Chapter 41
Non
Drip, drip, drip.
I swatted away the water that splashed against my forehead.
Drip, drip, drip.
Where the fuck was that coming from?
Drip, drip—
I shot upright but immediately regretted it. Sitting up so quickly was a huge fucking mistake.
We were in a circular stone room, but the bricks were too dark to be Llwyn Onn.
Looking down, I saw that my hands and feet were bound with rope.
Dylan's fiery hair was splayed across my lap. He was still unconscious, auburn lashes fanned against his cheeks. His hands and ankles were bound like mine.
Multiple other bodies lay asleep on the floor of the circular room, everyone tied up.
Did Aeron kidnap us?
I shifted my arms and felt a nick of pain on my hand. Looking down, I saw that I was wearing my harness and daggers.
They hadn't been on my person when we passed out in the woods.
Why was I—
As I looked up, I noticed the circular room appeared to be a huge, round tower, and we sat at the base of it.
This was the next trial. Aeron had drugged us to catch us off guard.
Mother fucker.
The placement of my daggers at my sides meant I was able to saw my bindings off my wrists in no time. As I stood, I realised the sedatives didn’t seem to have a lasting effect. I walked from person to person, giving each of them a small kick to see if they were still asleep.
All out cold.
The sound of stones grinding to my left startled me. From the unassuming wall, a set of steps emerged.
Looks like I was supposed to go up.
If I wanted to give myself the upper hand in this challenge, leaving everyone tied up while I made a head start would work wonders. But as my boot stepped onto the first step, I couldn't help but look back at Dylan's sleeping face.
Putting up very little fight with my inner conscience, I cut Dylan's bindings and placed his axe in his hand should he need it when he woke.
As I made my way back towards the steps, I noticed Alaw sleeping peacefully on the floor. Guilt wracked me at the thought of leaving her tied up too, so I sliced her bindings and propped her upright against the wall. The others could all rot in hell.
The lighting in the tower was absolutely appalling, and it wasn't until I reached the top step that I realised the stairs had led me to absolutely nothing.
Stone grinding against stone startled me again, and from behind me, another set of steps appeared from the wall. But they were too far away to step from one to the other.
I wasn't particularly high up off the ground, but I was conscious that it wouldn't take a huge drop for me to seriously injure myself.
To reach the next set of steps, I would need to jump and pull myself up, which was way too athletic for someone like me. When someone groaned from below, I decided it was certainly worth a try.
My first attempt was a disaster as my sweaty palms slipped against the smooth step, landing me back on the first set of stairs directly on my coccyx. I brushed myself off and was so grateful that the rest of the competitors hadn't seen that.
On my second attempt, I managed to gain enough purchase to pull myself up and over the ledge.
Thankfully, the second set of stairs led me to something. At the top was a wooden door that opened to a long corridor. The lighting was just as terrible in this corridor, and I cursed Llyr for not giving me the power of fire.
Something about the silence made this whole place seem eerie, and a chill skittered down my spine as I moved deeper into the darkness of the corridor.
A hand grabbed my shoulder, and I screamed with all my might. I was silenced by a hand pressed to my mouth.
“Just me, cariad.”
My whole body relaxed at Dylan's voice. It was difficult to see him in such a dark corridor, but his voice was unmistakable.
“Anything you want to fill me in on?”
“From what I gathered, I think Aeron spiked our drinks and dumped us in the second trial.
I don't remember much of the evening; my last solid memory is going to find you and Zenn in the woods to come toast with the rest of the competitors. All our wrists and ankles were bound when I woke, but someone had strapped my daggers on me. I managed to cut the bindings off and did the same for you and Alaw. Then those steps just appeared from nowhere. I followed them up and now here I am.”
“Thank you for cutting my bindings. Was the axe in my hand your doing, too?”
I nodded. “Does it seem strange that they just handed us our weapons? Why not hide them somewhere to make this whole thing more exciting?”
Dylan contemplated this for a moment before he responded. “I agree it's very generous of Aeron. Too generous, if you ask me. Makes me think they had to give us our weapons. Possibly, whatever is in this tower is so terrible that if it came across us unarmed, we wouldn't last five minutes.”
As if on cue, a groaning sound echoed from above.
“They need people to survive as much as they want to pick a couple off, don't forget that.”
I tried to repeat Dylan's words to myself, but it didn't do much to calm my nerves. The Afanc had been terrifying, but at least we'd known what we were up against as soon as the trial began.
