The end of the beginning

"Why are you two here, " He asked promptly

"We are on the way to the examination"

"Right... I would not advice travelling in this weather. Find a secluded spot and sleep, those creatures just now are some of the easiest to deal with and something gives me the impression they would eat you two alive."

"Are you an adventurer?" Alexander asked.

The man did not answer, instead he jumped back on his carriage and rode away. "What a stale man," Alexander thought. Nevertheless, they decided to listen to the man's advice, they decided to travel a fair distance away from the corpses. They gave off a strange smell, and they looked gruesome.

The smell would probably end up attracting other creatures, and if what that man said was true they did not want to stick around for that. They travelled about 5 kilometres before settling down.

They had eaten yesterday and whilst they were hungry they could go without food. At least Alexander, Orion kept moaning and bitching about being hungry until Alexander almost slapped him. Water was another question but luckily they had pouches filled with water. Alexander almost drunk all of his water, he had sweated quite a lot when he had run from the creatures. He put his head against his rag and fell asleep quickly.

The next day they kept on walking and so on the next day and the day after that. The days got so repetitive, it felt like they had gotten shorter. The days were so relaxing compared to the previous days that they were almost boring. With boredom came time, and with time came the ramblings of Orion. Furthermore, there had been a lot more towns and small villages on the way, food wasn't a problem anymore.

The road had started ascending a few days ago and it never stopped. Orion was practically tottering upwards the road at this point. It was not steep enough to be considered climbing a mountain but it was not flat enough to be a hill, it was in a weird spot in between. However, all of that was soon to be over as they say they saw the top close in front of them. The end of any task was the hardest to do, but it was the part with the highest motivation to complete, mainly because you saw with your own eyes that every step was a step closer to the finish.

Just as they overcame the top a brisk of wind hit them right in the face. Alongside the wind came the beautiful sight in front of them. The city was humongous, the city was so large it extended into the horizon. He could see black smoke of smelteries; every now and then he saw towers that were longer than the others, where the city faded into the horizon he saw a giant tower that went all the way up onto the clouds. He saw activity everywhere in the city, almost as if he was looking at an anthill. Alexander felt exhilarated

His exhaustion completely wiped out of his mind, he walked towards the city with strides closely behind him was Orion dragging himself to keep up. Alexander did not care for his exhausted party member, he had waited, visualized, idealized, dreamt and wished for what was ahead of him and he was eyesight away from it. Nothing except the examination was on his mind.

There was a small problem. He did not know exactly where to go, he knew that it would be found somewhere at the outskirts of the city but he did not know exactly where. It was not a problem worth festering as all he had to do was ask around.

The city was surrounded by a wall that seemed quite small compared to the buildings inside of it, the wall was made out of chiselled stone. Alexander saw a few archers standing on top of the wall. The wall didn't seem very practical in Alexanders eyes, it was too low. It could easily be overcome by an army.

Alexander followed the road and soon found himself in front of the gate. The gate was huge compared to the rest of the wall. Simply the opening in the gate was four meters tall and 10 meters wide, and for good reason to. There seemed to be a lot of people going in and out of the city, but why the opening was so high was still a mystery.

There were two guards standing at the opening. They were standing straight with their sight pointed straight forward. The guards had various small scars on their faces and were surrounded in chainmail. The guard's sight changed from the void in front of him to Alexander's eyes.

"Do you know where the examination is being held?" Alexander asked impatiently

The guard did not respond verbally instead he pointed to his right, if the angle were to be described on the clock, it would be 1. Alexander before returning back into staring at the void in front of him. Alexander decided to start walking that direction.

Eventually, he saw it. More teenagers than he had seen in his entire life were standing in front of him. There was a huge area composed of only rock floor on which they were standing. There was enough chatter that it became deafening. In the crowd of teenagers, there were 5 banners standing tall, on their respective banners there was written. Warrior, mage, ranger, rogue, monk.

The mage banner was towards the other side of the crowd. Alexander decided to make his way towards it but before he could he heard a thundering voice.

"Silence"

It came from above them, in unison, everyone looked up to see an old man floating in the air. Suddenly the chatter which had been deafening had disappeared and what was left was an eerie silence.

"Today starts the beginning of your new lives. You have all chosen to become adventurers of sorts and I want to applaud you for that, the future ahead of you is not easy but certainly necessary. I assume everyone here has chosen what path they want to go down, if not please do now."

Without wasting a single second he continued.

"Now that is finished we can continue to the proceedings. Soon each sect will leave for their own respective bases. The rogues will head into the old dungeon, the warriors will head towards the armoury located in the west forest, the monks will head towards the largest church, the rangers will head towards the hunting station located in the south forest, and last but not least the mages will all head to the magical school located in the east."

"Soon the banners will start moving towards their locations in respective order. Please follow the banner of the path you want to take to begin your tests. Good luck!"

The man in the sky had disappeared and the first banner had started moving, it was the banner of the rogues as he had said. A sizeable chunk of the crowd had followed behind the banner, more or less around 20%.