Challenge One: A-Mazeing on Labyrinth Gardens

System

August 12, 2022 5:46 AM

Team 2 by System

0 System Team 2 0 System 0 5

Selina Skies

August 12, 2022 5:46 AM

Challenge One: A-Mazeing by Selina Skies

Selina was excited for the first challenge. Traditionally, this was the closest to a pure ‘strength’ challenge that they got. It tended to either be athletic, or require subverting that need through use of magic. That brought in a problem-solving element, but you still needed fire power of one sort of another to back up your brains.

As ever, there were the needs of the specific cohort to consider. Whilst the challenges were designed to push people outside of their comfort zones, they weren’t meant to be downright traumatising or impossible, which meant they had to design them in such a way that students with access needs weren’t at a disadvantage—in this particular cohort, they had to consider how to make a challenge that was equitable for Lazarus, given that his communication method was more time-consuming than other people’s. That meant either limiting the need to talk, making a rule against it, or not making time the deciding factor. Whilst a few different ideas had been bounced about, the one they’d settled on leant more towards the first two options. This was a timed challenge, but one where he wouldn’t be at a disadvantage.

The groups were gathered in the Cascade Hall, although those with a higher number were permitted to wander the rest of the school, save for the Labyrinth Gardens (where the challenge would be taking place) and the MARS rooms (where the teams would go after finishing). They had been given a time to return to the hall by, which was an approximate estimate of when they’d be needed. The posters announcing the task had told them only to bring their wands.

In turn, Selina collected each team, and led them outside. Technically, a labyrinth was a single, meandering path. It was distinct from a maze in that, whilst it twisted and twined back on itself, there was only ever one single route. It was designed to be more of a meditative experience than a puzzle. The labyrinth at Sonora fell somewhere between this and a more traditional maze—it did have branches, and dead ends, but more to create separate areas and a chance for privacy than because they actually wanted students to get truly lost or stuck. However, the familiar paths had been warped and twisted, rearranged into something that was much trickier to navigate. That fact, at first, was only obvious from the large, curved wall they found themselves standing by.

“Welcome to the first challenge. In a moment, you will enter the maze. Although you will all enter through the same doorway, you will all end up in different sections of it. Your job is to find each other. You will primarily score points on how quickly you do that, although you may gain bonus points for the number of obstacles defeated or creativity of the spellwork involved.

“The maze is constructed in such a way that you will not meet an obstacle that is above your grade level whilst on your own.” By which she meant, there were age lines between the various sections, and they could only be ‘finited’ by someone who was old enough to cross them. Whilst that meant that lower years might hit an invisible barrier they couldn’t cross, it meant that they couldn’t wander into danger without an older student to help them. The obstacles in the maze consisted of some ‘combat’ style tasks like those they would find in their DADA classes—minor jinxes that were fired by visible dummies or tripped by less obvious (but still detectable) means, creatures suited to their age range and the fact that they weren’t under the immediate eye of an adult—but also more puzzle solving elements, such as hedges that would close up behind them or gaps that were too small to get through.

“You may use green sparks to try to catch your teammates’ attention, though I’m not sure how well they’ll be able to see them. Please only use red sparks if you feel genuinely unsafe and require intervention from a staff member.

“Any questions?” she asked, taking time to answer anything about the rules of the task, but not giving away any details about what they’d find inside. “Alright,” she smiled, once that was done. “Best of luck. On your marks, get set, go.” She waved her wand, and a doorway opened, which would scatter them to their starting points.

OOC: Welcome to your first challenge! You may make up any reasonable obstacle in line with the above descriptors. Your post will be graded by class standards - i.e. it is about length, relevance and realism, not about how amazingly awesome you claim to be. Your initial or most detailed post for each character will be scored on a scale of 1-5 and every other post you make will gain an additional 1 point.
Unlike normal threads, you do not have to follow a posting order (e.g. keeping the same order of speaking) though try to consult with your team mates in chatzy if more than three of you get back together.
You may not write for other characters. Please give teammates (or staff) room to respond if something happens that would get their attention.

The challenge will run for two weeks, from today until Friday August 26th.

You may also post celebration threads in the MARS room.

Subthreads:

Team 2 with System, Lenny Pierce, Yaniel Ayala Velez, Lavender Brockert, Mara Morales

Team 1 with System, Oz Spellman, Iris Cobb, Morgan Garrett

Team 3 with System, Robyn Lundstrom, Phil Carson, Graham Osbrook

Team 4 with System, Billy Cobb, Cole Pierce, Bertie Jackson, Alexei Vorontsov

Team 5 with System, Verdillia Scurlock, Nausicaa Scapetello, Rosalynn Tellerman

Team 6 with System, Isla Brockert, Lyla Holland, Gwendolyn Brockert, Hansel Hexenmeister, Sadie-Lake Chalmers, Eben Sosna

Team 7 with System, Lydia Priory, Valentine Duell, Xarryn Bavol, Leviosa Scurlock

0 System Team 9 0 System 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

August 13, 2022 6:32 PM

Divining Inspiration by Xavier Lundstrom

Challenge one was a 'one at a time' deal, which meant Xavier spent most of the day waiting. Given that the school had a whole house of people who they had deemed 'not good at waiting' as one of their primary personality traits, he wondered how they thought that was going to go over. He really thought that number of Pecaris rather than team number should be the deciding factor in order. It was super frustrating. He couldn't even pass the time in any of the ways he liked. MARS was closed off, so he couldn't skate (unless he did it in the corridors, and dang, he was tempted because had they ever said no skating in the hallways? He didn't think so. He didn't think they knew what skates were). His other go to recently had been divination. He couldn't wait for his classes in it - like, literally couldn't, and was almost always spending his evenings fidgeting with the things he’d gathered from Professor Duell. His favourite was the crystal ball. He could totally lose himself in its murky depths, enthralled by the passing of the ghostly shapes whose meanings felt like they hovered on the edge of his understanding. Everything else melted away, and he could lose track of time completely - which was why it wasn’t an option now. He’d also noticed that he was frequently tired after a long session of crystal gazing, or even if he used the tarot but did it again and again and again. It was like going skating, and pushing yourself harder and longer than your body was used to—something he’d always been prone to. Wearing himself out before the challenge didn’t sound like a great plan.

He’d done a couple of tarot pulls, because he couldn’t resist, and they were lighter work than crystal gazing. He wondered if the challenges had been future-proofed somehow. If there was something you didn’t want people seeing, then there had to be a way of blocking people like him. Like, how did they stop Seers cheating on exams? Or was it just assumed that The Fates would always be vague enough for it never to actually be helpful? He was getting the impression that they’d be more likely to give a message along the lines of ‘you will face many questions and suffer greatly’ than ‘heads up, there’s an extended essay question on switching spells.’ Still, it couldn’t hurt to try a little tarot. Much like skating in the corridors, no one had told him he couldn’t. He’d been practising single card draws, seeing if he could shuffle the deck and get the same card multiple times in a row by letting his intuition guide him. On his first draw, he got the Knight of Swords. Swift action. Ha. Were they mocking him? He shuffled and searched for it again, but drew Temperance instead. Patience. Carefully considered actions. Fine. If the cards were going to be salty with him, he was going to pass his time in other ways.

Between snacking and pacing and games of exploding snap with anyone else who was as bored as he was, he managed to fritter away the time until it was their go. He followed Professor Skies out into the gardens with the rest of team eight. They were being put into a maze, and had to get back together as fast as possible, whilst not dying of monsters and traps. ‘Age appropriate’ monsters and traps. He wondered what that meant for him. His practical magic had been improving since he’d started learning to channel his divination powers, but he was still low on fire power for a fourth year. Would there be fourth year threats in his path, or had they tailored it to his actual level? He didn’t know which was worse. The thought that he might have remedial monsters was utterly humiliating but probably not worse than literal death. Not that they would let him die. They were often weirdly specific about offering that reassurance like it shouldn’t be taken for granted. Even if his monsters were grade-level, he would probably manage without their help. He had a pretty good fight or flight response, even when it was pushed to engage the ‘fight’ option. The Center had proven that. When he was physically threatened, it startled his powers out of him. Apparently his greedy, power-sucking Seer senses had enough self-preservation to lash out at threats.

He followed his group into the maze, but immediately found himself alone with two paths ahead of him. How was he meant to know which way to go? He could feel the clock ticking, speed was of the— Speed. Speed was of the essence. Swift action… Had he predicted this? In typical divination fashion, the actual answer was only presenting itself once you got there, and could retroactively jam the facts into some kind of significance. Swiftness, but patient, measured decisions. What was that saying ‘more haste, less speed?’ Rushing things wasn’t always the fastest way forward. He could plunge down a path at random, in order to get started and get moving or he could try to work out which was the more effective path to take. After hours of waiting, he knew which he wanted, but he fought to reign that in. He reached for his tarot deck, but he’d left them in his room to ‘cleanse’ themselves/think about what they’d done. He probably wouldn’t have been allowed them anyway, though right now he would have gladly traded his wand for them. He felt more powerful and in control with divination. Although, that would be relying on the fact that the staff wouldn’t actually let anything eat him, because what would he do if he came up against an actual threat? Scare it off with visions of its future? Papercut it to death?

He took in his surroundings, considering what he could use to choose a path. He’d been reading a book that was all about nature divination, and which scorned the use of tools like tarot cards and crystal balls, saying that Seers who became over-reliant on them were limiting their possibilities—that a true Seer should be able to take the world around them and read it, unfiltered through any man-made object. Which was… a strong take. Xavier liked his crystal ball and his tarot cards, and felt vaguely defensive every time he read that book. Yet he kept coming back to it. And now he was starting to see the point. In situations like this, he was kind of screwed if he couldn’t use his powers. And, whilst this situation was fabricated and extreme, he could either carry a crystal ball and a tarot deck everywhere for the rest of his life, or learn to interpret the world without them.

He tried to remember what the book had said. The first couple of exercises were all about using naturally occurring things the same way one would use tea leaves or wax or any other kind of medium in which symbols occurred—like, scattering leaves or dust or flower petals and just willing meaning to make itself apparent. Well, he had plenty of those things. Feeling vaguely ridiculous, and still more than a tad restless, Xavier sat down. He pulled a twig off a nearby hedge and scratched two boxes into the dirt, one representing each path. He gathered a handful of loose earth and tried to focus his energy, exploring down each path in turn as he scattered it and stirred it, continuing until he felt that it was Done. He wasn’t sure if he was sensing that for real or just running out of patience.

When he opened his eyes… a pile of dirt greeted him. Okay. So, what had he been expecting? A giant arrow? He thought that if the fates actually wanted to speak to him, being that direct would get their relationship ticking along much more smoothly, but they never seemed to agree. Right, well, even if he just stared at it intently for a few moments and then picked a path, maybe he’d get bonus points from Professor Duell? It was unlikely that anyone else was trying to divine their way around the maze. There was a difference in the way the dirt had fallen. The dirt in the right box was more clustered. The dirt on the left was more scattered. He was trying to get to people, so did the right represent that, whilst the left was being lost and separated? But the right one… Something about it just seemed Wrong. It wasn’t just clustered but looping in, crossing itself… Barriers on the right versus openness the left? Or loneliness on the left versus reunion on the right? Both interpretations were equally valid, and he would probably never know which was right, and he might well be wasting time. He felt better about the left dirt. He wasn’t sure if that was any real, stronger feeling or whether he’d have been just as confident if he’d left it up to ‘eeny meeny miney mo’ (could you divine with ‘eeny meeny miney mo?’ Was his eeny meenying actually meaningful? Those were thoughts for another day…)

He headed down the left path, moving at a light jog to make up for his slow start. Until he got to his first obstacle. Initially, he thought he was approaching a dead end, but as he got closer, he saw that the hedge was only half the height of the rest of the maze. Enough to be an inconvenience, but the path most likely continued on the other side of it. They hadn’t said he had to use magic, and he was pretty sure his own athleticism was more reliable than his skill with a wand. He reached in, searching for grip, but it was obvious that the hedge was the perfectly unfriendly combination of too flimsy to hold him up whilst being too thick for him to just push through. He thought of all the spells that felt too big for him on something this size or that were beyond his skill level even if he’d been a normal fourth year—blasting it, conjuring steps. If only it was solid enough for him to climb!

If only…

”Duro,” he cast. If this didn’t work, he was going to live to regret that when he had to blast the whole thing out his way. The last thing he needed to do in that situation was give it reinforcements. But, even though the whole hedge didn’t turn to stone (obviously, he was a fourth year and him) it felt much more solid when he grabbed hold of it. He got most of the way to the top before his hand plunged into soft foliage again, and he cast a hasty repetition of the charm, managing to scramble onto the top and drop down safely on the other side, panting slightly.

He picked himself up, and carried on. He faced another fork, and closed his eyes, trying to look like he was Intuiting but actually just silently eeny-meeny-miney-moing. As he rounded the next corner, he heard a voice. It was muffled, on the other side of the hedge, but it was definitely a voice.

“HEY!” he called out, as loudly as he could. “HEY! It’s Xavier! Relashio!” he cast, slicing at the hedge between them. The spell crackled through the air, satisfying and actually frigging working. Except, in his head, that had led to a dramatic parting of the hedge, whereas—even successfully cast—all it did was send leaves and twigs tumbling. It wasn’t actually a spell for creating an opening, just for cutting. “Uh, any ideas?” he called through the hedge.

13 Xavier Lundstrom Divining Inspiration 1529 0 5

Lydia Priory

August 14, 2022 7:43 AM

Amazingly terrifying. by Lydia Priory

OOC: CW-Brief allusion to eating disorders. Also, some internalized ableism. I am sure some preemies grow up strong and healthy, Lydia's just always been infantalized BIC:

Everything about these Challenges was absolutely terrifying to Lydia. For starters, it had been nerve wracking worrying about who would be on her team…and then those fears had somewhat come true. She was thrilled to be on the same team as Val and happy to be with Levi, who was her best-as in probably only- friend’s little sister, and most of the rest of them seemed nice enough. Plus, the fourth year was happy that Lorena was also not athletic which made Lydia not the only one, because both Xarryn and Val were. However,there was still Leonor. Who was pretty much the meanest person in the entire school.

Lydia was completely frightened of the Pecari. She was anxious that the older girl was going to mock or bully her. Especially if she freaked out and began to cry in the middle of one of the Challenges. She had heard about the previous ones from her siblings, Bridget and Peyton. She knew they’d had an obstacle course, which involved either physical skills or magical ones, the latter of which she was alright at but the former of which she had none, and a desert survival challenge. This had not been a big deal to Connor or Sophia and not the worst thing for Bridget or Peyton. Peyton’s biggest issue had been a couple of her teammates, one being the half-sister of her siblings from their dad-Peyton being their half sibling from her mom, it was all very complicated-and one being a girl who could be rude to people for no apparent reason. Bridget’s issue had been having very personal family things come up and being embarrassed by it.

Anyway, neither of Lydia’s siblings had finished very well, in fact Sophia had gotten last place and Connor had gotten second to last. While she obviously felt bad for them-even though they did not seem upset by it now-she was at least glad that she didn’t have to try and live up to their successes in this. Peyton had done the best out of anyone that Lydia was closely related to last time and her team only got seventh. Although Uncle Evan’s team had gotten first way back when he’d done the Challenges. Lydia was certain that her experience would be far closer to that of her siblings than that of her uncle. After all, she was on the team and she was severely deficient. The fourth year tended to be anxious about most things and she was extremely physically weak. She had always been delicate ever since she was born. She had been a preemie, so she was fragile.

And if neither of Lydia’s much stronger, tougher siblings had been successful, how could she be? While she knew that she wouldn’t have to do the exact same things as Connor and Sophia had but there may be similar situations She knew that if she was put into those situations, she would probably burst into tears and freak out completely…and then all her teammates except possibly Val, would hate her and think she was a huge crybaby, not just Leonor.

In fact, that was why Lydia had failed to mention that particular issue she had. She had mentioned her lack of athleticism, feeling okay mentioning that since Lorena had and besides everyone had to mention their strengths and weaknesses. However, she had not mentioned all her fears and anxieties because she did not want others to make fun of her.

So, it was with great trepidation-possibly even more trepidation than she’d felt during the initial team meetings when she found who her teammates were-that the fourth year entered the Cascade Hall to find out what the first Challenge would be. It turned out that each team was going to be doing the event at different times, and they would be doing them in numerical order. As Lydia was on Team Seven, she was going to have a bit of a wait. Which was just more time for her to worry and imagine horrendous terrifying things that she would inevitably fail at, humiliating herself and making her teammates hate her. Maybe even Val would.

She felt herself getting more and more anxious as time grew closer to her team’s turn, staying in one of the bathrooms nearby in case she ended up vomiting.Or crying. Or panicking. The Teppenpaw remained in the stall where nobody would find her.

Finally, though, it was her team’s turn and Lydia returned to the Cascade Hall where Profesor Skies led them out to the Labyrinth Gardens. The Teppenpaw gulped. She didn’t go out to the Gardens under normal circumstances, partially because of fair skin and mild allergies, but mostly because of the potential that she would get lost and die of exposure or something before she was found. Or at least catch her death by contracting a cold that turned into pneumonia (and killed her). Lydia very much identified with old fashioned fragile Victorian lady types and she genuinely did get ill more than most people she knew, minus Bridget’s mother Harmony. Oh, and her cousin Autumn, but that was because Autumn didn’t eat much. Even less than Lydia herself, and everyone said that the Teppenpaw ate like a bird. Especially when she was anxious, which she had been more so this year than usual.

A thought occurred to her, what if she got really sick? Then she wouldn’t be subjected to the horrors of the Challenges!Maybe her stomach ache and rapidly beating heart wasn’t just anxiety, maybe they were some horrible illness and she could get out of doing something that would only lead to failure and the inevitable torment from others. Lydia briefly considered deliberately poisoning herself with some potion or walking out in the rain wearing something flimsy. Although that might very well kill her.

However, it was too late to do so now. And things had just gotten worse. They were going to be in the maze alone . Plus, there would be obstacles and even though they wouldn’t be “above grade level” that did not mean that they would be things that Lydia could handle. Yes, she was capable enough of magic but she definitely was not…fast or strong and when it came to anything physical, there was no such thing as grade level! Xarryn, who was a first year, would certainly be able to handle such tasks better than Lydia would.

Honestly, the only good thing about this was that they didn’t have to fly. That was a small relief though since she honestly wasn’t all that good at walking that long either. She got tired and hot. Which made her dizzy and nauseous. The Teppenpaw didn’t handle extreme temperatures at either end very well. Hot was arguably worse because she was from Wisconsin and less overall acclimated to it, though it did get hot there too, contrary to popular belief, but when it got super cold, she had trouble breathing. Usually, Lydia just stayed inside her temperature controlled house.

She entered the maze, hands shaking and heart beating out of her chest. The fourth year really did feel like she might throw up. Or faint. Or throw up, then faint. Which might end up really really costing her team and instead of her teammates being concerned about her, they would be angry that she made them lose. Everything would be her fault and they would hate her! Lydia knew from personal experience with Sophia that not everyone had much patience with weak fragile types who were scared of most things.

And not only would her team hate her but Verdillia might turn against her too because Levi was on her team and Lydia would be responsible for her friend’s little sister losing miserably.

The fourth year wandered through the path, managing to trip over some jinx that she should have been able to detect except that she was not really thinking very clearly at all. She was terrified and nervous and most likely hopelessly lost and never going to find her teammates. Although she hoped she found someone soon, preferably Val and preferably not Leonor. Lydia didn’t want to be alone, having to manage obstacles on her own but she didn’t want to be alone with the Pecari who would likely belittle her either.

She turned a corner, calling out her teammates names and continuously sending up green sparks. Suddenly, the fourth year heard a voice saying. “You pathetic weakling. Why did I get stuck with you!”

Lydia whipped around to find Leonor standing there, sneering. “You’re a worthless crybaby and a burden. We’re going to lose because of you!.”

The Teppenpaw shrank into herself. Why was this happening? It was the exact thing that she had been dreading. She began to shake even more, and tears streamed down her face. She knew that crying would only make things worse but she couldn't help it. Lydia curled up into a ball on the ground as Leonor kept berating her. She wanted so badly to send up red sparks to have the staff come rescue her from this bullying but if she did she would be a laughingstock and besides, nobody likes a tattletale. Plus, she was frozen with fear and couldn’t move.

“There’s a reason why nobody likes you. Why Iris prefers Amethyst. Why Sophia ignores you.” Now, had the fourth year been thinking clearly at all she would realize that that was stuff that the Pecari had absolutely no way of knowing. However, Lydia was not thinking clearly at all.

Then suddenly, mercifully, it stopped as a shadow fell over her. Apparently, another teammate was there and she breathed a sigh of relief, glad that the seventh year had stopped. Maybe Leonor didn’t want anyone else to hear the scorn she had for the Teppenpaw.

Lydia looked up to see who else had arrived and saved her….only to find that the seventh year was no longer standing there, and something else was in its place. “Boggart.” She whispered.

11 Lydia Priory Amazingly terrifying. 1533 0 5

Robyn Lundstrom

August 14, 2022 8:53 PM

bump by Robyn Lundstrom

Robyn didn’t really know enough people in Sonora to have an opinion on whether her team was above average in any respect—be that brains, athleticism, or friendliness. There were individual members of it that she could easily rank on that scale, and she was hoping to steer clear of Olaf, as much as one could whilst working on the same team. Graham seemed kinda closed-mouth, but not unpleasant. Pretty much all the other boys gave off solid older brother vibes, and she’d decided that Tommy reminded her of Joel. This might not have been based off much other than sheer force of will, and seeking out some way of feeling comforted. Ray was scary and looked like she’d eat someone who’d owned My Little Pony kneepads for breakfast, regardless of how much skating said person had done in them.

When they had discussed strengths and weaknesses, Robyn hadn’t known what to say. All of her strengths were relative, which was to say that, as a first year, they weren’t much. Based off the handful of weeks of classes she’d had, she didn’t suck at magic. She was quite athletic, but her speed, strength and stamina were all on the scale of her being eleven, and all the sports here were unfamiliar to her. She’d taken to flying well enough, compared to people who hated it, but none of that marked her out as special or different. She’d gone with ‘I’m quite fast’ as her best strength. The other thing that made her unusual was that she knew about non-magical stuff, but she thought that might be considered a flaw rather than an advantage, and it seemed unlikely to be useful, so she’d kept it to herself.

She was on team three, so she didn’t have to wait long, or put up with Xavier’s restless pacing. In fact, she didn’t have to put up with him at all, as he was spending his restless energy elsewhere until his team got called. Which also meant he didn’t wish her luck when she left, which was fine because she didn’t need him to… Joel would have, if he was the brother at school though.

They followed Professor Skies outside, and Robyn listened as she explained the first task. Apparently what Robyn thought about her teammates, and what she worried they thought about her, wasn’t going to matter because they were being split up. Well, okay, she could still make a bad impression if everyone else got back together and had to wait ages for her or if she had to get rescued or something. She actually found herself slightly regretful as they went into the maze… She was wary of the challenges, and wasn’t sure how she was going to contribute anything, but in the back of her mind there had been the possibility of her coming up with something super cool and impressing all these older boys and no one ever underestimating her for being a girl/the baby/the sister of that weirdly incompetent fourth year boy ever again. Now she wouldn’t get the chance. Any obstacles she successfully tackled would be without an audience.

She stepped into the maze. It was weird, finding herself suddenly alone. Adrenaline and competitive spirit was kicking in, and she felt pumped, like she might before a race or a soccer match. She also felt the vague prickle on the back of her neck that this wasn’t her world, and she wasn’t sure how PG they’d keep the obstacles. A maze where monsters leapt out at you sounded like something out of a horror movie. And Robyn had two older brothers and a complex about being left out for being the baby—she’d snuck glimpses of more than enough things for the very idea of being in the maze to freak her out slightly.

She took the right fork, and had gone just far enough that it would be annoying to double back when she saw darkness up ahead. Like, a literal cloud of it, hovering in the middle of the path. She considered retreating, but there wasn’t any way of getting through this without facing something, and who knew what lay down the left path? She wasn’t scared of the dark. Not really. Just what might be in it, and the fact that it was unnatural and she couldn’t be sure that it was just dark. What if it was some mystical terrible dark creature that sucked your soul out through your eyeballs if you touched it, and everyone knew that except her because she was just a useless, Muggleborn first year? Except, they’d said they would have threats they could deal with… Oh! She did know a spell for dealing with darkness. Just so long as it was only regular darkness, not wild, soul-through-eyeball-sucking darkness.

