"Good afternoon, applicants, and welcome to the Beacon combat exams."
The hall stilled, the excited buzzing being replaced by silence as the weight of the words Goodwitch had spoken fell on everyone's shoulders. Charlotte could almost feel another round of buzzing ready to start, but Goodwitch used her cool authority to dispel it, a single look enough to shut everyone up a second time.
"I am Glynda Goodwitch, and to my left are Professor Port, Professor Oobleck, and Professor Peach. We will be your proctors and guides for this exam."
Everyone looked at the adults next to Goodwitch, and compared to Goodwitch, they seemed lacking. The green-haired one seemed like he had no muscle on him, the short one was clearly past his prime, and the pink-haired one was short and looked more like a doctor than a Huntress.
Charlotte watched as everyone in the hall made assumptions based on the physical traits of the people in front of them. They were all idiots. Huntsmen and Huntress were more than met the eye. One of the boys she fought in the forest had milky white eyes, yet he'd moved like he had sight to rival hers. The girl with the giant gun was shorter than her, yet she'd been able to lift and use her weapon like it weighed nothing, cutting down Grimm like grass while the boys and Charlotte fought.
In the woods, the Grimm that gave her the most trouble were never the large Ursas and Beowolves. It was always the small flying Grimm and insectoid Grimm that came the closest to killing her. Underestimating their opponents based on their looks was something only fools did. It was a lesson that the woods had taught her time and time again.
Goodwitch carried on, explaining the exam to the rest of the people there.
"As you most likely know, the Beacon combat exam includes a fitness and agility test, an Aura Proficiency test, and then two separate combat tests. However, what you might not know is that given the number of applicants taking the test today, we have decided to change some of the rules."
"In the past few years, each test was conducted separately. This year, the fitness and agility test and the aura proficiency test have been consolidated into one test, and to move on to the combat tests, you will need to pass the consolidated exam first. Those who fail to do so will be eliminated, and those who pass will be allowed to move on and take both combat tests. If you pass both combat tests, you will be allowed entry into Beacon."
The murmuring started up again, and even Goodwitch couldn't stop it this time. After waiting for a while to let everyone digest the information she'd given them, she cleared her throat and powered on.
"You will take the first test in groups of ten. I assume you have all filled out the required forms and sent them to us?"
Everyone nodded, and thankfully, Charlotte knew what Goodwitch was talking about. Apparently, several days before the test, you had to send Beacon a bunch of forms with all your personal information on it. According to Glynda, Ozpin had filled hers for her, and the form was the reason why Ozpin had asked all those questions to her the day they met. The man had known she was going to ask to be a huntress even before she did.
"The groups will be assigned based on the alphabetical order of your given last names. Once your name is called out, wait until I finish calling out all ten names. After all the names have been called out, follow your assigned Professor to your testing room. I will begin to list the groups now."
She began to read out names, and Charlotte strained her ears until her name popped up. She didn't have to wait long.
"Stella Aldridge, Aspen Arrenwell, Blake Belladonna, Foxglove Bruins, Blodwen Bombadil, Haytham Byrd, Renarde Byrd, Wolfram Clarke, Charlotte Candesco, and Magnolia Cresian are in group A. You will be with Professor Oobleck."
The tall man called them over with a lightning-fast hand wave, looking like he was going explode with impatience. "Come along, students! Time waits for no man!"
Charlotte joined the group that had formed around the Professor as he led them to their testing room. The first thing she noticed was that her group was very weird.
Two of the kids had strange cloaks and hoods with colors and shapes that made them look like a hawk and a fox. They kept to the back, keeping her in the middle of the group. There was a girl in black and white with a large bow on her head who had taken one look at her eyes and mandibles and had started to act shifty. The mean boy with pink hair was also there, and he alternated between looking condescendingly at the Professor and sneering at her. The rest were a collection of people with strange-looking weapons and colorful hair that she simply couldn't remember because she couldn't be bothered to. She jumped as the Professor began to speak to no one in particular in his loud voice.
"The true beauty of Vale's tournament stadium is not the stage itself, but the plethora of training facilities that allow us to safely test and train new hunters and huntresses with the aid of cutting-edge Atlasian science. Several years ago, the combat exam was conducted in Forever Fall Forest, but now thanks to Ozpin working very closely with General James Ironwood, we were able to get some of the technology that Atlas uses to train and test its students, and so you'll be taking you exam in one of the new modular training halls we've modified for the exam."
