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 forhimself. 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.
Chapter Thirteen
“Joining the Trials is pledging yourself, body and soul, to the mission of the Geist. On the day of your Oathtaking, you become a Holy Vessel, and you no longer belong to yourself but to the Geist and to all of Sanctuary.”
-Theory of the Trials; 952 Age of Sanctum
