She didn’t seem to care about the fact that if Hadjar had stumbled or slowed down even for a moment, they would’ve been hit by multiton stones. Hadjar raced down the staircase, feeling the shards of stone and rubble slam against his back. Like sharp needles, they pierced the fabric of his caftan and bit into his flesh.
Einen, gliding along the walls, handled the situation better than the others. He slid down the oval walls of the chute, dragging Tilis lower and lower. Glen, who had laid out a path of light beneath him, was copying the islander’s glide rather successfully. Hadjar was the worst off. He had to run down the steps while jumping several times and constantly pushing off the walls to avoid slamming into them face-first.
“Damn it!” Hadjar swore again.
It felt like the faster he moved, the faster the stones fell from above. A mere mortal would stand no chance in such a trap — they would’ve probably not even realized what had sent them to their forefathers.
Hadjar slipped beneath another stone slab, drawing his blade as he went. This time, the stone didn’t land behind him, but right in front of him. Hadjar crouched so low that Karissa had to put her book in front of her face to keep her nose from plowing through the stone. As he soared through the air, Hadjar struck out with a swift slash. This launched a blue and black crescent from the blade’s cutting edge. Slicing through the falling stones, he wound his way around the supporting column and, meeting little resistance, cut through it easily. With another loud crash, part of the staircase collapsed, creating a small dome above their heads, and the stones struck it instead of them.
“It’ll collapse soon,” Hadjar gritted through clenched teeth without slowing down.
“You’re close to the exit!” came from below.
Einen had been the first to reach the bottom of the chute and now stood before an arch of blue light. A moment later, Glen landed next to him, and Ramukhan jumped down off his back.
Hadjar was only a few steps away from the ground when he heard an incredibly loud roar behind him. The rubble and stone chips flew like buckshot. They cut his face and hands, leaving deep, gray scratches behind on the walls.
Einen swung his staff and pointed it at the space in front of him. The shadows around him stretched out and formed two giant ape paws. They reached for the ceiling and pressed together beneath it. The islander had erected the shadowy barrier just in time — a second later and Hadjar would’ve been standing in a pouring rain of stone.
“Hurry up!” The islander paled, and Hadjar put his all into it.
He lunged forward and rushed past Einen, rolling across the floor. Hadjar managed to throw off Karissa, who screamed, but it took him some time to control his momentum. He had to drive Mountain Wind into the stone floor and cut a long furrow in it to finally stop.
The islander canceled his Technique, and the stones clattered down, sealing the archway and cutting the squad off from the surface.
Rising, Hadjar dusted himself off. His tattered caftan, smeared with dirt and dust, now resembled Hadjar’s favorite threadbare garments which were currently resting in his spatial ring.
“Damned barbarian!” Glen ran over to Hadjar and grabbed him by the collar of his caftan. “Didn’t your mother teach you to look where you walk?”
Hadjar’s eyes flashed with malevolent fire and he was reaching for his sword when Einen’s staff appeared between him and the Baliumian.
“If you want, Glen,” the islander said quietly, “you can go first. None of us would mind.”
Hadjar cooled down as quickly as he had become enraged. Before Glen turned away, he saw the disappointment in the Baliumian’s eyes. Only then did Hadjar feel the sting of the scar on his palm left behind by the oath he had sworn. The Baliumian wasn’t as simple as he appeared! He’d acted rather well on someone else’s orders.
Hadjar turned to Ramukhan, but couldn’t catch the sorcerer’s eyes. He averted his gaze, pretending to study their surroundings. They stood in the middle of what appeared to be a wide hall at first. There were towering columns on both sides, depicting various animals: a hippopotamus standing on its hind legs and supporting the ceiling with its forelegs. A monkey that was sitting in a lotus position. Its tail served as its chair, and the top of its head was also supporting the ceiling. A heron with wings that formed a bed. A peacock with a beautiful tail.
“I wonder if those are emeralds…” Glen’s eyes devoured the jewels set into the bird’s plumage.
Hadjar understood him perfectly. The emeralds made him want to pull out a carving dagger and try to dig them out as well. Hadjar apparently had a stronger will than... everyone else. Even Einen, like a puppet in the hands of an inexperienced puppeteer, jerkily staggered toward the jewels.
“It’s a trap!” Hadjar snapped at them.
Skirting past the other squad members, he cut through the air with his sword. A blue crescent passed by them. It left another long furrow in the floor, but did its job and countered the spell.
“Demons,” Glen croaked, turning away from the alluring glint of the emeralds, “this place is going to kill me.”
“If one of us doesn’t do it first,” Tilis snorted, apparently forgetting her recent vow.
“Come on,” Ramukhan said. “And by the Evening Stars, be careful.”
Chapter 400
They were walking across a wide and long platform. It looked like a hall, but then it became clear that there was some sort of gap between the floor and the walls, and that all the columns were actually behind the gap, not in front of it.
The first trap on this stone bridge (it was the best comparison given the fact that the platform floated through the air) was intended to weed out the people who’d passed the first test by chance, and not because of their own skills. If not for Hadjar and his strong will, the squad members would’ve fallen into a bottomless abyss. Glen told them all about it. Dropping to his stomach, he crawled over to the edge of the platform and leaned his head down.
“May all the demons of the Fire Hall love me!” He shouted in his native language. No one except Hadjar understood this strange curse. “It’s at least three miles deep.”
“What’s at the bottom?” Tilis asked.
“Pikes.” The Baliumian said, “There are a lot of skeletons impaled on them. There are mountains of bones below.”
“So, there’s no doubt about it, we aren’t the first people to get this far,” Ramukhan nodded.
Hadjar looked behind him. He had no doubt that they’d entered through the only entrance to this infernal place. But… How could the collapsed staircase have become an ancient one with a faded pattern after other people had already used it?
“It makes no sense to ask questions that can’t be answered,” Einen patted his friend on the shoulder and adjusted his white bandanna. “Let’s go. We may die soon anyway, so stop fretting.”
Sometimes, Hadjar wanted to hit his friend on the head with something heavy, but he restrained these urges, which were, however, still noticed by the islander. Einen answered him with a condescending smile.
This time, the squad moved forward slowly. They took each step as carefully as possible, their feet barely touching the slabs at first. The stone floor they were walking on wasn’t a monolithic structure, but many connected, three-foot stone slabs instead. Different animals were depicted on each of them. The animals came in a variety of colors and were shaped like the columns that surrounded the platform.