by S T G Hill
Casey lurched the rest of the way out of the tar and hung in the air, dripping with the black stuff.
"He's not breathing!" Thorn struggled and waded against the clinging pit.
Ellie floated Casey’s limp body over to their side of the tar pit. The vast torrent of power rushing through her started to narrow. It threatened to cut off.
She held it open, just a little longer, even though it wanted to burn her from the inside out.
With the last bit of it, she yanked Thorn free of the muck as well.
Ellie fell down onto her butt, feeling fried and exhausted. Casey lay beside her.
Thorn stumbled his way over and fell to his knees beside the boy.
"Is he dead?" Ellie fingers dug into the dirt. She felt helpless.
Chapter 32
Thorn employed a magical version of CPR. Thankfully, that didn't seem to be against the rules in this place.
He tilted Casey's head back and used his channeling ability to force the sticky black muck out of the boy's lungs.
"There's so much of it!" Ellie said, ready to retch herself.
She still couldn't even stand up, so she supported herself on her side and watched Thorn.
Thorn wiped Casey's face as clean as he could. Beneath the slick blackness of the tar, Casey's cheeks were pallid and bloodless.
His lips, she saw, were an icy blue.
Her stomach clenched up. Awful pressure pushed at the back of her eyes and she blinked against it fiercely.
"Thorn..." Ellie said.
"Be quiet!" Thorn snapped. With a wave of his hand, a sharp white light appeared over Casey's body. The boy's chest started to rise and fall beneath it.
It let Thorn concentrate on breathing into Casey's upturned mouth, making the boy's chest swell even higher.
He did it again and again.
"Thorn..." Ellie said. She sat up so she could grab handfuls of her hair.
"No!" Thorn said, rearing back on his haunches.
He clapped his hands together. The ball of light above Casey's chest crackled with electricity.
A thin bolt of lightning struck Casey in the chest, the power coursing through it making his back arch up off the ground.
"Come on, Casey! I know you're there!" Thorn’s body trembled while he channelled the magic.
The next time he did it, Casey rolled over onto his side and coughed. His lips went from blue to deep purple to something like their normal color.
Ellie couldn't say anything.
Thorn just laughed and wrapped his arms around the kid.
Thorn didn't look like much more than a kid himself when he smiled like that, and Ellie reminded herself that he was probably just a few years older than her at most.
Besides, it wasn't like it happened often. When was the last time Thorn had smiled?
"It's okay," Casey said, his voice all scratchy, "I'm okay. We... we need to keep going."
That wiped Thorn's smile away. Casey stood up with Thorn's help, then brushed his hands away. The tar covered him from neck to toes.
Ellie stood up as well, almost as shaky as Casey. He looked at her.
"You used your power to save me, didn't you?" Casey said.
"Thorn saved you," Ellie said. Thorn looked away.
"You both did," Casey said, then his brow creased with concern, "You don't look good. Did you use it all on me?"
This time Ellie looked away. "I did what I needed to do."
"You shouldn't have used it all," Casey replied.
When Ellie looked back at him, he seemed much older than he was. Ellie glanced at Thorn, who wouldn't meet her eyes.
She knew what that meant. That he agreed with Casey.
"I think there's enough space around the pit for us to get back. Just go slower this time," Thorn examined the potential path with a critical eye.
They made their way around the tar pit, which still bubbled and burbled from that final struggle. Ellie kept a sharp watch on it, waiting for a sign that the thing that owned those clawed hands wanted another try.
It didn't.
The jungle continued to thin, and not far from the tar pit Ellie turned back for a casual glance.
She froze.
The trees shadowed most of it, but what she saw was still too much.
An enormous, jade-scaled snake watched them from the other side of the pit.
A snake with long, thin arms that ended in clawed hands. An odd, golden helmet sat on its wedge of a head, reminding her of the hats that the pharaohs on the coffins at the Met wore.
She'd been there once, on a school field trip, and she remembered those huge old coffins well.
She turned back to the others to warn them, but when she glanced back over her shoulder the snake thing was gone.
"Ellie?" Thorn stopped and faced her.
"We need to go faster," she replied.
She hated snakes.
***
After leaving the jungle behind, it didn't take them long to reach the chasm.
"I can't see where it ends!" Casey said, looking first one way and then the other.
"It probably doesn't," Thorn replied, standing there with his hands on his hips.
The chasm was a massive crack in the earth, stretching to infinity on either side to meet up with the dull horizon of this place.
It wasn't the length that concerned Ellie at the moment, but the width.
"I can see the path on the other side," she said, pointing.
"It has to be a hundred feet across," Thorn said.
"And we have to get across, don't we?" Casey looked to them.
Their walk from the jungle to this point seemed to have revitalized him. Color had returned to his face. And the tar had dried and mostly flaked off, leaving a trail of dull black chips behind them.
"This is it. This has to be the next trial," Thorn sighed and rubbed at his chin.
"We should look around, see if there's any clues," Ellie replied, seizing on that, "If we finish it, maybe there's be another of those break rooms at the end of the path."
"Maybe," Thorn agreed.