“Lumos!” she cast, almost laughing with relief. Except she still had to walk through there. But as her wand steadily illuminated the way around her, revealing nothing but hedgerows, and as the darkness continued not to physically gnaw on her, she relaxed.

She pressed forward until she got through the patch of darkness and extinguished her wand. Ha! She’d done it! She had completed an obstacle by magic, and it really hadn’t been too bad. She allowed herself a little fist pump, and continued on, feeling in much better spirits, and much more like this was a fun maze than a horror maze.

She made a few more twists and turns seeing some wooden blocks at intervals up ahead. They didn’t look like anything she couldn’t easily walk around or climb over. She kept going—and then abruptly stopped. She was sure she was moving forwards, but the scenery around her was retreating like she was moving backwards. She turned to her left but the world moved right. What the…? She stopped moving, dizzy and disoriented, and noticed something like a heat haze shimmering around her. She tried to back up out of it but found herself moving forward instead. Right. It was like… opposite land. She stood still again, gathering her thoughts with her eyes closed. If the staff thought she knew what this was they were sadly mistaken. She’d never heard of a jinx that did this! She could back up (by going forward?) and retrace her steps, or she could move forward (by going backwards) and hope she got to the far side, like she had with the darkness. She took a few steps backwards, opening her eyes to confirm that she was indeed moving forward. There were bars and blocks in her way, and she had to weave left to go right around them, or left if she wanted to go right. It was like trying to French braid in the mirror, and feeling like your hands weren’t going where you were telling them, only with your whole entire body. Was this what being drunk was like? It was how it looked in TV shows. If so, why did anyone want to do that to themselves? This was horrible. And frustrating. She was having to move so slowly. But she was making progress, and eventually she tumbled out the other side.

Thank goodness! She took a moment to shake her body, appreciative of how it went exactly where she expected, and then darted forward—SMACK. She hit an invisible barrier so hard that she fell to the ground with a loud “OW!”

She rubbed her nose, reaching out to explore the space in front of her. Beyond it, she could see an open area with many paths branching off it. But every time she put a hand out, it hit the same wall she had run into. No! She couldn’t be trapped! After all the effort she’d made to get through the backwards cloud, she couldn’t be stuck and have to retrace her steps through it! She wracked her brains for any spell she knew that might get a barrier out of her way.

“Finite incantatum!” she cast, feeling triumphant. She felt the spell warming her hand, pulsing through her wand. But when she tried to walk forward (admittedly more cautiously this time), the barrier was still in her way. She tried a couple more times, but it was still the same. ”Alohomora?” she tried instead, just in case. Still nothing. She turned back to the heat haze, wondering if she just couldn’t cancel any of the spells here. If they’d been made by the teachers it made sense that they were stronger than her magic. But it had seemed like such a good solution to something she didn’t recognise…

“Finite incantatum,” she tried, figuring it was worth a shot. The heat haze vanished. Okay. At least she didn’t have to go back through backwards land again. She still had to retreat though.

She was turning and heading back down that path, when she heard someone calling her name…

13 Robyn Lundstrom *bump* 1558 0 5

Isla Brockert

August 16, 2022 9:29 AM

Depends on your perspective by Isla Brockert

OOC: CW-Briefly talks about misogyny and gender norms. Also, Isla is a fifteen year old pureblood girls so she's unaware of the gender spectrum. And there are spiders. BIC:

As far as the Challenges were concerned, Isla was not quite as excited about them as Esme was but far more so than Olaf. The first year was being extremely negative about the whole experience but then, unless it had to do with books, he was not generally a very positive person anyway.

However, Isla generally did tend to be positive and was trying to overall have a good attitude surrounding the Challenges. Okay, she knew that she might very well have to do something that she didn’t like or wasn’t all that good at since there was more than likely going to be at least one somewhat athletically based Challenge. Which was not one of her strengths. And of course, her main strength was puppetry and that was most likely not going to be very useful in the Challenges. She would get to use it in the Concert though. Isla was not sure exactly how they would be performing “Challenge highlights” exactly, but she wanted to use puppets to do it.

Either way though, she would get to participate, with her puppets, in the Performing Arts club’s act. She was looking forward to that.

Anyway, with regards to the Challenges,she also knew that some people had not had great experiences, in particular Allegra. While Isla remained as optimistic as possible about the event, she had also done her best to be sensitive towards her sister's trauma regarding it. Which, in reality, the Crotalus alumna had already been previously traumatized by Topaz. So basically, an already fragile person was being put in a stressful situation, involving two events meant for overall physically and psychologically stronger people with teammates that Allegra didn’t really know, who were also all male. Not that Isla’s older sister specifically had issues with men, but she had been uncomfortable being the odd one out. The one noticeably different from her teammates.

Actually, the Aladren had noticed something among the teams this time around. It seemed as if only Amethyst’s team was balanced in terms of gender, with three boys-Lenny counted as a boy, regardless of how he liked to dress, he made that very clear- and four girls. Meanwhile Chris’s team had only one girl,Freya, making her the only girl on that team, just like Allegra had been. Similarly, Lorena’s team had one boy and the rest were girls.

Isla didn’t think this was really a fair thing to do to them at all, since being the odd one out was not a pleasant experience. It hadn’t been one for Allegra in the last Challenges. It hadn’t been for one Angelique when she was girly girl in year full of jocks and it hadn’t been for the fifth year when both her friends had boyfriends and she’d had to scramble around for people to do things with for things like the trip to the zoo and had just overall felt like her friends had something in common and she didn’t. So yeah, to put Freya and the first year boy in that position seemed cruel.

For every other team, including her own, there were two people of one gender and everyone else was the other. Isla had to wonder if that was on purpose. Like, if they were trying to turn things into a battle of the sexes or something. Or possibly making another statement about the irrelevance of gender like what had happened with the Head Student position.

In some ways, that was good. While Isla had been less affected overall by Uncle Eustace’s particular brand of toxic masculinity and misogyny than Jasper or Christopher or even Miles, she had still grown up hearing him spew stuff about gender norms, which were also to a degree, ingrained in pureblood culture. Isla did not think girls had to be like Esme, all prim and proper. Nor did they have to be soft and gentle like Allegra or super girly and princessy like Angelique and Amethyst. It was fine to be any of those things, but it was also perfectly acceptable-or should be-to be like herself or Liesl.

Pretty much the one thing her uncle ever said about her was that no man would ever want to marry a weirdo like her. Isla tried her best to take that with a grain of salt considering the source, but deep down, she wondered if it was true. However, she knew that if she changed herself to please others, she would not be happy. And it would take so much extra energy to keep up such a facade. Furthermore, if doing that meant having jerks like her uncle attracted to her, she would stay weird. The Aladren would rather stay alone with her puppets than marry someone like him!

Also, the idea that boys were better than girls at some things and girls were better at other things-ones that were unimportant to Uncle Eustace-based on their gender was ridiculous. Like the idea that boys were better at sports and girls were nurturing, for example. There were plenty of girls here at Sonora, Quidditch players and otherwise, who were more athletic than her brothers, male cousins and pretty much most of her male relatives. Meanwhile, Jasper wanted to help children with special needs and was far more nurturing than his neglectful mother or psychopathic older sister.

Still, generally speaking, if you joined a group of people that you really did not know well at all, and right off the bat there was something different about you, you were going to feel at least somewhat uncomfortable, regardless of what the difference was. You would feel left out and different. It had nothing to do with what someone’s particular skills were as an individual.

Although they had apparently made a token effort in most cases to prevent that. Except for Freya and Lorena’s one male teammate.

Isla, however, was pretty pleased with her group. She wasn’t the only girl or the only Aladren or the only anything really, not even the only pureblood since Gwendolyn and Hans were both purebloods too. More importantly, most of her teammates seemed really nice. Okay, Bonabelle had never seemed like the friendliest person and didn’t seem to like anyone but her girlfriend,but Isla was willing to give her a chance. Perhaps she was just shy. There was nothing wrong with that of course. Some people just had trouble making friends. Sadie was Esme’s roommate whom she seemed to like pretty well. Plus, Sapphire had considered the seventh year her closest friend. And Hans was Liesl’s best friend, so both of them had been highly endorsed.

As for the rest, Gwendolyn was a distant cousin of hers that she knew a little. Eben, she didn’t know well, but Christopher liked him well enough, having hung out with him on the zoo trip. Both of them, as well as Lyla, seemed pretty cool. So all in all, Isla had gotten a good team.

She joined everyone in the Cascade Hall for the first Challenge. As she was on Team Six, she had a bit of a wait. Soon enough, though, it was their turn.

Isla frowned as Professor Skies gave the instructions. How was this going to involve teamwork or encourage bonding or making connections when they were starting out alone? Not to mention there were certain to be people who would become extremely anxious and upset being in a maze full of obstacles all alone and who would end up traumatized, like Allegra had. Yes, her sister had been traumatized previously but who's to say that someone else hadn’t been and now it was going to be made worse.

However, it wasn’t a problem that Isla had personally and hopefully not one that any of her teammates had either. She would just have to find everyone as quickly as possible, not just because it was timed-which was just another way to put pressure on people and stress them out, some people just weren’t fast. In fact, the Aladren was not particularly so herself-but because Isla felt it would be better if they could work and strategize together.

For the moment though, she was alone. At first, all she had to do was navigate the path. Which became harder once a dense fog descended. “ Impervius ” She said, making the mist dissipate.

Unfortunately, as it did, Isla noticed that the ground was covered in spiders! She didn’t have a phobia about them but nor did she particularly like them. Still, how awful for those who were afraid of them. ”Arania Exumai” The fifth year called, blasting them out of her way.

She walked forward, turning a corner, as the ground began to move beneath her. Not like an earthquake, more like…it was just propelling her forward at an increasingly fast pace. Before long, it was going at a pace that was so fast that Isla could no longer stand up. She tripped, instinctively putting her hands down to break her fall. “Ow!” She cried. Her left wrist hurt and she had a few bumps and bruises now…but no time to fix them as she was moving much too fast.

Suddenly, she was ejected and flew into the air, landing in a patch of what appeared to be Flitterbloom…until it started to entwine itself around her arms and legs. Devil’s Snare! She knew to remain calm at all costs. Isla allowed herself to relax and eventually, it let her go. She rolled off to the other side from where she came from. Isla fired off some Bluebell flames to destroy it and then limped off to deal with her injuries. “ Episkey ”.

The fifth year continued on her path, until she heard some movement. She looked around for whatever creature was planning to attack her, only to see a flash of what looked to be human. She rushed towards what appeared to be her teammate, albeit with her wand ready in case it was some sort of trick. Honestly, she was starting to see why Allegra had been so traumatized by the Challenges. She also decided against telling Olaf what sort of obstacles she'd faced because he'd just say that he told her so.

She “called out to the person that she'd spotted. "Hey! Over here!.” Isla shot off some green sparks “ Verdillius ”.

11 Isla Brockert Depends on your perspective 1521 0 5

Lenny Pierce

August 17, 2022 9:28 AM

There's whiskey in the jar by Lenny Pierce

Lenny did not really know anybody on his team. He sort of knew Yarielis from class, and Cole spoke highly of her, but the others were all virtually strangers. Everyone else was enough older than the two second years that they hadn't even shared classes last year when Lenny and Yarielis were the younger half of the beginners. The good news there was that they had a pretty heavy slant toward older kids, with no first years and two second years in the Beginner division, and no third years, one fourth year, and one fifth year in the Intermediate division, and three Advanced students with both Lavender and Stanley representing the sixth year and Mara being their fearless seventh year leader.

The bad news was Lenny wasn't sure he was going to be able to keep up. Yarielis was at least smart and athletic (or so he assumed from her being quiet and attentive in class and a beater on the Quidditch team) and he was just . . . Lenny. Mediocre student. Mediocre flier. Mediocre beginner magic user. He hadn't known what to say during the meet and greet. He had no strong talents, and he wasn't unfortunate to have any terrible weaknesses. He was just middle of the road at everything except being fabulous and that probably wasn't going to come up.

Still, he'd come prepared for the first challenge with his wand in hand (the one thing they'd been told to bring) and his hair up in a high ponytail so it wouldn't get in his way (but it shimmered with the glitter gel he'd added to give it some flair). He was wearing practical high top sneakers, but they were hot pink (he thought maybe he could use them to distract his opponents or something?) and his shirt and skorts were likewise brightly neon. If he was good for nothing else, he'd keep everyone's eyes on him while his older and more capable teammates did the real work.

As Professor Skies gathered up Team Two - not much waiting required for them, thank Merlin - and brought them out to the Gardens where she explained what they were going to have to do, Lenny couldn't help but laugh a little. He'd definitely worn the right clothes for getting found in.

This didn't sound bad at all. He liked wandering the Labyrinth when the weather was nice, and many of the Renfaire's his family worked at had mazes (sometimes hedges, sometimes mirrors), too, so he knew the Always Turn Right strategy. It wasn't necessary the most efficient route, but it would mean he wouldn't get lost running in the same confusing loop over and over again. Also, she'd said he couldn't run into anything over his level, and he was okay at his own level stuff, so that shouldn't be a problem either.

"Nobody will be able to miss me," he promised his teammates as they walked to the maze entrance. He worked Renfaires as a hawker to get people to go to his family members' shows. Ensuring everyone knew he was nearby was definitely something he could do.

He was slightly startled when he walked through with them but then found himself entirely alone surrounded by hedges on two sides. He looked down both directions of the path he found himself in the middle of, neither looking particularly more welcoming or dangerous than the other. So he randomly picked one and started singing Irish Drinking Songs^TM as loudly as he could as he walked down the path, right hand trailing against the hedge so he remembered to always turn that way.

"Throw 'im in the long boat 'til he's sober!" he sang out with much more enthusiasm than skill as he turn the first corner and came face to blank wood with a dummy who shot a giggle jinx at him. "Whoa!" he shouted, dodging back around the hedge. He took a deep breath, readying himself for a duel and jumped back around to face the dummy, "Petrificus Totalus!" he cast, shouting the words loudly to give them more power as well as to maybe draw his teammates toward him. He also dodged another jinx shot his way, and he must have jumped aside too fast because his spell went wide and missed the dummy. "Petrificus Totalus!" he cast again as it shot a third jinx at him, this time one he didn't recognize. His spell hit, and the dummy froze and fell over, but its spell caught Lenny, too, and his skin began to glow.

Well, that was actually useful. "If you're watching and judging me," Lenny called out to any monitoring teachers, "I know I could use a Finite Incantatum to end this effect, but I think it will help my teammates find me, so I'm just gonna leave it on."

He moved carefully passed the immobilized dummy, and once he was a few steps past that obstacle, he broke out in loud boisterous off-tune song once more, "As I was goin' over, the Cork and Kerry Mountains..."

When he'd told everyone at the meet and greet that his strength was knowing the lyrics to a lot of different folk songs, but his weakness was that he couldn't carry a tune to save his life, he hadn't actually thought either skill would ever be called for.

1 Lenny Pierce There's whiskey in the jar 1547 0 5

Valentine Duell

August 17, 2022 6:40 PM

Nothing to fear but fear itself? by Valentine Duell

Valentine was ready for this adventure. She wasn't sure what it was as she gathered with her team in the hall, but she was sure it would be fun. She'd run so many games and scenarios for the gaming club thus far that she was ready to have someone plan out something of an adventure for her. If the professors wanted to do that, great! She had her robes and her wand and she was going to wizar... well, witch her way through this adventure!

Oooo.. they'd had some magical fun with the labyrinth! Excellent! Val thought and couldn't help but grinning as the professor gave them their instructions outside. There was no way she could suppress the excited smile radiating from her face as she looked around at the rest of her party. They were all magic users, hopefully they wouldn't need a tank. She giggled quietly at the thought and once the professor had finished, she called out to everyone, "Okay team, let's go! We can do this!" Then she strode to the doorway and entered the maze.

Val found herself in a small 'room' with a single hallway leading out. It was quiet and there was no one else around. The Professor had said that that would happen, and they would need to find each other. If given the option, the Teppenpaw would, without hesitation, pick to be with someone rather than to be alone. However, she thought she had plenty of experience being alone. Before she'd gotten to school here, it had just been her after all. She hadn't had any friends, just her and Mama and Papa, and Grandpa, and very occasionally Aunt Paige. Actually, now that she thought about it... she hadn't ever really been alone, alone. It was really quiet here.

She turned around, that weird feeling running through her of being watched, of maybe not being alone? But there was nothing there, she was alone. That unnerving sensation started sinking into her deeper, and she decided it was well past time to get moving. She had people to find and she wasn't going to get that done by standing around here. Her feet moved her swiftly from the room, probably more swiftly than they would have if anyone had been watching. She glanced around with just a bit of nervousness at the plants forming the corridor around her as she moved. Everything was fine, it was just a maze with challenges, an adventure. Now if she could only find some more of her party...

There was an intersection, which way? Left? Right? She had no extra information, either way was as good as another. Arguably she could try some divinations, but she wasn't actually sure if she could focus enough for that. The creeping feeling was still all about her... wait! She'd heard her name! Was it someone else? There was the girl's voice again, to the left now calling for another team member. It was Lydia's voice!

Without hesitation Valentine turned and followed the left passage, only to find around a turn a small circular chamber with a stone pedestal in the middle and a solid wooden door in the far wall. Upon the pedestal sat a small metal mug. Val eyed it warily as she moved around it to the door. She had no doubt that it was part of the challenge of the area, but random cups setting on pedestals were rarely good things to mess with in her adventure building experience. The door had a metal latch with a keyhole and was otherwise unadorned. It was also, unsurprisingly, locked.

Was she on the right path? Val waved her wand at the door's lock "Alohamora!". Nothing happened. Alright, maybe she was on the right path after all. She heard Lydia call out her namea again, and spotted some green sparks not to far off. On the other side of the door, naturally. She sighed and turned to look at the mug. It looked like a perfectly ordinary mug, it was empty. A terrible thought struck the girl. She wasn't supposed to transfigure it into a key to open the door, was she? That seemed like a ridiculous though, sure she was in advanced transfig, but still... that level of precision? When she didn't even know how the key should be shaped? No way, not a chance.

Maybe it was a simple lock? Val moved back over to the door to peer into the keyhole, if she could maybe see what what that looked like, and it was simple enough, then maybe..? Her eyes fell upon something other than the locking mechanism. Through the keyhole she saw that there was another similar room with a similar pedestal. However, upon that pedestal a key hung from a metal hook. She let out a sigh of relief and waved her wand once more, "Accio Key!" Again, nothing happened.

"What?" She spoke out loud, as she gazed through the keyhole at the unmoving key. "Why didn't.." she murmured to herself. She couldn't see the key well enough to turn the cup into a copy of it from here. What else... oh... Yet another thought struck her as she looked between the two pedestals. She needed to switch the items. Fantastic, a double transfiguration over a bit more distance than she'd like. Wonderful. Lydia was still calling out names, but then she stopped rather abruptly. That wasn't good! "Lydia! I'm coming! Hold on!"

A few moments later with some wand waving, spell shouting and not a little frustration, Val grabbed the key from her pedestal, unlocked the door and burst through. The mug now hung on the hook by it's handle, but the sixth year didn't give it a second glance as she hurried past in the direction she'd last seen the sparks.

Lydia was curled up on the ground crying when Val found her. She looked absolutely terrible and a glance around showed her why. Valentine's eyes went wide with horror and fear, "No!" She shouted out as almost a sob, "Nononononono!" For there on the path near Lydia was the inert body of Bonabelle. She'd known her girlfriend had been in the group just before them, it looked like she ran afoul of some terrible trap or creature and... and.. Lydia whispered something behind her, but Val didn't hear it. She couldn't do anything but start in horror at the sight before her.

2 Valentine Duell Nothing to fear but fear itself? 1490 0 5

Mab

August 17, 2022 8:04 PM

Team yay. Be inspired. by Mab

Even after actually meeting the people she didn't know particularly well on her team, Mab still thought she could have done much worse on a semi-randomized group of people from the school. Two Teppenpaws and three Pecaris mixed with only two Crotali and no Aladrens (why hadn't she gotten any Aladrens?) sounded like a disaster but Fortune was about the worst she had and even he was pretty tame. They had a decent set of skills, about half of them been somewhat sporty, two being good at Transfiguration, two being good at the Dark Arts (class stuff, not going evil), and no first years to coddle.

Given that, at their first meeting, she only asked for red flags and got back all the information the teachers had recommended they talk about at the table, the group was also pretty good at receiving directions and just doing what they were supposed to do without waiting for her to give explicit instructions, so that was promising as well. She probably mostly just needed to lead by example rather than hold anybody's hands.

Which was good, because she was not okay with hand holding.

As the second to last team to go, she was not required at the Hall until rather later than the first groups were, so she spent the time in the library getting some of her homework done and purposefully not thinking about the challenge because, with as little information as they had been give, there was nothing to think about that would be productive. Better just to do the potions essay, get it done, and maybe they'd get lucky and something she just researched would prove useful.

Soon enough it was time to get down to the Hall, so she tucked her books and papers away and headed down. She stuck her bag in an out of the way corner to retrieve later, and gathered with the rest of Team 8. Professor Skies led them out to the Gardens and explained what the deal was. Sounded pretty straight forward. Find everybody on the team and gather them together. They didn't even need to solve the maze, just find each other. And not die, of course, because the fey never did anything safely and there was no reason this would be any different.

As Mab was from the oldest student year group, everything in there was fair game for her, and there was probably something only she could defeat, if they ran into it. It was a maze and the goal was not to clear it. It could probably be avoided. She was pretty sure she could handle it, whatever it was, though, so she hoped they found it. Beating the big bad would probably get some of those bonus points Professor Skies had mentioned.

The one thing she was a bit concerned about, though, was that to find each other, they'd probably need to do something to draw attention to each other and frankly, she liked this group because they weren't huge attention seekers, and that might make things tricky for them.

She stepped through the maze entrance and found herself alone. She sighed heavily, pulling out her wand. At this point they were probably pretty far from each other so there was little use in throwing up the green sparks unnecessarily this early on, but she already dreaded the necessity. She had learned pretty early in life that the best way to survive was not to draw attention to yourself.

Instead, she used the wand for another spell she had personal objections to, but her gripe with this one was more aesthetic than constitutional. "Point me," she ground out resentfully. She set her bearings to the identified north and then picked up a leaf from the path and transfigured it into a piece of sturdy paper (forgoing her wand to do it because she still preferred wandless magic, especially for things that weren't too complicated, and it seemed to impress the teachers). She cast another one to transfigure a stick into a pencil and she wrote "MAB WAS HERE" and drew an arrow. She fastened the paper to the hedge and started walking in the direction she had drawn the arrow. If anyone else found this spot in the maze, they'd know which way at least one teammate had gone.

She moved slowly and carefully, watching for dangers, and spotted two traps. The first had been what Professor Brooding-Hawthorne (the DADA one) had described as a 'magical tripwire' that would have flung a pretty nasty hex at her if she hadn't spotted it and used the counter hex on it. She was pretty sure she had permanently disabled it, but she left another note for anyone following not to step on the spot that would have triggered it, just in case, and used rocks and twigs to outline the area that should be avoided. The second was less a trap and more an encounter with a Pogrebin, which Mab initially mistook for another stone along the path.

She'd started feeling a bit hopeless and sure that this challenge was beyond their team because nobody would want to be the first to call out and they were all just walking past each other, like ships passing in the fog, when she realized it was moving a little bit. She gave it a light nudge with her shoe and knocked it over enough to see its small hairy body, and she cursed. She did draw her wand for the stunning spell she threw at the thing, with a loud "Stupify!", because dueling club had gotten her used to using the wand for more combative spells. Then she gave it a good kick to get it more out of the main path.

She was just looking around to find materials to leave another note warning about the Pogrebin when she heard someone shout a muffled Hey! She froze and spun around, her wand up, crouched and ready for another attack, when the voice repeated, Hey! and then identified themselves as Xavier and the hedge between them rustled.

