33 Risen#re

Lirian held the reigns of his horse as it trotted next to the horse of the other candidate's, by now the initial formation had broken apart, no one could maintain those firm and rigid lines for more than an hour.

The initial enthusiasm in the students had also died down, as it turned out walking for hours on end was pretty boring and there was nothing for them to do.

Some off them tried to venture to the sides and record the creatures, they encountered but eventually they grew tired of the message, <Already Recorded>, popping up on their watches.

They had sat off at noon, and now the sun was quickly closing in on the horizon, but they still had a while before they had to stop.

Cole glanced around before voicing his thoughts, "We should prepare to set up camp a little early, most of the new students have probably never pitched a tent in their life, and I think we all lack experience in organizing things on such a large scale, there's a good chance that we'll run into some trouble while setting up."

Tobias nodded in agreement, and Lirian felt pity for the poor horse that Tobias rode on as he weighed a fifth of a ton, "I mean our preparations were only meant to take 2 hours but it took us 6 hours before we could leave."

"We also have a ton of things to review, improve and figure out before we sleep for the night," Media added with a tired face, she had tried to get some sleep after their last meeting, but she was too stressed to get any rest.

"Also, we don't want to set up in the dark it's a nightmare," Cole said as he slowly dismounted form his horse.

"Yeah it must be impossible to get anything done," Lirian commented in a plain voice.

"Yeah tell me about i…" Cole suddenly went quiet and turned to look at Lirian with sour look on his face, "Why do you feel the need to do that to me?"

"It's just fun messing with you," Lirian said with a laugh, that the others soon joined in on.

They dismounted and within a minute the entire group had stopped, Lirian pulled out the fifty-men tents, and they were slowly passed around.

He could have went for bigger tents and save a ton of credits, but there was a big problem with that, they were going to be in a forest and clearings would be rare and hard to find, ones big enough to fit a 1000-men tent would probably be impossible to come by.

As the students began to set up, Lirians commander tent was quickly set up, it was large enough to fit at least 100 people with ease, but Lirian quickly placed the commander's table in the centre, with a dozen wooden chairs that had silky red cushions that matched the tents drapes, it came in a set, for 450 credits, and he also bought a few additional luxury tents with the access money.

The area they chose was flat, so things went quickly, they only had the occasional hiccup of the wind lifting the tents as they were setting up.

Things went by surprisingly quickly as the last rays of the sun vanished a small city of blue tents surrounding one red tent decorated the plain, with flaming torches burning brightly at every corner of the tents, and a set of portable toilets was placed on the edge of the camp and the first set of rations were being handed out.

The mages took turns to create fires which large groups gathered around as they chatted and kicked back after a long day of tiresome walking.

Lirian walked under the short corridor that lead to the opening flaps of his tent, he'd heard that it was red, 'It's like they knew that it's my favourite colour,' he thought in satisfaction.

He pushed open the flaps and stepping into the cosy tent, the table already had the large map they received from commander Pexis spread out on it, and Media sat before it, slowly filling in more details.

She didn't even look up as Lirian entered as she dutifully did her task.

"It looks great," Lirian said from the side earning him a brief stare from Media, she was not amused, but she quickly returned to her task as the others came in.

As the tent slowly filled up, Lirian heard papers and more papers being slapped down on the table.

"The maps are in," Tobias announced, and soon a long and lengthy debate began about the maps.

Lirian could only listen in as it was impossible for him to judge the accuracy of the maps, most of the discussions were between Media and Edith as they had the best understanding of mapping.

Finally, they came to a conclusion, "Out of 50 only 20 are good enough to do mapping and the others were subpar at best."

"Now, we have to let them know who made the cut," Cole said with a dejected look and everyone grew a little awkward, it was always difficult to tell someone that they weren't good enough, but they all sighed in relief as they turned to look at the one person, who never had any problem with dishing out the cold truth.

They turned to Lirian simultaneously, with hopeful eyes.

Lirian nodded slowly, "Alright, sounds like my kind of fun," he answered casually as he leaned back in his seat.

A group of 50 cartographers walked into the room in silent trepidation, as their eyes slowly darted to every corner of the room they had a feeling that they were going to meet Lirian and they couldn't hide the anxiety they felt.

They were just a couple of students with an interest in cartography, they didn't really stand out much in a crowd, and they weren't exactly the popular types… they were into cartography after all, the writing was on the walls.

It's probably because of that that the others found it harder to let them down, it's easy to let down a popular student, they tend to have many things going for them, taking away one thing, just gives them a little extra time for the other things.

They soon saw the fold to the tents open and Lirian came walking through, he stopped for a moment and faced them, they could feel his imposing presence wash over them.

They saw his head tilt from one side to the other slowly, and any one of them would have sworn that it felt like they were seen through completely… by a blind person to boot.

Lirian held his walking cane in front of himself with both hands wrapped around the handle, it was the only item he had been allowed to keep.

He grinned at them with a sadistic smile and made his way to the front of the room.

Lirian reached out a hand expectantly and as the cartographers looked around in confusion they saw Media hand him a stack of pages.

"Can anyone tell me what is it that I'm looking at?" Lirian asked waving the papers around in front of his face.

The students looked around at each-other, with an I don't know how to respond to that look, and they silently looked to the other candidates for help them.

The candidates just chuckled at their expense but did nothing to help them.

"Okay since none, of you can answer I'll tell you what this is it's," he pulled the first page up and shoved it in their faces.

"This is an insult to the scribblings of a one year old," he said tossing it in the air along with a few other pages.

He quickly pulled out the next one, "For the first time I'm truly grateful for being blind because if I wasn't I would have plunged out my eyes after looking at this," he shouted and tossed the page in the air.

"And this one!" he shouted pulling another page, "Is something that would make a puppy kill itself," he bellowed as a girl in the back fell to her knees and broke down crying.

Lirian smiled in surprise, "Finally we have someone that understands the fate of someone that kills a puppy, let me tell you, even if I had to kill a million people to get to the person that killed a puppy, the world would be on my side, and they would shun the fallen souls that protecting the puppy killer."

"Is that a reference to something?" Cole asked with a pondering look.

The others just shrugged in response and continued to watch the show and the poor girl whose work would forever be known as a puppy killer in their heads.

"I just want to know how he makes insulting people look so fun?" Tobias whispered to them, but his whispers had the tendency of traveling far and wide.

As the cartographers heard his words they felt their hearts sink, it felt like they had been put straight into the fire without any reason or warning.

"It's just a natural gift," Lirian answered with a shrug as he turned back to the cartographers for round two.