While the noise grew the closer we got to the eighth tunnel, the cheers getting louder, clearer, I ignored our fans and focused only on entrance to our next test. Dante seemed to be doing the same. He didn’t so much as glance at the crowd gathered to herald us onward, nor did he attempt to communicate with me. We just marched on in silence, each of us preparing for whatever awaited us in our own way.
It wasn’t until we were safely alone, in the dark and relative silence of the eighth tunnel, that I allowed myself to relax, the tension dropping out of my shoulders. I took a deep breath and stepped into the familiar metal tube.
We were dropped into what appeared to be an enormous version of the same tubes which had brought us there. The floor was metal. The room was a circle, with walls rising up to form a metal cylinder around us. High above us, only visible because of our enhanced eyesight, were the rings, and in the center of theroom was a solitary staircase. Eight steps up to nothing but a drop back down to the ground below on the other side.
Dante moved closer to examine it.
I cast my eyes around the space as well. I didn’t notice anything particularly interesting about the staircase. It seemed normal, made in the same fashion as the much larger ones which connected each ring of Sanctuary. The walls were made entirely of one sheet of metal, it seemed, but there were slots in it. Closed now but could perhaps be opened.
“Maybe we’re supposed to move the staircase?” Dante asked. I turned back to see him bending over and shoving his weight against the staircase. It didn’t budge.
He looked up at me and raised a brow, and I rushed over to help. But even with our combined strength, it didn’t move. He sighed in frustration. I only shrugged. I wasn’t sure why it mattered. The staircase itself wasn’t high enough to bring us anywhere near the rings anyway.
“There’s got to be something in here we can use to get up there.” Dante started systematically searching the room around us.
I kept my eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary, but there was little to investigate. There was nothing in this room but metal walls, the stairs, and those rings high above.
Until…
“What’s that?” Dante’s gasp was drowned out by a mechanical whooshing that sounded strangely like our metal tubes when they transported us to our Trials.
One of the slots I’d noticed earlier had opened and something was slithering through. It was long and thick, like a rope but alive. It raised itself up and looked at us with beady little eyes, forked tongue flicking in and out of its flat, wide mouth as it hissed.
“What is that thing?” Dante cried.
I cocked my head to the side. Something about the creature seemed familiar and, when I realized why, I nearly burst out laughing. “I think…it’s a Viper.”
His eyes grew wide, and he shook his head. “That’s impossible. They’ve been extinct for a thousand years. They don’t—”
Another whooshing noise, and another viper slithered out of the wall behind us. Emboldened by its companion, the first snake darted toward us.
Dante cried out and bolted for the stairs. I dodged the viper’s first strike, speeding to the side. But another slot opened in the wall just beside my leg, and a third viper struck out at my ankle. I shifted just in time, and the snake bit nothing but air.
When I rematerialized, I dashed to join Dante at the bottom of the staircase.
A fourth compartment in the wall opened.
“What are we supposed to do?” he asked, wide eyes darting from viper to viper as they grew in number with each whoosh and gathered at the base of the stairs. “Why aren’t they coming closer? Is there some kind of barrier protecting the steps? Something we can’t detect? There’s nothing in here to fight them off with. There’s nothing for us to climb to get to the rings. Maybe we’re supposed to combine our gifts in some way. Maybe we’re supposed to…”
Dante went on and on. I simply sat down on one of the steps near the top, rested my elbows on my knees, and watched the pool of vipers beneath us grow steadily larger. Hissing filled the room, eventually drowning out Dante’s panicked rambling.
Perhaps I was tired. Maybe eight Trials was too much for a girl from the Third Ring. Maybe the unfairness of the treatment of my people, which had become more than I could ignore just the previous evening, was finally getting to me. Maybe this betrothal had done more substantial damage to my mental health, to my feeling of independence and autonomy than I thought. MaybeBria was right, and I simply wasn’t in the right headspace for this today. Whatever it was, I felt reasonably confident that I wouldn’t be making it out of that nest of vipers. And it felt like a fitting end. After all, this whole thing had started with my being tossed into a nest of them. It may as well end that way, too.
I chuckled as I leaned back on the staircase, propping myself up on my elbows and waiting for my end.
“What are you doing?” Dante snapped, horrified, from his place above me.
“Nothing,” I answered him. A strange kind of bliss wavered through me from saying the words aloud, a relief from the enormous weight on my shoulders I hadn’t known I was carrying. “I’m doing nothing, Dante.”
“What? Why?”
“Because there’s nothing we can do. You said it yourself.”
“Adrian, there’s a way out. There has to be. There are two more Trials. Other people have done it.”
I snorted. “Not for over a thousand years.”
He muttered a curse and resumed his frantic search for a solution. I just closed my eyes.
