"The moment has come to follow the Path of the Specialist. Will our friends attain the elite specialties they are aiming for? Training at the Shelter, led by the Mother Specialist and tutored by the four Elder Specialists, is turning out to be more intense than any of them had expected. The Proficiency Test will determine their future, and they will have to prepare and practice harder then ever if they want to graduate with the highly-valued elite specialties. But that is not their only concern. They will have to face new mysteries, strange characters, unusual situations, dangerous experiments, bewitched jewels, great predators, conspiracies and murder attempts in a place that oozes arcane power thousands of years old. Will they achieve all this? Will they solve the mysteries that surround them? Who will reach the elite specialization? Who will fail? Who will survive and who will die?"--Page 4 of cover.