“Tests?” Maria’s hand slid down the hilt of her sword. Her palms were sweaty, but the air in the cavern was cool. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard a waterfall.
“Yes, tests. Trials, if you prefer. The Trials of Antenele.” He laughed again, that wicked laughter. “Many have undergone the Trials, but few have walked away from them with a victory in their pocket and their sanity safely nestled inside of their brains.”
Good pep talk, Maria thought.
She spun around. The voice seemed to be getting closer and closer, as if the man was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
“If I take your trials, will you return Sherlock to me unharmed?”
“Why, yes, Maria. I will return your mutt to you, and then you will be on your way, on to the other side, free of my mountain.”
“And Ignatius and Freida?”
“They will pass through here without a clue. I may watch from the shadows, but they will remain untouched.”
“The rules?” Maria asked.
The ground shifted behind her, from where she had climbed up. She whirled around and saw the cavern floor rising up to meet her. There was no more drop off. The land had smoothed into a plateau; there was not even a crack in the ground where the two ends met. Lights flickered, orange and red, eating away the gray gloom. Torches on the walls, burning with flame, sending acrid smoke high into the mountain.
“There are no rules, Maria. But there are guidelines. The Trials are simple to understand: you will be given three tasks, each one increasing in difficulty.”
“What tasks?”
“Ah, ah, ah,” the man said, clucking his tongue. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
Maria didn’t answer him; she was deep in thought. The man had known her last name, had known Sherlock could talk to her. Somehow, he had access into her mind, her thoughts.
“Yes,” the man answered. “I do.”
The way he spoke made Maria shudder.
“There is no need to be frightened. No going back now. As you can see, I have raised the land. There is no exit behind you. A good metaphor of life, I think. The only way to be successful is to keep going forward. And Maria, my dear friend, that is what you will have to do.” He broke out in laughter again.
The walls began to narrow, closing around her. Maria held her ground. Down the rocky corridor, that pinprick of light reappeared in the blackness where the torchlight would not stretch, like a slit eye.
“I feel your anxiety, Maria. I know you want to begin. But you will not be thinking this once you are faced with your first task; so patience, my dear witch. Since I’ve grown to admire your work—the inside of your head is quite amusing, I must say—I will give you a few hints. Each trial will test you in a different way. Skill, will, and thrill. In what order, you ask? That, you will have to find out on your own.” More laughter. “Now, let the Trials of Antenele begin!”
The cave shifted again, more violently than before, yet Maria held her ground. Once it stopped, the silence engulfed her. She could hear her own ragged breathing, her own thudding heartbeat.
The music box weighed her down. It was a burden, it seemed, too great to carry. Some voice deep inside of her mind was telling her to put it down, to leave it there in the bowels of this great mountain, where no one would ever find it, and where it would be safe from all creatures, from Arachnids to Orcs. Never to be found again.
“No,” Maria said, sternly. If this was the first test, Maria thought it would be a breeze. She could resist a little whispering.
With the sword in her right hand—the sword that should’ve been wielded with two hands—Maria took a step forward. The goal was simple: Besides survival, Maria knew she was supposed to move forward, like the man of the mountain had said. The pinprick of light on the other side of the dimly lit rock corridor was where she needed to go. Along the way, the tests would be taken. Yet she found herself slightly afraid to take that first step. She had read somewhere that the first step of any journey was always the hardest. It had been true on her birthday, when the magic had started to surface, and it had been true when she left the portal into Oriceran for the first time. But she had done it, hadn’t she? She had taken that first step, and then the second and third and fourth.
C’mon, Maria. C’mon, she thought.
She stepped, her breathing ragged.
But when she stepped, the cave disappeared. Gone were the torch lights and the rock walls and the raised land behind her.
Now she was in a gray field. Two moons shone high in the dark sky. She could see her breath on the air. The temperature was low enough to make her flesh break out in goosebumps. She no longer saw the pinprick of light that was her goal, but a great wrought-iron gate.
She approached it, her sword still in hand. There was a word written in twisted steel at the top of the entrance, but Maria could not understand what it said. It was in a language outside of her English and two years of high school Spanish. The letters and symbols were enough to tell her that she was not looking at an Earthen language.
Still, understanding the words or not, it did not take a genius to realize where she was.
Beyond the gates were large slabs of stone sticking out of the ground—headstones.
The hinges squeaked rustily as the gates opened. As they did, the pinprick of light bobbed beyond in the blackness.
It’s back. I have no choice but to go forward.
Taking
