The Trials - Part 2

Following the next set of tunnels, Octavia comes out into a large circular room. Sconces on the walls burst into flames illuminating the area.

By the entrance to the room, rows of tables covered in weapons can be seen.

"It's like a whole arsenal in here."

The weapons range from small to large, or various shapes covering almost every inch of the tables. Massive weapons too large for the tables plaster the surrounding walls.

"This looks like even more than what a castle armoury would look like."

Making her way over to the weapons, she spots what looks like training dummies to the side and a large circular arena in the centre of the room.

"Oh no. I don't like where this is going." Where as she wonders out loud, she is once again interrupted by the voice of this trial.

"Initiate, well done for completing the first trial and welcome to the second. The trial of combat. Life is a struggle, it is a struggle to achieve balance, to survive and to live. Dangers in the world add to this and knowing how to combat them will help alleviate some of that struggle. Before you lies a multitude of weapons, crafted by lamias using knowledge from many different areas of the world. Train with the weapons that call out to you, and when you are ready step into the ring for your trial. Should you survive, the weapons you have chosen shall be yours to keep. You may not take more weapons after you have achieved victory."

The speech having ended, Octavia goes to peruse the weapons.

"Right, big decision to make."

The first table contains many bladed weapons, most notably daggers, knives, as well as one- and two-edged swords. Towards the back are ornate rapiers, a couple of longswords and some sabres. Surrounding these are many weapons she had never seen or heard of before.

"Good thing I read a lot of novels, or I would have no idea what any of these are."

Moving on to the next table, bows and arrows litter it. Arrows of various arrow heads can be seen, from very sharp points, blunted ends and some that look like barbed wire. Different short and long bows are scatted around, including a few crossbows. Hidden away to the back looks to be a sing.

"Well, some sort of ranged weapon is a necessity. Assuming I can use it properly."

The next table contained an assortment of exotic weapons. This included weapons such as sickles, scythes, maces, flails and strange curved swords.

"What were they called again, was it a kopesh or something."

A couple more tables follow with even more types of weapons, all surrounded by large ones attached to the wall.

"Now what do we have here."

Spears and pole arms of various sizes and shapes plaster the wall. From simple staves to pikes and glaives. The large and heavier battle axes are also seen, straining against the restraints keeping them on the wall.

"Let's think about this logically, I have my fists and venomous bite, which I completely forgot about when the wolves attacked, but those can only be used when up close and personal. My tail would be, somewhat medium to close range, so I need something to cover the gaps in what I can deal with."

Making her way back to the bows and arrows, she picks one up, and moves to the training dummies.

"Now how do you use a bow and arrow."

Holding it out, she nocks the arrow and goes for the shot… ending with the arrow dropping to the floor just in front of her. Shaking her head she fires again, managing to get some distance, but no accuracy.

This goes on for several more shots where she massively misses the target.

"Arrgh, stupid bow. Going to need some real training to be able to use this."

Given that she has no idea when she would meet someone, let alone someone who could train her to use a bow and arrow, she puts it back on the table, opting to try out a crossbow instead.

"Ok, lets give this a shot. Should be easier to use, but from my knowledge will take longer to reload."

The crossbow bolts are already in a quiver of sorts, so she attaches it to her body and readies the crossbow, fumbling with it to learn how it's used. She slots one bolt in and fires… missing the target again. Hoping this won't be the same as the bow, she reloads, finding that with her increased strength, it takes hardly any effort to ready it for the next bolt.

"Looks like the whole reload time isn't a problem anymore."

Taking her time to aim, she fires again and hits the target square in its body.

"Yes! Bullseye!... Almost." As she notices its off centre.

In case it was a fluke, she takes a few more shots, where amazingly they all end up in the dummy.

"Well, I think we know what ranged weapon I'm taking. Now, something for melee combat."

With the fantasy setting, the staple would be a sword, which is what she goes for first. A simple double-edged sword to start off with. A few practice swings and then some time attacking the dummy, while it goes well, it just doesn't feel right.

"This feels ok, but what do I do with my left hand. There are no shields here to use so its just empty. Oh, I could dual wield."

Taking a similar sword with her left hand, she tries again… but like how her coordination had failed her since coming to the world, most notably the many times she had fallen so far, it did not work in her favour here.

As she swings, it still doesn't feel right. She constantly clangs the swords together, knocking and locking her arms together. One time, from a terrible clash, the sword flew out of her hand, flying up slashing across her face where in then proceeded to fall, embedding itself into her tail.

"Ouch! Yeah, I don't think dual wielding is the way to go" She muses as she yanks the end of the sword out from her tail, thankful it was the resistant tail that was hit and not her human half. The cut on her face is only minor and should heal soon.

She tries out some more weapons but all end in failure, from the flail that almost chocked her once it got caught around her neck, to the rapier where her strength embedded it in the dummy so much, she couldn't remove it.

