva onto his nose, but why licking?

"Now, about your fighting style." The girl continued. "Because you defeated two molves with lightly empowered daggers, one with the entrance examination sign; of all my applicants that was a first." She made a noise equivalent to clicking her tongue. "And then here's the best part, you utterly decimated three by overloading a flashlight with a fireball... A flashlight."

"I guess my fighting style was close combat and a lot of luck." Ronan folded his arms. "And you call that thing a flashlight? It's more like a multi-purpose hand grenade!"

"Hand grenade? I'm not sure what that is, but if you're referring to its explosive attributes there are better, and safer, ways to cause an explosion of that magnitude... Trust me." The girl pondered her next question, throwing it out like she was reading off a list. "What is your native tongue?"

"English and some French."

"Alright..." Her hum of approval stopped dead as she let out a choked cough. "English? Where are you from?"

"Canada?" Ronan said, yet again remembering he wasn't on Earth anymore.

"You're from Earth? How did you get here?"

This was his chance, whoever that girl was she could know a way to get him back home, all he had to do was explain his predicament. "I was kidnapped."

"Kidnapped? By who?"

"Red." Even with the evil smirk plastered to his face, his irritation leaked through his voice at the thought of that name.

The girl sighed. "Blonde demon spawn. Anyways, despite the fact you successfully completed the exam, due to your inexperience with lumience your current rank is B. Here's your slip."

A blue slip materialized in front of Ronan's face and he threw his hands out a couple times to catch it. A large black B was plastered in the middle of it, followed by the words first year and his name in small print. The fearful lump formed in the back of his throat again. "Actually, I don't plan on staying here, do you know how to get back to Earth?"

The girl hummed disapprovingly. "Unfortunately I can't help you. Trans-world travelling is rare, you'll have to talk to Red about how he got to Earth in the first place."

There was a dry click as white lines crawled across the wall opposite of Ronan, forming the shape of two rectangles. Silver colouring filled in the shapes, morphing the rectangles into the double doors Ronan had entered through. "There's the way out. In the meantime, please consider attending Cobalt to try it out... And you should get that concussion and your other injuries healed."

"Thanks." Ronan whimpered, rubbing the dried blood clinging to the back of his head off with a sigh. He stuffed the blue slip into his pocket and reached to open the door, but stopped. "Oh! Wait." He slid his hand into his other pocket to remove the sack of smoke balls, but they had vanished along with any dust or pebbles that had been clinging to his uniform.

The girl made a questioning hmm towards Ronan, and he turned his head, falling back into the dark pit of contemplating his current situation. "Never mind."

He pushed open the silver doors, walking into the lobby that was now shady to his eyes that had been exposed to the lucid grey room. Red was leaning against the wall and intercepted him on his way out.

"So? How'd it go?"

Ronan glared at Red, cautiously keeping his distance. The last thing he wanted was to be taken control of by him again. "Take me back."

Red looked at him blankly and tilted his head to the side. "Back? Back where?"