Chapter Twelve #2
His lips parted and he nodded once before scrambling back down the rock wall and searching the remaining stones scattered around the floor below for any that might properly fit the task.
He tied the rope around one soon enough, and I pulled on my end, lifting it up and over the platform where I could lower it down, untie it, and transfer it to the weighted pad before tossing his end of the rope back to him and waiting for the next stone.
It wasn’t until we were halfway through our task, with me directing him toward stones I thought were the appropriate weight and him testing them out at the bottom, that I started feeling strange.
Just a twinge, at first. Hardly anything to cause concern.
But noticeable all the same. I glanced down to where Dante was busy tying our rope around yet another stone.
He hadn’t so much as hesitated. He didn’t appear to think that anything was wrong. So I shrugged it off and kept going.
A few minutes later, though, I felt it again.
“Dante—” I started but was interrupted by a gasp.
I looked over the edge of the platform. He stood only a few feet away from the bottom, his hand on his chest as he gulped in a huge breath of air and stared up at me, wide-eyed.
“What—” he stuttered, looking up and all around in confusion. “What is that?”
There was nothing in the room but stones on the ground, those rings behind the glass, and the rope that we were using to raise the rocks.
There was no one else in the room but us.
And yet, I felt it too. Sitting heavily on my chest was a weight I couldn’t see.
It pressed insistently down upon me, firmer and heavier by the minute.
I felt it in my arms as well, and my legs.
It was getting harder to lift them, harder to take a step forward, as if the air itself was thickening.
By just a minuscule amount for now, but if this continued, the weight of this nothingness would crush us before we had a chance to reach the rings.
“They must have affected the gravity in this room somehow,” Dante said. He whirled around as if he could locate the cause of this strange phenomenon. “Forced it to grow incrementally stronger.”
I hadn’t heard the term gravity before, but I could figure out what he meant.
“It’s a time limit,” I told him.
He turned back to me, eyes wild, and nodded.
“Right,” he replied, his tone taking on a manner of business. “Ignore the small ones, then. Tell me what you see. Which ones are our best chance?”
Without taking a moment to appreciate just how well we were actually doing with this whole working together thing now, I started pointing in different directions, barking out descriptions of the stones I could see from above that looked like they would work.
Dante ran as fast as he could to each one, tying them quickly rather than carefully and swinging them toward me before I even had a chance to lift the rope.
It was still working, for now, but it was sloppy.
And I couldn’t help but notice that, every time Dante went for another rock, it was taking him longer to get there than it would have otherwise.
My legs felt like lead, and every minute I spent lifting the stones tied to the rope, they grew heavier.
When we’d accumulated enough stones at the top of the platform for the weight to be enough, the glass box disappeared and the room was bathed in blue.
I nearly fell to my knees and wept with relief.
But we weren’t done. Dante had to get up onto the platform too.
We had to finish this together. Always together.
“Start climbing,” I hissed, doubled over as I fought to catch my breath. My lungs squeezed with the effort.
A grunt was the only reply I received. I shuffled forward on my knees and peered down over the edge as my partner began to climb.
He dropped the rope behind him and stumbled forward on shaking legs, practically falling onto the pile of rocks we’d created.
He grunted again as his fingers dug in between the stones and he hauled himself up an inch, then another.
He placed his foot a bit higher and rose again, but it was slow.
Too slow. My chest was caving in, my lungs were collapsing, even my vision was starting to blur.
“It’s okay,” I ground out, though whether I was encouraging him or comforting myself, I wasn’t sure. “We can do this. You can do this. We have time. We have time.”
He grunted again in a way that made me think he didn’t quite agree, then groaned as he hauled himself up another inch.
I could see how hard he was fighting just to rise that small amount, the weight of the air bearing down upon him, heavier than ever.
His muscles strained with exertion, thick veins popping out along the hard ridges of his biceps.
I knelt at the edge of the platform, panting and watching as Dante groaned and dragged himself up the jagged rocks with a strength I couldn’t fathom.
He was practically crawling on top of them in an effort to reach me.
I now understood the button below.
Surrender.
