As if I could ever forget. “Nobody said anything about quitting, but if I end up with your soul in my hands again, I’m seriously considering whether it’s worth the bother of putting it back where it belongs.”
He didn’t drop a snide comment or threat, as I might have expected. He simply vanished through the doors into the castle, at the same time as silence swept across the arena, signalling the start of the second round.
I blew out a breath. “Note to self: next time get a job working for anyone but the most ungrateful wanker in the Parallel or otherwise.”
I didn’t particularly care if he heard me. Turning away, I went to join the other Elemental Soldiers at the arena’s side as the second day of the trials kicked off.
7
“The goals of today’s trials,” Ryan told the participants, “are to test your ability to improvise and use quick thinking to solve problems. Everyone who isn’t in the contest, I’d advise you to get out of range.”
That meant me, then. I backed up to the castle steps, along with Felicity and Cal, as Ryan raised their hands.
A whirlwind shot towards the arena, knocking the contenders over like skittles. I braced my feet on the steps as the air current rippled over our heads.
“I see why we’re supposed to keep our distance,” I remarked to Felicity.
Ryan’s magically conjured whirlwinds lifted a number of baskets across the grounds, levitating them above the arena. What’s going on this time?
“Your task is to catch as many discs as possible,” said Ryan. “And don’t drop any. Everyone takes one basket. One basket, Sledge.” They addressed a heavyset guy with a mullet and a scowl who’d started a few fights already.
There followed a flurry of activity as everyone scrambled to grab a basket before the air current knocked them over again.
Once everyone had a basket in hand, the wind picked up again, sending a handful of blank cantrips surging above the participants’ heads. To no surprise, the first participants to catch any cantrips in their baskets were those who could jump the highest. Or climb on the others. One short, skinny girl climbed a taller contender like a tree, grabbing for the discs. Ryan raised their hands and the air current reversed, knocking her off the challenger’s back.
“You’re having fun with this, aren’t you?” I called down the steps.
“It’s rare that I get to make full use of my gifts.” They shot me a grin and returned their attention to the contest.
By the trial’s end, three participants were still on their feet. One was Sledge, who looked like he was part boulder; the second was a smaller girl who’d survived by hiding behind the bigger, sturdier contenders—and the third was Bria. She caught my eye and grinned—whether mockingly or triumphant, I honestly couldn’t tell. After our chat earlier, I still didn’t know where we stood, but I hadn’t seen her openly break the rules. She must be quick on her feet, that’s all.
“That’s enough,” said Ryan, lowering their hands. The wind died down and the remaining discs bounced into the mud. “Who has the most discs?”
Sledge dropped his basket, revealing it overflowing with gleaming gold discs. “Did I win?”
“Nope.” Bria casually stepped aside, revealing a basket piled high behind her back. “I did.”
The smaller girl looked a little annoyed, but she revealed her own stash of cantrips without a fuss. One by one, the other contenders began to rise to their feet and show their spoils. Ryan helped count them, while the rest of us watched for any signs of trouble. Like Sledge trying to steal other contenders’ discs, for instance. If it were up to me, I’d already have disqualified him, but that wasn’t my decision to make.
“The next trial will take place in the dungeon,” said Felicity. “Come with me.”
She descended the stairs and led the contenders around the back of the castle, while Ryan, Cal and I went through the main doors into the lobby. Inside, Dex had taken up his usual position in front of the hall of souls.
The fire sprite gave me a wave as I walked past. “Not much action in here, is there?”
“Don’t speak too soon.” I followed Ryan and Cal through a side door which led to a balcony overlooking a wide room.
The dungeon itself contained nothing of note, only a pair of oak doors which opened with a reverberating creak. The candidates filed into the room behind Felicity and assembled on the ground below our balcony, which was covered in what appeared to be sand. When the doors closed behind them, Felicity climbed a stone staircase to join the three of us on the balcony.