So they were passing by each other like ships in a fog. "It's Mab!" she called back, then warned, "Stand away from the hedge!" She gave him a few seconds to follow the instruction then threw her hand toward the barrier between them and wished for the fairies to just burn an opening through it. They did so, and she finished the effect off with a wand-waving spell, "Aguamenti!" to throw water over the smoldering leaves so Xavier could cross safely through.

"Are you all right?" she checked. "Have you seen anyone else?"

1 Mab Team yay. Be inspired. 1473 0 5

Samara Crosby

August 18, 2022 11:00 AM

Representing Team Softeness! by Samara Crosby

So far, Samara was really enjoying the Challenges. Although they hadn’t had any of the actual Challenges, she had met her teammates and they were so awesome. She was with Aunt Melanie’s nephew Ian and he was really nice so far. Phillipe and Theo were amazing too! They all seemed to really care about how comfortable people were, which was good, since she did like to be comfortable.. Like, Theo wanted to make sure they didn’t have to do things that they didn’t like and was willing to help them with the things they were iffy on

And Phillipe led a club of people like her great aunt, Margo, who had always been super nice to Samara because her middle name was after her aunt and Aunt Margo had always gotten a kick out of it. So he was cool too. Like he seemed to be really nice and open minded and seemed like he would make sure everyone was nice to each other.

In all honesty though, Samara was actually surprised to like her teammates. And sort of confused by it. She had expected that she would dislike everyone, that they’d be annoying or mean but so far she hadn’t met anyone awful at all. Honestly, the first year had only met nice people at Sonora.

Then again, she rarely hated anyone on their own merits.Most of the time, she picked up on who she was supposed to dislike,because of who her mother disliked-which was most people-and Samara didn’t want to make her mother angry. Merlin, did she not want to make her mother angry!

Of course, a couple of those people were really awful, like her great-grandmother Gloria and her cousin Angus’s wife Whitney, but mostly the Crotalus just kept her distance from people she wasn’t supposed to like and didn’t know well. Which was unfortunate in some cases, like with her cousin Caleb who was only slightly older than her. However, Mother really didn’t like Aunt Pippa, who was Caleb’s mom, and that extended to her husband and children. So, Samara was not about to risk it.

However, Mother didn’t know any of the other Sonora students, therefore, the first year was free to form her own opinions. She had found a loophole there and she did love a loophole. Although, she did wonder if she was allowed to like Ian. He was Aunt Melanie’s nephew-as well as some distant cousin on her Mother’s side too- and Mother didn’t like Aunt Melanie, supposedly because Aunt Melanie-the wife of her dad’s brother, Uncle Marcus-reminded Mother of her sister, Aunt Pippa.

The thing was though, that Samara did secretly like Aunt Melanie. Also, even if she didn’t, disliking someone for being the nephew or niece of someone Mother didn’t like and that she was not supposed to like, would mean not liking her brother or herself. So, Samara reasoned that it meant it was okay to like Ian. Meanwhile, Mother didn’t know her teammates or her roommate Lyla, and as for that group of girls who were her distant cousins, well, clearly Mother approved of the Crotalus hanging out with them since she was the one who basically shoved Samara at them and telling her to go hang out with them.

Which meant that she did have a ready made group here and she did talk to them although she wanted to make friends with other people too. While being clannish and only hanging out with family was not a good thing, she still was glad to have a support system. And Piper in particular was pretty good at helping the first year out. The older girl was very helpful when telling Samara all about the Challenges since her first cousins had all done it minus the one that was currently at Sonora.

Honestly, she sort of wished she hadn’t been Sorted into Crotalus since basically all of those girls were in either Teppenpaw or Aladren. On the other hand, her brother had been one too and she absolutely adored Martin. He was a person who made Samara feel special because she was the only person that he liked, aside from a girl named Jezebel that he’d become friends with when they were at Sonora.So, Samara was proud to have ended up in the same house that he’d been in.

Unfortunately, though Martin had graduated already and he was not here with her. And she was alone in Crotalus. She guessed she would try and make friends with her roommate. Lyla seemed really nice. Also, her teammates Claire and Winston were both Crotali and Claire wasn’t that much older than her so maybe they’d become friends too. After all, Professor Skies had flat out said that these Challenges were designed to create connections between people who might not otherwise ever talk to each other. Which was great. She was super happy to bond with them.

On the day of the first Challenge, she gathered in the Cascade Hall with the rest of the students, happily joining her teammates. It turned out that each team would be doing the task one at a time, in numerical order. As Samara was on Team Nine, she was going to have quite a wait.

Finally, it was their turn and they were collected by Professor Skies and led out to the Labyrinth Gardens. However, once she heard the instructions, she frowned. It was not the task itself-she was not the most athletic person but since they had been instructed to bring her wand, that likely meant she was going to be able to use magic for everything-but the first year wanted to do this with her team, not on her own! Not that Samara didn’t think she could do it alone, a first year path was likely to be pretty easy, especially given that it wasn’t even midterm yet. They certainly could not throw anything at her that she hadn’t learned yet as Professor Skies had specifically said they wouldn’t and so far, she was pretty decent at magic. She just liked her teammates and wanted to get to know them better.

Also, Samara was actually unsure of how they could even come up with many obstacles for the first years. They had pretty much almost any spell one could think of at their disposal for the seventh years but for the first years they were very limited, especially since it wasn’t even midterm yet. Merlin, did the Crotalus hope that this did not mean that she would have to rely on athletic skills. Those were very firmly on her yellow list and she would be alone without her team to help.

Samara entered the maze. She looked around, trying to figure out a quick way to find her teammates. If she found them fast, they could help her out through any of the more…athletic tasks. Honestly, it was kind of unfair to expect that of the first years. Just because they hadn’t learned much magic yet, they would have to use physical abilities, which meant if someone wasn’t great on them, they’d have a more difficult time. Surely, though,they were supposed to use magic.

And there was a spell that she’d learned, that she thought might help. The Softening Charm. It would make the ground in front of her rubbery and bouncy. Maybe if she cast it on the ground in front of her, she would bounce so high that she would spot one of her teammates over the wall. Samara drew her wand and performed the spell. “ Spongify!”

She tested the ground in front of her and found that her spell had worked. The first year happily stepped out onto the affected area, jumped up and looked around. Jumped up and looked again. And again.

After repeating this process a few times, not to mention extending it out a little further, Samara spotted one of her teammates. “Hey! Hello!Yoo-hoo, I’m over here!” She continued bouncing along, sending up green sparks, so her teammate could see her.

Then she felt herself crash down, not on the hard ground fortunately, but not on her nice bouncy Spongified ground either. Instead the first year found herself in what could only be described as muck. “Eeeew!”

Fortunately, she looked up to see one of her teammates in front of her. She looked up at them with a sheepish grin. “Hi. Can you dry and clean me off please?” Samara meant, of course, using the drying and cleaning charms to do so.

She managed to get up out of the muck. “I suppose now that you’re here, I don’t have to walk through that either.” It wasn’t that deep, so it would have just been one of those obstacles that Samara would have to get around some way. Either by walking through it or jumping over it-and fortunately, she didn’t have to do that because she didn’t think she physically could do so. Samara supposed if her teammate hadn’t shown up, she would have had to find a branch or something to transfigure into something big enough to be a bridge. Which may or may not have been successful.

11 Samara Crosby Representing Team Softeness! 1563 0 5

Phil Carson

August 19, 2022 5:48 PM

fist bump by Phil Carson

Phil gathered in the Cascade Hall with the rest of his team. As they were Team Three, they didn't have a whole lot of waiting time, and he'd watched the first two teams head out with some interest but there hadn't really been any clues to be gained from watching Professor Skies walk them out of the Hall. They never came back, though he wasn't really expecting them to. This was the gathering and launch place, not the celebration afterwards place.

Soon enough it was their turn. The Deputy Headmistress lead their group out to the Gardens and explained that they were supposed to find each other in the maze. They would, in addition to each other, find dangers in the maze, though nothing above their level. He wasn't quite sure how that would work, but trusted they had some means of ensuring that.

Green sparks, good to go for finding the other members of his team. Red sparks, only for emergencies. Got it. Green wasn't exactly an ideal color for drawing attention in a hedge maze but it was probably better than nothing.

He walked through the maze entrance and spun around quickly, as he realized he was abruptly alone, just as Professor Skies had warned. With nobody to overhear, he gave himself his pep-talk out loud. "Okay. Find the rest of the team. Defeat obstacles. I can do this."

He had arrived already facing a clear path so he kept walking that way, though his startled spin had revealed it kept going in the opposite direction as well rather than leading out where he'd come from. Still, there was no reason he could think of to turn and go what his brain told him was 'backwards' so he moved forward.

He soon came to a branch and he turned right. Then he came to another branch and he turned right. Then he came to another one and it was starting to look really familiar. He used a color changing charm to mark an arrow pointing right, turned right and kept walking. He came to the same too-familiar branch again with his red arrow on it. He turned left this time and walked until he found the same freaking intersection with the arrow pointing right.

He had no idea how to get out of this infinite loop. He pulled out his wand and cast, "Finite Incantatum!" at the hedge where the red arrow was and the red arrow went away but he didn't know if it did anything more than that. He did again just for good measure, then piled up some rocks as a natural trail marker and turned right.

"Freaking fudge!" he shouted when he walked on and came upon the same bloody intersection all over again with his rock marker right where he left it. He'd turned right (a bunch of times) and it just brought him here again. He'd turned left and it did the same thing. He'd tried breaking the magic, but that hadn't worked either.

If you get lost, try to retrace your steps, his mother's voice advised.

He wasn't sure that would work in a magical maze as well as it did in a national park, but he turned around and walked back the way he'd come. And then he started seeing new turns and different hedges (he assumed - hedges all looked pretty much the same to him, but there were some new flowers growing next to them that hadn't been in his infinite loop). He breathed out a sigh of relief. He'd escaped.

When he did come to an intersection - a different one with no trail marker made of rocks - he drew a big X in the dirt from the way he'd come. Then he remembered they were getting points based on creative spellwork, so he found a big stick and used some transfiguration to turn it into a wooden staked signpost that read "DEAD END" and jabbed it into the middle of his dirt X.

He looked down the two branches that were new territory to him, one looking bright and cheery, the other dark and ominous. He picked the ominous side because the sunniness was clearly a trap.

It wasn't so dark that he needed a light spell, but it was starting to get cold. Like, really really cold. Like, he probably needed a winter coat, gloves, and a scarf or he'd get sick or possibly die kind of cold. He cast a warming charm on his school robes and pulled them tighter around himself. That helped a little. He cast two more on each of his feet as his toes were getting really cold. Better.

He kept going, and looked down a side path and was surprised to see another person down it. "Hey!" he called out. "Robyn!" He hurried toward her and between one step and the next, the cold was gone. "Oh, blessed warmth!" he declared, raising his arms up toward the sun and soaking in its sweet sweet ultraviolet radiation.

Then he grinned at the first year and held out a fist for a fist bump. "Whoo! Two of us found each other! So far I found an infinite loop puzzle and a freezing cold patch!"

OOC: Godmodding to figure out the age line and move on is acceptable or they can post about figuring out what is going on there, as Phil has no idea he even crossed one. Or that such a thing exists.

1 Phil Carson *fist bump* 1536 0 5

Billy Cobb

August 19, 2022 5:50 PM

This ain't so hard by Billy Cobb

Billy strolled into the maze, his wand ready. This was gunna be fun, he thought as he looked at the three way intersection before him. According to Professor Skies, the goal was to find everyone else. How hard could that be? He knew nearly every twist and turn of the labyrinth by this point. It had looked a little different when they'd been brought out here, but how much could they have changed it?

Judging by where the sun had been outside and where it was now, he could at least tell he was facing East, and might be somewhere in the northwest corner of the garden. So, should he go south, west or north? Silly question. Without another thought, Billy set off straight ahead into the heart of the maze. Whether or not he ran across anyone else was besides the point, this was probably where all of the exciting stuff of their challenge was located.

The path twisted and turned as it wound its way through the gardens. The Pecari stayed alert with his wand ready. This wasn’t any path he was familiar with, the teachers must have shifted the labyrinth around more than he’d initially suspected. Still he was fairly certain he was making progress towards the middle. He passed a small pond that had a few small fish swimming in it, but nothing much else going on, so he continued on his way.

At the next fork he tried to turn right and ran into an invisible wall. Ahhh.. that meant something really exciting was over in that direction. He contemplated possible ways to get around it, but was distracted by a glimmering bit of red light on the hedge next to the path. What was that?

He turned and looked down the left path. It only went a short distance before he saw a fairly large, gem encrusted rock setting in the middle of it. The light of the sun was refracting off of the gems, creating colorful dots on the hedges all around it. Then it moved and Billy recognized it for what it was. It was a Fire Crab! He couldn’t help a chuckle, they shot fire from their butts. Heh. He was also well aware that they were a protected critter and that meant he had to get past the thing without getting burned or hurting it. Hmmm… he also wondered if he should help get it out of here so nobody else hurt it either.

It still made him just as mad now as when he’d learned it, that some folks just hunted and killed the poor critters just because their shell had some shiny rocks in it. He was pretty sure no one around here would intentionally hurt it, but if some younger kid ran across it… you just never knew. Well, first things first… which end was its head, and which end was the dangerous one? That took only a few minutes to figure that out, and he didn’t much like the result. The crab was heading away from him.

A stupefy would stun it for a few moments without permanently hurting it. That would let him get around it to the front. It wouldn’t be happy afterwards though and unlikely to accompany him to someplace safe…. Billy glanced around at the hedges. The possibly easily flammable hedges. This didn’t seem good at all. If he startled the crab, it could potentially set the entire labyrinth on fire. Suddenly Stupefy really didn’t seem like a good idea. What he really needed was something to feed it, then he could make friends and hopefully lead it somewhere safe for both of them. They were native to Fiji and lived on the beach, they ate… not hedges. Fish, he was pretty sure they ate fish. Where was he supposed to find fish around here though? It’s not like there was a pond he’d passed recently that had… oh wait.

Billy quickly backtracked to the pond he’d recently passed that had been filled with fish. Along the way he picked up a sizable rock, and then after another thought, he grabbed a second one. When he arrived he quickly transfigured the two rocks into two buckets. The first he filled with water, just in case he needed it. Then he started scooping fish from the pond into the second bucket. This was not a new task for him, and the relatively small pond made it super easy. He was soaked by the end of it, but he took that as a bonus as he was now less flammable than before. Actually.. He hopped into the pond and got himself completely soaking wet, just to be safe. Grabbing his buckets, he headed back to the crab who was still slowly heading away from him.

The first fish flew over the crab’s shell and landed in front of the critter, it shuffled a bit quicker and quickly devoured it. Billy tossed another one a bit farther down the corridor where it began to open up. The crab went after it as well. This continued until Billy could get a good view of this new area. In the middle of it there was a stone pit with a sandy floor, not more than two feet deep. A perfect resting spot for the crab. Now that he was in the open, Billy made his way around the crab and tossed another fish to lead the crab in the right direction, the rest of the fish he dumped into the pit.

The crab clambered down into the hole and Billy breathed a sigh of relief. He went to the edge and gave the critter a smile, “You’ll be safe down there, just be good and I’m sure someone will be along to help you back home soon.” He was rewarded with a blast of fire on the far side of the pit which he could still feel the heat of from where he was. He scooted back a foot or so and looked up to where the path continued. Someone was standing just outside, he grinned and waved at them. “Hi, wanna see my new friend? It’s also a nice cook-fire if you got anything to eat before we keep going.”

2 Billy Cobb This ain't so hard 1519 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

August 19, 2022 6:45 PM

Yay! And also boo. by Xavier Lundstrom

The hedge yelled that it was Mab. Yes! Xavier was possibly one of a very few people who meant that cheer entirely unsarcastically. Mab was someone he actually got on with, and trusted (she had, luckily, never needed to find this out, but if anything had gone hideously wrong with his experiments last year, Oz had been under strict instructions to get Mab, not a teacher [Oz had been instantly on board with the ‘not a teacher’ obviously, though had seemed less convinced about Mab, or possibly her willingness to come if summoned by him]). She was also a seventh year, which meant that she had enough firepower to protect him if needed. He might not have admitted that part of his relief out loud, and it irked him as much as it comforted him, but it was true regardless.

He stepped back as instructed, grinning broadly when Mab burnt a hole for him in the hedge. He stepped forward, and smacked face first into something invisible.

“Urgh. Guess they don’t want us cutting through the hedges. No fair.” He thought that had been a good solution. And decently ‘magical’ which was what they were demanding them all to show off, right?

“I’m fine,” he answered her earlier question, which was suddenly much more pertinent. He was nursing both his nose and a growling spot of resentment, but neither was a serious injury. He kicked at the barrier as he spoke. “And no, I haven’t seen anyone. You?”

13 Xavier Lundstrom Yay! And also boo. 1529 0 5

Robyn Lundstrom

August 19, 2022 7:00 PM

No bump? by Robyn Lundstrom

It was Phil who’d called her. Not the biggest of big brother vibes, but not Ray or Olaf either. Robyn gave him a big grin, relieved to feel like she was both making progress and not entirely alone.

“Hey, look out there’s a—” she began as he ran full tilt at the invisible barrier. And through it. Huh? He was talking about blessed warmth and freezing patches, and her brain processed enough to nod vaguely along, as the rest of it pondered what had just happened. Was it a one way thing? Oh no, were they trapped here now?

“There was a really dark bit and a kind of… make your vision go mirror imagery thing. But I lumos’d and finited them.” She presented the good news first, or at least the ones that showed she’d achieved something. “But there’s a barrier here,” she reached out her hand, pushing against it to check that it hadn’t somehow been deactivated by Phil running through it. “I couldn’t finite that. So, uh, we might be kind of stuck in my bit of the maze now? On the plus side, there’s nothing too dangerous here, I guess.” Which could be a plus side if Phil didn’t want to get horribly eaten, but a downside in terms of adventure and potential bonus points if he didn’t want to be stuck doing baby spells.

13 Robyn Lundstrom No bump? 1558 0 5

Cole Pierce

August 19, 2022 7:27 PM

We got this! by Cole Pierce

Cole was totally ready for this thing. He seemed to have a good team. Alexander was going to be a great leader, and Bertie was smart, and Billy was awesome, and Alexei was cool, and Christopher was probably as close as he had to a friend on the team, and Freya was his year mate, and they were going to rock this!

Unfortunately, as Professor Skies explained what they'd be doing, they were going to rock it alone, at least at first. Then they'd have to find each other and come together and make the band so they could rock together.

As Cole stepped into the maze, it didn't feel like side along apparition, or a portkey, but he suddenly wasn't at the entrance to the maze anymore and nobody else was around him. He looked around himself carefully, trying to find any clues that might tell him where his teammates were. He didn't see any.

He was standing in the middle of a four way intersection. He knew it wasn't possible to see the school from all points in the labyrinth, but from this one, he could. So School was that way. Which meant most of the maze and probably his team were the other way. Putting the building behind him, he started walking deeper into the maze.

"Hello?" he called out as he walked. "Bertie? Alexander? Billy? Chris? Anyone?" He tried to jump up to see over the hedge but he wasn't tall enough and couldn't jump high enough. He put out some green sparks just for funsies. "Freya? Alexei?" No answer. He felt weirdly alone. He couldn't remember ever being really alone alone, where nobody would answer if he called out. He didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

He turned a corner and the path just seemed to dead-end. Drat. That just lost their team about fifteen minutes of not finding him. Plus, he needed to walk back and maybe the next - he stopped abruptly and frowned. He moved closer to the dead-end. Yes. There was a passage there and more path on the other side. It was just . . . really small. A rabbit could pass through that pretty easily, but not a twelve year old boy.

Turning himself into a rabbit was way beyond his grade level, but he could probably do something about the size of the hole. What was that hedge trimming spell professor Xavier taught them last spring?

"Redingo!" he tried, but that didn't work. "Redge-go!" Not it either. He'd done this. He'd had Lenny as his partner. And they'd trimmed hedges. For like an hour. What was the incantation? He tried to picture Lenny next to him trimming a hedge. The movement was just moving the wand along where you wanted it to cut, but the word . . .

"Redigo!" Cole cried out in triumphant memory, and his wand sliced through the hedge, trimming the hole larger. He did it a few more times, not taking too much at once so he could clear it out neatly without getting attacked by unwieldly hedge bits, until he had a nice Cole-sized hole he could crawl through without too much trouble.

Standing up on the other side, he had an extra bounce in his step and a grin on his face as he move on. He called out every now and then, and even used the hedge trimming spell to cut peek holes through the hedge walls to see if he could spot anyone on opposing paths, but the first person he came across was Billy standing right out in the open of a largish sandy area with a stone pit in the middle of it. And the pit had fire in it?

Cole was staring kind of dumbfounded at the scene when Billy spotted him and invited him to join him to meet a new friend. Cole was always up for new friends! "Sure!" he agreed and started walking toward him. "I didn't bring any marshmallows but -" Cole smacked right into an invisible wall. "Ow!" He backed up a step and touched the seemingly open space in front of him but his hand stopped like it had met glass, though it wasn't cold or anything. It just wouldn't go any farther. "I seem to have found an invisible wall," he explained his failure to come join Billy.

1 Cole Pierce We got this! 1546 0 5

Lyla Holland

August 20, 2022 5:08 PM

The sooner we get out, the better by Lyla Holland

It was finally time for the first challenge. Lyla’s team wasn’t due back to the hall until past noon, and although breakfast went down alright, lunch sat like a stone in her belly. She stayed in her seat after eating, just waiting and wondering what was going to happen.

Lyla was glad that the organizers had thought to balance the students’ abilities, rather than divide them up by house or by year. She was equally glad she didn’t get thrown in with a bunch of people who were way above her experience level. Gwendolyn, a second year, was in Beginner classes with her, and although Lyla kept to herself for the most part, it was nice to see a familiar face at her table.

In fact, they had one student from every year, with Eben being in third, Hans in fourth, Isla fifth, and Bonabelle and Sadie rounding out sixth and seventh. As far as strategizing, it was excellent to have a spread like that, since you would have one student mastering each set of spells.

Lyla waited in the hall until the rest of her team arrived. Team Six. She hoped it would be like Seal Team Six- a well-oiled, well-trained, ready-for-anything crew that managed to pull off the most daring and dangerous missions. Lyla was confident in her abilities- she’d been practicing her spells diligently for weeks- but as Professor Skies gave the group their instructions, she fretted she’d be the last one found, wandering in circles for ages.

She didn’t have too much time to worry, because almost immediately, everyone entered the maze. Lyla turned around to see if she could see where her team had split off, but all she could see was the path she was on. Right. She straightened her robes and drew her wand.

Advancing down the corridor the hedges had made, she came to a clearing, stumbling over a protruding root.

As she dusted off her knees, she glared at the offending root. It was reddish-brown in color, and as her eyes followed it up to the parent plant, Lyla let out a yelp and scrambled backwards. An enormous Spiky Bush, with big yellow thorns. The bush gave a shiver and began to shoot off its needles, disturbed as it was by Lyla’s mishap.

Lyla squeezed herself into the corner of the clearing, as far from the angry plant as she could get.
“Incendio!” she shouted, flicking the tip of her wand in a flame pattern. A burst of fire shot out, wilting the cactus-like bush.

Lyla peered around the rest of the clearing, finding nothing but a stone bench under an arbor covered in small white flowers. No exit except the way she had come. Lyla slowly approached the bench, circling it warily. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but that didn’t mean much. Likewise, the flowers were a harmless variety of morning glory, and the arbor itself was simply whitewashed wood.

Lyla pursed her lips, thinking. There was nowhere else to go, except back the way she’d come, so the bench must be the way to move forward. Unless…moving back was the answer. She suddenly wished she had placed markers of some kind to signal herself that she’d already passed through a section, although she hadn’t thought she would need them, as her path hadn’t had any turnoffs. Sighing, she grabbed an armful of the large yellow thorns from the now defeated Spiky Bush and marched back down the way she’d come. She staked the thorns straight up along the path, until she came to a dead end. That must be where she had started.

Ten minutes after she’d left, she returned to the bench, and, seeing no other options, sat on it. She felt a pull in her belly and a moment later she found herself in an identical clearing with an identical arbor. The only difference was that there was a pathway to the right-hand side, rather than the left.