It wasn’t going to stop. The weight bearing down upon us wasn’t going to ease. It was only going to get stronger and stronger until the weight of it upon our organs, upon our bones and joints and muscles, might be enough to kill us.
Surrender, indeed.
“On three,” I whispered down to him, laying on my stomach and leaning over the edge. “One. Two. Three.”
He pulled up with a hiss, the breath escaping him seeming to be the only sound he was capable of mustering anymore.
“Again,” I croaked through a throat that felt bruised and beaten. “One. Two. Three.”
The next few minutes passed in nearly unbearable agony.
He rose on my counts of three, taking brief rests before pulling up again.
With every inch he came closer, I marveled at his strength, his determination, while simultaneously worrying that we were wasting too much time, that we were already too late, that we would be crushed any moment by that invisible force.
Then we would die in the dark where no one would ever know what happened to us, or at least, those who would know would never be able to talk about it.
“Pull,” I muttered before I got to three.
I dropped my arm over the edge, reaching for him.
Teeth gritted, I nodded, hoping he would understand the urgency.
I was too exhausted to communicate how little time I feared we had left.
He nodded and kept climbing, crawling farther up the rock wall without a single break in between.
Where he found the sudden surge of strength, I would never know, but I credited it to his adrenaline kicking in.
Finally, mercifully, he was close enough to reach for me.
Can you reach? We’d taken to communicating with our minds, too exhausted and too heavy to open our lips and speak. He gave a brief nod and stretched his arm out toward mine.
Dante let out a grunt of pain but didn’t say a word as he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes tight, pulling with all of his might just to rise an inch higher and keep steady. I met him there, fingers splaying and closing around his wrist. With all of the strength I had left, I pulled.
A scream tore from my throat as I lumbered slowly backward, hauling Dante along as I went.
He groaned but came sliding over the edge a few agonizing moments later.
I hunched over, hands pressed on the cool floor of the platform, and released a breathless laugh, practically giddy.
Dante joined me, panting from where he lay a foot away.
You’re up, I told him simply, fairly sure I was even panting in our mental communication.
My chest was on fire, every organ in my body seemed fit to burst. I remained on my knees at the top, heaving in greedy gulps of air and listening to Dante’s breathing.
It was coming faster, shallower, more hitched, as if every breath he took was forced in through his agony.
I sputtered a cough, and blood splattered on my arm. I froze, wide eyed.
Our time was up.
Dante looked over to me and a grim understanding came over his face. But not surprise. He’d already reasoned this out for himself. He didn’t even seem to have the energy to send me a feeling of encouragement this time. He just shook his head and rolled toward me, wheezing.
I reached for him, but my fingers trembled and dropped a few inches away. I tried to stand next but couldn’t rise even half a foot. I groaned in pain.
Dante met my gaze again and, as one, we began to crawl.
Fingernails scraped against stone as we pulled ourselves desperately forward. Blood bloomed on my fingertips, then my palms, and afterward my wrists. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I just kept dragging myself toward the rings.
When we reached the pedestal they sat on top of, we gripped the edge tightly and hoisted ourselves upright. Matching screams tore from our throats.
My spine felt on the verge of cracking, my eyes seconds away from exploding. My skull squeezed my brain without anything tangible even touching me.
We plunged our arms through the rings. They turned silver, glowed once more, then the searing pain burned through our flesh for the third time.
The moment we were branded, the weight lifted.
We fell to the floor, slumped against the sides of the pedestal, gasping and panting to catch our breath, chests violently rising and falling as we greedily gulped down all the air we could.
At first, it was too much. I nearly choked at the sudden onslaught of oxygen filling my damaged lungs.
I coughed again, spraying blood across the pedestal between us.
Dante groaned and dropped his head between his knees and gagged through the worst of it. But it passed.
Minutes, or maybe hours, later it passed.
Everything burned and I battled to keep my eyes open, but I was whole. And what’s more, we’d done it. We’d passed another Trial.
Dante didn’t say a word. Not out loud or in our minds. But his fingers wrapped around mine at the base of the pedestal. And that was enough.