Giving up on the one-handed weapons, she moves to the two-handed ones. The overly large weapons displayed on the wall.

Taking the simple stave to start, she has a go at the dummy and finds it a lot better to use than that of the single-handed weapons.

"There's more control, more than one place to attack from and it can also be used to block easily. This is so much better than the sword. But a stave isn't going to do much damage compared to a sword."

Moving to the other end of the spectrum, she takes the massive battle axe. She finds that while she has the extra strength the battle axe is much harder to move than the stave being massively top heavy. While likely to cause some very real damage to anyone, the difficulties of manoeuvring it could cause problems in a battle.

Moving along the many different weapons, she tries out various two-handed weapons from glaives and spears to two-handed swords, all coming up empty, until she finds one specific weapon.

"What is that? It reminds me of a multipurpose tool, but on the end of a pole."

Picking it up, she inspects it and a name finally pops in her head.

"Ahh, it's a poleaxe. Now it makes sense."

The pole of the weapon being a very ornately carved wooden stave, with a metal pommel at one end ending with a spike. The other end contained a much longer spike, along with an axe head on one side and a hammer head on the other. The top contains quite a lot of ornate details, from simple yet elegant pattens carved around the head and hammer, to what looks like a spade from a deck of cards removed from the centre of the axe head. The clincher of the whole weapon though is the gorgeous snakes that wrap around the metal head attached to the end of the pole. The snakes crawl around it and poke their heads out near the top of the head. An incredible amount of detail can be seen in the heads of the snakes, actually coming out from the weapon, where tiny red jewels are embedded in the eyes.

"It's so beautiful. The artistry in the snakes is amazing. It almost looks too nice to use. Then there are the eyes, I wonder if those are rubies."

At this point, all of the other weapons just became blurs to Octavia, and she takes the poleaxe and just admires it.

"Never thought I would have this much interest in a weapon. I think even if I can't use this properly, there is no way I am leaving this here." She exclaims as she makes her way to the training dummy, she hopes for the last time.

Readying herself, she holds the poleaxe with both hands either end of the pole and swings at the dummy with the axe head. Like the many other weapons she had used previously, she misses and hits the dummy with the wooded pole, the axe head having ended up past its target. As she starts to get annoyed, she realises something. Even though she didn't hit it, with the shape of the poleaxe, this gives her the opportunity to pull back and latch on to the back of the head, which she does.

"Ohh, I'm liking this so far."

As she pulls, the axe head digs into he back of the dummies neck, letting her pull it to the floor.

Next, she tries out the hammer, making some good dents into the dummy, knocking it down to the floor, and with the spear end she practices piercing with it.

"Like with all the weapons, I definitely need to practice more, maybe find someone to train me, but this feels the best out of the all the weapons. It just feels right… and added bonus, it looks amazing."

Having decided on her weapons, she attaches the crossbow bolts to her hip and manages to find a way to latch the cross bow onto the backpack. The difficulty comes in finding a way to store the poleaxe. With the backpack and crossbow in the way, she would need some proper gear in order to hold the poleaxe. Due to this, she keeps it out in front in one hand almost like a walking or hiking stick, so it is always at the ready.

"Now, onto the actual trial. I have my weapons, had some practice. There isn't much more I can do."

After taking a few bites of fruit and gulps of water, she makes her way over to the ring.

"Now begins your trail of combat. Defeat the enemy by any means necessary, as like the struggles in life, your enemies will not hold back, so neither should you."

…

Then silence. For the next several seconds nothing could be heard.

"It's been sometime since someone did these trails. Could it be that it's no longer operational any mo-"

*Thunk*

"Huh." Her words were cut off by the sound of something falling into place. This was then followed by gears grinding together, screeches of things twisting and turning, all coming from below her.

"Well… this is truly terrifying."

All of a sudden, at the far end of the arena, a small circular section falls into the ears and breaks apart into semi circles, pulling away from each other forming a hole.

Further gear grinding causes a meter wide pole to slowly raise out of the hole. The gears stop once the pole reaches a height of four meters. Inspecting the pole, it reminds her of a totem pole, where it is split into several cylindrical sections each with ornate designs across the section. The material of the pole appears similar to that of clay, and it is at this point in her musings that a blast of light zaps from the ceiling to the top of the pole.

"Ahh… What was that?"

Looking at the totem pole, the light that hit the top slowly starts seeping through the totem, illuminating the carved sections of the pole. Once it reaches the bottom, an earie silence took over where all Octavia can do is watch, as the sections of the totem start to spin, and appendages push their way out from the pole causing its width to reduce in size.

"This cannot be happening."

The end result is a totem pole containing four massively, muscular arms along with two large legs at the bottom. The arms are completely straight, only bending with a ball and socket joint right at the totem pole, while the legs are short and fixed in a bent shape, meaning it doesn't have much of a gait. The sections spin, and the arms bend in various ways as if its stretching and getting ready for the battle.

It then slowly starts walking towards her.