The Gauntlet

The first practice run is deadly. Trina nearly falls and uses a rope, Tynan freezes and climbs down, Violet injures her cheek and fails at the chimney formation, and Aurelie dies after slipping from the rotating posts when a Green Daggertail roars overhead.

On Presentation Day, Violet solves the chimney by dragging a practice rope sideways across the cliff face and bracing it over the structure, accepting the penalty but using the rope as a tool rather than a descent line. She clears the final ramp by driving her largest dagger into the soft wood for leverage, and her whole squad completes the course.

After Violet’s squad finishes, they place eleventh out of thirty-six squads despite her rope penalty. Only 169 first-years are left by the end of the morning, and Liam earns the Gauntlet patch with the fastest time.

Trysten dies during Gauntlet practice while Violet’s squad is in interrogation. Soon afterward, the course is active again with first-years struggling on it, including a cadet who barely saves herself with a vertical rope after fumbling on the spinning log of the fourth ascent.

The Gauntlet divides the citadel from the flight field and the Vale. Cadets who finish the course proceed through a natural box canyon above it to reach the flight field for Presentation.

A mage-lit tunnel provides the regular approach from the citadel side. It opens from the courtyard wall just left of the academic building, passes through a bottleneck after the western gate, and descends toward an archway at the base of the course.

Steps beside the Gauntlet serve as the route up to the flight field, and riders can back up there while waiting for flight training.

The course rises in five switchback ascents with increasingly difficult obstacles. Its known features include a spinning log, raised pillars, a rotating wheel, giant hanging buoy balls, swinging metal rods, shaking pillars, rotating cliffside posts, a chimney formation, and a near-vertical final ramp.

The chimney formation sits near the end of the Gauntlet before the final ramp. It is a high, leaning conduit angled at about twenty degrees, and cadets must get through the shaft rather than simply run across it.

The final ramp is the last obstacle. It juts ten feet out from the cliff wall and curves upward like the inside of a bowl, with its highest point level with the cliff top ten feet above.

First-year cadets must complete the final Gauntlet to proceed to Presentation.

Practice runs use ropes spaced every six feet down the cliffside as fall protection, and taking a rope costs thirty seconds. Emetterio can activate the moving obstacles with lesser magic.

The official Presentation-day run removes the option to climb back down. Cadets either complete the course or fall.

The final ramp tests a cadet’s ability to scale a dragon’s foreleg and reach the saddle.

Official Gauntlet results determine the order for Presentation. The fastest cadet earns the Gauntlet patch.

For first-years, Gauntlet training takes over as regular challenges give way to the sequence leading into Presentation and Threshing. Violet argues that the course teaches cadets to find another way and survive, while Rhiannon calls it a pointless method of eliminating the weak or unlucky.

Aura invokes the Gauntlet as part of the rider trial structure that fliers have not endured. Once normal quadrant discipline resumes, Devera can invoke a possible Gauntlet run as a punishment or training ordeal.

Emetterio is directly associated with the Gauntlet during training because he controls its moving obstacles with lesser magic.

First-year rider cadets continue to train on the Gauntlet in later years, including squads and individual cadets preparing for Presentation.