Chapter 20 #2
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t—”
Sacrifice, a voice hissed against my consciousness.
It was so disorienting, I nearly stumbled back from the top of the wall and went crashing down to the blood-soaked floor below.
But I righted myself at the last moment and remained teetering on the edge of the platform beside Dante, who was yanking on his arm as hard as he could, cursing and hissing in pain as the new manacle slid against his previous wounds.
Sacrifice, the voice growled again, this time slightly louder, and I realized, with horror, that it wasn’t just one voice at all.
It was two, disembodied and in perfect harmony, echoing around my mind as if calling to me from across the chasm. But the most discomfiting part was that those two voices were all too familiar.
They were our own.
Dante seemed to realize the same thing, for his eyes snapped to mine, flooded with sheer panic.
To continue on in these Trials, a sacrifice must be made.
“Dante—”
He shook his head, silencing me.
One of you has been chosen. The rings have decided. They will not release you. My heart hammered against my chest as our phantom voices continued. To escape, you must sacrifice the limb.
Our eyes met. Dante exhaled.
She must do it.
My jaw dropped. I’d thought the wall of knives had been cruel enough. Forcing us to drag ourselves up a razor-sharp wall at an agonizingly slow pace was already despicable, but this…
“Hell no,” I bit out.
“You have to.” There was a resignation in Dante’s voice already. It drew my gaze back to him. “Adrian, listen—”
“Are you insane? It’s your arm. They want me to cut off your arm!”
“I know but listen,” he replied, far more calm than he had any right to be. “My mother said we had to trust each other, that we had to trust the Geist. I trust you, Adrian. I do. So please, trust me too. You have to do it.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. Maybe there’s another way. Maybe this is a test. Maybe if I cut your arm off, we’ll actually fail. Maybe—”
“We’ve reached the rings, Adrian. We’re already here. This is the last step. You’re right. It is a test, but it’s a test of our dedication. They want to know if you’ll do it, and if I’ll let you. They want to know how much we’re willing to give.”
“Are you?” I asked, overcome with curiosity even amid my panic. “Willing to sacrifice this?”
He nodded.
“I—Dante, I can’t do it.” I’d almost lost consciousness at the sight of how much blood we’d lost on our climb, at the pain lancing through my fingertips, my palms, even now.
The idea of cutting off my partner’s limb, the idea of causing such misery over something as foolish as these Trials sickened me to my very core.
But he would do it. He hadn’t even hesitated.
I looked back at him as he stared at me, wide eyed but prepared, resigned. It was incredible, the faith he had, the desperation to continue along this path. True, it was what he’d been raised to do, but most people still would’ve balked at the thought of losing a limb. He hadn’t.
So no, I didn’t have the strength to do this, but perhaps I could draw a little from him.
“Are you sure?” I asked one more time, and he nodded immediately.
I sighed and peered over the edge of the platform.
I took my time examining the various blades sticking out of the cruel climbing wall.
Once I found one heavy and sharp enough, I spent a good ten minutes wrenching it free of its place embedded into the wall, sliding it back and forth, yanking at it with my enhanced strength.
The sharp edge of it cut into my flesh and I cried out more than once as new pain plunged through the numbness, spiking bone deep.
Once I’d extricated my chosen blade, I turned back to him. He was waiting, clearly doing his best to appear calm, but I could see the dreaded anticipation in his eyes and the tension in his jaw against the pain.
My muscles were groaning, my fingers numb, my hand slipping in my own blood around the hilt of the blade, but I pushed all the pain aside and focused on him, on my partner.
“I’m going to—”
“Just do it, Adrian. Please, don’t tell me when.”
“Okay,” I replied with a nod. “I just wanted you to know that I’m going to do everything I can to cut it completely off with one—”
I swung, putting the full force of my enhanced strength behind the motion.
Dante screamed, and his arm, just above the elbow, dropped to the floor below with a sickening thump.
My gut twisted as I glanced down at the fallen limb.
“Adrian,” he panted, his voice was weak but urgent. “Quick, the rings!”
My head shot back up. The rings shone with a blinding white light. I plunged my arm through mine just in time to receive my brand. Dante screamed again. His own ring had cauterized his wound. The scent of burning flesh almost made me empty my stomach.
Dante swayed. His eyelids fluttered.
“Shit!” I cried and launched myself toward him as he lost consciousness.
