Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“When the weight of the world is upon you and you feel as if you are drowning in worry, fear, and pain, let the Word of the Geist be your buoy, let your faith keep your head above water.”
Last night, when I’d returned from my visit with Cyrus in a sullen mood and unreceptive to company, Dante had barged into my room and informed me we were attempting the fourth Trial in the morning.
I would’ve questioned him, but I was so impressed he’d made this decision without the input or the knowledge of his grandfather or mother that I let it slide.
But I didn’t feel prepared. Months of learning to swim, of practicing in the pool every day until I’d practically grown gills and fins, and still, I wasn’t ready.
It was too new of a skill. I was too far behind Dante and the others who’d been practicing their whole lives.
It felt like an impossibility that I would ever catch up enough to have a chance in the fourth Trial.
And then there was that nagging memory in the back of my mind of my only experience with this Trial so far.
In the Trials, there was always the fear of the unknown. But for the fourth Trial, I’d become more afraid of what I did know.
As Dante and I waited outside of the gates to the fourth tunnel, I couldn’t keep my mind from replaying a screaming, terrified Dahlia dragging an unconscious Cyrus out of it just months before.
Since then, I’d wondered on more than one occasion what, precisely, had happened in that tunnel.
And now, it seemed, I was about to find out.
I flexed my shaking hands to still them and gave Dante a nod. He returned the gesture with a simple one of his own, then we were stepping into the darkness side by side.
It was the same as always. We were ushered into those metal tubes and hurtled far away, spinning through the darkness toward the fourth Trial and whatever awaited us.
The moment I was deposited onto cool, ancient stone, I could tell this Trial was different from the others.
There was light already, dim yet present, but given the advanced eyesight which I’d been gifted with at the culmination of the second Trial, seeing in the cavern was easy.
And it was a cavern. Stalactites drooped dangerously from the ceiling, some which had fallen centuries ago, littering the path forward.
Dante, I reached out.
I’m here.
Reassured, I took a step forward, down the obviously worn path of stone.
A few meters in, the distinct odor of saltwater, the same stench that had dripped from Dahlia and Cyrus when they’d emerged, tickled my nose. I fought against the memory, trying to keep my mind firmly in the present.
It was damp, everything was wet. The ceilings were dripping, the floor was slick with condensation. The walls were moist to the touch. They broadened as I moved deeper in, leading me out into an open chamber at the exact moment as Dante, who’d come from his own pathway to my left.
This chamber was different from the others as well.
The first three Trials had been manufactured.
It was clear they’d been created for the Trials themselves, that that was their only purpose, but this room felt older.
The stone was cracked and crumbling in some places, the walls were a varying array of heights with ceilings which dipped and rose depending on where you stood.
All around us were statues. Ancient depictions of what appeared to be likenesses of the Geist decorated every inch of available wall space.
And beyond, through an opening held by two enormous pillars, was a pool.
Three stone steps down, and we would be immersed in the water.
Steam hovered on top, as if the water were warmer than the cool caves surrounding it.
Somehow, it all seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I knew it from. Luckily, Dante reminded me.
“A bathhouse,” he said, and I looked over to where he stood, running a finger over the ancient depiction of the Geist named Deimos. “Like from the stories.”
His bright green eyes were shining, his lips parted in awe.
I’d seen that look on Bria’s face before, when she spoke of the Geist. It was piety, it was zealot, it was unquestioning faith.
It was a look Dante didn’t hold often but now, confronted with the evidence of some of those ancient tales, I supposed he couldn’t help himself.
I turned against it.
“Why are we here?” I asked, and his gaze snapped back to me as if remembering where we were and what we were supposed to be doing.
We stepped further into the chamber, toward the pool casting an eerie glow onto the surrounding statues, making their expressions appear evil, almost greedy, rather than placid. Were we supposed to just jump in? And for what purpose?
I stared into the depths of the pool. I couldn’t see the bottom.
“There.” Dante pointed behind us, to the far right side of the cavern. Carved into the rock was a door. It was made of brilliant, shimmering gold around the edges and clear crystal in the center. Behind it were the rings, glimmering faintly and hovering at shoulder height, as always.
We approached, but when Dante tried to open the door, it didn’t budge. He looked down at the handle—at the keyhole right below it.
We glanced back at the pool. So that was what we were swimming for.
“I’ll go,” Dante said, already peeling off his shirt and striding toward the pool.
His broad, muscled back rippled in the light of the cavern as he bent to pull off his pants too, revealing the special swimming shorts Myrine must have left in his room this morning the same way she had with the skintight one-piece beneath my clothes. “I’m the stronger swimmer.”
I nodded. He wasn’t going to get any argument on that front.
“You stay up here and look around the statues. Maybe it’s not down there at all.”
I nodded again, but we both knew it was. It had to be. Why else would Cyrus had more or less drowned when he and Dahlia had attempted this Trial?
Dante bent his knees and dove forward into the pool.
I walked along the walls, checking every nook and cranny of the statues, their hands, their eyes, their mouths, but I kept an eye on the pool at my back, feeling more and more nervous with every second that passed that Dante didn’t resurface.
We’d trained to hold our breaths for even longer in preparation for this Trial, but we had to be ready for anything.
Finally, thankfully, he emerged, gulping down air and swimming to the side. I rushed over to help pull him onto the stone floor as he shook his head. Droplets of cold water flew out of his slick dark hair as he raised his eyes to meet mine.
“It’s there,” he told me, dripping all over the already wet rocks. “At the very bottom. It’s in some kind of box. I tried to open it, but we have to hold three parts open while unlocking the top, so it requires both of us. And it’s bolted down, so we can’t bring it up with us, either.”
I nodded, already pulling off my own shirt.
“Adrian,” he gasped, still trying to catch his breath and shaking his head. I tossed my shirt aside, and his gaze snapped back to the water. “It’s deep. Really deep. I almost couldn’t do it myself.”
I frowned. If Dante, who had been training for the Trials his whole life, had struggled, I hardly had any chance.
Unless…
I finished undressing, tossing my pants on top of my discarded shirt, and turned. Clad only in the special emerald green swimming suit hugging my body from tight long sleeves down to a tapered arrow between my legs, I walked toward the nearest wall.
There was a statue there of a beautiful female Geist called Callidora, if the inscription was to be believed.
I grabbed her by her flowing hair—and ripped her entire stone head from her body, courtesy of the superior strength the third Trial had granted me.
I carried the heavy head back to where Dante sat recovering on the steps.
“I’ll hold onto this when I drop,” I explained. “That way, I’ll only have to swim back up.”
He turned his gaze to me and frowned. But then he nodded and stood back up without protest. Dante walked to his side and grabbed the nearest statue there. With one yank, he ripped its head from the wall just as I’d done. A Geist named Kleio. He returned to stand beside me.
We readied ourselves, and, with one final nod, plunged into the watery depths together.
The heavy stone dragged me swiftly to the bottom. I let go just before my feet touched the course ground, and the head rolled smoothly away from me. Dante dropped lightly in front of me and pushed his own stone away too. He gestured with a nod and swam off in that direction. I followed.
Soon enough, we hovered above a small box glowing in the murky water. It was crafted with the same transparent crystal as the door in the cavern, and a small golden key gleamed inside, waiting.
Dante placed his hands on two sides of the box and instructed me to do the same via our mental connection.
He pulled one lever, I pulled two, and the top snapped open, presenting the key, which had to be twisted out.
Dante used his free hand, and the box broke apart, its pieces falling onto the sand as the key floated up toward us.
Dante snatched it from the water and grinned at me, victorious.
I smiled back and raised a finger to signal him to return to the surface.
That’s when I felt it.