His hand fumbled over another open hole before brushing over something small and rigid. He froze, and the hair on his nape rose as he realized they were teeth and the other two cavities were eye sockets.
Cole yanked his hand away and scented the air. The potent aromas of mildew, stone, and earth permeated the air, but he didn’t detect any rot. But if these were the remains of a long-dead fae who failed in the trials, there would be no aroma of decay.
Shuffling forward, he kept his hand away from the walls, but something brushed his fingers, and when he reached out, he grasped the skeletal remains of another hand stretching out of the ground.
Curiosity won out over his disgust, and he followed that hand to a boney forearm and on to the solid rock the upper arm protruded from. There was nothing else of the skeleton, only that arm stretching out of the stone.
What the fuck?
In all his years, throughout all his travels and countless battles, he’d never experienced anything like this before. What was going on? What happened to this thing? How had it become trapped in the rock?
And how many of them surrounded him?
He suspected the answer to that was a lot. Rising away from the arm, he wiped his hands on his pants, but it did nothing to remove the feel of those smooth bones against his palms.
He was standing in the middle of a tomb, and if he wasn’t careful, it was going to swallow him too, strip the flesh from his bones, and leave him trapped within the stone.
The walls closed further in on him, and though they continued to brush against him, he didn’t touch them again. He knew all he needed to know about his surroundings without becoming more friendly with the dead surrounding him… watching him.
When he turned another corner, the ground gave way beneath him. One second, he was standing on solid stone, and the next, he was plummeting into a freefall.
Shit!
The air ripped at his clothes and battered him. His arms spun as he sought some purchase to slow his fall, but whereas the walls above had been steadily closing in on him, his hands connected with nothing as he fell further and further into an endless pit.
Was it endless, or would he soon find himself crashing into the ground and shattering every bone in his body? Once there, would the stone cover him until he became another skeleton reaching out of the earth?
And there was the possibility there was no end to this pit and he would fall for eternity. He wouldn’t put it past the dark fae and arach to design an endless pit that immortals never escaped.
How many dark fae had fallen in before him and were still falling beneath him? How many were trapped in here, rotting in this place as they wasted away from years of starvation?
He’d fallen into the first trial, and he had to figure out how to defeat it if he was going to survive.
Realizing that it was pointless, Cole stopped searching for a hand or foothold. There wouldn’t be any. The only way out of this place was himself and his abilities.
He shut down the endless possibilities of what lay below and concentrated on the currents of air battering him. Focused on those currents, he drew strength from the power of the air.
The air danced across his fingertips, flowed up his arms, and over his shoulders like faeries flitting across lily pads. It hummed against his ears until it vibrated his eardrums and filled his lungs with its life-giving properties.
The power of it seeped into his veins until it suffused his entire being. Feeling as if he were one with the air, he spread his fingers out beneath him and held his palms out. Air pushed against his palms until it felt as solid as the walls above.
As those air currents built, his plunge eased until it stopped. Hovering in the air, he used its currents to keep him afloat as he stared into the darkness.
From somewhere deep within the cavern, an agonized scream rebounded off the walls and spiraled into the pit until it echoed around him. Despite the fact it came from a distance, it sounded as if he could touch the owner of that scream.
There would be no touching or saving the owner as the scream abruptly cut off. Cole recognized a death scream when he heard one and knew it had come from one of the two kids. Either Eoghan or Auberon had met their end in this place.
Bowing his head, he closed his eyes in a moment of silence for the lost fae before opening them again. It was sad they’d died when they didn’t have to, but it was time to get out of this place.
He could use the air currents to lower himself, but he was unwilling to go any further down. While he could hover, he couldn’t fly out of here and could only use the currents to lift himself a little.
Wiggling his fingers, he shifted the air beneath him and used its currents to push him toward the side of the pit. It was farther away than he’d anticipated, but eventually, his fingers and feet found rock.
He shut down the image of skulls and hands grasping for him as he climbed, but his fingers found holes in eye sockets and gripped teeth far too often. They sliced into his fingers and cut through the material of his soft boots to gash his feet.
Blood dripped from his wounds. In the beginning, they healed almost as fast as they happened, but as he steadily ascended, they stopped healing as quickly. The blood coating his fingers and toes made the rocks slippery and climbing more difficult. When it caught on a tooth, one of his fingernails tore away completely.
“I hate this place,” he muttered.