“Stay up here.” Felicity told us. “Word of advice… you’re definitely going to want to keep your distance from this one.”
I shot Ryan a puzzled look, but Cal stepped in first. A grating noise came from below, and a large slab of stone slid across the sandy floor, blocking off the stairs Felicity had climbed. Another covered the door the contenders had entered through, trapping everyone in the dungeon… including us.
“Your test is to find a way out of here,” Felicity said to the fire mages below. “Don’t bother trying the stairs over here. They’re barred. And so is the way you came in.”
Then Felicity raised her hands, and water began to fill the room, sweeping across the sandy floor. The fire mages’ faces twisted with alarm and shock, but there was nowhere for them to run. In no time at all, the water rose to block the doorways, while the mages found themselves submerged to their ankles, then their knees.
I turned to Felicity, whose face was pinched in concentration, then back to the others. “What’s she doing? I thought the trials were supposed to test their skill at fire magic, not put it out.”
“The fire magic is on hold for a while,” said Cal, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “They won’t be much use if they can’t fight back when their magic is disabled, can they?”
By now, most of the contenders were treading water. “Is the test for them to swim out of here?”
“That’s the plan, yes,” said Cal. “I’m the one who hid the keys.”
“Please say the Death King has safeguards in place to prevent anyone from drowning,” I said.
“Hey, we all get a chance to cut loose,” said Cal. “Ryan already got theirs, and now Felicity gets to try hers out.”
I doubted she’d let people die in the middle of a challenge, but it was clear the Death King himself had no intention of intervening in this one. If anyone was unlucky enough to drown, he could always turn them into a lich and conscript them into his army. Or turn their bones into decorations. Arsehole.
The water stopped at neck-height for most of the participants, but the shorter people had to tread water or stand on the higher parts of the ground in order to keep their heads above the surface. I scanned the room, wondering where in the world the way out must be… then spotted a glimmering section of stone diagonally across from us.
One of the contenders had found it, too. She pushed against the wall, then shook her head. My eyesight wasn’t good enough to see what was wrong, but Ryan leaned in and whispered, “There’s a keyhole. They need to find the key to get out.”
“And it’s hidden in this room.”
The key must be below their feet, then, concealed in the sand. There was nowhere else it might be.
Several of the contenders had already figured it out, diving below the water to search the sandy floor. A furore rose when the big guy, Sledge, grabbed a smaller candidate and shoved her under the water, limbs flailing.
“Stop whining and grab the damn key,” he said.
“Hey, that’s cheating, isn’t it?” I readied myself to intervene.
“Yes, it is.” Ryan leaned over the edge and sent a current of air at Sledge, knocking him back into the water. “Three strikes and you’re out. No drowning the other participants.”
“Spoilsport,” Sledge spluttered, resurfacing.
“Real team player, that one,” I muttered, scanning for other familiar faces. The shorter girl who’d endured the last round dove un
der the water to search for the key, and Bria did likewise.
Then the crowd surged to one end of the sandy floor. Had one of them got the key? Judging by the way the crowd piled up near the door, I’d say so. Ryan shouted again, and their magic pushed the crowd apart, allowing the contender to reach out and unlock the door.
A doorway in the wall sprang open and the contender jumped through it to safety, but when the others tried to follow, they found the way blocked. The door had closed, and nobody else could get out.
“There’s more than one key.” Now I got it. “They have to find one each. Without drowning one another in the process.”
That seemed a tall order. Whenever one of the participants found a key, others would try to snatch it from their grip. Within ten minutes, five or so of them had left the arena, but the rest of them had to keep diving underwater to retrieve the keys from where they were buried.
“There aren’t enough,” I said to Cal. “Are they? You deliberately did that to disqualify half of them.”
“Guilty,” he said. “In my defence, it was the Death King’s idea. All of this.”
“Of course it was.” Sledge was still in there. So was Bria. Neither had been lucky enough to find a key, nor keep hold of it for long enough to unlock the door.