He spoke very quickly, and Charlotte could barely understand him.
They turned into a large hall, seemingly made up of grey cubes held together by glowing blue lines. The was a white line in front of the room, and several white lines that divided the space into ten equal tracks. The lines went on until they hit a wall, which had a bunch of smaller cubes jutting out of it like handholds.
The man, Oobleck, turned to all of them. "Now that we're here, I will explain what exactly you need to do."
He drew in a deep breath and seemed to brace himself before spitting out the next part at full speed.
"The test will take the form of an obstacle course. Our technicians have whipped up an obstacle course that will test both your endurance and technical proficiency with aura. In order to pass, you will need to complete it in the given time, and in the name of fairness, the course will be completely randomized for every single group. I will be behind the grass, keenly observing you and looking out for foul play. Understood?"
They nodded.
"Excellent! Now, take your places behind the white line in the order your names were called out. The obstacle course is time-sensitive as I mentioned before. You must complete it within twenty minutes in order to pass. You will start as soon as the buzzer sounds. Good luck!"
There were some shoving and harsh words as everyone took their places, and Charlotte took hers next to the boy dressed in silver armor and a boy dressed in a dull grey coat lined with fur after the pink-haired kid crashed into her and called her a freak and asked her to not 'get in his way'.
Everyone took their stances. Most bent over a touched the ground while assuming a strange bent-over position. Others, like her and the hawk-boy, remained standing.
Numbers appeared in the air, and if she was anywhere else, Charlotte would have gazed at them with wonder. Now, the only thing that she could focus on was the heady rush of a challenge before her and the beating of her heart.
An unnatural voice counted down the numbers and the floating numbers counted down with it. She could feel her heart start beating faster and her blood beginning to heat up.
"Three. Two. One. Go!"
She kicked off with her left and shot forward, and judging by the shifting of feet and panting behind her, she was the fastest here. The strength from her aura allowed her to move faster and faster, and she was soon at the wall.
She tensed and jumped, hands scrabbling at the handholds jutting out of the wall. She began to climb, quickly scaling the wall and putting her hands on the ledge at the top.
As she was pulling herself up, a small sword with a ribbon tied to it embedded itself into the part of the ledge next to her, and as she cleared the ledge, a black and white blur shot past her, taking the sword with it. Then the wall shook, and she watched with horror as the pink-haired boy ran out of a hole in the wall.
Most of the other applicants were the same. The hawk-boy simply lept upward as he reached the wall, and he somehow cleared the wall in one jump. A girl with violet hair simply pushed her hand forward and blew a hole in the wall. Snarling, Charlotte lept off the wall, embedding her left-hand spear into the wall to slow her descent.
By the time she got down, several others were already in front of her, and the black-and-white girl was in the lead. Charlotte began to sprint once more, quickly gaining back the lead she had lost.
The flat stretch of track between the wall and the next obstacle was double the distance between the starting line and the wall, and she soon felt the slight burn of extension in her muscles. She pushed herself to go faster regardless and quickly saw the next obstacle.
It was a forest of narrow pillars, built out of a strangely shiny gray metal. The pillars were packed tightly against each other and occupied a sizable portion of the track before them. The pillars had gaps in between them, but they were too densely packed for a person to pass through.
Already, several tracks had had their pillars cleared, and almost all the pillars looked cut in some way. There was one set of pillars that looked like it had been torn to shreds by a rabid animal, but the others all bore marks of being cut.
The black-and-white girl's track, notably, had had its pillars cut to the same length, all the way to the distant ones in the back. However, the pink-haired boy was still there, hacking away at the pillars with a pair of curved blades, and he was only halfway through. Why hadn't he simply run through the pillars like he had run through the wall?
As she neared the pillars, the boy attempted to kick the pillars in frustration, and instead of staying still, the pillar stuck to his boot, trapping him and forcing him to hack away at it to get free. So was the only way to get through them without them sticking to you was to cut them?
She looked up at the ceiling and saw that the pillars stretched up to the ceiling so that they couldn't simply jump over them. She looked back at the black-and-white-haired girl's pillars and she realized what she had to do.
As soon as the pillars were within striking distance of her weapon, she twirled while she imbued her weapons with aura, and as her weapon bit into the base of the first pillar, she forced a crescent of grey out of it by willing her weapon to lengthen. The crescent cut through half of the pillars in her way, and gritting her teeth, she pivoted and repeated the process with a slash from her other spear, clearing the path.
