Alex wonders if this is at least a little like what the gnomish cities were like before the fall but doesn't quite bring himself to voice the question.

"May you find fortune in your travels. Perhaps one day we'll meet again."

Alex will continue onwards.

Ivy drapes the low stone walls of Grawtosh proper, older and simpler than those of Arbis but vibrating merrily to Alex's magic sense. The gatehouse leading to the fort's grounds is curiously unattended, and leaning against it is a yellowed wooden sign that reads in Miezan: 

NEW STUDENTS

THIS WAY 

<---

It points north, along the green-grey wall that borders the scholars' quarter of Arbis.

That's slightly odd but he'll go where the sign points.

The noise of Arbis quiets, further along the wall. Smaller buildings press close, making a bit of an alleyway. The ivy thickens until barely any stone can be seen beneath it, and Alex begins to notice sharp thorns among the tangles. Soon the wall looks more like an overgrown hedge than a fortification. 

And then there's an archway made of brambles, leading to a dirt path flanked by more hedge-walls beyond, a path that splits in twain a few yards in. 

A scrap of parchment, impaled upon a bramble, flutters faintly in the breeze. Parts are torn to the point of illegibility, but the part that remains, if examined, reads: 

#################

You, sent out beyond ### recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
#########

Flare up like ######
############################

Let ######## happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No ####### is final.
Don’t let yourself lose ###.

Nearby is the ###### they call life.
You will know it by its ########.

On first glance that looks like a poem but he's increasingly convinced this is some sort of test.

He'll walk to where the path splits is there any indication of which direction he should go?

The castle is visible above the hedges, more or less straight ahead; the left path turns towards the castle after a few yards, and the slightly wider rightward path leads back in the direction of the gate, curving slightly out of view.

That isn't much to go on. He'll go left.

At first, it isn't so bad. The walls are thick and the nettles sharp, but there is space enough to walk between them unharmed.

It doesn't last.

The path twists and turns like a living thing, masses of sagging brambles bulging forth in ever-larger clumps, until Alex has to edge sideways to avoid catching his clothes on the thorns. 

An acrid organic scent fills his nostrils. It reeks of decay, or perhaps digestion.

And then there's another fork. 

Right, towards the castle, barely visible through an arch of thorns. 

Left, a wider path, a faint breeze tracing waves across the leaves of the hedge-wall.

He considers turning back as the path narrows but decides to keep going. If this is some sort of test he'll take the right path. The harder but faster route is the one he'll choose.

It's a choice he gets to make more than once, as the path splits again and again, narrowing all the while and closing in above his head. Soon he can't see the castle anymore.

It's no longer a question of keeping his clothes from snagging; thorns pierce through his shirt and pants as though they aren't there, scratching and stinging his skin like salted knives.

He's forced to a crouch, then a crawl. Everything hurts. 

Abruptly, the path makes a sharp right and opens up somewhat. Alex catches a glimpse of the castle through a gap in the brambles, though the path, having turned, doesn't go straight towards it.

No, wait - there's a gap in the base of the hedge just ahead. A muddy patch, and a slight raising of the brambles, barely wide enough for his shoulders and less than a foot high.

With some careful maneuvering, Alex has been able to keep his bag intact there's still just enough room to get it through this next obstacle with his body though and, well he's stubborn. He puts his misgivings aside and decides to risk it one last time. At this point his motivation is at least as much spite as any sort of philosophical statement.

The bag, pushed ahead of Alex, just barely fits through the narrow gap. 

After several extremely unpleasant minutes of crawling, shimmying, snagging, and scooching, he manages to get his head and shoulders through the gap in the hedges, then drag the rest of himself through. His back feels like it's on fire. 

He finds himself standing in a semicircle of hedges, near the base of Grawtosh castle, with a wide moat between himself and the wall. Grawtosh looms even taller from this angle, vibrating in Alex's magic sense; the pressure is almost musical, and he may imagine he can tease out a chorus of overlapping notes, each stronger than he's ever felt before.

Across the moat is what looks to be a small postern door; on Alex's side is a ramshackle boathouse barely large enough for a dinghy. 

...also, as the sting of the thorns subsides, Alex may notice that there's not so much as a scratch on him, and his clothes and bag are completely intact. 

The mud remains. 

A part of him was totally expecting that his clothes would be fine at the end but it's extremely relieving to be proven right about that.

He takes a minute to immerse himself in the music of the magic and calm down a little after that ordeal.

Then he'll go investigate the boat house.

There's a little boat inside! It's not, like, tied up or anything? It's just floating in the boathouse, easily reachable from a rickety walkway on one side, and entirely failing to drift anywhere. There don't appear to be...oars. 

It is at this moment that Alex hears a cheery voice say: "Hello there! What's your name?" 

He startles and lets out a little sound. He turns to look for the voice.

There's a person in the water! A very small person, perhaps half the size of Alex, his bare torso covered in scales, his eyes unusually large and gleaming with mirth. He waves merrily.

Is that a Fae or some sort of illusion like the hedges probably were. Either way it probably doesn't hurt to be polite. "Hello, I'm Alex." 

"Hello Alex! You can call me Melias." He dives and resurfaces just outside the boathouse. "Are you a new student? You look a bit old for a student." 

Alex almost doesn't notice, but the mud on his clothes is dryer than it was before he walked in the boathouse. 

"I am, I've been told most people come earlier."

"Wonderful, wonderful, that means we get to play! I'm supposed to tell you, don't get wet!" And Melias executes a dramatic dive, revealing as he does that his lower half is that of a fish. The muddy water of the moat ripples in his passage. 

That's a concerning rule when right next to water. He'll back up a bit.

The ripples fade away after a minute, and Melias doesn't resurface. 

Alex is beginning to notice that the air in the boathouse is extremely dry. His clothes are now caked with dried mud as if they'd been in the sun for an hour.

That's ... strange. He'll give the boat house a second look to see if he's missed something and then try to examine the little boat more thoroughly.

It looks to be a little wooden rowboat with tall sides and three small planks as benches. It's a different design than an Eriksmont fishing boat, but still easily recognizable. Small ripples from Melias's passing lap against its sides without budging it in the slightest. There's no oars, no rope, and not really any obvious place to stow either. 

(Now that he's paying attention, he can detect a faint hum of magic about the boathouse, barely distinct from the vivid orchestra that is Grawtosh. Hard to tell whether the boat itself is magical, though.)