Chapter 4 #2
“Thank you,” I gasped, glad for an excuse to step away.
Juniper waved a cheery goodbye, and I stepped forward to make my Oath.
“Down the tunnel,” the woman directing us inside said. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
That was it? Doubtful I could see anything in such darkness, I stepped forward and made my way into the tunnel as instructed.
For the first few steps, I was right; I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But after another step, a slight draft from somewhere to my right brushed my arms, and a dim light flickered into existence, buzzing overhead and casting everything in a soft white glow.
I was in a vast, open chamber. The walls were made of solid, smooth gray stone, almost the color of charcoal, with thin veins of white running through them at odd angles.
That singular, faint light shone down on a massive hunk of porous stone which took up most of the room.
I approached it slowly, in awe of the size.
I’d always thought the Oath Stone was small, something you held in both hands while reciting some vow the attendants guided you through or had written on the walls.
I glanced around. There were no words. Not on the walls, not on the floors, not even on the stone itself. There were no words written anywhere, no instructions, no Oath. I spun around again and again, searching in vain as my panic rose to the surface.
How do I know what to say?
How pathetic. Utterly, depressingly pathetic. How was I ever to make it past a single Trial if I couldn’t even figure out how to take my Oath?
My palms itched. I scratched them with my fingernails as I walked toward one of the walls. I narrowed my gaze, trying to discern a pattern in the white lines running through them. There was nothing.
I huffed, my nails continuously running back and forth on the sensitive skin of my palms. But the more I scratched them, the more they burned.
I switched to rubbing them as I approached the stone.
I leaned down, staring at the hunk of porous stone, tilting my head side to side as I inspected the bumps and crevices until I hissed—the burning in my palms had become an inferno.
Frantic, I held up my hands, expecting to see inflamed skin, a rash even, but they weren’t even red.
Still, they burned.
Flooded with an overwhelming compulsion to find relief from the cool surface of the Oathstone, I reached out and pressed my palms flat against the massive rock. The burning stopped, the itching soothed. I closed my eyes and took a breath.
Then I heard it. A faint voice in the back of my mind getting louder and louder…
I jerked back in surprise, but the moment my hands left the stone, they began to burn even worse than before. I hissed and stared at them again. I still saw nothing but my own skin. Shaking, I reached for the stone again.
The moment flesh met rock, the voice returned. I twitched, uneasy, but concentrated, frowning and pressing my eyes shut tight as if that would help me hear it. It spoke in a whisper and cycled through its message before I could finally make out the words.
“Repeat after me.”
I again startled. The words echoing around in my head were coming from my own voice. I tried to pull my hands from the stone, but I couldn’t. My palms were fused to the rock.
“I vow to obey the tenets of the Trials.”
I hesitated. Did I truly want to go through with this? As confident as I’d been this morning, as resigned to follow through with Darius’s last wish of me, this was…something else entirely. Something I hadn’t expected.
“Make your Oath,” my own voice hissed at me.
“I-I vow…to obey the tenets of the Trials,” I repeated. It seemed to be my only way out of here.
“I shall not speak of my experiences in the Trials, neither now nor upon their completion,” my voice whispered, then waited for me to repeat before continuing.
“I shall use my blessings in service to the Geist. I shall seek to keep all knowledge and capability given as a result of my success between myself and my partner. I shall train my body, mind, and soul to be a proper reflection of the holiness of the Geist. For the duration of my candidacy in the Trials, I forfeit all worldly obsessions and submit myself to the will of my gods.”
Again, I hesitated. It seemed a lofty price to pay in honor of a friend I’d never see again.
A friend the Geist had stolen from me. The thought of Darius, in this moment of all things, was like a punch to the gut.
But it was a reminder as well: I wouldn’t be swearing it for them.
So I took a deep breath and made my Oath. The words turned bitter on my tongue.
The Oathstone released its hold on me and I stumbled backward.
I rubbed my wrists, looking briefly down at my hands, but they were completely unchanged, unmarked by my Oath.