All the adrenaline from the tar pit had turned him back to his old self, at least for a bit.
But he was fading rapidly, Ellie could tell. He looked even worse than before, his eyes sunken once more and his skin all waxy.
He reminded her of the Errants who'd attacked the campus, their bodies ravaged by their addiction to magic.
Thorn went to the left and Casey to the right. Ellie snuck carefully up towards the edge of the yawning chasm.
I'll bet it doesn't have a bottom, she thought, dizzying vertigo burrowing into her stomach.
Still, she wanted to take a look.
The dirt of the jungle had given way to rocky fields. As Ellie stepped closer, a rock near the edge came loose just in front of her foot.
It tumbled down into the abyss.
"Careful!" Thorn reached for her, but stopped short when she didn’t go over.
Ellie rolled her eyes, then edged forward a little more, expecting to see nothing but darkness staring back up at her. Maybe a pit of spikes. Possibly even huge, glowing dragon's eyes...
"Oh," she said when she dared a peek.
"What? What do you see?" Casey said, staying well back from the edge.
Thorn had stopped as well.
"I think I know what this is," Ellie peered down into the darkness, "Come over here."
Casey hesitated only a moment but came over. Thorn hung back a little longer.
"What? Don't tell me you're afraid of heights," Ellie raised her eyebrow at him.
"No," Thorn replied, "Not heights. Just the sudden stop at the bottom if you fall."
"What? There isn't a spell for that?" Ellie said waving him over.
He sighed and walked over to them, good and slow. "There is a spell. A bunch of them, actually. But they might not work here, genius."
"If that's what you need to tell yourself," Ellie said, then she gestured down into the chasm, "But I
think I know what this is. Take a look. Come on. I won't push you in. Cross my heart."
Thorn went closer and peered over the lip with great care.
He saw what she and Casey had already seen.
A series of large stone blocks lying on the bottom of the chasm, maybe a hundred feet down.
They were large an irregularly shaped, but Ellie recognized them from toys she remembered.
"I stayed with this family in Long Island for a few months when I was seven," Ellie said, "They were nice. They gave me this set of weirdly cut wooden blocks. They looked like nothing if you scattered them on the floor... but if you put them together the right way they became a sphere."
It surprised her that she even remembered that. It was so long ago now.
She could recall a lot of it. Trying a bunch of times until she got the blocks to look like the sphere on the cover of the little box that they came in.
Thorn stared down at the odd pieces, his brow knitting into a frown.
Casey realized what she got at first. "It's a bridge! If you put them together the right way they make a bridge across!" Then he frowned, too, "But how do you make one?"
Thorn shook his head, "It's the trials. If the maze was for prognostication with those focus pearls, this one's probably about channeling. Lifting the blocks up and setting them against each other the right way to make the bridge."
"Lucky for us we have a senior channeling student with us," Ellie nodded at him.
Thorn ground his teeth, "My battery's pretty low... besides, I kind of suck at puzzles."
"So you're admitting that there's something you aren't good at?" Ellie said, cocking an eyebrow at him again.
Her smile faltered when she felt a prickle on the back of her neck.
Someone's watching us, she realized.
She scanned the stony field, but saw nothing and no one. Which was good: she didn't want to see one of those snake men in proper light.
"I like puzzles," Casey broke in.
"Good, then you can help me put this thing together," Thorn cracked his knuckles, "And Ellie, you can keep an eye out for whatever's going to come after us when we start. You know there'll be something."
She knew. Cold fingers walked up her spine. I hate snakes!
There was another problem, though. "If your battery's low, mine's dead. I won't be able to hold off much of anything. And no offence, but you look dead on your feet."
Thorn's shoulders sagged beneath the invisible weight pressing them down. "If it is like the maze, nothing will come after us until we start... Maybe it's time for a rest? A short one."
Ellie nodded. Even the suggestion of a rest made her tired bones ache and demand that it happen.
Ellie's skin prickled a moment before it happened.
"Or we could help," Miles said, stepping out from behind a boulder. Matilda followed him.
"Or we could not," Matilda said. She looked at Ellie, "Hey ab. I thought you'd be gone by now."
Chapter 33
This can't get any worse, Ellie thought.
Of course they'd chosen to show themselves when she was just about burnt out and Thorn could barely keep his eyes open.
"I think the competition's about to get a lot easier," Matilda said, stepping around Miles. She held her hands out, ready to cast some spell.
Then Miles stopped her. "Not yet... We heard you and I think you're right. Soon as we start doing this, something's gonna pop up and try and take a bite out of us. So I've got a deal for you guys."
"We don't want your deal!" Casey said, hands balled into fists at his sides.
Matilda smirked, "Then maybe you shouldn't have left us that trail of black stuff to follow, dummy."
Thorn put his hand on Casey's shoulder, "It's okay. What's your deal?" he asked Miles.
"You and Matilda are both big-time channelers. You guys put the bridge together, half each. The rest of us watches your backs. Sound good?"
"Sounds like a good way to get dropped down into the pit," Ellie’s spine still tingled with danger.
Her anger at their betrayal burned away some of her exhaustion.
