"But… the delving survival practical with Professor Moonhowl is supposed to be the last class today!" Kat complained, joining the teacher down at the base of the auditorium. "I don't have my gear on…"

"No gear. I'll be testing your body's base abilities," Professor Fern commented without looking back at the raptor girl. "The time to show off your overpriced magic gear will come later, don't fret, Miss Strand."

The double doors at the back of the auditorium opened onto a long corridor, leading toward the rear of the school grounds. As we departed from our seats and filed out behind Professor Fern, I caught Candace and Adelle exchanging glances.

"This is new," Candace murmured from my left side. "I don't recall practical happening this early in the day, it's not on the schedule."

"Dis' new Instructor smells sus," Adelle agreed, glancing at Kristi who was walking on my right. "Super high level delver. She's up to something. Whatever, maybe I will get to punch someone earlier." She stared at Kristi, clearly planning raptor-beatings.

Kristi, for her part, gave me an exasperated look that clearly begged me to stop hanging out with the fox and the cheetah for the good of my high school experience. I ignored her judging glare.

The corridor opened onto Ferguson High's athletic complex. Unexpectedly, it wasn't the manicured park areas I'd seen from the parking lot and inside the campus quad.

This was something far more elaborate, like the set of the Wipeout game show.

The running track field was barely visible beneath recently added upgrades, featuring a military-grade obstacle course. Towering climbing walls bristled with jagged spikes. Rope bridges stretched across pits filled with murky water and mud that twisted and bubbled—likely populated with mud and water Elementals. Mechanical barriers and spinning baton assemblies dotted the course at regular intervals, twirling on their own, featuring overhead sails pushed by wind Elementals.

"Welcome to your first practical assessment!" Professor Fern announced, her voice carrying easily across the assembled students. "A simple test of your prowess as a team! You will go through this obstacle course as many times as you are capable of, as quickly as your heart desires. A very special reward awaits you at the end."

She paused, a predatory smile never leaving her scarred face.

"The rules are simple: no killing, no destruction of course obstacles, and no leaving the designated track boundaries until you're done. Everything else is fair game."

Katherine and her Firestorm teammates were practically vibrating with anticipation, their pradavarian instincts clearly triggered by the promise of competition. Around us, other prad students were stretching, slitted eyes already calculating the fastest route through the obstacles.

Something about Professor Fern's devious expression was setting off every alarm bell in my head.

This wasn't just a simple physical challenge—it was a trap of some kind, and I had the sinking feeling that the students most eager to prove their dominance were walking straight into it.

"Oi, Kristi, get yo ass over here!" Kat yelled.

Kristi twitched. She glanced at me.

"I'll be fine," I said. "Go to your teammates. I got Addie and Candy backing me up."

"But I… they…" Kristi let out.

"Kristi!" Kat yelled even louder.

With a twitch of emerald feathers Krysanthea rapidly took off, feathered tail swaying as she joined the Firestorm team at the start line.

"Begin!" Professor Fern called out, snapping her fingers to produce a gunshot-like detonation flashbang.

The pradavarian students exploded into motion, showcasing their absurd strength, speed and agility as they launched themselves at the obstacle course. The Firestorm team took an early lead, their team experience, coordinated movements and raw power allowing them to rapidly tear through the initial barriers.

"Come on!" Adelle snarled, her own competitive instincts fully engaged. "We can take them!"

"Yeah!" Candace agreed, bouncing up and down. "Let's show these stuck-up raptors what real teamwork looks like!"

I grabbed both of their arms before they could charge off.

"No," I said firmly. "We go at my pace. Slow and steady."

"What?" Adelle spun to face me, violet-blue eyes wide with disbelief. "Are you fucking kidding me right now? We could demolish those cunts! I'm fast, Candace is smart, and together we could—"

"We stick together," I interrupted. "At my pace. No one gets ahead."

"But I could get to the end much fasterrrrr, show those dum' raptors who's boss. Ughhh, man, I wanna runnnnn," Adelle whined. "Starting to regret making a human tater my Alphaaaa."

"Well, you did," I said sharply. "And I'm telling you to obey me. We go through together, slowly."

Something in my tone must have finally penetrated their competitive haze, because both girls slowly nodded, though Adelle was clearly struggling with every cheetah instinct to take off and obliterate everyone.

"Trust me," I added, "Fern isn't testing our ability to win a race. She's testing something else entirely."

"What?" Addie demanded. "Huh?"

"Do you even remember what the lecture was about?" I asked.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Something about humans, prads and dungeons?" The cheetah asked. "I dunno, I wasn't paying attention. Between Candy rubbing herself all over you and Kristi ready to pounce at me to claw out my eyes, I kinda spaced out on whatever the fuck you were ranting about."

Candace laughed.

"Fern's most likely testing our endurance, you knob," I said.

"Ah," Addie said. "So it's not a speed race then?"

"I don't think so," I said.

"And if it is?" the cheetah pressed on.

"Then we don't win," I shrugged. "Do you really give that many fucks about winning a dumb school track speed-evaluation competition?"

"Not really," she shrugged. "It's just the principle of the thing. I don't like losing to the feather brigade."

"Learn to lose while winning," I said, repeating the words from Nessy's song.

"That's dum'," the cheetah huffed.

As we jogged away from the starting line at a deliberately moderate pace, it gave me time to observe the other teams, evaluating our competition. The pradavarian students spread out across the course, each team or individual pushing themselves to their absolute limits in pursuit of the coveted first-place position.

Katherine, Kristi and the rest of the Ferguson Firestorm were still maintaining their lead through sheer brute force, leaving claw marks in their wake. Behind them, other teams were employing various strategies—some focused on speed, others on coordination, and a few were already starting to show signs of the territorial aggression that seemed to be hardwired into pradavarian DNA, smacking or kicking each other off the course platforms and bridges.