She could feel the soul-deep exhaustion that came from using a lot of aura creep up on her and she shook it off and made her way through the wreckage of her pillars, leaving the pink-haired boy behind.
Just like before, after the pillars was another open stretch of track that seemed to go on forever. Her breaths grew deeper and deeper as she picked up speed once more, her limbs feeling like they were on fire and her blood getting hotter and hotter.
There were other obstacles in the long stretch, but these seemed to be designed to waste time rather than be challenging.
There was a long firing range that branched off from the left of the race course with a bunch of pedestals with pistols on them, next to the glass wall with a long hole in it. Charlotte picked up a gun and emptied the clip as close to all of the bulls-eyes as she could while still running, her superior eyesight helping her massively despite her being rusty with a gun.
There was a giant pit that she needed to cross by skipping across the floating rocks that were moving above the pit in strange configurations. She had strong legs and her experience with climbing ensured that she made short work of that obstacle as well.
There was a set of dummies in various poses that she had to slice through, which she did with ease.
All of these tasks were easy for her, but doing them one after another in such a short time was taking its toll on her stamina.
The track seemed to go on forever, and Charlotte wondered if they were still in the stadium. She ran and ran, ignoring her body screaming at her with practiced ease. As her legs ate up the distance between her and the other competitors, she saw a few of them simply walking or jogging along, having exhausted themselves. The violet-haired one that had blown a hole in the wall had collapsed, eyes starting up a the ceiling while her eyes fluttered around. The hawk-like one was still running, but he was staggering like he was going to fall any second.
After a couple of minutes of running, she spotted what seemed to be the start of the next major obstacle. There was a row of ten pedestals, and each of the pedestals were placed in the middle of one of the ten lanes. On top of each of the pedestals, there was a row of dust cartridges.
The girl in black-and-white had already taken her cartridges and was rushing towards a red line on the ground. As soon as her foot hit the line, a turret popped up a couple of feet away from her on one of the squares in her lane and began to fire at her. Unfazed, the girl dodged to the side. When the turret fired again, she jumped, letting the second salvo hit the ground instead of her.
Charlotte gazed at her, sure that the girl had signed her own death warrant by taking to the air. As she had found out very early on, it was impossible to change your trajectory once you were in the air, and once you jumped, you were up there until you fell back down or something hit you. By jumping, the girl had turned herself into a sitting duck for the turret.
The turret pointed its barrels upward and shot a salvo at the girl. She blurred, and a statue made of stone that looked like an exact copy of her took her place as she moved backward. The shots hit the statue and cracked it along the middle. Then, the girl blurred again, and a copy of her made of shifting wind pushed her forward. The girl landed on the stone statue's front half and used her weight to tilt it parallel to the copy made of wind. As soon as she did, the wind copy exploded, causing the girl to shoot forward at a tremendous speed. After a while, the girl jumped off the crumbling statue and used the momentum from her launch to hit the ground running, moving faster and faster until she was a little black-and-white figure far far away from Charlotte.
Showoff.
Charlotte reached her pedestal snatched all the cartridges of dust off the pedestal and spirited towards the red line.
Unlike the other girl, Charlotte did not understand dust completely, and couldn't do anything like that. Instead, she went for a simple approach, slotting a cartridge of ice dust into her weapon as she hit the red line. A turret rose up in her lane and fired a couple of shots at her, she slid under the shots, then rolled herself upright and slammed her right spear into the ground before pouring aura into the ice dust in her spear and guiding it to form a wall in front of her.
A wall of pure ice sprouted up in front of her, and the turret shot at it, trying to get at her. Instead, the bullets embedded themselves into the thick ice, leaving nothing more than gouges. The first part of her plan complete, she began to implement the second part.
She embedded both her spears into the misshapen block of ice and then pushed forward with all her strength. The ice cracked near the base and then slid forward, going from an immovable wall of ice to a movable wall of ice she could simply slide forward to protect her as she charged forward.
She ran forward with her wall-sized ice shield in front of her, quickly gaining speed and momentum because of all the extra weight she was pushing forward. After a couple of steps, she had gained enough speed to crash into the turret with all the strength of a charging Ursa.