“Portkey,” She mumbled to herself. She’d only used a Portkey three or four times through all of the times the Hollands moved to a new duty station. They made her dizzy every time, so her mom had finally agreed that Lyla could drive with her dad to the new house, and Mom and Lena would meet them there, since Lena usually got carsick. Lyla stuck her head between her knees until the buzzing in her ears stopped.

She staggered from the bench, looking for something to mark her place. A large stick would have to do. Lyla tried to figure out how to make it more noticeable, or at least less ‘is-that-my-marker-or-another-stick’. Maybe she could transfigure it into something? What was large and stick-ish? A few moments later, she had a twiggy broom in front of her. Lyla took a few more minutes to drive it into the soft ground handle-first, so it stuck up like a scarecrow in the center of the path she was about to take.

Satisfied, she pressed on.

This path did have options, so Lyla had to face her biggest fear- making a decision. Okay, maybe not her biggest fear, but choosing something without having any information to go off of was terrifying in its own right. She laid out three sticks in the shape of arrows to indicate which way she’d chosen, in case anybody else stumbled across her trail. Or at least she did at the first intersection.

At the second junction, she had three options, but all of them were obstructed by some kind of barrier spell.

Never mind that she’d found out they were blocked off by agonizing over which to take, and then walking pseudo-confidently into the equivalent of a glass door.

Lyla rubbed her nose, which had taken the brunt of the blow, and her eyes watered. She gingerly stepped into the next path, her arm outstretched, only to be repelled again. Same thing with the third branch. Lyla sat on the ground and squinted at the three passages in front of her. There had to be some way to unblock them. She tapped her wand on her temple, trying to think.

Her ears pricked up as she heard a faint shout. Green sparks flew above the hedges, barely visible. Lyla spotted Isla running down the center trail towards her.

“Stop!” Lyla shouted at her teammate. Her nose still smarted, and she didn’t want Isla to share the same fate.

64 Lyla Holland The sooner we get out, the better 1559 0 5

Oz Spellman

August 20, 2022 7:43 PM

The Pecari Approach by Oz Spellman

Team one was an awesome team to be on. They had the best number. It also turned out that challenge one was one by one, so that meant they got to go first whilst everyone else had to wait. Suckers.

Oz followed Professor Skies out to the garden, occasionally bouncing or swinging his arms, both to get pumped and also because he was pumped already. The fact that it was outside was encouraging. Hopefully that meant they were doing something active. Oz was so ready for something active.

As she began to explain, Oz's excitement bubbled up, continuing to spill out in the forms of a broad grin and more warm up exercises. This was cool AND active AND hazardous AND a maze! Mazes belonged to that category of things that always looked super fun but was inevitably behind some kind of paid entry point. It was one of the things he loved about running around the gardens, getting as lost as possible. He finally felt like he hadn’t missed out on that, though he wasn’t sure the gardens actually were a full on puzzle to solve. This sounded like a proper maze!

They were given their starting orders, and Oz stepped out to forking branches. He picked a direction at random, taking off running. He had no idea which was the right way, or how to find the right way, so covering as much ground as fast as possible seemed like the best plan. He hit a dead end, and turned back, only to find a new panel of hedge sliding into place, trapping him. Okay, so he was going to have to flight or climb his way out of this somehow.

Oooooooooooh.

“Reducto!” he cast, aiming at the new panel that had blocked his way. The hedge wavered. Having more flexibility than stone, there were some ways in which it was more able to withstand being attacked with sheer force. But it still wasn’t strong enough, and the curse ripped a ragged hole through it. Okay, so back the way he had come.

Unless….

His first instinct had been to use the spell on the obstacle that had been placed in his path. But he had wanted to go forward, and that would make it possible…That could be FUN. Like, doing an actual maze and completing it ‘properly’ would be cool, but maybe he would get other chances to do that in his life. But fighting, blasting, and what would normally be considered ‘cheating’ his way out through one? That really was a once in a lifetime opportunity. They hadn’t said they couldn’t make their own shortcuts.

“Reducto!” he cast, aiming at the hedge in front of it. Sure enough, a neat hole opened up in that too, and he was able to step through onto a new path. Cool! And no teachers swooped in to tell him to stop. The path he was on ran parallel to the one he’d started on, so he had left, right, or straight ahead (through the hedge) available. He opted to blast another hole, although his mind was already wondering what other ways he could attack. Fire would be cool. And he was getting to grips with Incendio. Maybe, given that he wasn’t making much fire, it would be controlled and therefore not dangerous? But Oz had seen buildings gutted by house fires. He’d lived in buildings with dodgy wiring. Fire was one of those very real and present dangers that was just frightening enough to override his impulsivity. Maybe he could get MARS to make some things he could set on fire for practice and experimentation later? For now, he wanted new ways to conquer the hedges. He’d done through, what else wouldn’t normally be allowed? How about up…. He blasted another hedge out of his way whilst he thought through his options. The other side was marshy-looking, and there was a stunned hinkypunk that must have been caught in the blast he’d put through the hedge. Hm. Good thing he hadn’t knocked out any of his teammates by mistake. Definitely time to try something else. His brain had been turning over things he could climb, and ladders and ropes had both come to mind. A ladder sounded big.

“Corpulae,” he cast, pointing at the hedge, and focussing on the idea of small loops of rope. The thin stems and their leaves twisted together. He had to repeat the spell a couple of times, aiming at the middle and then the top of the hedge, but soon he had a set of foot and handholds, making their way up the hedge.

It wasn’t the steadiest of climbs. The hedge was not a solid foundation, and it swayed and bent as the weight of a fifteen-year-old boy pulled at one side of it. But it was no worse than a rope net, or at least not much. It was unsteady, but do-able, and Oz soon found himself on top, hands and feet both plunging into the hedge as he scrambled up. He tried to stand, but there wasn’t enough solidity to get his footing.

”Silvae,” he cast. They’d been doing a lot of basic material transfig. Like, there were specific spells for getting a wooden table/cup/whatever (he couldn’t think of many things you’d want made out of wood - even a cup was stretching it, but he was pretty sure they’d done a spell for that—ooh, boxes! Boxes could be made of wood if they were like… decorative or pointless. They’d definitely done that). ANYWAY, whilst you could use specific spells for all that, you could also just use the root material spell and focus really, really hard or something. Oz had actually been kind of interested in that because it sounded like a shortcut to learn only a handful of spells instead of infinite ones. He pictured the top of the hedge being solid planks of wood, and it kind of happened. They were a bit bumpy still, but his foot definitely didn’t sink in when he stepped on it. It was still mounted on a hedge, so it swayed much like his rope ladder had done, but he didn’t think he was going to fall. Okay, so his super cool vision of running along the top of the maze wasn’t happening, but at least he was up.

He wasn’t going to shoot out pathetic green sparks. They’d been mixing up the incendio spell with different colours and levels of control, which was basically a really Professor Wright way of dulling down the idea of ‘I’m gonna teach you to fire mini fireworks out of your wand.’

”Incendio… uh… blue,” he tried because he couldn’t remember all the stupid wizard names for colours. Magic was about intent, right? It was mostly just regular fire that shot out of his wand, pointing straight up. He whipped it around in a circle, put his fingers in his mouth and whistled—a sharp piercing sound, that easily carried. Ooh! He knew magical ways to be loud too!

”Sonorous!” he cast, pointing at his own throat. “WOOOOO! OVER HERE!” he called out. He made a few more planks of wood in front of himself (his spells echoing across the maze, as he hadn’t bothered to cancel the volume charm in between) and walked a little further, looking out at the paths below him to see if he could see teammates and offer them directions, or make his way too them. He continued to periodically whistle, let off fire, and call out as he scouted.

13 Oz Spellman The Pecari Approach 1514 0 5

Jasper Brockert

August 22, 2022 8:54 AM

Yay enough by Jasper Brockert

OOC: CW-Yeah, toxic masculinity mentioned. I hate Eustace so much . BIC:

Jasper had to admit, he was slightly worried about the Challenges. In particular, he was worried about having to do anything athletic, in particular, that he’d have to fly. It wasn’t simply that he wasn’t good at or didn’t like it, he had a pathological anxiety around all things flying and Quidditch. Any chance that he might have been at all interested in them had been destroyed by his uncle when he was a child.Jasper could hide just how much the idea of riding a broom bothered him…until he actually was faced with doing so, and then he completely froze up.

Unfortunately, that anxiety sort of extended to people who were sporty too…and even more unfortunately, he had people like that on his team. The Teppenpaw tried to be open minded and fair and give people a chance, but it was just like there was a block, the way there was with flying, a fear that they would be like his uncle. Okay, Fortune did not worry him too much, based primarily on the fact that the Pecari was a second year and Jasper was a sixth year.

And while Mab was on the Quidditch Team and the president of the Dueling Club, Esme didn’t think she was so bad.Which meant that she was probably not much like Uncle Eustace. She definitely was not loud or obnoxious. Although she wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy either. Jasper supposed he would have to step into that sort of supporting people role, although arguably his cousin was the only one who would need him too.

Then there was Xavier…who flew for fun. The sixth year was trying his best to give him the benefit of the doubt, even after hearing about the Pecari being rude to Billy Cobb.Maybe he wasn’t like Uncle Eustace, however, people like Xavier just didn’t hang out with people like him. Or Liesl. People like Xavier especially did not hang out with people like Liesl. They made fun of them. Jasper would have to make sure that did not happen. While he and the third year had never been especially close, probably due to the age difference, she was his cousin, and fairly closely related-compared to someone like Lavender, for example-he wanted to look out for her, like a big brother would.

Honestly, even though most of his sisters were older than him, Jasper often felt more like a big brother than a little one. He was the oldest male cousin-although, if Liesl counted in that group, he supposed Owen did too and that made the Teppenpaw alumna the oldest-and while four of his sisters and two of his first cousins were older than him, he still felt the need to look out for his family. That was the role that Jasper had been cast in as a child, the brave knight protecting the princesses from evil. (Evil, of course, being Topaz.)

And, truthfully, it was so much easier to focus on looking out for his cousin than dealing with his own vulnerabilities and insecurities. Maybe it was because of how Uncle Eustace berated and mocked any weakness that any of the boys showed and while he thought, intellectually, that his uncle was full of it, on the emotional side, it had stuck with him. Especially when faced with people who played Quidditch and ran the dueling club and flew for fun and were otherwise good at sports.

It was much easier to encourage Liesl when she clearly thought she wasn’t good at anything. Jasper had been able to see her floundering during the team meet and greet when that came up. He’d felt pretty bad for her. It seemed that under her fairly cheerful demeanor and her love of all things creepy and spooky, she didn’t have the best self-esteem. The sixth year had never realized this about her before, and now he wanted to help her out, hence the whispered reminders of what she was good at.

Granted, Jasper wasn’t sure that those things would come in particularly handy in the Challenges, minus the Transfiguration thing, and maybe the fact that really, Liesl was a pretty brave person. Maybe not like doing the sort of…Pecari daredevil things that used athletic skills, but like dealing with things like snakes that scared some people or like Dark Magic. That was what he was trying to hint at when he was whispering that to her. Jasper didn’t think she was necessarily quick on her feet when it came to dueling or anything, given that she’d mentioned that she was not very athletic.

Still,he hoped the younger Teppenpaw wasn’t too nervous about the first Challenge. Jasper, honestly, was trying not to be. He was worried that this might be the dreaded physical challenge, the sort, if not the exact same thing, that had traumatized Allegra so much. Well, traumatized her more since she’d obviously already been so by Topaz.

The thing was though, that Jasper had been previously traumatized too, albeit on not as strong a level as Allegra had, by Uncle Eustace’s toxic ways, the bullying about how-in his uncle’s opinion-he was unmasculine based on his lack of ability or interest in Quidditch. Even though the sixth year didn’t let on much, he knew full well that if he was actually faced with having to fly, he would absolutely freeze.

And if that happened, Jasper worried that his teammates, Xavier in particular and possibly Mab too and maybe even Fortune, would laugh at him and make fun of him. Thanks to his uncle, he was much more worried about that happening to him than Liesl, even though they very well mock her too, but the older Teppenpaw was a boy, and he had been conditioned by his uncle to believe that people were more likely to think a boy should be athletic than a girl and would be more likely to belittle him.

Honestly, why did Jasper have to get such a sporty team with so many Pecaris? How was this fair? Esme had gotten four Aladrens and so had Isla. Apparently, in addition to teams that weren’t balanced gender wise-he was on a heavily male team, but being on a team with a bunch of girls would not have bothered him since he had five sisters and no brothers-some also weren’t well balanced in terms of house.

It wasn’t that Jasper exactly hated Pecaris or anything, because there were nice ones. Fortune honestly seemed fairly nice and Mab…sort of had Esme’s approval, because she wasn’t loud and annoying although she did seem sort of…like she didn’t really like people. Sort of like an athletic female version of Olaf. And Chris-someone every bit as wary of Pecaris as the Teppenpaw was, if not more so-got two of the good ones. Alexei was friends with Amethyst-who, like Esme, actually seemed to not be a fan of them as opposed to the wariness the Jasper and Christopher felt-and Billy, despite his very loud and typical Pecari tendencies, had always honestly seemed pretty nice.

He was happy for his cousin, but still worried for himself, especially given what Liesl had termed “The Cobb Incident” where Xavier had been horribly rude to Billy. If the fourth year could be rude to someone who was also the athletic type over something else, something about hanging out or something-and the fact Jasper’s teammate had not wanted to hang out with someone who was similar to himself-how would he treat someone like the sixth year who had the hang-ups around flying that Jasper did if they came up? Or Liesl either?

On the plus side, they’d been told that all they needed to bring was a wand. He’d sighed with relief at that. They didn’t need brooms, thank Merlin.

Although, there was always that fear that brooms were waiting for them. And he had a long time to worry about it too, since he was on Team Eight, and the teams were performing this task in chronological order. Or even if brooms were not required, what if they were an option that Xavier either insisted they all do, or made fun of Jasper for not choosing them?

Finally, it was their turn to go and Professor Skies led them out to the Gardens. He listened to the instructions that she gave. He was unsure whether or not it was a good thing that they were initially going to be alone. What if the younger students needed help? Jasper had thought the Challenges were about being a team and he wanted to be able to look out for his cousin.

On the other hand though, well, at least if he wasn’t with his teammates, none of them could judge his lack of athletic prowess. Although, he supposed they might have already given that he’d mentioned it at the meet and greet. Not that Jasper had gone into how he pathologically hated and feared all things flying and Quidditch, since he was sort of embarrassed by it, but he had mentioned that he wasn’t all that good at sports and didn’t like them much, making him probably seem like an outright alien to his Pecari teammates.

Honestly, Jasper would have traded with his cousins in a heartbeat. Or even his roommate, although he would have had to step more as an Assistant Leader had he been with Theo rather than Mab. Still, Phillippe was on a team where he didn’t have to worry people would make fun of him for not being athletic.

At least he didn’t have to fly though. So at least that was some consolation.

He entered the maze and set off on his path. The obvious thing to do would have been to use Point Me but the goal was to find his teammates, not find his way out of the maze. The Homonculus Charm might have been useful if he had a map of the current layout, but he obviously didn’t. Hm.

Jasper wandered around for a bit…until he felt things getting hotter. And not just because he was walking around either. In fact, things kept getting hotter and hotter…until he came to a wall of fire. What the *kumquat*? What the actual *kumquat*? This was downright unsafe.The Teppenpaw had to believe-hope-that none of the younger students had to deal with such a thing.

He considered his options. Jasper could either douse it with water or…use the Flame Freezing Charm. Perhaps he’d get more points for the latter. Besides, it was good practice in case the Statute of Secrecy got violated and people tried to burn him at the stake. Or much more likely, if Topaz tried to come after him with fire.

Jasper quickly cast the charm and passed through the fire, feeling the pleasant tickling sensation that meant he had done it correctly. He walked on, noticing before too long that it was starting to smell terrible. Like rotting fish and dirty diapers. The Teppenpaw automatically cast the Bubble Head Charm and kept going.

Eventually, he heard voices up ahead and walked towards them. Of course, it would turn out to be the two that Jasper was most nervous about but since the goal was to find his teammates, this was definitely a success. “Hey!” He greeted the two Pecaris.

11 Jasper Brockert Yay enough 1496 0 5

Verdillia Scurlock

August 22, 2022 4:13 PM

This isn't very teamly by Verdillia Scurlock

Verdillia stared up at the hedge maze in dismay. She wasn’t particularly worried about its obstacles, which she had been assured were age appropriate. But what was the point of being on a team with all the right people if they weren’t actually together? What was the point of sharing their strengths and weaknesses and forming a strategy if they were going to be facing things alone? This challenge seemed awfully individual for something that was supposed to be about team-building.

Still, the time for those types of comments would be if she was offered a feedback sheet. First, she needed to tackle the obstacles that she was given, as efficiently, proficiently and originally as possible in order to get back to her team as fast as possible whilst scoring maximum bonus points along the way.

She found herself alone, and with only one path ahead, though it quickly branched into two. She picked the right. The first thing she came across was a large sheet of glass blocking the path. Glass was easy enough to get through without magic, but it wasn’t particularly safe to smash it, and she was supposed to be thinking like a witch.

“Papyracea,” she cast. It was simple magic - inanimate to inanimate and keeping the same shape, but it was over a very large area, which would definitely have made it a challenge for all but the most highly skilled second years. She ripped through her newly constructed paper barrier, much more easily and safely than she could have smashed through the glass, and continued on down the path.

Up ahead, it was raining. Conjuring a brolly or fixing the weather charms were clearly beyond her. She tried a ‘finite incantatem’ on the clouds, but they didn’t respond. She tapped her hair, her robes, and her shoes, casting ‘impervius’ on each of them before stepping into the rain.

It mostly worked. Her robes were large, and all the objects she was casting on were porous which made it harder. There were some wet splotches on the bottoms of her robes, and her hair felt a little damp, but she had definitely avoided the worst of it. She cast hot air, waving it over her robes as she walked. Her hair would dry easily by itself, and she had to be careful how she blow-dried it to preserve her curls. She was fairly sure that pointing a wand unevenly at it whilst walking did not constitute ‘carefully.’
Up ahead, she heard noise. She quickly checked her robes to make sure she was presentable again (she was) and then readied her wand in case there was trouble ahead. She moved forward, peering around the corner where she’d heard the noise.

13 Verdillia Scurlock This isn't very teamly 1541 0 5

Nausicaa Scapetello

August 22, 2022 4:22 PM

Sigh by Nausicaa Scapetello

At least she would have this absurdity over with in her first year, Nausicaa thought to herself as she and 'her team' was finally led to their first challenge. You only needed to suffer through it once and that was a good thing, she couldn't imagine doing this when she was older and it would be even more important to carry herself with the proper dignity and grace her station demanded. As such, she was thankfully still a 'child' and could get away with a little impropriety when necessary.

That turned out to be a very good thing as the Deputy-Headmistress (why the Headmaster himself wasn't overseeing this, she couldn't guess), told them what exactly the first challenge was. They were to scramble through the bushes and find each other. Lovely. They were to do it quickly, but also defeat as many obstacles as possible as creatively as possible. That is, if one wanted to win. Naturally Nausicaa wanted to win... no, 'wanted' was the wrong word. She assumed she would win, and why not, surely none of these others were better than her. Perish the thought. At least she would be able to work by herself for a while.

Naussica stepped through the gateway and found herself in pitch blackness. Really? Was this supposed to frighten her? Please. Nothing in here would be able to harm her, the staff would be in serious trouble if it did. "Lumos", she stated in an almost bored tone. The tip of her wand lit brightly and she could see the small area around her and the door to what she assumed was the way out into the rest of the maze. A quick tug on the handle revealed that it was locked. "Locked, what a surprise," She continued in the same nearly bored voice and without loosing a beat, "Nox, Alohamora". The light extinguished and the door clicked. Without waiting for any such fanfare (if there were to be any), she pulled the door open and entered a sunlit part of the maze.

Well, that was two challenges down fairly quickly, she thought, but not terribly 'creatively'. Whatever that actually meant. The door opened in the side of a hall which stretched a little distance to her right and left. She immediately turned to he right and started walking, there was not point in debating 'which way to go', the paths were nearly identical. She debated firing some green sparks up as she walked. The point was to find each other, but she preferred to work on her own without other people hindering her progress.

A passage opened to her left and she glanced down it as she continued onward. No point in turning unless there was something interesting in sight. Then she very ungracefully walked into an invisible wall. She bounced back a few steps, but thankfully did not land on her backside. Stepping back up to it, she investigated to the best of her ability. Was this one of those things to solve 'creatively'? Nothing she threw at it seemed to make any difference. The only thing she notice that was odd was that somewhere that direction sounded like rain. After a few moment she decided to leave it alone, she was just wasting time. Sometimes it was best to cut your losses and move another direction.

She turned back to the left passage and started in that direction. The next turn looked a fair way off, and as she walked it didn't seem to be getting any closer. How long was this passage? She looked behind her to check her progress, and saw the intersection not more than 10' feet still behind her. Nausicaa watched behind her as she walked forward and her view did not change. Her next point of inspection was the ground under her feet. As she walked, she could see it moved under her, keeping pace however quickly she tried to move.

Her first thought was attempting a Finite Incantatem, but she hadn't mastered that one yet. Soon, but not quite yet. Looks like she was going to need to use some 'creativity'. Fine. This certainly wasn't going to beat her. The ground would allow her to move sideways, so she stood next to the hedge wall. Then cast "Wingardium Leviosa!" on her shoes. They did not float very high with her, but enough to get her off of the ground. Then, keeping her feet under herself, she pulled along the hedge as far as she could before the spell dropped her to the ground again. Once down, she tried walking again and found it worked normally once more. She turned a smug face away from the enchanted ground and began to move off to her next 'challenge'.

2 Nausicaa Scapetello *Sigh* 1561 0 5

Rosalynn Tellerman

August 23, 2022 10:35 AM

The Spectacular Tentacular! by Rosalynn Tellerman

Rosalynn was excited for the challenges but was a little nervous about her team. She was sure they were all perfectly good people individually, but as a group . . . she felt she was the team's representative half-blood. Maybe Xander might also have mixed blood, and Quincy clearly wasn't proper, but there were no muggleborns and the other girls were all purebloods and it made her just a little uneasy being the California Pierce from Vegas in their company. Even Connie, who seemed more interested in picking apart every detail of every bit of knowledge she could find than doing any society things, still seemed to ooze that she'd grown up magical.

Rosalynn . . . did not, largely because she had not. Her dad was a wizard, but he was also a stage magician, and Real Magic^TM had always just been a trade secret she'd never been allowed to talk to about with anybody, except maybe her adult brother when he came to visit, but he did that so rarely and what was there even to talk about? She'd grown up living and breathing dance and music and sleight of hand and, above all, performance, not magic.

Esme was fine, she was sure, but she'd really been hoping to be put with Morgan. Morgan understood performance. By now, the day of the first challenge, she'd gotten over that disappointment, but she still arrived at her time slot just a bit anxious about how things would go now that they were going into a situation where the pressure was on and they were actively in competition. If she messed up would someone call her a useless half-breed?

As Team Five, they were exactly in the middle of the line-up, with four teams going before them and four teams going after. She thought it was a good place to be. They didn't have to wait really long to start and they wouldn't need to wait any longer for everyone else to be done. She wondered if they'd get the ranking results right away or if it would take a couple days. She hoped today.

Professor Skies led them out to the Gardens and explained their objective, and Rosalynn smiled and let out a small breath of relief. It actually sounded fun. She walked through the entrance, and found herself alone.

Her objective was to find her teammates. She could do this.

She was standing in the middle of a T intersection so she had three direction to choose from. None looked different from any other. She threw some green sparks into the air and looked for any answering ones, but all she saw were hedges. Okay. She closed her eyes and spun in a slow clockwise circle. After a ten-count she stopped and opened her eyes. She was facing the middle path, so she started walking that way.

"Helllooo!" she called out. "It's Rosalynn!" As concerned as she was that she might be out of place in her team, she was still a fifth year Aladren prefect and a good person to have in the middle of a maze full of dangers, she thought. Plus the timed objective of getting the team together would encourage the others not to avoid her. "Can anyone hear me?"

She received no immediate response, so she kept walking. Her path turned and as the new area opened before her, she saw an arch she would need to pass through with flowers growing on and around it. Something flashed in the sunlight as she moved closer and she slowed, pulling out her wand as she recognized some fanged geraniums growing on the ground next to the arch. They were the lesser threat though, she realized as she looked at the vines that had twined up and around the arch.

