The first thing Beth noticed about the new environment was how clinical it all looked. It wasn’t unfamiliar though. In fact if you told her it was the exact same place she had taken her Trial Taking Trials she would have believed it. Did she get an assigned room in a place like this or was it just standardised. She doubted the Trial was anywhere near as exciting as the Trial Taking one had turned out to be. She willed up the Trial screen she had been sent.
She had gotten where she wanted then. Much like most early Trials her time limit was also extremely large given the Trial. In general she had found that the first five Trials for any given skill seemed very doable. Then again this was a rare skill and Beth couldn’t help but wander if that had any influence.
Anyway she approached the desk where the small deck of cards sat. It There were only 10 cards in a small box. The minute she opened it a timer appeared on a small device on the desk counting down from 2 minutes. She quickly examined the cards, she had plenty of time so wasn’t too worried about failing this first attempt. She mostly wanted to come to terms with the equipment she was using. As she began flicking through the cards she became very aware of loud obnoxious music beginning to play in the room. It’s source wasn’t obvious and it seemed to permeate the whole room equally loudly. Even covering her ears had minimal effect. Beth uncovered her ears and attempted to focus on the task at hand. The cards weren’t made of any paper-like substance. Instead they appeared to be electronic letting out a small glow.
The cards had two distinct features, their colour and design. They were two main coloureds that were the inverse of each other. Some had a black background with a printing in white while others had the opposite. Looking closer the design could also be split into two features. There were four main symbols on the cards gems, water droplets, clockwise spiral and a crescent moon. Beth allowed the time to expire, the cards faded till they were blank and the device that had displayed the timer now required her to insert the card types.
Going through the trial several times, each with order Beth quickly came to terms with the composition. Each suit which Beth referred to as gem, droplet, spiral and crescent respectively had 13 cards, ten numbered 3 with images associated with royalty. Both spiral and drop cards were white with black images while the droplet and gem were white on black.
Having come to terms with the deck Beth felt comfortable trying to tune out the music and focus on her memory. At first it proved more than distracting enough. To the point where she found herself getting frustrated and looking around the room to distract herself. In her huntings she found a large obvious switch that when pushed called all the distractions to stop. She let out a large sigh of relief at that but after enjoying the silence for just over 5 minutes turned it back on. She knew changing the circumstances of Trial might lead to different skills.
She wasn’t entirely sure how this corresponded to mental fortitude but she knew she wanted a full 10 Credit performance all in all. To do that she needed to have the distractions and overcome them. Or at least you hoped that was the requirement. Attempting the Trial properly Beth angled herself so the only thing in her field of vision was the cards with the timer available at a glance if needed but not in her field of view as a permanent ticking deadline. She then relied on repetition, repetition and more repetition to get the information deep into her brain. It took her several attempts to get into the groove of timings and how much time she should spend on each individual card. Then she got a pattern that Had the first three cards as consecutive numbers of the same suit. A lucky draw that Beth knew would allow her to easily finish the Trial. She confidently committed the cards to her short term memory barely noticing the loud obnoxious music having had it playing for so long.
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Sure enough the Trial was soon proved complete, in well under four hours too. A far cry from the months Beth had spent in the last one. The next three Trials were more of the same with the distractions changing from music to idle gossip to a baby crying. The room also shifted slight, bad constantly changing lighting and colours being projected don the wall all changed in such a way to try to take Beth’s concentration away.
The fifth Trial was by far the worst. For one it was quiet eerily so after the range of awful audio distractions Beth had endured. The deck had steadily grown. It was now up to 20 cards in 5 minutes having steadily rose from the first Trial. The type of card had remained consistent though. The silence was beyond unnerving, Beth was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Th quirk that replaced the blasted noise. But she grabbed the deck off the desk and began scanning the cards and everything remained quiet. She glanced around the room nervously, even tried the switch to see if it had turned off between events but nothing changed so she switched it back on. Maybe something was broken. Either way she wasn’t about to take the Trial for granted and continued to focus o the cards themselves, committing to memory them as quickly as possible, wanting to escape the feeling of ease that she felt.
Three minutes went by and Beth was finding the cards fairly easy to memorise without the distraction. She had just 5 more to commit to memory when suddenly and without warning a loud bang rang out across the room. As though somebody had slammed the door with their full force right next to her ear.
Beth was ashamed to say she leapt into the air releasing the cards she held as she did so causing them to go everywhere she looked around the room but nothing had changed. She bent down to pick the cards up annoyed that she had lost the order physically and mentally but relieved she hadn’t damaged them. As she was reaching for a card that had fallen right behind the desk sound played again causing her to jump again banging her head into the bottom of the desk with a large thwack.
She grabbed the last card and slammed them onto the desk, more than a little annoyed about the whole exchange. The timer reached its conclusion and she didn’t even attempt to submit an answer as she watched the cards drain of colour.
She needed a break after that, and for the first time since she started these Trials headed over to the bed and grabbed a snack, pressing the button again before sitting down. She just needed a minute to give her brain a break. A minute that quickly turned into twenty, then thirty. At this point though she dragged herself back up. After all she couldn’t afford to fail this Trial, well she could afford to she just didn’t want to. She had stuff to do, and this protection was a key step in getting it. Dragging herself back to the desk she paused to confirm she still had forty-five minutes left of attempts, given each as five minutes that gave her just under nine attempts as there was bound to be some down time between attempts. It wasn’t like she knew how to end them early. She picked the cards back up and got back on with the attempts.
The loud sound effects playing seemed to be happening entirely randomly. They weren’t after any set amount of time. Nor did they happen a certain number of times. In many ways much like the previous Trials it was down to the luck of the draw. Eventually though, having been able to tune everything out and focus, she was barely distracted by the four, times the noise attempted to throw her off and was able to enter her answer successfully. Officially reaching level one in her new skill. She wasn’t content to settle at that point though and continued into the next Trial ready to face whatever it had to offer.
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