As Shin and the cold protector strode out, Northern’s gaze moved to the door the bartender had used earlier.
Glancing privately left and right, he slipped his clone through the door, leaving himself waiting patiently at the counter.
His eyes wandered as he hovered in the entranceway, drawn to the stairs where the young boy and citadel’s headmaster had ascended minutes before.
He briefly wondered about the kid’s identity before dismissing such baseless curiosities. Better to focus on the matter at hand.
‘I hope Shin hasn’t started any trouble…’
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the door flew open, nearly surprising Northern back a step.
A fiery woman barged through, her colorful vermillion curls whipping about as if stirred by inner flames.
Thick, unruly strands spiked and twisted in a complex structure across the furry cloak draped over her powerful shoulders.
One rough hand gripped the neck of a bottle already half-drained, while the other hung loose at her side.
Her face remained mostly covered by her hair, except for one infernal eye glaring with unsettling intensity.
She was a predictable figure – a figure of a veteran drifter, covered in dirt-caked rags and disorganized leather armor molded to a body shaped by a lifetime of savage conflict.
Loss and unimaginable hardship haunted the harsh lines etched into her face.
This was someone long accustomed to surviving through sheer, pitiless self-interest.
Crude scars spotted her exposed skin, each one whispering its own grisly tale, hinting at even more horrific trophies concealed beneath her unkempt attire.
She moved with a deceptive, careless grace, lifting the bottle to drain another mouthful while locking eyes with Northern.
Despite the drunken mist, a keen predatory intelligence glinted in those irises, marking her as anything but some helpless sot.
“Stop staring before I hit you with the booze,” she growled, clearly sensing his intense inspection of her scarred appearance.
Yet her tone remained almost playfully indifferent as she openly assessed him with an evaluating sweep from boots to hair.
Caressing her pointed chin thoughtfully, the woman snarled, “You’re the one who just awakened, eh? Look like a scrawny stick about to snap…but I’ve seen worse.”
She shrugged nonchalantly before jerking her head toward the back room. “Follow me.”
Northern shot an uncertain glance toward the bartender, who simply nodded reassurance while neatly opening the door to grant the boy entry.
Since he wasn’t getting any information yet from his clone, perhaps his lingering curiosity would finally be satisfied.
Or so he thought, for the other side revealed little more than a wide stone corridor fishing steadily downward into deeper shadow.
If anything, the impression of impressive, sturdy construction only heightened the aura of strange unreality.
Northern had expected the rear door to open onto some cluttered storeroom or gloomy antechamber averting the underground training halls whispered about in schoolyard rumors.
Instead, the hallway simply terminated in an open, rectangular space around fifty square meters in area, its floor composed of finely gathered white sand rolling with each boot fall.
The mysterious woman strode to the exact center before wheeling to face Northern fully.
“Brat. What’s your name?”
The boy’s brow furrowed slightly at the judgement, but he responded without inflection.
“Northern.”
His answer appeared to give the woman momentary pause before she abruptly burst into chimes of wild, unrestrained laughter, clutching at her midsection as she gasped for breath.
“What…what the hell? You’re actually named Northern?”
When the boy merely stared back in stony silence, her laughing narrowed into a few muffled snuffles before falling still, head tilting quizzically to one side.
“…Really? That’s seriously your name?”
“Yes,” Northern bit out, his tone dripping malice. “That is my name.”
Registering his evident offense, the woman restricted her remaining laughter, shooting him a sneering glare that sent an involuntary shiver racing up his spine.
A sudden, instinctual sense of danger flooded Northern’s psyche, triggering an instinctive urge to avert his gaze and compose himself lest he unintentionally provoke lethal consequences.
When she finally spoke again, the drifter’s gravelly tone rang with sobering temperance.
“Listen carefully, Northern.”
She barely stifled another contemptuous snort.
“I’ll be administering your evaluation, which I normally despise. Truth be told, I was quite the big shot back in my day. But…certain matters transpired, and these days I tutor the rabble too weak, destitute or feckless to enroll in the Academy proper. For all I know, you could end up one of my permanent students, boy.”
A tight frown creased Northern’s features as he adamantly rejected that notion.
Public citadels primarily existed to monitor newly awakened walkers, testing and equipping them with the bare essentials for their first ventures into rifts – basic survival skills to endure that swift transition.
Some, like this particular establishment, also maintained a focus on cultivating full-fledged drifters as collectives for rift-harvesting operations.
Whether privately owned or under state authority, citadels represented the first exploratory bases beyond the academies’ sheltered walls.
The woman clapped her hands together, the sharp report snapping Northern’s wandering attention back to her.
“Pay attention, brat!”
He got angry slightly at the small disgrace but remained outwardly stoic as she resumed explaining in neat tones.
“Two parts to the exam. First is practical and likely the easiest part for a snot-nosed brat like you. All you need do is come at me with every attack in your arsenal. And yes, that means using your talent to its fullest extent.”
She paused meaningfully before adding, “Second part involves using a specialized setting to quantify and classify your talent’s base parameters. Even if it reads out as dead zero, however, an exceptional practical showing could still earn you a top-tier recommendation.”
One rough finger tapped the pocket containing her folded missive.
“Believe me, with my endorsement letter, you’re virtually guaranteed Academy admission. At least then you’d have adequate time to train up before your second awakening…”
Northern’s eyes narrowed skeptically. ‘Who is this woman to guarantee such?’
For several extended seconds, he studied her privately before the sudden tremor of her foot impacting the sand floor staggered him back a step, breaking his composure.