"Venomous Tentacula," she said, eyes narrowed at the arbor. "The bite can be fatal." She guessed this example was not at full strength or it wouldn't be in a maze designed for children and teenagers, but it would still hurt and sting very badly if she got bit. She didn't want to utterly destroy Professor Xavier's plants, so she dismissed burning them to a cinder with incendio as an option. Ideally, she'd just want to go around them, but they were draped right over the only path through and they'd definitely be able to grab her or anyone else from where they were. Plus the geraniums were just waiting there to bite the ankles of anyone distracted by the Tentacula. Fire was looking more and more appealing.

Did the stunning spell work on plants? Rosalynn wasn't sure and this wasn't a circumstance where she wanted to experiment. It was a bit big for a containment charm, and she wasn't sure she could confine anything in such a way that people could still walk through the arch . . . but if she shrunk it first . . .

"Reducio!" she tried, and the whole arch with its Venomous Tentacula shrank down to only be as tall as her knee. She cast the containment charm on that, and then threw, "Petrifus Totalus" at the Fanged Geraniums to keep them from biting her as she picked up her glass encased Venomous Tentacular arch (she'd enclosed a bit of dirt on the bottom too, so the plant wouldn't loose its roots and die anyway after all this effort to not destroy it). She added an Unbreakable charm to that, too, just in case.

The shrinking of the arch left small openings in both sides of the hedge where it had been, large enough to stick her head through and look down the neighboring paths. Down one, she saw curly head of Verdillia Scurlock peeking around a corner. "Verdillia!" she called out, "Hi! It's Rosalynn!" She pulled back, used the hedge trimming spell to cut the space just a little bit larger, and then squeezed through, bringing the contained Tentacular Arch with her, just in case she might need it later. She couldn't think of a specific example for any such circumstance, but it was better to be prepared than not.

"That's two of us found!" she declared happily as she stepped onto Verdillia's path. Five team members left to go, but two was a start, and maybe the others were pairing up elsewhere in the maze. Rosalynn fired off another set of green sparks on the off chance any of them were nearby.

OOC: As Nausicaa turned back and left the age line, but got stuck in a Not Going Anywhere spot for a little while, she can probably hear Rosalynn call out behind her? I figure she probably hit the age line for the storm, but the teachers set it back a bit in case the Venomous Tentacula tried to reach into the next path.

1 Rosalynn Tellerman The Spectacular Tentacular! 1520 0 5

Theo Spurn

August 24, 2022 2:43 AM

You're doing it wrong by Theo Spurn

Theo’s team was last, which meant they had a very long wait. Waiting was a complicated thing. It could be boring, but also anxious at the same time because you had to worry about not being late, which was a challenge, especially when it was a long enough wait that you would want to do something distracting. Luckily, Theo had strategies for that. He went to his room and got his collaging materials, and brought them back down to the Cascade Hall. Collaging was a very good way of losing track of time, which would make the waiting disappear, and being in the place you needed to be meant you couldn’t be late.

He was working on a collage for Anya, figuring Philippe could give it to her along with her hug at Christmas. His idea was to rip out lots of browns and reds to make a volcano and a literal floor of lava (only not literal because it was only paper and fabric and shiny things), and then add lots of flying things very much not touching the lava floor, like birds and gymnasts and butterflies and whatever he could find. He was currently in the collecting stage, and had piles of brown, red, and flying which he was adding to. He thought he might have enough brown so he was laying it all out on the page when he was informed he was supposed to go. Oh.

He asked whether a prairie elf could very carefully move all the things exactly as they were back to his room, and then followed his team, hoping that challenge one was something that was as fun as collaging otherwise he might actually kind of be annoyed about it and it would be annoying to be annoyed about it because he’d actually been looking forward to it before, and he didn’t want to be in an annoyance loop but sometimes that just happened.

Challenge one sounded… fine? He still hadn’t fully finished collaging, even if he was only doing it in his head now.

“Red list, red sparks,” he noted to his team, taking in that key bit of information. Ian had concerned and confused him when they’d talked about that. He had done something off his red list. Which meant that either Ian didn’t understand what a red list was or the school didn’t. You couldn’t do things off your red list. It was to the point of absolute no, freeze up, melt down. He wasn’t sure how those things had happened and no one had stopped it. Still, hopefully they wouldn’t happen today. There was a safety mechanism built in.

They all stepped into the maze, and Theo found himself entirely alone. He wandered forward, eventually sending up some green sparks because that was what they’d been told to do.

He’d only gone a little further, when several eyes snapped open, peering out of the hedge at the point where he was standing. An alarm sounded, and a metal grate slammed down in front of him. Theo stumbled backwards, disturbed more by the noise than the eyes. He didn’t mind convivial loudness—he was the source of a lot of it—but the sudden loud and jarring sound was unpleasant. As soon as he stepped back from the section with the eyes, it stopped, and the grate slid up again.

Hm.

Theo tentatively reached an arm out but as soon as he saw the eyes flicking open, he withdrew. He could go back, but he was supposed to problem solve. He stood thinking. He had three problems, the biggest of which was the unpleasant noise. He looked around for something to cast a ‘silencio’ on but he couldn’t see any likely source. He tried it anyway, just vaguely aiming at midair, but the sound started up as soon as the eyes opened. He needed to not be seen.

Aha!

He took a deep breath and cast a disillusionment charm. He didn’t love the slithery, creepy, cold sensation, but he could run his hands over his clothes and they felt just the same as before. It wasn’t really making him slimy or anything else unpleasant. It was, however, hopefully disguising him from the alarm eyes. Sure enough, when he walked forward, there was no reaction, and he passed through the archway without the gate slamming down.

He continued on his way, having to stretch or shrink or vanish a thing here and a thing there, but not meeting anything that he found particularly bothersome. At least, until he rounded the corner and came across what was almost definitely a boggart—a slime and muck covered person lurching towards him from a pit of ooze.

“Riddikulus!” he cast, trying to imagine it sprouting feathers to replace the muck. That wasn’t funny, just delightful, but it would at least not be scary any more. Except the spell didn’t work. ”Riddikulus!” he yelled again, trying not to gag or run at the sheer grossness of everything in the vicinity. He wasn’t always good at not reacting to boggarts, but he was very good at wanting them to be unboggarty, and this usually worked. As it continued to remain unchanged, another possibility occurred.

“Don’t hug me!” he instructed, in case it really was Samara. He had set a precedent for hugs but he absolutely did not want one right now. He backed up a few steps. She possibly had a hard time noticing that, or the look of revulsion on his face, as he hadn’t remembered to lift the disillusionment charm. He wasn’t invisible, and when he did attention-grabbing things like yelling or casting spells, he was probably easier to find, but it would potentially be challenging for anyone to keep their focus on him. He dried and cleaned her robes, and then used a transfiguration to turn the mud to solid rock, which was much less disgusting.

13 Theo Spurn You're doing it wrong 1476 0 5

Yaniel Ayala Velez

August 24, 2022 3:47 AM

Uh, no, it's shrinking solution? by Yaniel Ayala Velez

The team meet and greet had gone okay, as much as sitting around talking about yourself with a bunch of strangers and Lenny could ever go okay. Lenny hadn’t been weird in a way that became directly Yarielis’ problem and nothing had been on fire.

Now it was time to try to maintain that, whilst actively facing obstacles. The Crotalus was not optimistic.

They didn’t have a long enough wait to justify going anywhere, which meant further awkward sitting around pretending to be a normal person who didn’t want to die during group interactions. Then it was outside.

The task itself sounded kinda cool. Maze, cool. Obstacles and outdoors… Yeah. And the ‘teamwork’ part of this was minimal, which was the best type of teamwork.

As they were sent to their starting points, Yarielis tried to edge as far away as possible from Lenny, hoping that meant the maze would spit them out a good distance from each other, though from what Professor Skies had said, it sounded like it was divided up into different age-related zones, which meant they might be close by, or even in the same area. If that latter part was true, it at least wasn’t true immediately, and Yarielis entered the maze blissfully alone.

Strangely, the first thing Yarielis came across was a bubbling cauldron. The recipe pinned by the side declared it to be a shrinking solution. That was a third year potion, although it had been mentioned in various textbook passages and essays. It was also more or less done, judging by the colour. There was a cluttered ingredients bench next to the potion. That meant this was more a task in identifying than brewing, which really was much more a beginner thing. Yarielis found the requisite shrivelfig, and sliced up a caterpillar (gross) to complete the potion. It was a little off the bright green it was supposed to be, and Yarielis didn’t fancy using it on anything living (and definitely didn’t want to have to drink it) but bottled some, just in case.

Around the corner, the use of the shrinking solution became apparent. There was a giant set of stairs, blocking the entire path, making Yarielis feel Alice-in-Wonderland scale without even doing the ‘drink me’ thing. Yarielis dropped some shrinking solution on the first step, and noted as it collapsed down, bringing the top below the level of the—wait. The steps currently, just about, went to the top of the hedge. And they were steps. Yarielis hesitated. The obvious thing was to use the shrinking solution and get them out of the way. But weren’t they being rewarded for not doing the obvious thing? The deeply rooted Crotalus tendencies protested—surely there were lines, and crossing those lines would lead to trouble, and this was supposed to be shrunk not climbed on. It was an effort to put the shrinking solution away, and to not go with the obvious, expected thing, but Yarielis did. Perhaps it helped that working out how to actually climb this was an interesting challenge… The first step was now easily low enough to get onto. The next one… It was about chest height, but upper body strength wasn’t an issue for a Beater. Yarielis placed flat palms against the next step, pushing straight down for leverage, and scrambling up. It was hard, but do-able.

The Crotalus took on another step, then paused to consider if there was a more magical way of doing this. Gripping charms… but Yarielis already had shoes with good grip. Transfiguration? Almost definitely. There was almost definitely some useful spell that could shape just a small, second-year amount of stair and twist it into a little hand hold. Yarielis had no idea what it was. Which meant the physical way would have to do.

As Yarielis continued up, a deeply off-key noise started up not too far off. At first, Yarielis assumed that someone was having a violent encounter with several cats and that, sadly for the cats, the other person was winning. But as the Crotalus paused for breath, it became much more obvious what, or rather who, that had to be. Oh no. Yarielis regarded the one remaining step, considering abandoning the whole idea and just shrinking the steps and carrying on in the most opposite direction possible. But this time the Crotalus side won out. They had a task to do. The teachers were watching and grading them…

Yarielis scrambled up the last giant step. It was easy to see over quite a bit of the maze. Lenny had just gone by, loud and oblivious. And unfortunately, Yarielis just had to correct that situation…

“Hey…” The first one came out so quietly he probably didn’t notice. “Hey! Lenny!”

13 Yaniel Ayala Velez Uh, no, it's shrinking solution? 1554 0 5

Gwendolyn Brockert

August 24, 2022 1:36 PM

That's the spirit! by Gwendolyn Brockert

OOC: CW-Very brief mention of stereotyping groups of people. BIC:

Gwendolyn was honestly completely relieved by the teammates that she’d gotten for the Challenges. It wasn’t that she was worried about being bullied like Lydia was,it was much more that she would fight back and shut that crap down. Which was not conducive to a productive happy experience.For anyone.

Fortunately, though, she had gotten one of the more pleasant groups of people. Isla was her distant cousin, and the second year knew the other Aladren a little despite the age difference, since Isla was close to Liesl and Gwendolyn often hung out with the Teppenpaw during the summer. The fifth year was often around as well.

As for the rest, they also seemed fine. Hans was Lydia’s year and housemate and Liesl’s best friend so he was cool. Sadie seemed really nice, although she seemed to generally lack confidence. Sort of like Gwendolyn’s dad, which kind of endeared the older girl to her.

The second year was also looking forward to getting to know the two teammates closest to her in age, Eben and Lyla better. She didn’t really have any close friends yet, besides some of her relatives, and if she was going to bond and make friends with her teammates, it was more likely that it would be the people closest to her age.

Actually, now that she thought about it, Gwendolyn didn’t know specifically who would be an unpleasant group, though, apparently, Lydia had gotten the “meanest girl in school”-which was a direct quote- as a Team Leader. The Aladren was a bit concerned for her cousin with regards to the Challenges in general. The fourth year did not handle stressful things well, and had a tendency to freak out about stuff. Which, if Leonor De Matteo was as mean as Lydia claimed, was probably going to make matters worse and it would just be a vicious cycle.

Gwendolyn did not know why they wanted to torture her cousin that way.It just seemed cruel. Like, when someone was vulnerable, you didn’t put them in a position where they could be harmed. Yeah, she didn’t expect the school to coddle them the way that Aunt Kaylie and Uncle Ian did Lydia, but like, showing decency and not putting them in a potentially humiliating situation with someone who’d bully them. The humiliating situation part might be unavoidable, from what Gwendolyn had heard from her cousins as well as Aunt Hope, Uncle Evan and Aunt Lucille, but you didn’t need to add insult to injury. Or insults to injuries literally.

The Aladren was really glad that her dad had never gone through the Challenges, honestly….and so was he. That was what he’d said when they’d come up. They had been sort of a hot topic among some of the distant cousins that Gwendolyn had been around and then Lydia had been freaking about them to Aunt Kaylie, and Dad said that he was glad that they didn’t start them until after he graduated. While it had come off as a bit of a smart*** remark in the moment, Gwendolyn knew that he wouldn’t have taken the Challenges much better than Lydia was.

Which was basically why the second year had more compassion and tolerance for her cousin than Sophia did. Because her dad had been that way when he was a kid. He was still shy, hence having Cory selling wands and going to alumni/career fairs in his place, but he’d developed something of an attitude as an adult and had a massive chip on his shoulder. Hence why Gwendolyn could be a smart*** too at times.

Which amused Dad to no end. He said he was glad she was more like how he was now than how he was as a kid. Not that he would have liked or loved her any less if she was painfully shy like he had been or like Lydia was, but it was something that would make things easier for Gwendolyn.

She waited for her team’s turn. Finally, Professor Skies came and got them. Then she explained the Challenge to them. Yup, Lydia was going to absolutely lose it. The second year was concerned for her cousin, but at the moment, she had teammates to find. And maybe bonus points to earn.

Actually, come to think of it, how would they know what spells were being used or how many obstacles were defeated in order to give the bonus points? Were the students being watched? However necessary that might be, both in terms of awarding bonus points and making sure people weren’t seriously injured, it still sort of creeped her out. She was sort of envisioning the staff sitting around some sort of viewing device, laughing at the hapless students possibly struggling with the obstacles. In particular, laughing at the pureblood girls, often targets of scorn and derision by people who weren’t them. Or possibly, the Quidditch Coach was laughing at and mocking the non-athletes.

Either way, it bothered Gwendolyn a great deal. She fell into those categories and so did people she cared about. Any stereotype about pureblood girls-or purebloods in general-was every bit as offensive as ones about Chinese people or biracial people or gay people or anything else. And just as false, like the idea that all pureblood girls were prissy or weak. Or mean and snotty. Okay, yes, Lydia embodied the delicate fragile stereotype and her cousin Arianna embodied the stuck-up *broccoli* one, but like had these people met Sophia? Or Liesl ? Or, you know, the diverse group of pureblood girls just in her family?

She set off on her path. Before long, she began to feel dizzy. Which was confusing to her. Gwendolyn was not that sort. She did not tend to get ill just from walking outside a little and she’d eaten today so that wasn’t the issue. Those were more Lydia’s type of thing. Merlin, she hoped that she wasn’t getting sick. That would really suck.

Then she spotted the cause. A clearing full of freaking puffapods. Something with such a cute name that was so misleading. They were pretty enough, but those stupid spores. Ugh.

So, she either had to suck it up, maybe plug her nose-she was too young to do the Bubble Head charm-so she didn’t inhale the spores and try her best to get through without fainting…or she could set them on fire. Or, she could transfigure them into something else.

Now, Gwendolyn had to figure out what was similar to puffapods. After trying to figure it out for a few moments, she decided…that there was nothing similar to puffapods, other than maybe another plant. However, she was wasting precious time….so setting them on fire it was. “ Incendio ” Transfiguration might be the Brockert way, but right now, burning the stupid things was just easier.

Gwendolyn walked on. As she continued on her way, a dummy jumped out at her. Ugh. Dueling. She so didn’t have time for this *orange*.

Of course, before she could draw her wand, the dummy attacked with a Tickling Charm and she barely managed to duck out of the way. She managed to grab her wand and fired off a Full Body Bind. “ Petrificus Totalus ". And….she missed. Which made the second year utter off a string of the kind of curses that were absolutely not going to help her fend off the dummy.

Then she saw the green sparks. There was a teammate nearby! But she had to get away from this *cauliflower*ing dummy! She was going to have to just run away. Running was not something that Gwendolyn enjoyed, but she was going to have to.

She sped away as fast as she could-which wasn’t all that fast-towards the sparks. She arrived, panting, out of breath, just in time to hear Lyla say to Isla to stop. Gwendolyn frowned. There had to be some way to reach each other but at the same time keep them from being on a path with obstacles above their grade level. Having grown up with magic, she knew what this could be. “Actually, I think it might be an age line. So, she has to be the one to take it down because she’s older.” The second year nodded at her cousin.

OOC: Yeah, someone had to figure out the age line thing eventually

11 Gwendolyn Brockert That's the spirit! 1555 0 5

Iris Cobb

August 24, 2022 3:44 PM

Wonderful by Iris Cobb

Iris did her best to hide and stay out of sight. She had initially thought this might be fun. Professor Skies brought them out to a much altered Labyrinth and told them they would need to find each other while overcoming obstacles. Neat! That sounded like it should be fun, and it was at first.

She had entered the maze with the rest of her team and then found herself alone, standing at a corner where two paths met. Unbeknownst to her, she picked the wrong direction. They looked like two ordinary paths, so she had randomly picked the right one. Now she was desperately wishing she had gone to the left.

Her chosen path had a relatively simple challenge to overcome. No real problem there, however once she had gotten past that, she heard shouting and what she could only assume was the sound of hedges exploding. It was clearly Oz somewhere not nearly as far off as she would like. Oh well, she'd thought to herself, they were supposed to find each other.

That was when she had made another terrible decision that she regretted. She began to move towards the sound of Oz's ruckus. Now she was trying to stay out of his sight, because the fool had climbed on top of the hedges and was shouting and shooting fire into the air! Did he not know how mazes worked!? He was going to lose them any points they might have gotten, and she wanted nothing to do with this! She'd find the sensible members of her team.

Iris was huddled up tight against the hedge, hopefully out of sight from where he was. Now she just had to get away before he moved and spotted her! There was a side passage just a little ways behind her, could she get there without being seen? Once there, she might be able to backtrack to her starting location and find someone else.

She began by scooting back along the hedge, wishing all the way that she knew a charm to make herself quieter. Now she was at the dangerous part. She had to cross the path, in the open, without him seeing her. In a burst of inspiration, Iris grabbed a nearby rock and quietly cast the feather-light charm upon it so that it only lasted a moment or two. Then she threw the rock easily, arcing up and past where Oz was standing, the spell should cut out... and she heard it fall with a solid 'thunk' somewhere opposite her. Then she dashed for the pathway and hopefully towards some sane people.

2 Iris Cobb Wonderful 1526 0 5

Fortune Ardovini

August 24, 2022 4:49 PM

What's over here? by Fortune Ardovini

Adventure at last! Eventually anyway. Fortune spent the time waiting for his team's turn by brushing up on his charms while wandering about the school. Mainly because he knew he should review his magic, and his legs didn't want to stay still. When their turn finally came, he was as ready as he would ever be.

Their task sounded like fun and he delved into the maze with everyone else, and wasn't terribly surprised when he was all alone. He was mildly surprised to be standing in the middle of a small gazebo looking structure. There were hedges in a tight circle all around it, about a foot away, with no apparent exit. His first thought was to just try blasting his way through, but that didn't seem quite in keeping with the challenge aspect of their task. He suspected there was a more clever way out, and decided to look for that first. Speed was of the essence though, so if all else failed, they were just bushes.

One thing he'd learned from reading and listening to adventures, was to always look up. People in stories never did, and it always seemed to cause them such problems. Hanging from the center of the ceiling of the peaked gazebo was a small metal cage, he couldn't see what was in it though. He also couldn't jump high enough to reach it. As he moved around, trying to inspect the cage he learned that it was also important to look down. He stumbled over some debris that was scattered about the floor. There were broken wood bits all over the floor. It looked like someone had smashed a perfectly good ladder.. oh.

With a chuckle he began gathering the pieces together and putting them together like a puzzle. Then with his wand ready he cast "Reparo!" and watched as the ladder slowly pulled itself back into one piece. It was simple enough then to... wait... the latter was to long to set up, and the cage was on a chain that swung around. After fumbling around for a bit he realized he could simply set the ladder up against the cage. Why did they give him a ladder if it wouldn't work? Frankly, they'd given him the wrong kind of ladder, it should have been one of those folding stepladders.. oh. Well, he didn't know the tranfiguration spell to turn a straight ladder into a step ladder, but there were other options.

"Diffindo!" Fortune called out as he cut the ladder in half with his wand. Then he set them up against each other and cast a quick sticking charm to hold the ends together. Hopefully it would last long enough. Once together he quickly scampered up the ladder to finally see what was in the cage. It held a quaffle. That was not what he was expecting. How was that supposed to get him out of here? How was he supposed to get it out?

Fortune felt the ladder shift just slightly under him as the sticking charm began to give way. He grabbed for the cage to steady himself, his fingers grazed the ball as he began to fall, then he was wrenched away by something pulling him sharply from the navel and he landed on the ground while the quaffle bounced away from him. He laughed as the shock passed, it had been a portkey! Pulling himself to his feet, he looked around, it was a round area about the same as the last one, but with no gazebo, and a passageway heading out of it. The ball had come to a stop against the hedge. Should he take it with him? If he recalled properly, touching it again may send him back to the previous area. He didn't really want that, so he left it where it was and continued down the path to see what he could find. Hopefully a teammate. He shot some green sparks into the air as he walked, just in case someone was nearby.

OOC: Fortune is off in another part of the maze as I couldn't see how a second year could wander into an intersection of a fourth, sixth and seventh year area.

2 Fortune Ardovini What's over here? 1549 0 5

Claire Osbrook

August 25, 2022 1:44 PM

I mean, you are the one who just turned something into solid rock.... by Claire Osbrook

There was something about the nature of the challenge which was…something. Claire wasn’t sure what the exact word she wanted was – ironic, maybe? – but she knew there had to be one. She was in the Gardens, which she was pretty sure she knew about as well as anyone at the school, after all the time she’d spent navigating the mazes just to learn them - and now that this knowledge would have proven unusually useful for once, the staff had gone and changed the layout, at least a little.

Stepping through, though, she blinked and struggled to get her bearings as she noticed for the first time just how similar any given section of the Gardens could look to most of the others when she was just effectively dropped into the spot without any context. Maybe this would have been harder than she had thought it would be even if the layouts hadn’t been curved and stuff now….

…And if there hadn’t been a knockback jinx set to go off as soon as she got too close to a certain hedge only a few steps in the first direction she started to go. She wasn’t hurt by her tumble to the ground, but she did turn red with sheer embarrassment, hoping that the staff wasn’t watching them work somehow. Jinxes that weren’t being aimed at her by someone else in Defense Against the Dark Arts weren’t something she thought anyone would have really expected her to be on guard against, if only because they were so rare, but this was a challenge, and she felt stupid for forgetting that over something no bigger than being a little confused about where she was.

On the bright side, though, embarrassment was one of those emotions that rapidly translated into anything between annoyance and anger with her, and annoyance was actually useful at the moment. Being disoriented was a little creepy, a little unsettling; annoyance cleared her head from that, which enabled her to think more clearly about what she was doing and how she might be able to do it better.

It made the most sense, she decided as she (much more cautiously) continued to make her way forward, to assume that she was somewhere near the periphery of the Gardens. If part of the task was finding each other, then one way to make it especially challenging would be to fling them all as far apart as possible. If they all had sense, therefore, they would try to make their way inward with the goal of meeting up somewhere near the heart of the maze.