As soon as she felt the impact of the ice wall hitting the turret and then heard the thump of the turret flying off and hitting the ground, she twisted her spears out of the block of ice and vaulted over it, running over to where she last saw the white-and-black girl. The track began to angle upward, the steep incline making her sweat by forcing her to put more force into her steps to simply keep moving. She neared what she assumed was the peak and smiled at the thought of how easy the next section was going to be. After all, running down a hill was far easier than climbing one. Of course, the track again decided to defy expectations.
The track ended on a ledge, and in front of her, there was a large drop that would certainly kill her if she jumped. The other girl was already somehow at the bottom and was on the other side of a white line that was probably the finish line. Of course she was already down, her weapon was a sword on a rope!
Sighing, she ran to the end of the ledge and slid off, fingers digging into the material of the track and keeping her from falling to her death. Hanging from the cliff, she stared in horror at the empty space beneath the cubes that made up the track, unsure of how it was staying in the air.
This ledge, unlike a natural ledge on the end of the mountain cliff, was somehow suspected very high in the air without having anything under it, which meant she couldn't simply slide down it or use her spears to scale down it. As she pulled herself back onto the ledge, she tried to come up with a plan to descend without hurting herself too badly. As she thought, she fiddled with the dust cartridges in the front pocket of her hoodie, and she remembered what Goodwitch had taught her a couple of hours ago.
Dust is extremely volatile, Miss Candesco, and the purer it is the more volatile and reactive it is. The powered dust we use in our weapons is the most reactive and pure form of dust, allowing us to use it with ease, but this also means it is easy to mishandle it and cause yourself and other injuries.
She pulled out the vial of white wind dust and played around with it, a foolhardy and stupid plan forming in her head, partly based on the trick with the wind clone the black-and-white girl had pulled to get over the turret. If she succeeded, she probably hit the ground unscathed and be able to cross the finish line. If she failed, she might break a couple of bones, but she'd still be able to crawl over to the finish line. Mind made up, she got up and jumped off the ledge, the vial of dust clenched in her hand.
The wind whistled through her ears as she jumped, and she felt her exhaustion give way to the sheer thrill of imminent death. She felt free in a way she hadn't felt in a long time and relished the sense of stillness and weightlessness that had its hold on her.
Then she began to plummet, her moment taken away from her by gravity. The ground rose up to meet her, and just seconds away from her legs meeting the ground, she threw the vial of dust behind her. The thing exploded in a giant burst of wind, peppering her with tiny shards of glass and pushing her with such force that her aura took a noticeable hit.
She folded into herself as she was flung away by the force of nature she'd just unleashed, flying faster and faster and getting closer and closer to the ground. At this speed, even if she rolled when she hit the ground she was going to dislocate or break something, and she was fine with it. She had foreseen this, after all, and so she simply braced herself for the pain.
She soon crossed the line, and just as she was about to hit the ground, a sword with a black rope tied to it wound itself around her torso and pulled, saving her from her fate. Her torso was yanked forward, and the rest of her body followed. She crashed into her savior at full speed, sending them both sprawling on the ground.
She had been in this position with a lot of Beowulf corpses after she'd charged at them, and so she rolled herself off the girl the moment they stilled and quickly got to her feet. She stumbled a bit because of the rope that had wound itself on her legs, but she managed to right herself after a couple of attempts.
The other girl was slower to get up and stared at Charlotte for a while after she got up. Charlotte had enough of people looking at her like she was something filthy.
"Stop staring." She spat out.
The girl had the audacity to look surprised.
"I wasn't-I mean I was, I just I wasn't looking at you like-"
"Shut up."
Charlotte turned away from the other girl, the anger in her appeased just a bit. She felt a bit bad for yelling at her savior, but the girl was starting at in a way she didn't like. She pushed her guilt away and focused instead on the angry joy she felt when she had snapped at the girl.
It felt good. She wanted to scream at the girl more and make her feel the same way she did when people like her or the pink-haired kid or the mean nurse treated her like dirt.
They stood in awkward silence for a while, unsure of what to do. Unable to stand still while her blood was still cooling, Charlotte pushed down the rope around her legs and then started to pace while the other girl carefully untangled the rope and sheathed her weapon.
Finally, after several minutes of waiting, another person approached the ledge. It was hawk-boy, and he simply leaped off the ledge and floated down slowly like he was a feather. After he crossed the finish line, he collapsed to his knees and stayed there, unwilling or unable to get up.