"Because of you guys, Jackie's gone. Maybe even dead," Ellie continued.
Matilda stepped forward again, "If you're so worried about her I could send you to see her. Just say the word."
"Besides," Miles crossed his arms and shook his head, "She's not dead. No way the Magister and the others would go through with this if people could actually die."
"And what if you're wrong?" Thorn said, walking in between Ellie and Matilda, "Because if you are, you two ran away and let it happen. There's a reason Cassiodorian and the others tried to stop this from happening. There's a reason they don't even teach us about it anymore."
He let the implications hang in the air.
Miles puffed up his chest and stood beside Matilda. He was still shorter than Thorn. "Darius Belt is a great sorcerer! He wouldn't waste good talent like that. Of course, maybe that's why you came to Sourcewell: Belt cut you loose 'cause you're not good enough."
And there's no way they don't see how worn out Thorn is, Ellie thought.
Thorn's hands balled into fists. The air around them began crackling with static so thick that Ellie's skin tingled.
Miles stepped up, his fists glowing with power.
Casey kept a nervous watch on the whole thing, eyes shifting from the confrontation to the chasm full of puzzle stones.
"Okay! Fine!" Ellie said, walking up to them.
Inside, she just wanted to get away from all this. But she also knew that that wouldn't help any of them.
So she assumed her old self. The self that could put on an act to convince someone to do what she wanted.
She just hoped that Matilda and Miles would be no harder to convince than a movie theater usher.
"We'll do it your way," Ellie said, heart pounding the blood past her ears. "Thorn, come on, we do it this way or no one gets across."
Thorn's jaw worked in its trademark teeth-grinding fashion. Then the static left the air and his shoulder sagged.
"That's what I thought," Miles dropped his fists.
"You too," Ellie put in.
If Miles and Matilda decided to press their advantage, Ellie didn't think she and the others could win. Thorn was pretty low. Ellie wasn't certain she could even light a match with whatever spark remained inside of her.
And Casey couldn't take the two of them alone.
So she maintained that disapproving, stop-the-measuring-contest glare even while the base of her spine tingled and her feet itched to carry her away from this whole mess.
"Truce. For now," Miles said, nodding.
Ellie quirked an eyebrow, "It was your idea in the first place."
They all went over to the edge of the chasm to work out the plan. All in all, it was pretty much as Miles had laid it out before: Matilda and Thorn put the bridge together, each of them supporting half of it, while the others kept whatever decided to come after them off their backs.
"Any ideas what's out there? We saw some shadows in the jungle, but that was about it," Miles jerked a thumb back over his shoulder, indicating the distant treeline.
Ellie swallowed hard. "I think I know." She told them about the snake man with his long arms and strange helmet.
"I hope that's not it," Miles said.
"Whatever. Snakes are cool," Matilda replied.
Of course she'd think that, Ellie thought. "Let's go set up."
Ellie started to join Casey and Miles in their spot about 30 feet from the edge of the chasm when Matilda gave her a quick shock with a snap of her fingers.
Ellie wheeled around, ready to lay into her.
"Where are you going, ab? You're not going to be any help over there," Matilda said.
Casey had stopped, with Miles noticing and also coming to a halt a little farther away.
Ellie waved them on, swallowing her hot anger, "No. Matilda's right. I don't have the juice to stop anything that comes that way, but I c
an help with the bridge. Thorn's no good with puzzles and I watched Matilda ball all her laundry up and shove it into the closet.
"The faster the bridge goes up, the faster we all get across."
No one had mentioned what happened after they got to the other side. But Ellie thought that was a worry they could put off for now.
"Whatever," Matilda smirked and turned towards the chasm.
As though to underscore Ellie's point, she channeled her power to lift a few random blocks from the floor of the chasm and started beating them together like a kid trying to force the wrong ends of two puzzle pieces into each other.
"Those don't go!" Ellie said, hurrying over.
Twenty stone blocks lay at the bottom of the chasm, scattered about in random order.
Ellie did her best to guide Thorn and Matilda in bringing the pieces up and rotating them, trying to find matching surfaces.
It was frustrating to say the least.
She knew with her full powers she could probably just force them all to magically fit.
But when she cautiously tested herself, trying to bring a few little pebbles up off the ground, her stomach went all tight and queasy and her vision doubled. A no-go.
And between them, Thorn and Matilda could only bring a few pieces up at once to compare.
Ellie kept glancing back at Miles and Casey, who'd each taken position on top of different boulders, trying to get the widest field of view.
For a few minutes at the beginning, Ellie dared tell herself that maybe the snake men were confined to the jungle.
That maybe the main danger for this trial was betrayal from your fellow Chosen.
They tried to use a simple organizing spell to fit the pieces together, but it didn't work. Whoever had designed this Trial wanted them to have to take the time to fit everything together piece-by-piece.
They found they also couldn't circumvent the task by simply having Thorn or Matilda float them over to the other side.
Their power worked only on the stone slabs.
"Whoever made this is the worst," Matilda’s face became a mask of effort, her hands held out as she projected her will to lift a block.
"Yeah. Now let's beat this thing," Ellie said, and started directing them again.