Sense, of course, was not something Claire attributed to most people just as a rule of thumb, but she thought it…might not be the stupidest thing she could do today, anyway. Most of the team was, after all, made up of people from her own House; nobody she knew all that well, of course, because that would have made the game too easy, but people whose thinking, she had to assume, was at least somewhat similar to hers. Plus, she’d be bound to run into either someone or an exit (in which case she might at least be able to place herself more precisely) if she followed that plan herself, at least as best she could without being a hundred per cent which direction she was even starting from.

Sense, to her mind, also included avoiding obstacles as best she could, though of course this wasn’t always possible. Such as when what looked like a holly bush attacked her…and then chased her, at least until she was able to deploy the same jinx against it that had tripped her up in the beginning and then hit it with a Freezing Charm. A jarvey, in turn, was stopped as it went with petrificus totalus, even though she wasn’t sure that was even the ‘correct’ charm to use – it was just the first one that came to mind. She got a little less lucky with the pixies, though; by the time she’d cleared enough of the swarm that went for her head to get through the opening in the hedges she’d been aiming for, there were scratches on her face and arms, and her robes were torn at both shoulders from where some of the nasty things had decided to pick her up and had managed to lift her off the ground with what seemed to her like way too much ease, even considering that her brother had once compared her appearance to that of a stick-bug.

Hitting the ground a second time hurt more than it had the first time, she thought as she rolled the rest of the way to where she wanted to go, taking advantage of how pixies seemed momentarily confused by her going lengthwise on the ground instead of moving the way people normally did. She wondered if it was because of the repetition or because she’d fallen from the air the second time. Muttering to herself – making non-verbal noises of disgust, really – as she dusted herself off after that encounter, she winced as she bent her knee forward and back – and then froze when she heard voices.

Probably teammates. Possibly a ruse, though, she thought, running through spells in her head. She couldn’t think of one right now that would make it sound like she heard someone talking when they weren’t present, but she didn’t think that necessarily ruled one out. It seemed logical enough to her that they could face obstacles that involved spells above their levels, as long as the solution was something they could handle, and voices…would be most likely to lead her the wrong way, if they were fake. Or at least, that was what she would do if she could do something like that. Still, though, it seemed stupid not to check….

Claire thought for a moment and then adjusted her grip on her wand. “Engorgio,” she said, pointing at a branch in the nearest hedge and expanding it until it was wide enough for her to put at least one foot on and about as long as she thought she could make it. She then repeated the process with a few others higher up, creating a rough sort of climbing apparatus, something somewhere between a very lopsided set of stairs and a very crude ladder. Then – carefully, because it would suck if it didn’t hold her weight and she fell a third time – she scrambled to look over the top of the hedge and down on…

…Well, a person, anyway. A person and…what sounded like Theo Spurn, but which was just a very erratic patch of light and texture – a visual illusion of some kind. That seemed to think that Samara Crosby was a boggart which…wanted to hug him?

“Hi,” she said, about as close to brightly as she usually got. “Do I, uh, even want to know?”

16 Claire Osbrook I mean, you are the one who just turned something into solid rock.... 1540 0 5

Hansel Hexenmeister

August 25, 2022 6:05 PM

I'm with you guys! (And I'm totally not cheating.) by Hansel Hexenmeister

Team Six walked into the maze together and stepped out into the paths alone. Hansel looked around, and decided that there was no such thing as cheating in a challenge like this. So he knelt down where he stood, and called out, *Hello? Is anyone here?* in Parseltongue. The Sonora school grounds were surrounded on all sides by desert and he'd already made friends with a lot of the local snakes who came into the gardens to hunt prey and get water, both of which were much more plentiful here than anywhere else nearby, so the Labyrinth had a fair number of wild snakes in it at any given time, and it usually didn't take him very long to find one.

Today was no exception. *Hello, Redrock,* he greeted the young rattler who poked out of a hedge at his call with a smile. *I'm looking for a bunch of other two legs, can you help me find them?*

*Did you bring mice?* Redrock asked cagily.

The notice had said to bring only a wand, but Hansel always carried around a few dead mice in his pockets, and hadn't thought twice about doing so today either. *One for you now, and two for whoever can lead me to more two legs.*

*I will find you a two legs,* Redrock promised after gulping down the mouse Hansel offered him as an enticement, and disappeared back into the hedge. While Hansel waited for him to return, he pulled out his wand and regarded the hedges. He would need a quick and easy way to get through them if he was going to follow Redrock to his teammates. He also didn't want to disturb the labyrinth any more than the teachers already had because it was a home to a lot of his more slithery friends.

"Partis Temporus!" Hansel tried, pointing the wand at the closest hedge. This was the largest object he'd ever tried to part, and the space he made was not very big. It would probably be big enough though. Hansel was a fairly slim fourteen year old. He practiced the spell a few more times, and each time opened up the hedge a little bigger. By the time Redrock returned, he was making a narrow opening large enough that he probably wouldn't even tear his robes as he pushed through it.

*I have found a two-legs,* Redrock announced. *It is a small one with long straight black head fur.*

Gwendolyn, Hansel guessed off the description. *Great! She's one of the ones I'm looking for. Lead the way.*

Redrock again went through the hedge and Hansel used his temporary parting charm to open the way after him. The edges of the hedge still pulled at his clothes and hair, and after a few more passes through other hedges, he was reasonably certain he was sporting a twiggy look for his hair, but he was making good progress and not making Redrock wait too long for him to catch up.

After a few minutes, Redrock stopped and tasted the air. *She was here,*Redrock informed, still scenting the air. *She went this way,*he declared after another moment, and started slithering down the path. Hansel followed, keeping his wand in hand though Gwendolyn had probably already cleared the way. Redrock led on a few dozen feet then slowed. *There is a strange two-leg just ahead,* he warned. *It has no heat or smell.*

That sounded strange. Hansel approached with caution, and when he turned the corner, he saw the dummy, and was ready for it. Well, not specifically for a dummy shooting a curse at him, but ready to defend from something and he'd gone to the dueling club enough times that he got his shield up quickly enough to deflect the tickling charm that was fired his way. "Protego!" he cast, and the spell bounced off it harmlessly. In the moment of regrouping the dummy took to see if its spell had work, Hansel fired back, "Expelliarmus!" The dummy flew backwards and its wand flew toward Hansel and he caught it out of the air.

In a duel that would be that, but he wasn't sure if the enchantments on the dummy would let it accept defeat gracefully, so he followed up with a petrifying jinx. "Petrificus totalus!" The dummy went stiff and still on the ground.

Recognizing the threat was gone, Redrock slithered back out onto the path from where he'd taken shelter in the hedge. *Your friend is close.* Redrock announced, *And more have joined her.*

*Awesome!* Hansel cheered, thinking this was proving even easier than he'd expected it to go, and followed Redrock until he could hear talking. *Here,* he tossed the snake two more of his mice. He only had one left. *I have one more today, and three more for you tomorrow if you can find anyone else.*

Redrock happily gulped down the two mice. *I will find you another two-leg.* He disappeared into the bushes again. Hansel followed the path to find not only Gwendolyn but also Lyla and Isla as well. "Nice!" he exclaimed, interrupting whatever conversation they were having. "Half of you are right here! I've got a friend scouting for everyone else. Redrock will let us know if he finds Eben, Bonabelle, or Sadie, and we can follow him to them. Weird question but . . . . None of you happen to have any dead rodents or birds on you, do you?"

OOC: Hans is probably a minute or two behind Gwendolyn, so you can probably finish up your conversation and get the age line dropped just before he arrives.

1 Hansel Hexenmeister I'm with you guys! (And I'm totally not cheating.) 1524 0 7

Lyla Holland

August 25, 2022 10:01 PM

Let's get this show on the road! by Lyla Holland

Not long after Lyla had spotted Isla, Gwendolyn came barreling down the track. An age line, that made sense, though Lyla thought it might have been a little kinder of the professors to mark them in some way so that people didn’t have to find them with their noses. Still, it wasn’t anything that Isla couldn’t handle, being a fifth year and all.

She was rather glad to have the cousins on her team, being purebloods, they had grown up immersed in the magical world, and they were bound to have picked up on things that others hadn’t been taught at Sonora yet- like what an age line was, for example.

Lyla’s round hazel eyes surveyed Gwendolyn and Isla. They were both Aladrens, which was another advantage for tactical purposes, as Aladrens supposedly trended towards logic and problem-solving. They were equal parts similar and dissimilar, both with dark eyes and long hair, though one had black locks and the other had brown. Isla had pale skin like that of a ghost, but Gwendolyn’s darker tone hinted at a mixed ancestry. Nevertheless, the “Brockert” shone through in the way they carried themselves, standing gracefully despite the exertion they’d both just been through.

Lyla stood back as Isla readied her wand. She didn’t know how an age line reacted to being dispelled, and she didn’t want to be standing too close and get sucked into a vortex or slashed with invisible shattered glass, or the million other ways it could go wrong. She partially shielded herself behind the corner of the hedge, not being keen on having a wand pointed at her, even though it wasn’t at her.

“Ready!” she shouted out.

OOC: Just a quick little post before Hans joins the girls.

64 Lyla Holland Let's get this show on the road! 1559 0 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

August 26, 2022 3:50 AM

Or stay where you are and let me find you by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Sadie wasn't sure how to feel about the challenges. It was odd to be asked to lead something right after a vote in which everyone decisively demonstrated how they didn't view her as a leader. In some ways, that took the pressure off. Had she been head girl, she would have had something to prove, whereas here she was, the girl who wasn't quite anything enough... She wanted to be a veterinary assistant, not a vet. She was prefect, but not head student. She was quiet, never the centre of things. People probably didn't expect her to do well at this. Whilst that was a little depressing, it was also freeing. It would be better to surprise people in a good way than a bad one, not that she really thought she'd outstrip their low expectations.

Her team was… fine? Sadie wasn’t exactly super social within her own year group, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that she didn’t know them very well (or that she hadn’t got head girl…). Oddly, the one she had the strongest association with was Lyla, having spoken to her at the feast. None of them had ever struck her as objectionable, which was a good thing.

She led them out to the gardens, feeling horribly responsible for protecting them from whatever was about to happen. Except, apparently, she wasn’t going to be able to. They were going to be split up. In some ways, that made it worse. As the leader, she was meant to make sure that nothing dreadful happened to any of the younger students in her care, and now she wasn’t going to be with them?

Still, there was nothing to do but plunge into the maze and start looking. She found herself alone, as she’d been told, with only one path ahead, so she took that at a brisk pace—fast enough to be purposeful, but still cautious of what might be around its many twists and turns. She slowed when she got to a corner, peering cautiously around. A mannequin fired at her. She’d quit defence against the dark arts after CATS, and this was precisely why. It made her nerves jangle, which wasn’t going to improve her aim any. Still, protego worked against most things, as did expelliarmus except the latter needed her to hit a target. Much as she would rather not put her shields to the test, she had always been stronger at defence than counter-attack. She threw up a shield, which was enough to let her duck past the mannequin and around the next corner…

Where she encountered a brick wall. As a seventh year, she was used to doing some heavy lifting when it came to vanishing charms, but she was pretty sure that counted as a transfiguration of unusual size, which was usually assigned as a paired task. Still, she didn’t need to get rid of the entire wall, and another thing they had been learning was controlling their effects to a specific area or specific amount of time—something that was useful across subjects.

“Evanesco,” she cast, focusing her thoughts on making a gap in the centre of the wall. It was neither quite as big or quite as neat as she had pictured, but unless Professor Skies was a mind reader, she wouldn’t know that—well, apart from the fact that Sadie did tend to be very neat in all her tasks. Still, it was good enough to let her get through.

On the other side was something much more challenging… A choice of three paths. Sadie had only had one way to go at the start, so the only thing she’d had to do was be quick about it. Now, there was a choice…

“Hominim revelio”, she cast, practicing the same principle as before, of trying to contain her power and her reach down to a specific area. She wasn’t sure quite how far to stretch… if she did it within a certain radius, the areas would surely overlap at some point. She also had no real way of estimating distances… She focused on dividing the maze up into sections in her head, with the paths as cut off points making large wedges in a semi-circle around her. The first segment yielded nothing. Which either meant that no one was that way, or that she was doing it wrong. On the second segment though, she got a blip, which suggested it wasn’t the spellwork at fault. On the third section she got three. So, had that gone wide, and picked up the middle person, or were more of her teammates really in that part of the maze? And should she go towards the group, or strike out for the one person who was left alone? Not to mention the fact that she was still missing at least two people.

It was so hard to know what was the right thing to do (could people sense this about her? Was that another reason no one had voted for her?). But, the section with more people gave her more chance of finding someone, and that was the aim. And any one of those blips could be just as lost and alone as the solo blip. Just because there were three blips in that part of the maze didn’t mean they’d found each other—after all, what were the odds of that?—and the solo blip might have been one of them or might wander into their section whilst she was looking.

That made sense, right?

Still doubting herself, she set off down the path that seemed to lead towards the most people, though she strongly suspected there wasn’t going to be a direct or easy route to any of them…

OOC: Given the way Sadie is using the charm, she could be picking up the group, or she could be picking up other people and only some members of the group. Someone outside the group is welcome to post as if they are one of the blips, e.g. coming across Sadie (or being still out on their own) or the group can go back and forth a bit more, and she can gradually work towards them.

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Or stay where you are and let me find you 1480 0 5

Bertie Jackson

August 26, 2022 6:56 AM

I'll just wait here by Bertie Jackson

Bertie dimly recalled Zara talking about the challenges. There had been an obstacle course (no thank you, unless he could treat it like a series of puzzles instead), a survival challenge (maybe kind of cool but only if you weren’t surrounded by frat boy types - he wanted to be with fellow nerds who understood and could harness the water cycle) and party planning (just no). He felt mildly betrayed, because whilst he had long known that his idea of fun and his peers’ ideas of fun did not line up, he generally thought that the school’s idea of fun (namely studying and asking interesting questions) and his did. He had begun to be mistrustful as soon as the idea of ‘mingling’ had been mentioned, and although five-sixths of his teammates weren’t truly awful, he didn’t really want to get to know any of them better than he already did.

Luckily, the staff were back on his side for the first challenge, and they were going to be scattered around a maze. This was about the least amount of teamwork it was possible to do, seeing as once they came back together as a team, the challenge was over. Excellent. He stepped into the maze, happy to find himself alone, and set about solving things the smart way. That didn’t mean placing his hand against the right wall (or, indeed the left wall—there was no actual benefit to right over left, the wall follower rule simply stated that continuing to follow a wall consistently would lead to an exit, and it was probably hand-dominance and centuries of oppressive superstitions against lefthanders that led to it being named for the right hand). There were two problems with that strategy. The first was that he wasn’t trying to find the exit, he was trying to find people—people who were no doubt scurrying purposelessly about the place, making it harder for everyone. The other was that that theory only applied to connected mazes, where all walls were attached to the outside edge. If the maze was a complex structure, with islands, you could end up walking around in circles forever—perhaps not in a regular maze, where you would start at a connected wall and would have to break the hand rule to switch to something that was an island, but it was a risk here where he had been dropped at random. Plus there was the possibility of the walls shifting about when they weren’t looking, given that they were dealing with magic.

What he needed was more information. He plucked a leaf from the nearby hedge, and transfigured it into a piece of parchment, stretching it until it was big enough to be useful.

“Charta,” he cast, trying to feel his way out into the surrounding area with his mind. He had only practised this with known areas or on small scales before—either with making a plan of a section of the school, or with something like a rearranged and darkened classroom. He wasn’t sure he would get the whole maze to materialise before him, but if he could get some bearings, that would be a start. He watched the lines spider-webbing across his parchment, making a note of where they started from, as that was his own location. There was a definite dead end to his right. He waited a few minutes, letting the lines fill themselves in as much as they were able to, studying the map as it drew itself.

There was no clear way to go, in that all his paths met with some kind of blockage. Given the magical and obstacle-course nature of the challenge, that was somewhat to be expected, though it was hard to tell which—if any—were impenetrable barriers. He decided that his best bet was to head to the middle. It was a logical place to congregate, and would give him easy access to all other areas. On the map, he could find a path that led to what looked like it might be some kind of centre (it wasn’t central on his map, but it was a wide open circular area with multiple paths off it) and it only had one blockage along the way.

That didn’t speak to how many obstacles there were, and the first thing he came across was a pond, which hadn’t shown up on his map, and which stretched across the whole width of the path. He conjured some stepping stones easily enough, feeling like that wasn’t a very satisfactory solution but hoping he would come across something more complex later. Similarly, a mannequin firing jinxes was simply toppled.

The blockage in his path proved to be much more satisfactory. It was a heavy, wooden door. Judging by the rope dangling from it, the suggested way of opening it was to pull it up, though naturally it was too heavy to do that. A featherlight charm was the obvious answer, or vanishing or blasting it, but why the rope if you could just zap it out of the way? The rope begged to be used, and luckily Bertie knew—as anyone who’d completed grade two science on simple machines would know—just what you could do to make a rope work for you. He transfigured an overhanging branch of the hedge into a frame with two pulleys. Using his wand, he threaded the rope through them both. He hauled on it, lifting the door with… if not total ease, then definite ability, which was more than he’d had before, and tied it off to a stake he made in the ground. He dashed through the door, pleased to have lifted it with magic and science combined.

After that, there was a very pleasing section where he found a potion recipe pinned to the ground. At first, it served no clear purpose, but as it was a potion for clarity of thought, he pocketed it. When he set foot on the path, a dizzying gas surrounded him, so he backed up consulting the parchment again. The first ingredient was asphodel, and he could see some growing in the nearby hedge. He walked towards it, finding that he didn’t trigger the trap. It was a maze within a maze, and following the ingredients as they grew in the hedgerows was the way to avoid the sensors. Neat!

With that achieved, he was in the middle of the maze. He sat down to study his map, and work out whether there was a logical onward path, or whether he should just wait there.

13 Bertie Jackson I'll just wait here 1497 0 5

Lavender Brockert

August 26, 2022 3:43 PM

I think I'd prefer the whiskey by Lavender Brockert

When it came to the Challenges, Lavender had one goal. Kick Bonabelle’s (Team’s) backside. No offense meant to the Aladren’s teammates who were all pretty decent. Well, at least Sadie and Isla were, she didn’t really know the younger ones of course aside from Gwendolyn a little. Seriously though, her team could get eighth and Bonabelle’s could get ninth and she would be happy. Of course, naturally she did want to do better than that but she’d take it.

Especially if Wally won. Or got second like his dad did. Lavender really believed her cousin needed that especially because of what happened with prefect selections.Of course, it wouldn’t be exactly the same since he wasn’t the Team Leader like Ryan had been. Still, she felt her cousin needed to feel good about himself. He’d probably be unhappy if Stanley beat him.

Which would be if she beat him too, since she and Stanley were on the same team. And it would be her beating him again, just like prefect. It was one of those things where she just couldn’t win. Or she could but her cousin would feel bad if she did. Because he’d feel bad that Stanley beat him.

Maybe neither of them would win. That might be easier. Lavender had always thought it might have been easier for her if Graham had gotten prefect since she had sort of felt guilty about beating her cousin. However, either way, one twin would do better than the other even if they were eighth and ninth. Or seventh and eighth since the Crotalus wanted to absolutely crush Bonabelle. It would be best of all if her team got first and the other sixth year’s got last.

Still, no matter what, Lavender wanted to do her best. Even if it meant beating people that she cared about, like Wally or Val or Graham. That would not be fair to her teammates if she didn’t do as well in order to let her friends and family succeed. They might very well have their own reasons why they needed to win. For all she knew, one of her teammates had a mother like Aunt Jillian and would be in deep trouble if they didn’t win.

And she knew that Wally’s parents were absolutely not like that. It would probably be exciting for Ryan if his children did well, because he had, but Lavender was sure that he would be proud of them no matter what. Just like her parents would be. After all, neither Ivy nor Vlad had done especially well.

Anyway, who was to say who was most deserving of a win? How did one decide that? Other than the fact that Bonabelle didn’t, of course. Personally, Lavender kind of wanted the underdogs to do well. Like, Theo’s team, for example. Or like Ryan’s team had been. It was nice to see people like that triumph, people who had disabilities or people who’d otherwise had it difficult. Although sometimes underdogs who needed the self-esteem boost like Wally were put with people who absolutely did not, like Oz.

Besides, just because someone might need the win, didn’t mean they’d get it. While Ryan had done well and gotten second place, and he was satisfied and proud of it, he still hadn’t gotten first, although Lavender certainly wouldn’t take his accomplishment away from him. And Chaslyn had not done all that well in the Challenges at all, and her mother had been disproportionately disappointed in her.Aunt Jillian had been unhappy with Amity’s performance in them too, but Amity didn’t care and blamed her teammates.Apparently, they were not the type of people who deserved a win and hadn’t gotten one, dragging Amity and Arnold Carey-the one teammate she didn’t dislike- down with them.

Anyway, Lavender doing her best didn’t mean that her best was very good. There was still the possibility of having something athletic as part of the Challenges.She was not looking forward to that one bit. And some of her teammates did not strike her as the athletic sort. Basically, they had Yarielis, who was a beater, and then Stanley…well, he enjoyed those kinds of things, but didn’t really always have the skills to back up that interest, at least when it came to flying and Quidditch.

Then there were Amethyst and Lenny, who….seemed more the type to worry about getting their hair messed up and ruining their clothes and shoes and breaking a nail. Not that Lavender thought less of them for that, she was honestly more comfortable with that type than the sporty type. She was less concerned about them looking down at her either because they would mock her lack of skills or just think themselves better than her, like being good at sports made them somehow overall superior as people to those who weren’t . Stanley and his mother Sophie were nice, and she had other Pecari relatives, including her father -though Scarlett was really more the goofy type of Pecari-which made Lavender know that they weren’t all bad but that was not always the case.

Actually, Yarielis didn’t seem like she was like other athletic types either. The sixth year tended to associate the type of person who was into sports with being confident extroverts. That did not seem to be the case with the younger Crotalus. Okay, yes there was the fact that the younger girl was a Crotalus and not a Pecari, but…Tristan had also been a Crotalus and other than that, he very much had the personality characteristics that Lavender associated with people who liked sports.

Therefore, Yarielis confused her a little, although, wasn’t unpleasant. The sixth year definitely could relate to lacking confidence socially. That was a large part of her issues. She wasn’t as social as Val, and had a harder time making friends than the Teppenpaw did. So, because Lavender didn’t have as many friends as Val-she had two-and Val had so many, she didn’t get as much time with her friend as she wanted because the other sixth year was busy with other friends and clubs and studying. And yes, the Crotalus had Graham and she liked spending time with him and honestly, he might very well be her best friend now, but it still hurt that she didn’t get as much time with Val.

Also, Bonabelle was a soul sucking human blackhole that hogged the Teppenpaw so Lavender didn’t get to spend as much time with her, and so, the Crotalus and her teammates must beat Bonabelle’s team at all costs. So, sorry Sadie, Isla, Gwendolyn and the rest of the poor unfortunate people who were stuck with the Aladren. (Whom she really did feel bad for.)

Anyway, Lavender was on Team Two,so she didn’t have long to wait. When Professor Skies led them out to the maze and gave them instructions, she couldn’t help but to have doubts about her ability to be successful and help her team achieve victory and beat Bonahelle. The sixth year quickly tried to figure out if her nemesis’ team was particularly athletic. Lavender had her doubts about that too though, unless the younger students were.

Then again, Professor Skies had made it sound as if they were supposed to use magic. Which she supposed made sense, considering they were in a magical school. However, the Deputy Headmistress had also mentioned not reaching something above one’s grade level. While that did give Lavender and the other Advanced students a wide range of things they could do magically-and a wide range of problems to run across-most Advanced Students did not take every class. She did not take DADA or Potions or COMC anymore. Although she had done fine in the second two, and just did not want to take more classes, DADA was pretty much not her subject.

So, if the Crotalus ended up with Advanced DADA obstacles, how would that be fair? Would she end up with fifth year level stuff or would she have to find a different way? Maybe she should just transfigure her way through this event, since that and Herbology were her strengths. Lavender knew her plants-and it was a hedge maze, so plants were everywhere.

She set off on her path, wary and alert, waiting for something terrible to jump out at her. Like a dragon or something worse. Like bees. Bees might not even be an obstacle put there by the school for the Challenges , they might just be something that occurred naturally in the maze. And Lavender was deathly allergic to them. She did have her emergency medication in case she was stung by a stray bee and certainly, since her allergy was on file, they would not have a bee related obstacle and if she ran across a swarm of them, it would have to be a boggart, right?