A tremendous quaking shook outward, nearly unbalancing the stuttering Northern as his heart hammered, threatening to burst from his chest.
Fixing him with a nasty smirk, the woman praised mockingly, “Nice…so you DO possess the sense to tremble before true power. Good – then let’s see what you’re made of, brat!”
With a wild shout, Northern exploded into motion, propelling himself across the clearing with every ounce of speed at his command.
Fist cocked back, he closed those final meters with the mysterious woman squarely in his sights, heedless of her seeming nonchalance sipping from her lasting bottle.
Yet razor-edged instincts that have been cultivated from countless mock battles with Shin screamed urgent warning, the fine hairs prickling along the nape of his neck.
Obeying that irrefutable sixth sense, Northern twisted himself into an awkward evasion at the final possible instant – a fraction too late to feel the blur of air calving the space his torso had just occupied.
The ground ruptured with titanic force as something unseen carved a vicious furrow straight through the pristine sand.
Northern skidded to a quaking halt, gaping wide-eyed and panting heavily at the obvious display of absurd power.
She could have cleaved him in twain with literally no effort whatsoever.
A chill slithered down his spine as that realization sank home, cold sweat beading his pale brow.
Thanks to his instincts he was able to afford a split-second window to evade the lethal strike – this drunken enigma possessed the deadliness to effortlessly extinguish his life before he could even blink.
Yet she remained utterly bored, confused by his desperate defensive gap.
Stunned awe warred with growing terror across Northern’s features as he finally understood the truth.
Had he followed those ingrained instincts even a hair more sluggishly, he would now be two separated pieces slumped across the obliterated sand.
The scornful woman merely laughed again, waving a dismissive hand.
“Oh…I honestly didn’t expect you to evade that. I suppose you’ve got decent combat sense, at least.”
Fishing a scrap of parchment and quill from some concealed pocket, she swiftly scribbled an indecipherable notation before roughly folding and restowing it.
“The point of this evaluation is assessing your practical talent capabilities,” she drawled, focusing her single gleaming eye fully upon him once more.
“Which means you need to actually, y’know…use it. Unless…” Her tone adopted a mocking tone as a new realization visibly struck her. “Wait, don’t tell me – is your talent something speed-based?”
Northern closely shook his head, his expression hardening to one of grim wariness as their gazes’ locked, electric tension building between them.
She made a dismissive tsk. “Good…because THAT would’ve been dreadfully disappointing.”
The silence stretched out as Northern remained rooted to the spot, refusing to be further baited into mockery until the keening edge of mortal danger had fnished from his mirrored instincts.
Finally, the master sighed. “How old are you, brat?”
“Fourteen,” he responded automatically. “Nearly fifteen.”
Something flickered in her eye – perhaps approval, or even nostalgic recognition. “Huh…an early bloomer. Lucky you.”
A predatory grin slowly curled her lips as Northern’s cautious disguise of bravado crumbled beneath the growing, suffocating aura of threat.
Her stance shifted with subtle danger, hips cocked and hands resting insolently on her belt.
“Try not to piss yourself, boy. I may be rough, but I won’t outright kill you.”
Yet everything about the blazing drifter from her body language to the intensity of her eye to the glint of wild amusement said the exact opposite – that to perform inadequately before her would surely spell a terminal sentence.
And recalling that casual display of cutting lethality moments prior, Northern couldn’t restrain a violent, full-body shudder of hopeless mortal dread.
If their earlier clash represented pulling her punches, suffering the full brunt of this monster’s unrestricted might didn’t bear contemplation.
‘No, I can’t be paralyzed like this!’ He savagely rebuked his own fear, straightening his spine.
‘Even facing that abomination earlier, I never felt such crippling terror. There’s something deeper at play here…’
Northern’s gaze sharpened to diamond focus as realization gradually dawned.
“You…didn’t actually attack me. Not physically, at least.”
The words tumbled out in a breathless rush, his tone quavering minutely beneath the omnipresent pressure boring into his psyche.
Her visible eye widened fractionally before crinkling in a uneven grin.
“Well I’ll be…so the little whelp DOES have a ounce of sense after all.”
Tossing back a long pull of cheap booze, the flame-haired drifter nonchalantly tossed the bottle over one shoulder, where it shattered against the far wall in an explosion of sound and glass shards.
As she began closing the distance separating them, Northern felt the malign aura crushing his mind intensifying with every heavy stride.
“What you’re experiencing is Spiritual Pressure – the ability to spring one’s quintessential soul essence outward through their aura. A relatively simple technique…for a Master, anyway.”
Being a Master meant reaching the Vagrant soul rank – it was not the proudest of heights, yet still stratospherically distant from a raw awakener like himself.
If Shin’s casual displays of mastery were anything to judge by…
Before Northern could ponder that alarming thought further, the threatening entity loomed directly before him, near enough for him to smell the boozy reek of stale alcohol coming from her imposing figure.
His legs began trembling uncontrollably, sympathetic shivers racing throughout his body as the malign pressure peaked, constricting his very breath.
One rough-skinned hand shot out to clench his shoulder, merciless fingers digging into the meat until he cried out involuntarily.
As that baleful vermillion eye bored into his very soul, the drifter’s voice sliced through his mind’s hazy desperation with piercing clarity.
“I’ve decided to take you seriously…NORTH boy.” The twist of contempt on that final syllable dripped with searing venom. “You’re the first worthwhile prospect to catch my eye in ages.”