Chapter Sixteen
Farah
There was no time to process Hades’ return to this world before they were whisked away.
Water dripped down the walls of the underground cavern like a slow and steady melody.
They were deep within one of the mountains, no possible way to escape whatever fate lay before them in the first trial.
Farah could only help that whatever vague training Acacius had given her over the last two weeks was enough for survival.
He seemed to think as much, but maybe that was his way of getting revenge on Farah or Chloe.
Left. Right. Left. Farah counted her final steps as the cavern’s passageway opened to a clearing.
Before her lay a vast river the color as deep as a starless sky.
It looked like how Ajax had described the Stygian River in the depths of Aidesian—claiming and damning.
The air tasted of decaying leaves in the forest, like death and rebirth swirled into one.
Oil-lit torches cast a ghostly aura across the expanse.
Ebony marble pillars with gold veining lined the shore, each carved raw with what appeared to be names in the Elliniká Glóssa.
Were they the names of initiates that completed the trial?
Or the lost souls trapped beneath? Would her name be engraved alongside Chloe’s after today?
She took another step closer to the river’s edge, the onyx water unnaturally still and reflectionless. Kneeling, Farah reached toward the break of the river to see if it was real or merely an illusion cast by the glow of the torches surrounding it.
A hand landed on her shoulder just as her fingers were about to graze the water’s edge. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Farah pulled back and spun her head around to face a cloaked man, nothing showing behind his hood except his lips, but she still knew it to be Acacius. His voice was an ever reverberating echo in her mind since they started training.
“I-I just wanted to see if it was real,” Farah stammered. Nothing about this seemed true. Even the fact that she had to be in these trials seemed like a bad dream, something she would wake up from any moment now, still in her cabin of the Parataxis sailing for these shores.
“I assure you, everything about this place is real.” The smile that so often graced Acacius’s lips was gone, replaced by a thin line, not even a scowl.
“Do not mistake these hallowed halls for anything other than the tortuous place they are. It will take things from you—things you’ve kept deep in your heart, things you don’t even think to remember—and it will swallow you whole. ”
“And if I don’t participate?” Farah already knew the answer to this question. Hespali was supposed to be a simple mission: infiltrate the court, find the missing artifacts her father hid, return to Nexos hopefully with her life.
“It is too late for those kinds of thoughts, phoinix. Now come, we must begin.”
With a swish of his cloak, Acacius began to walk toward an entrance path to the river lined with stakes wrapped in flaming cloth.
Beside each stake stood another acolyte, draped in the same white cloak as Acacius.
He took his place at the start of the pathway opposite to who Farah could only assume was Markos.
He held Chloe’s hand, whispering things in her ear to which she nodded along.
She looked calm, which was quite the contrast to Farah’s twitching eye and swirling gut.
Farah approached the entrance and when her eyes finally adjusted to the lighting, a series of stepping stones appeared to rise out of the water line, spanning all the way to the shore on the opposite side of the cavern.
She glanced down at her nightgown and over at Chloe’s similar white garb and wondered why they had not allowed them to change into something more suitable for crossing the river.
“Welcome, initiates, to the Claiming.” Avra’s voice echoed in the cavern, making the very flames on the walls dance in a deadly melodic rhythm.
“Today you begin your pledge to the Fates and to each other. To succeed today, you must strip bare, in both mind and body, leave yourself raw so that the other can see the truth that lies beneath your soul.”
Acacius stepped closer to Farah and reached for the hem of her night gown.
“What do you think you’re doing!” she hissed under her breath.
“Unfortunately, it was not a metaphor. You need to disrobe before crossing. I am sorry for that. When I participated it was summer, not that this thin garment was protecting you much from the winter’s chill anyway.”
Wonderful. Farah was not expecting to be naked around Chloe anytime soon and most certainly did not think the first time in years would be in front of a group of cloaked men and women, many of whom she did not know.
Reluctantly, she held her hands up, letting Acacius peel the white cloth up and over her head until her bare skin was kissed by the chill of the evening.
Goosebumps inched her way up her arms and legs and Farah crossed her arms over her chest, shielding her pebbling nipples from the gazes of the acolytes.
Glancing briefly to her right, Farah took in Chloe’s bare form, pale and glowing as the moon. Still, stripped to nothing, she seemed unburdened. A twinge of jealousy crept into Farah’s heart for how the Nexian woman could be so comfortable in her skin.
“Does this not bother you?” Farah whispered out of the side of her mouth.
“When I shift I am essentially naked, so no, actually.” Chloe paused and turned her gaze toward Farah, traveling from her feet slowly up until their eyes met.
“Nor should it bother you. This ritual is not sexual by nature but even if it were, no one here could deny how beautiful you look laid bare.”
Farah swallowed hard, her body heating in places despite the crisp air swirling around her. It was the first genuine thing Chloe had said to her since they left the shores of Nexos. The first words not shrouded by fear or duty.
The flames grew higher with a crackle that whipped Farah’s attention back to the task at hand.
“Before,” continued Avra, “you lay a pathway across the river. You must make your way across together, and be wary, the river below is spelled to symbolize the Lethe. It will take from you, willingly or not. May the Fates bless you both.”
Avra lowered her hands and with a whoosh of wind the fires above the stakes went out. “Begin.”