Dante and I exchanged a glance.
“We can talk in the morning,” he said gently, moving forward to usher his mother to bed.
“No, you don’t understand.” Myrine yanked back from her son’s grasp. “It’s dangero—It’s not what you—It’s—”
She gave a growl of frustration, and my lips parted as I realized what was happening. I was witnessing someone being physically restrained by the Oath.
“Mom, please,” Dante pleaded, worry creasing his brow.
“It’s going to be hard,” Myrine spat, hurriedly, as if afraid that Dante was going to stop her again. “It’s going to be more difficult than anything you’ve done so far, anything you’ve ever done your whole lives.”
I just stared at her. That was sort of the point of the Trials, wasn’t it? That they got harder with each level you passed.
“I’ve been trying to tell you,” she continued, practically raving now. “I’ve been trying to tell you since you got here. Only trust will get you through it. Trust in each other and in the Geist.”
I restrained the urge to scoff. I’d never trusted the Geist, and I wasn’t likely to start now.
“We can talk about this tomorrow, mother,” Dante again pleaded gently. “You can train us for—”
“There will be no training.” Myrine’s face returned to a mask of cold indifference as she straightened and pulled out of her son’s grip once more. “Nothing can prepare you for this. You either can…or you can’t.”
She turned on her heels, leaving Dante and I staring at one another, horrified.
Chapter Twenty
“Pain is the body’s way of reminding you that you are alive.”
-Journal of Rainier, 379 Genesis Age
Iwould never get used to the sickening feeling of being hurled through space at the incomprehensible speed of the metal tubes. But at least this time when I was dropped unceremoniously onto the stone floor below, I landed on my feet. One look to the side showed that Dante had done the same. He glanced at me and nodded.
We’d taken Myrine’s advice to heart and decided to begin our attempt at the fifth Trial the next day. If there was no training to be done in preparation, there was no sense in delaying. Though, if I was being honest, I was more affected by Myrine’s fatalistic approach to this trial than I openly admitted. She’d hardly even looked at us the night before and had made a point of missing breakfast this morning. Dante hadn’t said anything, but I feared that if he didn’t unclench his jaw soon, his teeth would shatter. I imagined her lack of assistance had something to do with it being the one she herself failed so long ago. But what that meantfor us, facing a Trial that even Myrine so clearly still feared, I hadn’t the faintest idea.
So we were at it again, thrust into the next Trial.
The room was smaller than the others and much simpler. There were no ancient statues like the fourth Trial, no complex arrangement of staggered rocks and boulders and lengths of rope like the third. It wasn’t dark like the second or winding like the first. It was a simple room. Perhaps fifteen feet wide and just as long across. The ceilings were high, though, higher than they’d been in any other Trial. Perhaps fifty feet up.
It took us no time to find the rings. They were practically on display, hovering delicately above a small platform at the top of the opposite wall, which was a darker color than the others and made up of jagged, uneven edges, bumps which stuck out farther at hand and foot length.
Climbing, then.
"I wonder why your mother said we couldn’t train for this," I mused to Dante as we strode toward the wall. "Seems like climbing is something we could have added to our training routine."
"Adrian."
He’d reached the wall first and was sliding a finger over one of the jutted out edges. When he looked back up at me, his eyes were wide. As I stepped up beside him, I understood why.
This was no standard rock-climbing wall. The edges we were meant to grab, to hold onto to pull ourselves up, to lean all of our bodyweight against, were blades. Knives, daggers, swords, all of varying lengths and thicknesses, all with razor sharp edges, jutted out of the wall, our only hand and footholds for the climb.
I nearly shivered at the thought of the pain we were about to endure.
“This is sick,” I spat. “This is horrific, inhumane. This—”
“Is what it is,” Dante replied, already grabbing one of the blades and hoisting himself up.
“Dante!”
We still hadn’t discussed anything about the night before or the weeks prior. We hadn’t talked about Dahlia or Cyrus or even Olympia. I hadn’t said a word about how I hadn’t been able to keep the thoughts of his hands on my body from my mind since they had been. But now, staring up at those jagged blades, it felt like an apt time to have the conversation.