Except, she wasn’t even sure that was her boggart anymore. She was certain there was something that she feared even more now.

Lavender walked on. Before long, she was beginning to feel as if the walls were closing in on her…..because they were. She drew her wand. ”Reducto “ The wall that she pointed her wand at and parts of the two adjoining ones, blew into rubble. She continued on her way.

Unfortunately, she tripped over a stump. “Ow!” She cried.

That’s when Lavender noticed the long prickly bramble-like vines shooting out of it. Of course, being the “plant-person” that she was, she recognized it as a Snaraluff. Oh hell no! It started to entwine one of it’s tentacles around her leg, “ Diffendo ” She cast, cutting off the offending vine.

After a quick Healing spell on her injuries-that thing’s thorns had cut into her skin and the fall hadn’t been too pleasant either, Lavender went on. Suddenly, she heard a sound and groaned inwardly, it was probably another obstacle.

Or maybe it was her teammate. She decided to head towards it since it sounded human. Sort of. Maybe it was a person being tortured? In which case, she should probably go see what the problem was because it might very well be that one of her teammates was in trouble and she should go help as she was one of the older people on her team. Lavender took off in that direction.

She arrived to find Lenny loudly singing. It turned out that the Teppenpaw was one hundred percent correct. He was absolutely not a good singer. “Hi Lenny.” Please stop singing now. The sixth year didn’t want to be mean to the younger student, but really it was almost like another obstacle and Lavender did not want to have to use the Silencing Charm on him.

The Crotalus heard another voice calling out to the second year. “Sounds like someone else is here too.” Possibly Yarielis? It didn’t sound like Amethyst and it was definitely not Stanley or Gus. “Let’s go over there,”She added. “We’re over here!” Lavender threw up green sparks for good measure as she headed towards the sound of the person who’d spoken.

11 Lavender Brockert I think I'd prefer the whiskey 1504 0 5

Eben Sosna

August 26, 2022 4:04 PM

I...guess I'm taking a third option? by Eben Sosna

It was, Eben thought wearily as he came to yet another crossroad, a good thing that the outside world had GPS in almost everything these days. If it had not, he was increasingly sure that he’d have just had to barricade himself in his home and never leave ever and order all his groceries despite the extra expense when he grew up, because he clearly had no innate sense of direction.

He really hoped nobody was watching this. It was gonna suck if anyone knew how many times he’d run into what were apparently invisible walls that didn’t respond to any spell he’d been able to think of. Could they actually kick you out of a House for lacking ability in one of its defining areas? Because those walls, plus the number of circles he’d been in, were making him develop new doubts about his problem-solving skills.

And this is why I should listen to Euan more often, he admonished himself, thinking of the time his brother had insisted that a corn maze would be fun.

In theory, he’d come into the maze with two pieces of information that should have been helpful. One: since it was a challenge, the way that looked easier was either a) booby-trapped to no end, making it a dangerous choice or b) not the right way to go, making it an incorrect choice. Two: he vaguely remembered reading somewhere that if you were in a maze, turning left every time would eventually take you to an exit, which…was part of the goal, he guessed, and would almost certainly take him far enough around the block sooner or later that he’d be bound to run into someone else. In practice, though, these pieces of information had not been as helpful as he’d hoped. He’d kept running into areas he couldn’t walk into, which made it hard to follow the turn-left plan, and it wasn’t always easy to tell which path was the apparently-easy one – or, for that matter, which one was the more booby-trapped of two obviously booby-trapped options. As a result, after what his watch said had been too long, he was totally lost, skipping on every other step, and wasn’t entirely sure his hair was the same color it had been when he’d gotten up this morning, the result of having gotten distracted and bumbled into a dummy that had shot a spell at him.

Observation: the wizarding world is not the place to be if you tend to think too much. Investigate management strategies. Also, spend more time outdoors in future. This might not happen again, but it’s still embarrassing to have been here this long and still be this lost…even if there is so much more interesting stuff indoors here. For a given value of interesting -

By some miracle, he noticed a hair of movement just below the frames of his glasses, where a line divided the parts of the world worth paying attention to from the parts he couldn’t see well enough to do anything with. He ducked one spell and managed to cast a Shield Charm against the second long enough to retreat – he couldn’t concentrate well enough to both cast a spell and focus on not getting hit by one at the same time, he’d discovered, which meant he was more flustered every time he tried to do it, which then made him even worse at it….

Walking backward, he only narrowly missed bumping into another person and jumped with what totally wasn’t anything remotely close to a distinctly unmanly squeak when he noticed the near-miss. The fact that he had time to turn around and notice that he still felt startled meant that Sadie was probably real, but he thought he’d still better check.

“Are you Sadie Chalmers, or is this another trick-test?” he asked, pushing his glasses up his nose and regarding her warily. He’d gotten lost in one portion where it had been like he’d been in a thick fog, and he’d kept feeling sure that he saw shadowy figures, the right sizes and shapes to be people he was looking for, and only just failing to catch up with them; it had taken a while to realize they weren’t real and start trying to retrace his steps, whereupon he’d had to deal with a gnome. If it was just an illusion, though, it probably wouldn’t be smart enough to answer questions, so…this was an adequate plan, and not just the only one he could think of right now.

16 Eben Sosna I...guess I'm taking a third option? 1538 0 5

Oz Spellman

August 27, 2022 6:17 AM

Thanks! by Oz Spellman

Technically, you could be loud and set off sparks and stay still all at the same time. It was hard though. It was just such a natural accompaniment to wave your arms around at the same time. And that was an extra attention-getter. It did, however, keep threatening Oz's balance, so he tried to keep extraneous movements to a minimum. Holding his arms out and maintaining some forward momentum helped with balance, like riding a bike or a broom, but he tried to keep it just to that.

His challenges to keep his balance and not flail too much became more challenging when a rock flew at him out of the path. Ah. That was the downside of attention-getting. He seemed to have attracted the attention of some kind of rock-throwing monster.

"Petrificus totalus! he cast, once he had regained his balance. It was a wild shot, in the general direction the rock had come from, and not very likely to hit, given that he wasn't totally sure where to aim. He crept forward, keeping his wand steady and trying to peer into the area of maze the rock had come from. From what he could see, it seemed empty. Maybe the monster had moved?

He probably ought to investigate... He was torn between that, and his current strategy. This felt like a good strategy. Which, given that he thought that, possibly meant it was terrible... He could easily climb back up here later, and he was one of the older ones, so he ought to make sure no one else got rock-monstered. He would have wanted someone to remove rock-monsters from Xav or Henry's path.

He spongified the ground, and jumped down, landing slightly harder than he expected, but not hard enough to hurt permanently. Glancing back at where he had stood, he had an idea to keep his strategy going. He pointed his wand at the air. What he was aiming for was a jaunty 'Oz woz here' in cool graffiti style writing. But perhaps he was focused more on style than substance. The letters were cool, but looked more like 'Ozzozzere' but eh, close enough. People would realise.

He crept around the corner the rock had come from, wand drawn.

OOC: From what I understand, he aimed and is investigating in a place Iris.no longer is, but take it as you will.

13 Oz Spellman Thanks! 1514 0 5

Xarryn Bavol

August 27, 2022 11:05 AM

There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Or at least at the top of this tree. by Xarryn Bavol

OOC: There's no way a first year is getting past whatever age line is around the boggart that Val and Lydia haven't defeated yet, so he's in a different part of the maze. BIC:

Xarryn walked into the maze, feeling ready for anything. Professor Clouds had said there would be nothing he shouldn't be able to handle and he took that to heart, losing the butterflies that had begun to grow as he waited and waited and waited for his turn to finally start the challenge. It had seemed like ages before Team Seven got to go, but now it was happening and he was in the middle of a hedge maze all by himself and he needed to find the rest of his team.

He could do this. Step one was to find his bearings. He checked the position of the sun, orienting himself to the cardinal directions based on the time of day and the season. He'd been at this latitude and longitude long enough to have a good sense where it was supposed to be at any given time of the day.

Step two was to get an idea of which way he should be going. To that end, he looked for something tall enough to climb to see over the hedges. There was no convenient mainmast for him to scramble up, sadly, and he didn't know enough magic yet to make one. But he did see a tree not terribly far away. So that was the intermediary direction he needed to go.

He took his current path as far as it allowed, but when it turned Xarryn did not. The hedge was pretty thick but it was no match for a determined Pecari and he just pushed right through it. He had at least four new scratches and his shirt was torn when he emerged on the other side, but he was closer to the tree and he'd saved a ton of time. He did the same thing with the next hedge that got between him and his goal. Now his shorts were torn, and he was bleeding from a few more places, but this did not phase him. They were small wounds and barely hurt.

He had reached the tree and that was what was important. He climbed up the tree and discovered trees are not like masts. They have leaves and leaves make it hard to get a good view of what the maze looked like and where everyone else was inside it.

But they had taught him the sparks charm, and from up here a lot of people should be able to see them from pretty far away in the maze, so he just started shooting green sparks out in every cardinal direction so people knew he was here and they should come this way. If enough people noticed, maybe he'd draw in the whole team!

He kept shooting out sparks, climbing up a little higher too where the branches were a bit thinner so his sparks would escape the tree's boundaries a little easier, but he was concerned the green sparks wouldn't show so well against the green leaves of the tree. They'd said red was specifically for emergencies, but they hadn't said a thing about blue sparks, so he interspersed some blue sparks out along with the green ones, hoping they'd draw the eye a little quicker.

1 Xarryn Bavol There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Or at least at the top of this tree. 1560 0 5

Alexei Vorontsov

August 27, 2022 5:11 PM

This is very close to an ideal game! by Alexei Vorontsov

As a rule, Alexei Vorontsov was not known for his enthusiasms. Not that he was excessively dour or ill-tempered – far from it. He was not even especially devoted to Russian-style stoicism; he had long since picked up the American habit of smiling automatically when he met someone’s eyes (even if his brain did still suddenly inform him this was disingenuous at the most random of times) and when he wasn’t doing that, he tended to regard his surroundings with a sort of mellow goodwill. House placements aside, anyone who remembered his older sisters would have likely thought him far more like his Teppenpaw sister Katerina than his Pecari sister Tatiana…most of the time, anyway.

This attitude held through the whole first part of the day, extending to telling his roommate (who was on another team) and his teammates to “have good luck today” equally pleasantly. Within five minutes of entering the maze, however, a transformation had overtaken him – one only tangentially related to the spells in the Gardens today, and not directly an effect of magic at all – and he was, by the time he found another person, bearing an unusually close resemblance to Tatiana. His auburn hair was untidy, his grey eyes were sparkling, and he grinned easily and automatically upon spotting the little Beginner who sometimes wore funny formal clothes as he said, “Hello!”

There was very little real danger in this maze – of that, Alexei felt quite confident. Getting squashed was not an outcome he thought would be allowed, no matter how much it looked like it was. Knowing about the true nature of something, though, was not necessarily a reason to acknowledge it, and Alexei had happily ignored the lack of real danger when he had been confronted by an obstacle of stones which had been taller than his head and which had moved, trying (ostensibly) to crush him. He’d had to move his feet and his wand quickly to dodge them all without allowing any of them to touch him, as he assumed that making a mistake would result in losing points of some kind, plus it was more fun if he took it more seriously. Success had put him in such a good mood that he’d nearly walked right into a wall that he couldn’t even see not long after.

It seemed Cole (Alexei had to remind himself not to call him “Kolya,” as his name sounded very like one of the diminutives for Nikolai) had found another invisible wall. “It is a wall that is not visible?” he asked. “I found one of these also. I…could not make it go away,” he admitted, while waving to Iris’ brother on the other side of the not-wall. “I had to find another way to go after some time.”

16 Alexei Vorontsov This is very close to an ideal game! 1531 0 5

Lyla Holland

August 27, 2022 7:52 PM

I'm free! I'm free! by Lyla Holland

OOC: Isla removing the age line approved by her author BIC:

No sooner had Isla dropped the age line (with far less excitement than Lyla was imagining there would be) than the trio heard someone coming down the path behind them. Lyla craned her neck to see around the older girls.

She didn’t have long to wait until a blond mop of hair bobbed into view. Like a beacon against the dark green of the hedges, Hans came through, looking for all the world like he’d won the lottery. It wasn’t until Hans mentioned that they had half of their team-well, over half, now- that Lyla realized that it meant that the challenge was half over already. They’d only had to find their teammates, after all, not get out of the maze. Which seemed strange, as a maze was meant to be solved, but perhaps the ‘powers that be’ didn’t want them to wander out of the maze accidentally before they’d found their cohorts, and so had decided that finding each other was enough of a ‘solve’?

Hans said that he had a friend helping him find their teammates, which didn’t make much sense, and sounded like cheating, besides. Lyla was about to comment on it when he asked if she had any dead animals. Which was possibly the last thing she’d expected anybody to ask her, ever.

Her mouth hung open, her brain trying to make sense of his request. Was this some sort of necromancy-voodoo-something spell that was supposed to find people? Lyla was pretty sure that sort of thing would be frowned upon at Sonora, along with most of the wizarding world. The Princess and The Frog had utterly terrified her, even though she was nearly nine when Lena had become obsessed with the film.

But Hans didn’t seem like the type to dabble in Dark Magic, with his generally cheerful disposition. Besides, who ever heard of an evil Teppenpaw?

And so, Lyla chalked up the strange request to being A Boy Thing.

“No, sorry,” she said, shaking her head.

She had thought she would feel small, surrounded by older students, casting her silly little first-year spells, but the more time she spent with her teammates, the more she felt like a valuable and important part of the team. Nobody had made fun of her at the meet and greet when she’d said she was new, nobody laughed at her for bonking her nose on the stupid age line, and nobody looked down at her because she didn’t know what an age line was.

She was starting to feel really good about winning this challenge.

“What’s next?” she asked her cohorts, “Who’s Redrock? Is that somebody’s nickname, or something?”

64 Lyla Holland I'm free! I'm free! 1559 0 5

Leviosa Scurlock

August 27, 2022 8:28 PM

Hooray! by Leviosa Scurlock

Levi was excited for the challenges. She didn’t know anyone on her team at all well, which was the whole point, and she was very excited to get to know them all better, especially Valentine and Xarryn—Valentine because who wouldn’t be excited to get to know Valentine Duell better, and Xarryn because he seemed to lead a very exciting life, and was actually close enough to her in age that they might become proper friends.

However, as they took on their first task, Levi was met with disappointment—they wouldn’t be working together. Not really, anyway. Even when they got to the after party, most of the other teams would be there already, so her teammates would probably disperse and check in on their friends. Oh well… Maybe if she found someone quickly, the two of them could bond over working through the rest of the maze together.

She stepped in, finding herself alone, and began to make her way forward. She was keeping her eyes up, looking for signs of trouble, until suddenly she was thrown backwards by an invisible force. That had felt like a knockback jinx, and—from her new position on the ground—she could in fact now see a hazy green line across the path which her foot must have hit. Picking herself up, she very carefully, she stepped over it, finding that this was sufficient to not get pushed back again. She kept her eyes on the ground from then on, until she suddenly found herself the victim of a tooth chattering jinx. Spinning around, she found this beam was at head height, and she must not have noticed it whilst keeping her eyes fixed on the ground. It was easy enough to finite the tooth chattering jinx (she just had to take a steadying breath and do it quickly to get the word out), but this was starting to feel mean. She was happy to defeat obstacles, but she didn’t like being tricked and tripped and jinxed without a fair chance to defend herself. Maybe it would feel different if she was with a friend (or a potential friend) and they could look out for each other or laugh about it, but on her own it wasn’t funny.

She moved forward more slowly, feeling like she was letting everyone down by not being quick, but wanting to make sure she scanned all of the space around her as she moved. She ducked another beam, almost tempted to turn and put her finger through it afterwards. She felt glad to have avoided it, but she couldn’t deny the curiosity about what it would have done. The feeling wasn’t quite strong enough to make her want to risk it on herself though.

Her newly developed tendency to keep a careful eye on her surroundings proved useful. At first, when there was a flicker of light in her peripheral vision, she paused, searching her surroundings for a tripwire. But there was none, and she expanded her search to the wider horizon just in time to see blue and green sparks pouring out of a tree. Oh! Someone! Someone was over there! Levi felt her heart skip and swell at the promise of human contact. She could see a junction up ahead, and when she got there, she took the path that went towards the tree—though of course, in a maze, there was no guarantee of that being the right one.

She was forced to twist and turn towards and away from it, and to get her shoes wet crossing a river. She decided not to waste time drying them, but squelched onwards, wanting to find a friend as soon as possible.

This plan was thwarted when she came to a door, about half her height, in a panel of wood that blocked the path.

“Alohomora!” she cast confidently, but when she tried the handle, the door didn’t budge. She tried the spell again, but it was clearly the wrong one. She was so close to the tree now. It looked like it might even be just the other side of here. It was possible that the path would take her off in some other direction, but it looked hopeful enough that she didn’t want to be defeated by some stupid, unfair door that wouldn’t respond to the only door spell she knew! She was a second year! She couldn’t blast it out of the way or vanish it. Opening stuff was all she had!

She ran her fingers around the edge, looking for other ways, and really trying to think. This was a challenge, and maybe there were puzzles as well? What was puzzling about this door? Well, besides the fact that it wouldn’t open was the fact that it was small. She wasn’t sure what that meant though. She peered into the crack around it, looking for how it locked, trying to think if she could use something else. But there was nothing visible. There was no locking mechanism—there wasn’t even a keyhole either, actually. So if it wasn’t locked, why couldn’t she open it? She continued to run her fingers around the gap on every side. She went around twice before it hit her. The crack ran all the way around. There was no point where it was interrupted. The door was not a door. Not yet, anyway. And maybe, if it had been a full sized door, that would have been far too big for her to work with, but it was just a little one, that at a crouch, she could get through. And that was small enough for her to manage this spell on.

“Cardinatus!” she cast, her chest bubbling with hope and excitement. She pushed and—yes! With its newly added hinge charm, it swung easily. She had done it! She had solved the puzzle! With a broad grin, she stooped through the door, and was rewarded with a clear run to the tree on the other side. With only quick glances along her path, she hurried towards it.

“Hello?” she called up as she arrived.

13 Leviosa Scurlock Hooray! 1545 0 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

August 27, 2022 8:43 PM

Option three also good by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Sadie was just stepping around a corner, when something barged right into her. She jumped back, throwing up a quick shield and then felt ridiculous when the ‘threat’ proved to be one of her teammates. At least she was the kind to react defensively instead of offensively to a perceived attack. Imagine if she’d k.o’d one of the younger students she was supposed to be in charge of!

Blushing a little, but also smiling with relief, she dropped her shield. Eben seemed… well, slightly orange on top, but also, more concerningly, not to trust that she was who she seemed to be.

“I’m Sadie,” she promised. She tried to think of something that only she would know, that Eben would know that she knew. She quoted back to him a few of the things that he’d told her about himself at their opening meeting, that really being the only interaction they’d ever had.

“You seem like you’ve been through it a bit,” she said, noting his hair and his general demeanour. She didn’t move to fix his new dye job with her wand. One thing Sadie had lots of experience with was dealing with small, spooked out creatures, and you absolutely had to make sure they were settled down and trusted you before you started pointing nasty bang-bang sticks at them, even if what you were firing off was for their own good. Luckily, unlike most of her usual patients, Eben could actually talk back to her. So she went with the simple and straight forward thing that she could never normally do and simply asked… “Are you okay?”

OOC: Sorry, this is gonna get a bit wonky due to not being able to make separate sub-sub-threads. Just gonna have to roll with it. Y'all know who is talking to to who.

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Option three also good 1480 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

August 27, 2022 9:24 PM

Speak for yourself... by Xavier Lundstrom

Xavier felt himself tense at the voice behind him. The odds weren’t particularly in his favour, he supposed. He’d already found Mab, which meant that of the other people they could come across, there was a three against two chance of it being someone who made him uncomfortable.

He wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much. The fact that his magic was stunted was scarcely a secret. Unlike academic work, where you could keep your hand down or your paper hidden, practical magic was very much on show. Even if you didn’t work with someone directly, everyone had a sense of how everyone else was doing, and where they ranked. Everyone could look over at other work benches, and compare how they were doing with each other. By now, it was definitely no secret that Xavier was the weakest student in his year, and that he possibly was being overtaken by especially competent third years on a regular basis. And sure, Jasper had never said anything about it, at least not to his face, but Xavier also hadn’t been forced into a claustrophobically small interaction with him, where Jasper would be directly confronted with all the magic Xavier still couldn’t do and would have something to lose as a result of it. Xavier worried about all of his teammates being mad at him for that last point—no one liked having to carry a weak player—but Jasper, Liesl and Alexander worried him the most. They all absolutely exuded old magic—the Brockert name, the numerals on Alexander’s name, the way Liesl dressed… He wasn’t totally sure what it meant, but he read it as ‘super into my own witchiness.’ They all undoubtedly thought being incompetent at magic was one of the worst things a person could be.

And, of course, Jasper would find him not when he was doing something super cool like using magic to help him scale a hedge, but when he was stuck. For a second, he imagined just deferentially bowing Jasper through the gap with an ‘after you’ and watching him smack his face on the invisible wall. But that was horrible. He wasn’t that kind of person. He just didn’t want to have to say ‘I’m stuck’ to someone who was think less of him for that.

“We hit a snag,” he admitted, knocking on the barrier. It didn’t actually make any noise, so he kind of just looked like he was tapping the air, but he trusted that Jasper would work it out. After all, he’d grown up in a land where invisible walls were perfectly normal.

13 Xavier Lundstrom Speak for yourself... 1529 0 5

Theo Spurn

August 27, 2022 9:34 PM

Messy is worse than hard by Theo Spurn

Theo had met Claire before she started Sonora. She had bumped him and then her dad had said ‘sorry’ about it even though that was not how apologies were supposed to work. This was not something Theo held resentment for, it was just a fact about Claire that was filed in his brain—she was, and always would be, The Unapologetic Bumper. He had only mentioned this twice since they’d been teamed up.

Now, as her face and shoulders (which were all wrong) appeared over the hedge, he added Nonsensical Question Asker to her list of known traits. Did she even want to know what? And how was he supposed to know what she wanted to know? It was inside her brain.

“You’re a mess,’ the Theo-ish patch of shimmery air said instead of answering her question. That fact seemed much more pressing right now. Claire’s face had scratches on, which made his stomach squirm as he imagined the feeling that went with it. “I’m going to fix that,” he said, then remembering something else important about casting spells, especially medical ones, on other people, he added, “With your consent.” Though why anyone wouldn’t want to become unscratched, he had no idea.

13 Theo Spurn Messy is worse than hard 1476 0 5

Liesl Brockert

August 28, 2022 4:23 PM

Me. Yay? by Liesl Brockert

Ever since the Challenge Team Meet and Greet, Liesl had been feeling pretty bad about herself. Even though Jasper had been giving her hints about what she was good at, the third year still felt like it wasn’t much. The things she’d said, the reminders that her cousin gave her, were basically exactly little things that one said when they were reaching for things that they were good at when they were in a situation like this one where they were being asked to say what they were good at.And the only obviously useful one-the Transfiguration talent-wasn’t even hers alone.

Regardless of whether or not she had more natural talent in it than her teammates-aside from Jasper-the bottom line was that Liesl was just not special. She was unique-if one was nice about it, different if they weren’t-but that didn’t make her special. The Teppenpaw did not have a talent of her own that she was better at than anyone else or that most people couldn’t do, like Hans’ parseltongue. She was simultaneously extremely weird and painfully ordinary and mediocre. Liesl both stood out and didn’t.

And it made her feel pretty low. So, she did what she always did when she felt bad, she wrote to Uncle Cory and confided in him. Of course, he wrote back quickly as usual. Which was the case even when she wrote to him normally about what was going on in her life. However, this letter was full of encouragement. Okay, so he’d told her basically the same things as Jasper regarding talents, along with pointing out she was good with her cousins and Krisalyn. Which was also not going to help in the Challenges since she was a third year and the only people on her team younger than her were second years.

What had helped Liesl feel better was her uncle pointing out that she was a good person, which was much more important than being talented, and that she also had something even better than a special talent, which was a good friendship based on something in common. All good friendships were important, but for someone like Liesl, who was different and didn’t have much in common with most people, finding a person with whom she shared common ground was a very big deal.