Another participant escaped through the door and Sledge tried to drag him back out. As the two grappled, Ryan’s magic sent Sledge flying into the water again. He disappeared with an angry shout. The water levels appeared higher than they had before, covering half the exit. That’s new.
“Felicity’s not doing that, is she?” I looked at the Water Element.
“No, she isn’t.” Ryan shot her a concerned look. “Someone else is using magic. Everyone—get back from the edge.”
I took a step back, and the water gave another surge, dragging the contestants downward. Felicity swore under her breath. “I can’t stop it. The person doing this must be a mage. We have to get them out—”
In a rush, the water surged up to the ceiling and over the balcony. Icy water drenched me, a powerful current dragging me into its wake. I kicked out, my feet seeking the stone floor, but the balcony wasn’t beneath me any longer. My hands touched the ceiling, and panic shot through my nerves. There was no surface. The water filled the entire hall. The only way out was to swim through one of the doors which had been sealed for the contest—or find a key.
Luckily, I had one ace up my sleeve in the form of a water-breathing spell. I fumbled in my pouch for the right cantrip, my already-poor eyesight hindering me further. Then I turned on the cantrip and a bubble appeared around my head, bringing a relieving surge of oxygen. I dove below the surface, spotting Ryan treading water beside the oak doors the contenders had entered through. Air shot from their hands and the doors burst open, sending a current of water and mages surging out into the main castle.
Oh, hell. Now the whole castle was in danger of flooding. The nearest contenders took their chance to swim through the now-open doors, while others kicked and climbed over one another in an effort to escape the water. Felicity remained behind, directing the stragglers towards the doors, while Cal had disappeared. Maybe he’d made a run for it. I turned on the spot and caught sight of the earth mage floating unconscious nearby. Or maybe not.
I grabbed his arm—he might not have been particularly nice to me, but I didn’t want him to die—and swam towards the open doors. The water level was no lower on the other side, and by now, it filled the corridor almost to the ceiling. Gritting my teeth, I pulled Cal through the doors and towards the others swimming for freedom up the stairs into the main castle. I pushed Cal up the stairs ahead of me, relieved to find the water levels above only came up to my ankles.
In the upper corridor, Ryan was performing CPR on one of the contenders. They caught my eye as I dropped Cal off, and as the contender stirred, Ryan moved to Cal’s side. I glanced behind me, still seeing more contenders escaping the hall. Most of them had already fled, but some of them might have been left behind. Including, perhaps, the person responsible for the flood.
I swam down the staircase back into the dungeon, pausing to allow a couple of stragglers to swim past me to safety. My feet touched down on the sandy floor, unearthing a key. Might there be a cantrip hidden under here, too? It was that or a water mage had got in… which was unlikely, given how thoroughly everyone had been searched.
I shoved the sand with my foot, glancing up as Felicity helped another contender escape. Movement stirred below, a faint glitter in the water. Magic?
I swam towards it with strong kicks, but the water current changed direction with a surge that sent me flying back. I hit the wall, and the bubble vanished from around my head. Water filled my mouth.
I rotated towards the door again, my lungs screaming for air. Water overflowed my mouth, and my vision blurred.
The image of Dirk Alban’s face flashed before my vision.
“What have you done?” his voice said. “Olivia Cartwright, you have doomed us all.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came out. My sight turned grainy, like a corrupted video recording, and the voices blurred into one, the faces merging before my eyes before darkness clouded my vision.
I choked on a breath, then coughed up a torrent of water. Cold hard stone cushioned my back, while my eyes opened to see the Air Element leaning over me.
“Good, you’re alive,” Ryan said.
“Thanks.” I coughed up some more water. “Who did that?”
“I don’t know,” they said. “Thanks for getting Cal out. I couldn’t help everyone at once. The water moved too fast.”