Professor Fern stood at the sidelines with her arms crossed, watching the proceedings with an expression that a feline researcher might wear while observing mice in a maze.

I kept our pace deliberately slow, slowly climbing up and allowing myself to fall behind even the teams with human members. This gave me a perfect vantage point to observe what was really happening on the course.

The first odd thing I noticed were the signs.

They were everywhere—bright, colorful banners stretched across obstacles, painted messages on climbing walls, even holographic text that floated in the air. "FIRST PLACE GLORY!" proclaimed one banner spanning a rope bridge. "WINNERS ONLY!" flashed in neon letters above a mud pit. "BE THE BEST!" was carved into the wooden planks of a climbing wall in colorful, glowing letters.

The second thing I noticed was how the pradavarian students' behavior changed the moment they saw these signs. Their pupils dilated. Their movements became more frantic, more aggressive. What had started as friendly competition was rapidly devolving into something uglier.

"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" Katherine snarled at a wolf student who'd had the audacity to try passing her team on a narrow balance beam. She violently shoved him off the beam, sending him plummeting into the mud pit below.

"This is my course!" Kristi roared at a fox who'd gotten ahead of her on the climbing wall, her claws extending as she literally climbed over the smaller pradavarian to maintain her position.

But the most curious thing I noted in the shadows and corners of the course itself. Hidden among the obstacles, barely visible unless you slowed down enough to pay attention, were hundreds of Elementals—living plants, wooden beams, steel wires, metal supports, wind gusts, and what looked like barely visible earth mounds. They moved with subtle, deliberate purpose, occasionally extending a branch to trip a running student, or creating a sudden gust of wind that would blow someone off balance directly into the path of another competitor.

Every time an Elemental "accidentally" caused a collision, fights broke out. Claws flashed, fangs bared, and what little teamwork had existed dissolved as prads turned on each other with feral intensity.

"Sheet," Candace murmured beside me, her gray eyes tracking the concealed Elementals as they orchestrated chaos. "There's Elementals hidden everywhere!"

"Yep. The signs are doing something to them too," I observed, feeling an incessant, growing pressure in my own head as my eyes lingered on the bright, encouraging text. There was something hypnotic about those messages, a pull that made part of me want to sprint ahead, to push past the slower teams, to prove I could be the first, number one and—

"Charmchain magic," Candace nodded grimly. "Visual compulsion spells embedded in the signage. The longer you look, the stronger the effect becomes. Classic Charisma-aligned Sentinel dungeon psychology tactic."

"Can you—" I started to ask.

"Already on it," she said, raising her silver-white hands to frame her own face. "Unbind desire to compete." Her hands glowed briefly with fractal silver patterns, and I saw her pupils return to normal size. She repeated the gesture over Adelle, who had been staring at a "SPEED IS EVERYTHING!" banner with increasing fascination.

"Wha—?" Adelle blinked in confusion as Candace's magic took effect. "Why don't I want to run really fast now?"

"You got Charmchained, my dude," Candace explained.

"Argh," the cheetah let out. "Das' fooking bullshit. Why didn't you unbind me sooner?"

"Usually Turbo spots that stuff for us," Candace sighed. "I'm not the best at sensing Charmchain."

"Bleh," the cheetah licked her paw and then pushed her red hair locks out of her eyes. "Hate this mental shit, it always gets me."

"You want me to unbind it from you too?" Candace offered, turning to me.

I shook my head, straining against the alien pressure that was trying to rewrite my thoughts. "No. I want to understand how it works. How to fight it myself."

"Okkay boss," Candy nodded.

The compulsion was insidious—not a crude mental hammer trying to bash its way into my consciousness, but something more subtle. It felt like whispered suggestions, like my own thoughts being slowly twisted until the desire to win felt completely natural and justified.

I reached deeper into that tree-consciousness I'd been discovering, those strange roots and branches of thought that seemed to exist in a different layer of my mind. The pressure pushed against me like wind against bark, trying to bend me, but trees were designed to flex without breaking.

Let the wind blow, I thought. Feel it, acknowledge it, but remain rooted.

The compulsion slid past me like water around stone.

Looking ahead, I could see that even the teams that were more level-headed were succumbing to the effect. Nessy's trio—the husky, the owl, and the fox—were now snarling at other students, friendly coordination gone, replaced by a desperate scramble to push ahead of the competition.

The owl had drawn what looked like a black, creepy, bone-like crystalline staff out of his book and was using it to trip other climbers on the rope ladders. The fox had her pistol out, though she wasn't pointing it at anyone—yet. And Nessy... Nessy was using her voice, but not for inspiring music. She was projecting some kind of song-attack that disoriented nearby students, causing them to lose their grip on obstacles. It sounded like she was humming something under her breath that made the others slip or become confused as they tried to move past her.

"This is getting hella ugly," Candace observed as we watched a full-scale brawl break out on one of the balance beams.

A team of wolves and a group of cats were going at each other with claws and fangs, completely ignoring the obstacle course in favor of trying to knock each other into the mud pits below.

The signs were getting bigger too, I noticed. And more elaborate. What had started as simple banners were now towering holographic displays that dominated entire sections of the course. "VICTORY AT ALL COSTS!" blazed across the sky in letters that hurt to look at directly. "CRUSH THE WEAK!" pulsed with hypnotic intensity above the final climbing wall.

This wasn't just a test of the compulsion effects—Fern was showing us exactly how dungeon psychology worked in terms of devious escalating mental pressure. How even the strongest, most disciplined pradavarian teams could be torn apart by playing on their deepest instincts!

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