“We'd better get a move on if we want a head start. Seren was making a lot of noise in her sleep. I wouldn't be surprised if she's up and about soon.”
The corridor seemed to go on forever. Only stone wall lay ahead. With the silence making me more uneasy by the second, I took the opportunity to ask some burning questions.
“Haven't you competed in two previous Anoethau?”
“I have,” he answered tightly.
“And didn't you say they always follow the same pattern? Beast, bone, and blood?”
“They do.”
“Then how do you have no clue what's going on in this one?”
“In case you hadn't noticed, cariad, we're walking down an endless dark corridor made of stone. We haven't come across any clues as to what the end goal might be.”
Back in the direction we came from, the sound of something rattling echoed through the corridor.
“Snakes?” I said, moving behind Dylan.
“This one is bone, remember? Can't say snakes are synonymous with bones.”
Dylan interlocked our fingers and led us further down the corridor. As I took one final look in the direction of the noise, I could have sworn I saw two glowing orbs of red in the distance.
Eventually, we made it to the end of the corridor. We had the option to continue left or right. I chose left, which led us down another empty hallway for what seemed like forever.
“How big is this place? It feels like we've been walking for hours.”
“Likely not very big at all, but Aeron uses strong magic to make it feel larger than it is.”
I stepped to turn the corner, but Dylan snaked an arm around my waist and pressed me to the wall.
“Brychan,” he whispered in my ear as the scuff of boots grew louder.
In my peripheral vision, I saw his green tunic come into view. He paused at the junction as he contemplated where to go. He only needed to glance to his right, and he would have seen Dylan and me instantly. Thankfully, he chose to turn to the left and disappeared into the darkness.
I let out a relieved breath as Dylan looked at his palm with a furrowed brow.
“Everything okay?”
“My water... It won't come when I call it. I tried to summon something I could throw in the direction we wanted Brychan to go, but I couldn't do it. I can't feel the connection to Caledfwlch either.”
I could hear both my daggers humming loud and clear. Opening my palm, I summoned a ball of shadows with ease.
“Strange that it's only affecting one of us.”
Dylan considered this for a moment before his eyes focused on something above my shoulder.
“Non, don't move.”
I froze as Dylan lifted Caledfwlch slowly above his shoulder, then launched his axe.
An ear-splitting scream filled the corridor as Caledfwlch clattered to the floor. Dylan pushed past me to retrieve his axe, unable to summon it back. On the ground next to it was a white sheet.
“Is that it?” I asked as I toed the fabric with my boot.
Dylan used the edge of Caledfwlch to lift the sheet off the ground, revealing a pile of animal bones.
“Is that a horse skull?”
“Mari Lwyd.”
“Pardon?”
“That's what this is, a Mari Lwyd.” Dylan dropped the skull and picked up a large pair of antlers.
“As in the children's winter solstice tradition of dressing someone up in a white sheet and a horse skull and going door to door singing songs?”
He gave the horse skull a shake. “The very same.”
“That's what our second trial is? Fight against someone wearing a horse skull with a bed sheet over their head.”
Dylan's face was solemn as he continued to examine the bones. “Don't write off Aeron's capabilities so soon. There will be more in store for us, I'm sure.”
He grabbed my upper arm and directed me down the corridor Brychan had disappeared down.
“Come on, let's see if we can get the little fucker to piss himself.”
It wasn't long until we stumbled across Brychan, who was picking at the bricks of the wall with the sharp end of his staff.
“Has he gone mad?” I asked, looking up to Dylan, who towered over me.
“No, he's just convinced there must be hidden doorways somewhere.”
“Do we attack or try and reason with him?”
Dylan scoffed, but Brychan didn't even notice as he was too engrossed in picking at the wall.
“Does he seem like the reasoning type to you?”
To the right of Brychan, two red eyes emerged from the darkness, followed by a skull topped with antlers that dripped blood. Its body consisted of a floating sheet that hovered mid-air.
“Should we—” I began, but Dylan shook his head.
As the Mari Lwyd began to open its mouth, Brychan turned towards it.
“Ha ha, very funny, Mared. Take that stupid thing off and help me get this brick loose.”
The Mari Lwyd didn't seem to like not being taken seriously. It let out a piercing scream as it lunged for Brychan.
He stumbled backwards, his staff clattering to the ground. He made to run but drew up short when he nearly smacked into Dylan's chest.
“Don't just stand there and watch—help me!”