A few more contestants lay scattered around the corridor, soaking wet and shivering. I wobbled to my feet and walked up to the staircase leading into the dungeon, where the water had almost cleared. I held onto the wall for balance as I descended the stone steps until I came to the balcony. Felicity stood alone, her face set in an expression of concentration. In the dungeon, the water levels were lower, but puddles covered the floor along with sand and unearthed keys. Nobody had been left behind. Did I really see someone use magic, or did I imagine it?
If that had been a person I’d seen, they’d tried to kill me. I retreated upstairs into the corridor, where the contestants huddled together in bedraggled groups. None appeared obviously guilty, though it was hard to tell from outside appearances. Further down the hall, the door into the castle’s lobby lay partly open. I walked through, finding the hall slightly damp but not flooded, and it didn’t look like the doors to the hall of souls had been opened. The mental image of fishing soul amulets out of random places for the next week was not an appealing one.
“What the hell is going on?” Dex wanted to know. “Did His Deathly Highness try to drown his contenders? Has he forgotten one of his security guards is a fire sprite?”
“It wasn’t him,” I said. “I thought I’d find him in here. Is the hall of souls okay?”
“No thanks to whichever fool flooded the place.” He flounced over to the doors. “Storms and quakes. This job will be the death of me.”
“I’m starting to agree.” I turned around as Felicity walked in, dripping-wet.
“I swear I didn’t do that,” she said, as Dex puffed out smoke at her. “Either another water mage got in, or someone used a spell to make the water rise.”
“Like a cantrip?” I said. “Are all the contestants in one piece?”
“More or less,” said Felicity. “Ryan and I got most of them out. The trial itself ended inconclusively, but what can we do?”
“Never mind the trial.” Someone had flooded the castle with the intention of sabotaging the trials without a care for who might have died in the process. “Where’s the boss?”
“Pretty sure he can’t drown,” said Felicity. “He’ll be in his hall of souls, I don’t doubt.”
“He isn’t,” said Dex. “Nobody has been in there, not even me.”
“Do you think the person who did this was intending to dist
ract everyone so they could steal his soul amulet again?” I asked.
Her expression shadowed. “Maybe. Truth be told, I don’t know if a contender did it or not. If it wasn’t a water mage, a cantrip would have turned to dust after its use, which would have vanished in the water.”
She had a point. From above, none of us would have seen someone set off a cantrip underwater… but the other contenders might have.
“You’re right,” I said, “but I reckon if they did, someone must have spotted them. It’s hard to do something like that surreptitiously. And there was a lot of bad behaviour going on in there.”
“Like that bully Sledge,” said Felicity. “I’m going to dry out the castle. Can you ask Ryan to find me when I’m done?”
“Sure.” I turned back to the bolted doors behind Dex. “The water won’t have got into the hall of souls, would it?”
“No,” she said. “It’s protected by magic the rest of the castle isn’t. None of us expected the place to end up flooded from the inside, but anti-elemental shields only cover the jail and the hall of souls.”
“I’d pity the person who had to rearrange every soul amulet if they didn’t,” I commented. “Who knows, maybe the Death King is hiding somewhere in there after all.”
“It’s locked,” said Dex.
I had an unlocking cantrip, but I had an inkling that wouldn’t work. So be it, then. I turned away and went to find Ryan.
“Everyone accounted for?” I asked the Air Element, who sat at the foot of the stairs, squeezing water out of their cloak.
“Sure,” they said. “I’d get everyone assembled outside, but I’m pretty sure they’ll catch their death of cold if I do. We need to find some cantrips to dry them out.”
“Bring them into the hall,” I said. “The contenders, I mean. We can grab the cantrips while we’re at it.”
“Oh?” Ryan climbed to their feet. “What’s the plan, then?”
“Play detective.” And if necessary, convince His Deathly Highness to step in and do some of his own damn work for himself. “I’ve got this, don’t worry.”
Trial of Shadows (Order of the Elements Book 3) Page 7