I stared at the stone, open-mouthed and massaging my palms, before I turned away and headed back down the dark tunnel I’d entered through.
No one awaited me on the other side.
I reached up and brushed my fingers over my forehead. I couldn’t feel the mark, but it was hot where I touched, as though I’d been branded.
On autopilot, I made my way to the first tunnel where the first Trial was being held.
The attendants had us lining up in two columns, one for men and one for women.
I went to the back of the women’s line and watched as the others ahead of me tried to arrange themselves so that they were across from whoever they wanted to be partners with.
Was that how it worked? Were we partnered with whoever we were across from in line?
I turned to see who I was across from and sighed.
The guy who’d been wringing his hands together in line for the Oathstone before. Great.
“I believe everyone is here,” someone spoke from the front of the lines.
A woman in a rich blue pantsuit. Her lips were painted red and her blonde hair was cut short in the fashion of the upper houses.
She smiled out at all of us as she spoke again, a little louder.
“Welcome, new candidates, to your first Trial!”
Some scattered applause rang out as families cheered for their own candidates, but those of us in the lines remained unsure of whether we should clap. It didn’t seem to deter her.
“I can’t say much about what you’ll find inside the First Trial, of course—and I wouldn’t tell you if I could. The main purpose of the Trials is to find their solutions yourselves. Your success rests entirely upon your shoulders and those of your partner.
“As eager as you all are to begin, I’m tasked by those above to remind you of the gravity of your candidacy.
” Her friendly tone faded to reveal something firmer and far more somber.
"You’ve taken the Oath. You’re an official candidate of the Trials.
You now not only represent yourselves but all of Sanctuary.
Remember that when you step forward among the gods.
“Move forward as far as you can, as best you can. You’ll be disqualified either when you fail a Trial, when you turn twenty five, or…when you die.”
Despite her hushed and reverent tone at the end, those at the back of the line muttered amongst themselves and those at the front became wide eyed in silent panic.
“Per the Stone, that is all I’m permitted to tell you. So please, keep to your orderly lines and march on inside. We’re all rooting for you!”
She clapped, and some families and other attendants joined in, but none of the candidates applauded. The mention of our potential untimely deaths seemed to sour the mood.
I followed the line of women in front of me into the tunnel awaiting us.
It was the same as the one which housed the Oathstone.
I could see absolutely nothing, not even the person directly in front of me, and I completely lost the line of men to our left.
For a moment, all sound vanished as though sucked out of the air.
Then, from somewhere far in front of me, there was a faint whooshing and the synchronized stepping of a thousand feet at once.
Including my own.
I frowned and looked down at my feet but could not see anything in the darkness. I hadn’t consciously decided to step forward, yet I matched the pace of the other participants, my legs moving of their own volition.
My stomach turned queasy. There’d always been an aura of mystery surrounding the Trials. A sense of the unknown that could never be nullified since we weren’t permitted to speak of them. But this wasn’t the tedious bureaucratic testing I’d expected. This was something new. This was…magic.
Another whoosh and another step forward.
I peered around frantically, hoping to discover that I wasn’t the only one having second thoughts, but it was pointless in the dark. I could only rely on the sense that the others were still there.
Whoosh. Step.
It continued like that for some time. Every whoosh was followed by the mass of us moving forward in unison. I began to worry about whatever was at the front of the line. Perhaps this wouldn’t be the quick and painless failure that I was expecting.
The attendant’s words echoed in my mind as I slowly but steadily stepped through the darkness .
Die. Die. Die.
The next whoosh was louder, closer, and I moved forward again, but this time I stepped down on metal instead of stone. I’d barely registered the clanging under my feet when the whooshing enveloped me and I was spinning, hurtling through the void in some sort of tube.
My gut twisted, breath fleeing my lungs as I was sucked forward into nothingness. Disoriented, I squirmed and bumped against the metal enclosure, hissing when my forehead connected with the side of the tube. I pressed my eyes shut and tried to drag air through my nose.
My feet hit the ground and I gasped.
The first Trial began.