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For a long moment, Call stared into the dark beyond, until he started to wonder if anything was there Maybe the test was to see if the apprentices actually believed thetwelve-year-olds fight wyverns in gladiatorial colooh the dirt as three creatures eed from the cave They were as tall as two ing spiked tails behind theht have been Wide, toothy s beat inside his head,him feel like he couldn’t breathe He wasbefore All the ination, every beast that hid in closets or under beds arfed by the nightrily toward hiht to himself Water wants to flow Air wants to rise Earth wants to bind Chaos wants to devour Call wants to live

Jasper, apparently possessed of an entirely different feeling about his own survival, broke away froreat howl, ran directly toward the wyverns He lifted his hand and thrust it, palm out, toward the ers, flying past one of the wyvern’s heads

The creature roared in fury, and Jasper balked He thrust out his palain, but now only smoke rose from it No fire at all

A wyvern stepped toward Jasper, opening itscurled through the air slowly, but not so slowly that Jasper was able to evade it He rolled to one side, but the fog blew over hih it, floating up like a soap bubble

The other tyverns sprang into the air

"Oh, crap," said Call "How are we supposed to fight that?"

Rage flashed across Aaron’s face "It’s not fair"

Jasper was yelling now, bobbing back and forth on the plumes of wyvern breath Lazily, the first wyvern batted at him with its tail Call couldn’t suppress a spark of pity The other apprentices stood frozen, staring upward

Aaron took a deep breath and said, "Here goes nothing" As Call and the others watched, he dashed forward, throwing hied to catch it on the down stroke, and the wyvern let out a cry of surprise that sounded like a thunderclap Aaron clung on gri hi bronco Jasper, in his bubble, rose up and bobbled around at the ceiling as

The wyvern cracked its tail like a whip, and Aaron went flying Ta out a hand, and flecks of ice crystals shot fro a hand-like shape that caught Aaron inches from the floor and then froze that way

Call felt a burst of relief in his chest He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he’d been worried that the Masters wouldn’t lift a hand to help theainst the fingers, trying to get free A few of the other Iron Year apprenticestoward the second wyvern Gwenda made fire spark between her hands, blue as the flame on the lizards’ backs The wyvern yawned at the out slow tendrils of breath One by one, they began to rise through the air, shouting Celia shot out a blast of ice as she rose Itjust to the left of the second wyvern’s head, ent whisper, just in tiht of Drew standing frozen, off to the side of the group