None of this especially would help much with the Challenge, but it did make the Teppenpaw feel better about herself as a person. Like, she was special to Uncle Cory and maybe she was special to Hans too,.She hoped so,since he certainly was to her. And Liesl had the approval of the snakes on her friend’s ranch which she thought was probably important to him.

Anyway, there was also another way that her uncle had helped her. Generally speaking,the third year had a wardrobe that, while representing her and who she was, and that she hated putting robes over,was overall not really appropriate for what tasks she might face in the Challenges, based on what her cousins had said about them. It was not a good idea to dress in Elegant Gothic Lolita clothing when doing an obstacle course or desert survival. Granted, Liesl would not be doing those exact things, but she might be doing something similar and the poster said only to bring wands giving absolutely no other information. Which actually made her wonder if Uncle Mortimer was behind it.

Still, she wasn’t taking chances on it. So, in addition to a letter filled with heartfelt
encouragement-actually two, since Liesl had gotten a second one from her uncle this morning, along with a cute little knitted eyeball stuffed toy that must have been knitted by Aunt Amy. The stuffed toy market as pretty much devoid of eyeballs, minus the ones in the head of the stuffed animals-her uncle had sent her more appropriate attire, mainly t-shirts and leggings that had Liesl’s favorite things on them and even a pair of sneakers with skulls on them. She suspected her uncle had transfigured the pattern onto those.

And, of course, Liesl had to ask her uncle. Her mother never would have sent her clothes that she liked. Now, she got to wear something that represented.who she was while also being in the sort of clothing that was appropriate if she had to do something where her regular attire would not be so. Plus, she didn’t have to cover them up with robes so that was a plus.

And it was something she needed today, since she was so nervous about the Challenges given her general mediocrity and less than mediocre athletic ability when she was on a team with people who were good at sports. Her clothing was her armor

Currently, she was wearing the sneakers along with a pair of skull leggings and a t-shirt with a big eyeball on it. The Teppenpaw had considered wearing the skull one, because skulls all the way, but the eyeball was supposed to,like, ward off the evil eye and all things considered, she felt that was probably a good idea. Maybe there was nobody evil around but maybe it would protect from being made fun of or having a difficult event that did not play to Liesl’s strengths. Which she guessed would be impossible since she didn’t have any, but at least one that didn’t emphasize the things she was downright bad at like sports.

Anyway, it turned out that her team was going to have quite a wait. They were doing something where teams went one by one, in chronological order, and she was on Team 8. Liesl went back to her room to get her book to read while she waited though she spent some of the time talking to-and being reassured by-Jasper, as well as talking to Samara a little.

Finally it was their turn to go. As Professor Skies gave the instructions, she decided it was definitely a good thing that her uncle had sent her the clothes, because her usual attire certainly would have made things a bit more difficult for her. And Liesl did not need for things to become more difficult for her.

Of course, while a maze full of obstacles sounded like what Angelique would say was “pandering to the athletes”-something which both be terrible for Liesl personally but possibly go well overall for her team, given the fact that they had athletes, assuming that she didn’t somehow mess things up for them-but Professor Skies made it sound like they were supposed to use magic. And the third year was actually pretty good at magic in general, not just Transfig, it just wasn’t something that made her special and the good kind of unique. She might be better than some people, but others were just as good or better than her. However, Liesl could still most likely be successful using magic in this event. At least she hoped so.

The Teppenpaw took off down her path. Eventually, she came to a spot where her path was blocked…by charmed skeletons! How utterly cool! She couldn’t help but grin.

Of course, then Liesl realized that they were an obstacle, not something put there to enjoy and be cheered up by. Pity, it was sort of a shame to destroy them. However, she had to do what she had to do. “Sorry guys.” She apologized before casting a Tickling Charm on them. “ Rictumsempra ” They fell apart and, after a moment of silence to honor them, Liesl continued on her way.

She walked through corridors where the hedge seemed to decide to grow up right in front of her, blocking her way. “ Diffendo ” Unlike the skeletons, these were not the sort of things that the Teppenpaw regretted destroying at all. They were merely an annoyance to her.

Then Liesl came to a clearing where the ground seemed to be crawling with… “Rats!” She squealed. How utterly adorable ! She had always found rats and mice to be extremely cute, even though she knew that they had to sometimes be sacrificed as snake food. Still, they were so extremely adorable that Liesl would have pet them, had she not been a bit afraid they might bite her.

Oh wait, this was another obstacle. She was supposed to somehow vanquish them. Which meant…it was time to Transfigure! It might not be only her talent, but it was her best one.

Okay so rats were small and gray and so were rocks. Or there was the mice to snuff box spell. That might work on rats too so Liesl decided to try that. Fortunately, it worked. Now the ground was littered with snuff boxes,

Then she saw the green sparks. Which meant…teammate! Hopefully it was Jasper, who was absolutely the person on her team that the third year felt the most comfortable with since she knew him previously and he’d been encouraging towards her and he was even less athletic than her, or at least hated Quidditch and flying more . And while, judging by Professor Skies’ remarks,she could not cross into his path, he could cross into hers.

However, when Liesl got there, she spotted Fortune instead of her cousin. Apparently, she was the one who had crossed into the second year’s path. Stil, this meant she had found a teammate so that was good, and Fortune did seem fairly nice. “Hey Fortune!” She greeted him.

OOC: Fortune had a good point, so Liesl's response is to him since it's more likely that she'd cross into the second year path than meet up with the older students

11 Liesl Brockert Me. Yay? 1537 0 5

Graham Osbrook

August 28, 2022 9:15 PM

I don't think it's time to jump. by Graham Osbrook

Graham was unsure what to think of the composition of his team. On one hand, they had the Head Boy, who...was a little unusual, but one expected that of Aladrens, and presumably, the 'Head Boy' part overruled the 'odd' bit. Hopefully, the 'Aladrens are smart' bit overruled the 'odd' bit when it came to the guy from Claire's year (Graham thought he was the one she identified primarily as 'the guy who wears sunglasses indoors,' which he was...pretty sure would at least be an improvement over 'guy who annoys portraits'). Tommy was fine as far as he knew. And then there were...some first years and a girl who appeared to wish to frighten or intimidate.

And him. He was also...here, mostly just glad that it was this year and not last year. The pressure to figure his life out and perform at a higher level than he comfortably could hadn't lessened much, but a little was something - enough that he didn't feel in immediate danger of a nervous breakdown most days, anyway. This was a definite improvement and probably an asset to the group as well.

"Good luck, everyone," he said, to be polite, as their group was called out to the Gardens, and then he stepped into the maze, all tensed up and expecting something weird to happen....

And something weird did happen. He ended up in a completely random part of the Gardens that he didn't recognize, with no logical connection between it and where he had just come from (looking over his shoulder revealed that nope, he could not see the opening back toward the school anymore). It didn't, however, feel any different than walking into the place he 'should' have ended up would have. He didn't know if that was better or worse than the alternative - for about five seconds. Then he realized that no, feeling something weird was almost always the worse option when it came to magic, so he shook his head a little, took his wand out, and proceeded with caution, but without letting the inherent creepiness of being alone in an unfamiliar part of the maze get to him. Much, anyway.

At least it isn't CATS, he thought. Or RATS. Beside those, most things count as an improvement.

Most things. There were, however, worse things. Such as walking on what looked like a perfectly innocuous span of the ground and then realizing suddenly that he was sinking, and sinking rapidly.

Think. It could be some kind of illusion, or it could be, well, some actual sinking situation. Probably better to assume the latter; if he was wrong, the former probably would be easier to address later in the process than the latter. So he should address the second option first. What to do, what to do...probably couldn't levitate his shoes out and get himself out at the same time...Dehydration charm?

The dehydration charm worked, so the ground, beneath an illusion making it look ordinary, became dry sand instead of sucking mud. It also allowed Graham to learn something about himself: apparently, in a crisis, he was pretty calm. It was just afterward that he felt a little rattled. Which...he guessed at least it worked out, but he hoped it wore off fast, because who knew what was around the next corner? That was why he hated mazes, and did his best to scold his sister about spending so much time out here without actually letting on that he really worried about her, since....he loved Claire. He guessed she probably returned the feeling. He was pretty sure they would both rather walk on hot coals than talk about it or acknowledge it outright in any other way. That would just be...weird, wouldn't it?

The next obstacles were less easy to miss ahead of time, and he gained confidence as he went on....right up until he suddenly found himself in the air.

He didn't have a problem with heights...when he had a broom, or else was standing on something with guard rails. Something solid and familiar, something with spells built in for its safety. At the moment, he was not totally sure he was dealing with either of those situations, not least because he feared for the stability of anything that suddenly started rising out of the ground at a pretty quick clip. He could have jumped safely enough at one point, but he was sufficiently startled that this window of opportunity passed quickly (at least by his none-too-adventurous standards). Which...left him with a few options....

"Descendo," he tried, figuring it was worth a try before he tried to conjure a ladder from thin air (because he wasn't about to break off something and try to Transfigure it from there; the platform he was standing on was not nearly big enough for him to feel like that was a good idea). He wasn't too surprised, though, when it didn't prove amenable to moving under a relatively easy charm like that. So he could try to cast some kind of cushioning charm on the ground and jump, or else try to conjure a ladder....

A rare flash of creativity struck him, and he - very carefully - took off his shoes. Then he started tying the laces together between them. It would only be one direct Transfiguration - but with a visual model structurally similar to the end product, he thought he could get a few rungs out of it, then put a stretching charm on the whole.

The end result was not as sturdy-feeling as he might have liked, but it seemed at least a better option than jumping and counting on landing in the right place, and on having cast a charm at that distance. The wobbling made him question that assumption a few times (at least jumping would have been quicker), and he ended up jumping away before he got to the bottom when he heard what sounded a lot like splintering wood, but - it worked well enough, he guessed. He was on the ground again with nothing broken and alive and stuff. Now just to get his shoes back....

That done, he proceeded a little way and found humans. "Now we're talking," he said approvingly. "One from each class, huh? And three down, four to go."

16 Graham Osbrook I don't think it's time to jump. 1498 0 5

Mara Morales

August 28, 2022 10:37 PM

Duly noted. by Mara Morales

A certain tendency toward stoicism was sometimes a disadvantage for Mara’s social life, but when it had come to the meet and greet with her team, she thought it might have come in handy for once. She had no objection to anyone for any personal reasons, but…Lavender, Amethyst, and Lenny were perfectly unobjectionable people. All three of them had ‘potential customer’ written all over them, and that meant that they were most likely Okay by her standards, provided Lavender and Amethyst (she could not seriously include Lenny in this provision; if he was the girls’ type of person, he was the best dang actor in the wizarding world) kept any opinions they had about Mara’s parentage to themselves. None of them, however, screamed ‘winning options in a challenge’ at her. Stanley and Gus seemed like better options, but the truth was, she didn’t have much clearer of a read on either of them than she did on Yarielis, despite having been in classes with one of them for most of her career here. The real challenge, she’d decided, was definitely working with a team that you didn’t know the strengths and weaknesses of, though it could have been worse. At least they hadn’t put active enemies together just to see what would happen, or worse, by pure accident….

On the day itself, a maze was not, to Mara’s mind at least, amazing news – at least not when she defined ‘amazing’ as ‘surprising.’ It seemed like an obvious challenge, throwing them into an obstacle course, and the Gardens were an easy place to construct one – the structure itself did half the work for them. If they hadn’t been thrown in there, then it might have even been…amazing. If Mara had had the sense of humor of a sixth grader. Which she totally did not.

She had to admit, though, that it sounded like they had come up with some doozies to go in the provided structure from what they were told before going in. Still – hardly a team exercise, was it? Unless the obstacles got harder as they started gathering a larger group back together....

Well, nothing to do about it if they did, and nothing much for her to say to them in the way of advice. Mara had never done many mazes at all, and had done approximately zero on foot before. The closest to 3D she’d gotten had been those little toys she got sometimes in Easter baskets or Christmas stockings, tiny handheld plastic squares containing a tiny metal ball, tinier than a baby’s earrings, that one tried to navigate from one side to the other. Mara was pretty sure that those toys didn’t really constitute knowing anything about mazes.

“Good luck, everybody,” she said, and then stepped in.

Immediately, she became disoriented. She shut her eyes hard and held them for a moment, hoping to figure out, when she opened them again, if it was just because she wasn’t where she expected to be, or if it was a magical effect. She ended up coming to the conclusion that it was a combination of the two – partially the wrongness of the geometry, partially that the walls were…curved, in a way they usually weren’t. There were a lot of things about this school that Mara was sure she didn’t know, but on the whole, she thought she knew the Gardens pretty well after jogging in them as much as she had for the past six and a half years. The walls weren’t supposed to look like that.

Taking a deep breath, she went forward – only to promptly find herself closing her eyes again, this time trying to shut out too much light – it was as if the air was full of confetti, but instead of being made of pieces of plastic or foil, it was shards of multicolored light. Very bright shards of multicolored light, that left colors exploding behind her eyelids, and which made it nigh-impossible to see clearly where she was going, between having her eyes squinted almost shut and the air being full of moving colors –

”Finite incantatem,” she snapped, and the lights dissipated…only, a moment later, for her to find something attempting to wind itself around her leg.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered, staring at the Devil’s Snare. However, it did not seem at all inclined to tell her it was kidding, or in fact to kid at all; it was now wound around both of her ankles. The flurry of lights must have kept it at bay at first – all while also blinding her, so that by disabling one trap, she set off another. And now a tentacle was reaching toward her wand arm –

”Incendio!”

A tricky proposition, disabling this thing: creating enough fire to make it withdraw, but not to burn herself, or risk burning her surroundings too much. She thought she managed it, but by the time she pulled herself out of the snare and stumbled into the next clearing, she started to wonder if a) she’d made a mistake, or b) the maze was somehow reading her mind, because she found herself surrounded by fire.

“Okay, fair enough,” she said to the air – and then smiled.

By the time she heard the sound of human voices again, she had extinguished the fire trap, found pieces to a key and assembled it in order to get through a door, navigated an area which had appeared to have a ceiling which had kept trying to drop what had looked like boulders on her, and was in an unusually good mood. As weird as it was to have such real-seeming challenges, it was also kinda – fun. Or at least, defeating the obstacles was as good a way as she’d found lately to get a dopamine hit.

She blamed the dopamine hits for why it briefly crossed her mind to use a Blasting Curse to clear the hedges between her and what she assumed were her teammates, before she remembered that oh, yeah – risking injuring her classmates was probably not a great idea. So instead, she took severing charms to a wall of hedges and then another, with silent apologies to Professor Xavier, until she found herself emerging onto a path with Lavender and Lenny.

“Having fun?” she asked, with a rare grin on her frequently rather serious face.

OOC: So, I googled around for ideas, and in the process came across a wheel of 'ways to enliven your lockdown' which included the phrase 'murder in the dark.' I assume it's referring to a game, but...needed to someone to know that I saw that and raised an eyebrow in rather Mara-like fashion at it.

16 Mara Morales Duly noted. 1472 0 5

Morgan Garrett

August 28, 2022 10:58 PM

Adapt, improvise, overcome. by Morgan Garrett

Morgan didn’t know what the first challenge was going to be, and she didn’t know how to prepare for something for which they’d only been told to bring their wands. She was also still not (the opinions of her classmates apparently to the contrary for…some reason?) too sure what she was supposed to do in terms of being a leader-type. Therefore, she spent most of the lead-up to the first challenge doing what she’d done during the meet and greet, which was desperately suppressing the desire to make a joke about having two goddesses on the team, but wondering about one of them being the goddess of discord….

Luckily, her team was the first to go. The downsides of resembling her father physically had decreased from what they had once been, when she was little and he hadn’t been around and her face and hair and eyes had all strongly reminded the family of someone only Anna had even seemed to remotely like, but the downsides of having inherited his sense of humor as well seemed…if not infinite, at least as close as they could get without crossing that line.

“Cool!” she said out loud when the challenge was described to them. She didn’t know how true this assessment would be, but it at least sounded pretty cool…as well as pretty difficult. Morgan was pretty sure she didn’t have much of a sense of direction – plus, it looked like they had done some magic stuff on the hedges, too, which meant they might be kind of difficult to deal with even aside from obstacles…but whatever. Wasn’t part of the leader thing being enthusiastic? And what was she if not over-enthusiastic about everything, maybe especially when she thought it might be a bad idea?

Once she found herself inside, she progressed a little way before she had to disable a gate that was locked on the side opposite from her, which did make it a little more tricky, it turned out, than just using Alohomora (unless it was that they’d enchanted it not to work with the easiest of the available spells). After that, she got part of the way through assembling a puzzle that she had to finish to progress before Oz Spellman got…noisy. Like, really noisy.

Hey, nobody had said that wasn’t a valid strategy, right? Adapt, improvise, overcome and all that. Morgan began making her way toward where he sounded like he was, wondering what the spell he was now casting at the top of his lungs was about, at least until she heard running footsteps from a path parallel to hers. That sounded…well, that could be anything, really. Could be a trap, even. She glanced around the corner before rounding it, but saw nothing too threatening-looking, and so stepped out onto it just before Oz crept around from another direction.

“I like your style,” she informed him. “Was that you running through here a second ago, though?”

16 Morgan Garrett Adapt, improvise, overcome. 1470 0 5

Eben Sosna

August 28, 2022 11:10 PM

Even if it does hurt my ego a little. by Eben Sosna

The entity in front of him knew that he could see almost exactly six inches away from his face without his glasses, that he had read most of the library’s material on ghosts already, and that he tried to learn an extra new spell every week. It was probably really Sadie. It had sounded kind of like too much work to create a fake Sadie at all, but it was definitely way too much work to make one that knew things. Eben nodded, visibly relaxing as this information processed.

“Sorry,” he said. “Thought I should probably check – I got stuck in a fog a while back, and I kept thinking I saw other people in it…took a while to realize they weren’t real,” he admitted, feeling perhaps more embarrassed about that than he should have done. He had always prided himself on seeing what was really there no matter how hard other people tried to convince him that it wasn’t real, and while he knew now that it was just because he could literally see things that his family couldn’t because of the whole magic thing, it was still easiest to think of himself as really observant. “Not too long, though,” he added, not entirely truthfully to his own mind, to save nonexistent face.

He grimaced a little when his state was pointed out to him. “Yeah. Turns out reacting, uh, you know, deciding what to do in the moment…little harder than it is in class, when they tell you what spells to use,” he confessed, wondering if today was just Embarrassing Confession Day or something. “I’m getting better at it, though. No worries. I, uh, guess you haven’t seen anyone else, either, though?”

16 Eben Sosna Even if it does hurt my ego a little. 1538 0 5

Claire Osbrook

August 28, 2022 11:49 PM

...Yeah, fair enough. by Claire Osbrook

“I know,” Claire said when Theo’s voice, which seemed localized to the shimmery, heat-haze like effect going on, informed her that she was a mess, as though she didn’t know. She was almost certain that her parents would have scolded her for not being a sweet girl despite the ostensibly pleasant tone, and she guessed she probably even would have deserved it, this time. Since she was ninety-nine percent sure that he hadn’t noticed the undertones, though, she decided not to worry about it too much, especially when she couldn’t help but think he was trying to get under her skin, with how he just kept bringing up that stupid thing from years ago at the Concert….

Since testing the strength of her branch-steps indefinitely didn’t seem like the brightest idea, she finished climbing to the top of the hedge as she spoke and then dropped to the ground near Theo and Samara. She pulled the hair tie out of her hair and redid her ponytail, thus tidying up that much of her own appearance.

“Uh…that’s nice of you, thank you, but I’m all right,” she said when he paused after having previously announced that he was going to fix the problem of her being a mess. “It looks like you and Samara both ran into worse than I did. Do you know if reparo works on sleeves? Let’s not go back the way I came, those pixies are awful. That’s the only real problem I’ve run into. I guess we should stick together, now that we've found each other," she observed. "It'll hopefully get us out of here quicker."

16 Claire Osbrook ...Yeah, fair enough. 1540 0 5

Mab

August 29, 2022 5:47 PM

This is weird by Mab

Xavier was all right, relatively speaking. He'd clearly run face first into something and it looked like it stung, but nothing serious. No burns from her own fire, no injuries from other encounters, no despair from the pogrebin. Also, no sightings of anyone else.

"Me either," she admitted in mild frustration, both at this unexpected undermining of her attempt to clear a path for her teammate, and the fact that time was ticking and they'd only found each other so far.

Before she could begin to try to figure out how to circumvent the invisible wall that took the hedge's place as a barrier between them, or how to find anyone else, someone else found them. So maybe that part at least was going to work itself out somewhat.

Jasper was, she supposed, by dint of being the other advanced student in their group, her deputy leader, and she found it a bit unbalanced and inefficient that the teachers had placed him in a position that would find her sooner than anyone else (she wasn't sure Xavier could be considered placed well to find her as they'd had to burn down a hedge to see each other and there was still the issue of the wall to deal with). Shouldn't the two oldest students have been placed on opposite sides so they could gather up everyone in their respective halves and meet in the middle? That's how she would have set them up if she'd had a say in any of this, if they'd been allowed to strategize and plan at all.

They hadn't though, and now they had a heavily unbalance distribution with three of their four oldest teammates right here and the younger kids Merlin only knew where. Hopefully, Henry was out there, able to help out some of them.

As Xavier failed to audibly knock on the wall he'd run into, Mab tried to feel around for its dimensions, hoping to figure out where its weak spot was so she could take it down like she had the hedge . . . but she couldn't find it. She was pretty sure she was already reaching past where Xavier had run into a barrier, but she took a careful step closer to him, and poked at his still extended arm, and . . . there was nothing between them. She'd successfully made contact.

Confused, she frowned and stepped back where she'd been originally, and tried again. Still nothing barred her way. "Is it a velocity thing?" she ventured uncertainly. "If you approach too fast it stops you but if you move slow and carefully it's not there anymore?"

Both herself and Xavier were changelings, but Jasper had been born to the fey. She glanced his way, "Do you have any idea what this might be? It's blocking him but not me. I can't feel anything here at all."

1 Mab This is weird 1473 0 5

Hansel Hexenmeister

August 29, 2022 6:26 PM

We can meet in the middle? by Hansel Hexenmeister

Hansel did not realize his mistake until Lyla asked who Redrock was. He abruptly adopted a slightly chagrined nervous expression. "Erm, Redrock is a snake," he admitted. "I rewarded him with the mice I carry around for my own pet snake, and that's how I found you. He's got better senses than us for finding people. And I can . . . talk to him?" That was a secret that was pretty much out of the bag at this point. Nobody who wasn't a Parselmouth could get a snake to go scouting for other people at their request, no matter how many snakes they took care of. That required some pretty sophisticated communication and trust.

"And I just told him to go find more people on the promise of the one mouse I have left and what I can bring him tomorrow, but I think he'd be more willing to keep helping past the next teammate if we had more mice for immediate gratification. He shouldn't take too long though, so I guess we wait for him to come back?"

He jabbed a finger back the way he and Gwendolyn had come from. "He found Gwendolyn pretty quick and led me back to her. I can show you the parting charm I've been using to follow him through the hedges. It's not super hard." It was probably a little over the Beginners' level, especially Lyla who was still new to all things magic, but with a little coaching and practice they could probably get the basics. They had him and Isla to help them actually get through the hedges, but they had a few minutes to spare while Redrock scouted, and learning a new useful spell seemed like a good way to pass the time.

And in fact, it did seem that it wasn't terribly long after he'd demonstrated it a couple times and given them a chance to try it themselves that the rattlesnake poked his head out of a different hedge and hissed, *I found two over this way. Larger female, smaller male.*

*That's great! Thank you!* Han hissed back happily, then translated for everyone else, "He says he found an older girl and a younger boy in that direction, let's go! Once we find them, we'll just have one left to go!"

He parted the hedge for them to follow Redrock to Eben and either Sadie or Bonabelle. Both of those girls could take care of themselves quite well, he was sure (he based this assumption entirely on their age), and he was glad it wasn't one of the younger one who'd been caught out all by themselves all this time while everyone else seemed to be coalescing together. Maybe if the team was very lucky the other two would find the lone remaining teammate (or the other way around) while this subgroup of team six made their way over to them.

1 Hansel Hexenmeister We can meet in the middle? 1524 0 5

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