The platform wasn’t wide enough to accommodate someone laying down and the way Dante was already swaying as he passed out informed me he was going to miss the mark anyway.
So I slammed into him, wrapping my arms around him as we sailed over the edge of the wall.
I turned to shield him from the impact as we struck the cold hard floor far below.
Gasping in the breath that had been knocked out of my lungs when we’d hit, I pushed him off of me.
He slumped to the side, unaware of the fall.
I continued to sputter and cough against the pain that wracked my back from the landing.
My fingertips and feet throbbed from the horrors of the climb but I turned and crawled toward Dante.
I grabbed his shoulder and turned him onto his back, looking down to where his left arm had been.
The stump where his arm ended was still smoldering from the cauterization.
The whole chamber smelled like burnt flesh.
My lip curled as I fought to catch my breath, looking down at my own bloody hands.
I needed to try to help him. Somehow. There had to be a way to help him.
But he still hadn’t stirred. Something was wrong.
We’d been branded. We’d done it. So why did this feel like failure?
“No,” I muttered. “No, no, no. Dante, please wake up. Don’t do this to me again. Please be okay. Please—”
I ran my bloody hands over his chest, his face, and paused.
I could hear something. It was faint and far away, but there was a sort of thrumming.
I frowned and glanced around. But we were still the only two in the room.
Even the metal tubes, which always appeared once we were branded, were nowhere to be seen.
I exhaled, tears of frustration coming unbidden to my eyes.
“Where are the tubes?” I shouted, looking around, fury and panic rising within me. “Why haven’t they come for us? What more could you possibly want from us?”
I fisted my left hand and pounded the bloody stone beneath me, whimpering in agonized rage.
“You wonder why we no longer worship you in the lower rings?” I croaked, voice shaking. “This cruelty. This contempt. Is it truly any wonder?”
The thrumming grew louder until it was like a drum pounding against my head.
I covered my ears to muffle it but to no avail.
A guttural scream of frustration broke free from my throat.
I reached down to shake Dante awake, to carry him if I had to, but that’s when I felt it.
The faint beating of his heart, the pulse at his wrist, it was perfectly in sync with the thrumming beat.
I looked down at my hand wrapped around his wrist. I could feel something there. Little strings, some thin, some thick, some corded, some hollow. Blood and veins. And if I closed my eyes and took a breath, I felt the muscle covering them and the bone beneath.
Scrambling to my knees beside him, I reached for his other arm, the one I’d cut off at the elbow.
I felt the layers there, just the same as I had with the other, almost as if brushing my fingers along the tissue.
But the unnatural ends of the bone, muscle, and veins was akin to the throbbing in my fingers.
I probed the cauterized skin, and gasped. New skin grew over the wound as I held it. I blinked, in awe. Was I…healing him?
My breaths came in quickened drags. I remained as still as physically possible, afraid that if I moved, whatever I was doing would stop and I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to start it again.
Already exhausted, I battled against my waning energy as I stared in stunned disbelief at the quickly blooming skin around the wound.
My eyelids dropped, but I forced them back open.
Was this process leeching life from me to heal Dante?
I made no move to stop it. Maybe I would, if it got to be too much, but for now, I was just amazed it was happening at all.
Once the wound was almost completely closed, Dante stirred, but I hardly realized. My eyes had grown even heavier, and I’d nearly shut them for good.
“What happened?” he asked as he sat upright, peering down at his arm.
“We…we can heal.”
“Stop!” he cried, pulling his arm out of my grasp.
Whatever connection I’d made to heal him snapped, and I was flooded with the remaining energy that had been slowly siphoning off to him. I gasped and sat bolt upright. “No. I think I can heal it, Dante. I think I can regrow it.”
He cradled his partially healed stump, watching me as I swayed, delirious.
“Later,” he barked with a frown. “Right now, we need to get out of here.”
“But the tubes—“
“They’re here.”
I looked up. So they were. When had that happened? And why was it so hard to think? My thoughts were so fuzzy it was hard to grasp onto any of them for long.
We helped each other to our feet and pulled one another toward the exit. We were covered in blood, dripping the viscous fluid onto the stone floor behind us, but we held onto each other tightly, strength surging in one when the other’s failed. Before I knew it, we were spinning away again.
I lost consciousness once or twice on the ride back. I could only imagine Dante did as well.
When we emerged from the dark tunnel to Sanctuary, coated in red, Dante without a limb, me practically falling over, we became the first pair in five hundred years to pass the fifth Trial.