Enter the second trial

You step forward into the glowing circle, and your two companions are quick to follow. With everyone inside, the energy coming off the circle intensifies into something like fire, slowly rotating around your party and rising ever higher. It rises to your knees, then up to your chest, before it finally passes your eyes and cuts off your view of the room. You feel Blythe loop her arm around your own, and you look to see her watching you carefully.

“Let us try not to be separated this time,” she says, tightening her hold on you. You turn to Lia, who you catch looking at you too. She jumps and turns away, but then wordlessly extends her hand for you to take. Hand in hand with Lia, and with Blythe on your arm, you stand in the swirling pillar of white-blue fire. It’s not hot at all, surprisingly, and it makes you wonder what it really is if not actual flames. You are now fully encapsulated by it, and you can feel a nausea similar to what you experienced in the color void before. Another kind of teleportation, you think. I mean, that’s what I expected when I decided to step into a magic circle on the floor, but why bother with a different aesthetic? This one’s more… fancy? Grandiose? Elegant? Maybe this is reserved for people who can get past the first trial. Whatever the reason, the feeling of this still makes me sick. No amount of glamor in presentation is going to fix my stomach turning. The ground beneath you starts to feel different: what was a hard and level surface becomes uneven and soft. Then, the magical flames begin to die out. Once they fall past your eyes, you get your first look at your new surroundings.

Your party stands on a small hill in the middle of a vast, open plain of grasslands. The sky above is blue and clear, and there are birds flying by in formation. The sun sits just past the center of the sky, signaling either almost noon or just past it. About ten feet ahead of you is an odd rock formation, and behind it you see the back of a familiar navy blue cloak. As the last of the magical flames die away, the cloaked figure turns to your party. Even in the broad daylight, their face is entirely obscured by the shadow of the hood. The mysterious person beckons you all forward, and your party is quick to disentangle from one another and oblige. As you get closer, you see that the rocks standing between the cloaked person and your party make a sort of miniature shrine: large, flat stones rest on top of each other, creating three leg-like columns that arc inward and intertwine with each other as they reach about to your waist, atop which rests a thicker stone which acts like a tabletop. Once you’re right up next to it, you see that the top of the “table” has three recesses in it, with the magic runes you’re becoming familiar with carved into the surface to form a magic circle around the recesses. These runes aren’t glowing, though, which gives your puzzle solving brain the idea that the spell needs to be activated. Probably something to do with these holes, you think.

“The second trial,” says the blue cloaked figure, “is one of earth. You stand outside the town of Hes. Defeat the Elemental to complete the trial.” They speak the words as if from a script. A long pause catches you off guard, with the mystery person just standing there quietly running a dark-skinned hand over the runes of the magic circle. Their fingers are long and delicate, their nails long and painted black. Just when you’re about to ask a question to break the silence, the person speaks again. “There are no other towns within the second trial.” They then take a step backwards and lower their head as they magically turn to dust and float away on the breeze. You see Lia flinch in your peripheral, but she doesn’t do or say anything more in reaction to the sudden exit of the mysterious Blue Cloak, as you’ve now decided to call them in your head. Come to think of it, why wasn’t I phased by that? They just disintegrated and flew away for fuck’s sake. Am I that used to crazy shit happening already?

…No, I’m just really fucking tired.

Turning around, you can see the town of Hes that Blue Cloak mentioned. It looks to be about the size of Evris, if not slightly larger, and unlike Evris, it actually has walls surrounding it. There’s a nice dirt path from where you are up to a gate into the town, where you can barely make out the ant-sized shapes of two guards on duty.

“What the shit is an Elemental and how are we supposed to kill it?” says Lia. You turn back around and see that she’s directing this question toward Blythe. You look to the elf for answers as well.

“I do not know,” she says. “Though I suspect this magic circle has something to do with it.”

“I agree,” you say, glad Blythe is right there with you when it comes to quickly sussing out puzzles. You point to each of the three recesses in the stone table. “I think our objective here is to find whatever goes in these three spots. With any luck, doing that will lead us to this Elemental thing. Also, I think Blue Cloak —”

“Pffff” Lia cuts you off, unable to contain her reaction to your nickname for the mysterious person.

“Hey, I think it fits. Anyway, I was going to say that I think we got a pretty big hint right at the end there.”

“She said that there is no other town beyond this one,” says Blythe.

“Which would mean…” says Lia. Her cat ears flick around sporadically as her eyes gaze downward in concentrated thought. “Everything we need is in the town?”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” you say.