The next one over the ledge was violet-hair girl, who jumped off the cliff and at the last second, pointed her palm at the ground and used a giant blast of force to stop herself from going splat. After that, she tried to roll to dispel some of the remaining force from her fall but slipped and smashed her face into the ground.
Hawk-boy and black-and-white stared at each other.
"Is she okay?" Hawk-boy asked, voice soft but sharp, somehow.
"I don't know." Black-and-white replied.
Hawk-boy looked very concerned, and so Charlotte took a look at the girl with her eyes.
"She's breathing." Charlotte told hawk-boy, and he seemed to relax a bit. Then, hawk-boy got to his feet and tried to stumble over to the violet-haired girl, but slumped over on the ground when his legs failed to work. Taking pity on him, she walked over to violet-hair and dragged her over the finish line. After Charlotte was done, he sat up on the floor and nodded to her. Confused as to why he was nodding, she simply nodded back.
She didn't understand why he had wanted to help the girl. It didn't help him in the slightest, and he had tried to help despite being half-dead with exhaustion. Maybe he was just a good person like her nurse or Goodwitch? If so, then her respect for him rose just a bit.
Another person was nearing the ledge now, and Hawk-boy stood up straighter as they came into view. It was fox-girl, and she she neared the ledge, she came to a stop and looked down, then backed away like a normal person.
Then, she did something strange. She took out a spear and held it very close to her face while also looking at everyone behind the finish line. Then the spear began to shimmer, and it began to grow, orange light encasing it and making a larger copy of the spear. The girl slid the spear down until it hit the ground, and simply shimmied down on it. Then the spear turned back to normal size and clattered to the ground along with the girl who didn't get back up.
Why was everyone dropping like flies? They couldn't be that exhausted, right?
She walked over to the girl and hauled her over the line like the other one, and hawk-boy was immediately next to her, muttering things and trying to get her to wake up.
A harsh buzzing sound filled the air, and the green-haired Professor quickly rushed over to them from...somewhere.
"Congratulations, applicants! You five have passed the combined aura proficiency and fitness test. After a fifteen-minute rest time, we'll be moving on to the practical combat exams, starting with the Grimm combat practical. Follow me to the waiting room, applicants!"
The cubes covering the walls moved and revealed a door, and she and black-and-white moved to follow the Professor. The rest of the people behind them hadn't.
Violet hair was still unconscious. Fox-girl was trying to move, but her body wasn't listening to her. Hawk-boy was up, but he was staggering around like a newborn foal.
With a sigh, she walked back and slung both violet-hair and fox-girl on her shoulders. Fox-boy was still stumbling, so she looked at black-and-white, who was still standing there instead of helping the boy.
"Help him!" She spat at the girl, and she finally moved and slipped an arm under his shoulder.
Oobleck was waiting for them, but apart from tapping his foot against the ground very quickly, he didn't seem displeased or angry that they'd made him wait.
"That was a brilliant show of altruism, Miss Candesco! However, did you perform the act because of your innate goodness, or were you pressured to act that way by the circumstances you were in?" The man said again.
She stayed silent, not understanding about a quarter of the words the man was spouting.
"Oh, how foolish of me! Your unique circumstances would have not given you many opportunities to speak, which would have led to the degradation of your language skills. Thankfully, since you were eleven years old, you had probably hit all of your basic developmental milestones, which means that you can speak, but your vocabulary..."
The man continued to talk, and Charlotte sighed. It was going to be a long and frustrating fifteen minutes.
Ozpin
"So, Glynda, what do you think of the applicants this year?" Ozpin asked Glynda, taking a sip of his cocoa.
"More of them have passed the first part of the exam compared to the previous years. But courage against the Grimm isn't something that can be taught. At least not ethically and safely."
Ozpin chuckled at what he assumed was a joke. With Glynda, he never knew for sure.
"I was referring more to the two leaders of the pack this year."
"Miss Candesco heeds instructions well and has a natural talent for combat. Her time in the wild has also allowed her to develop a unique style of fighting and has sharpened her instincts. However, she struggles with the more complex uses of aura and dust. Blake Belladonna seems to be excellent in all aspects so far."
Ozpin hummed in response and took another sip of his cocoa while looking down at the stadium's arena from behind the barrier that separated the seats and the arena floor. Charlotte Candesco stood in the middle of the arena, spears at the ready.
Fifteen out of forty had passed the first part of the exams, and as the Grimm combat practical had gone on, they were down to four applicants. As Glynda said, the courage to stand in the face of nightmares was something a school could not teach you. It was either innate or earned through hardship and spite. Opzin watched closely to figure out which camp Miss Candesco was in.
Port, who was supervising this part of the exam for all applicants, blew the whistle around his neck, and on his signal, a single cage rose up to the arena floor. Most other combat schools did not test their applicants against live Grimm, but Ozpin knew better than that. It was better to test the applicants in a controlled environment to see if they could withstand the rigors and stresses of combat without cracking. It also had the added effect of ensuring that the timorous and cowardly were weeded out to prevent any fatal accidents down the line.
Besides, Port was one of the few huntsmen who would reliably capture Grimm and keep them in captivity, and he'd be foolish not to make use of his talents.
He watched as Ms. Candesco moved forward and cut off the Beowolf's head with one single, fluid motion. She seemed to be smiling, which was odd. Perhaps she was glad she was finally able to show her talents off to her benefactor?
Ms. Candeco moved back to the center of the stage, and Port blew his whistle again, and four Beowolves rose up to the arena floor. Ozpin and Glynda watched in silence as she slaughtered them all in mere seconds, using only four strikes.
The rest of the test was more of the same. Port would blow his whistle, a collection of Grimm would rise to the stage, and Miss Candesco would eviscerate them with clinical efficiency.
When Port blew his whistle one last time, and a giant container containing a King Taijitu rose to the stage. Ozpin leaned forward, hoping to see Miss Candesco at least break a sweat.
When the two-headed snake Grimm slid out of its tubular container and hit the ground, Miss Candceso started at it with curiosity. Then the Taijitu moved like liquid lighting, both heads moving to either side of Miss Candesco with their fangs out and mouths open, ready to devour her in the blink of an eye.
As the heads bore down upon her, Miss Candesco simply continued to stare at the Grimm while standing as still as a statue. Ozpin saw both Port and Glynda tense up, ready to kill the Grimm and save the girl if necessary.
As the fangs of one of the heads were nearly about to hit her, she moved to the side with practiced grace before slamming the buts of both of her spears into the top of the Grimm's head, causing the lower jaw to crumple into itself and causing the fangs of the upper jaw to sink into the stadium's floor. The other head hissed and tried to take advantage of the preoccupied girl, but as the other head rushed at her, she simply vaulted over it and slit its throat while she was on top of it.
She then slid off the decapitated second head of the Grimm walked over to the still squirming first head, and carved the first head off of its body, finally killing the thing.
Ozpin and Gynda watched in stunned silence as the girl grunted to something Port said and left the stadium to rest up for the next part of the combat test.
"She doesn't fight like a student should." Glynda finally said, breaking the silence between them. "She fights like an experienced Huntress."
"Experience is the best teacher, after all." Ozpin replied, still a bit shocked himself.
"Most first-years can't resist adding pointless flips and tricks to their moves and they certainly can't resist dashing into danger without a concrete plan. Miss Candesco did not do either of those things, showing that she's already understood something that most of her peers will only realize after they experience their first failed mission."
"And what does Miss Candesco understand?" Ozpin asked Glynda.
"She understands that combat isn't something to be taken lightly. Every wasted movement and moment of indecision in the field can lead to anything from grievous injuries to loss of life. She understands this because she's probably had several close brushes with death herself because of her shortcomings."
Ozpin hummed in reply. "That's all well and good, but despite the various challenges tossed her way today, we have yet to see the extent of Miss Candesco's mettle, and we have seen nothing but hints of her true nature."
Glynda looked at him with confusion as he set his mug and scroll down.
"Who is Miss Candesco's examiner for the next part of the exam?"
Glynda checked her scroll. "Oobleck is scheduled to fight her in about ten minutes."
"Ask Oobleck to take a well-deserved break for the next forty minutes."
"But we don't have anyone to replace him!"
"I will be testing Miss Candesco myself."
Ozpin strode towards the arena while Glynda spluttered in indignation. He was ready to push Miss Candesco to her breaking point, and he was eager to see what she would reveal to him when she was faced with insurmountable odds.
Thank you to Aelthyrneld and Fatswordsman for your wonderful words of encouragement! Also thank you to everyone else who's been faving, following, and reading my work. Also, thank you to FlavorTown for your feedback. The part with the wolves was a tad bit unrealistic, and I've changed it so it makes more sense.