Chapter 45: Trial of Weights (Part 1)

  The transition is not gentle.

  One moment I'm tumbling through the portal's kaleidoscopic void, Thrak'zul's weight pressing against me, the Orc's blade a hairsbreadth from my spine. The next, cold stone slams into my back with enough force to drive the air from my lungs.

  The impact sends fresh agony through my wounded shoulder, the embedded spear grinding against bone. My vision whites out, consciousness threatening to flee entirely.

  Then, sound returns. Ragged breathing. The scrape of scales against stone. Someone retching violently.

  I force my eyes open.

  We're in a chamber. Not the flooded temple antechamber we'd just fled, but somewhere else entirely. The architecture is familiar with those same surfaces that seem flat until you look directly at them. But this space is dry, the air carrying a faint metallic tang rather than the marsh's perpetual rot.

  "Brother?" Gorvash's voice, rough and strained. "You alive?"

  "Barely," I rasp, pushing myself onto my side. The movement makes the spear shaft shift, and I bite back a scream. "You?"

  "Been better." The warrior sits slumped against a pillar, his splinted arms cradled protectively against his chest. Blood matts his copper scales, both fresh and dried, creating a patchwork of violence across his hide. "Kor'ik?"

  The Frogman doesn't respond. He's curled into a tight ball near the chamber's entrance, his throat sac pulsing irregularly. Not unconscious, but not present either. Lost in whatever mental space grief and exhaustion have driven him to.

  "Grib," Kor'ik finally whispers, the name barely audible. "He was just... he was so small..."

  Thrak'zul has dragged himself to a sitting position against the opposite wall. The prince's condition is horrifying even by the standards we've experienced. The gash across his head still bleeds freely, painting half his face crimson. The impact from the Orc Chief's halberd has left his entire torso a mass of purple-black bruising that extends down to his remaining shackled ankle.

  But his eyes are clear. Sharp. Already assessing our situation with that tactical mind that's kept him alive through whatever led to his enslavement.

  "Mark?" he asks simply, the single word carrying volumes of meaning.

  I reach up to touch my forehead. The brand is there, still raised and warm against my scales, but the vicious pull and that draining sensation that had been consuming my life force is gone.

  "It stopped," I say, relief flooding through me even as my analytical mind catalogs this new data point. "The portal severed the connection. Or at least... weakened it enough that it's not killing us anymore."

  "For now," Thrak'zul adds grimly.

  He doesn't finish the thought. He doesn't need to. If the brand reactivates when we exit, if it tries to drain us again without Hynnal to anchor it…

  One problem at a time.

  "The spear," Gorvash says, gesturing with his head toward my embedded shoulder. "Need to come out."

  He's right, of course. The crude iron shaft restricts my movement, makes every breath an exercise in agony, and serves as a constant pathway for infection. My regeneration is trying to work around it, but the foreign object prevents proper healing.

  "This is going to hurt," I warn unnecessarily.

  "Everything hurts already," Gorvash replies with that familiar grin, though it doesn't reach his eyes this time.

  I brace myself against the stone floor with my good hand, the Razor Claws transformation starting to revert, leaving my nails brittle and cracked. Then I grip the spear shaft with my other hand and pull.

  I pull. The scream isn’t a choice; it’s a jagged thing that rips from my throat as the iron shaft hitches against my collarbone. There’s a sickening, wet thud inside my chest as the barb tears through muscle, followed by the frantic heat of blood sheeting down my side.

  But it's out.

  I drop the gore-slicked weapon, breathing hard through the waves of agony. My regeneration kicks in immediately now that the obstruction is gone, that familiar warmth spreading through damaged tissue as my biology works to repair itself.

  "Good," Thrak'zul nods approvingly. "Now rest. Need strength."

  "The trial," I protest weakly. "We don't know…"

  "Trial waits," he interrupts, his broken Lizardtongue carrying absolute authority despite the accent. "We die if move now. Trial... maybe survive."

  The logic is sound even if my scientist's curiosity rebels against it. We need time to recover, to let our various injuries heal enough that we're not completely helpless.

  I let my head fall back against the stone, staring up at the chamber's impossible ceiling. The architecture here is subtly different from the shadow trial's arena or the chain guardian's space. Less ornate, more utilitarian. Functional rather than ceremonial.

  My eyes drift closed despite the adrenaline still coursing through my system. Exhaustion pulls at me with irresistible force.

  Behind my eyelids, I see Grib's final moments. The small creature's yellow eyes meeting mine, that chittering defiance as he sacrificed himself to buy us seconds. He deserved better than to die in a flooded temple, torn apart by an Orc's blade.

  They all deserved better.

  Sleep claims me before I can finish the thought.

  Pain wakes me.

  Not a new pain, but the persistent ache of injuries struggling to heal despite my enhanced regeneration. The shoulder wound has closed to an angry red scar, but the tissue beneath remains damaged. Even my broken fingernails are beginning to regrow, though they're soft and weak.

  How long? I blink away the fog of unconscious rest, trying to orient myself. No natural light reaches this chamber, making time impossible to judge. Could be hours. Could be days.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The others are stirring as well. Gorvash sits up with a groan, testing his splinted arms with careful movements. Kor'ik has uncurled from his defensive ball, though his eyes still carry that hollow quality.

  Thrak'zul is already standing, or rather, leaning heavily against the pillar he'd claimed. The prince's condition looks marginally better, the bleeding from his head wound finally stopped, though the bruising across his torso has spread rather than diminished.

  "Awake," he observes unnecessarily. "Good. Must move now."

  "Move where?" I push myself upright, ignoring the protests from my battered body. "We don't even know what this trial is yet."

  As I look around, I can see we're on a platform maybe twenty feet square, perfectly flat and made of that same impossibly smooth stone.

  But it's what lies beyond our platform that makes my breath catch.

  A massive chasm splitting the chamber floor like a wound. Two bridges span the chasm, running parallel to each other perhaps ten feet apart. Not solid walkways but suspension bridges, their stone platforms held by massive chains that connect to an elaborate pulley system overhead. The mechanisms look ancient, but the metal is still in pristine condition.

  And four Ancient Guardian statues flank the bridges, their forms similar to the guardians we'd fought in the chain trial but somehow more imposing. These ones carry symbols carved into their chests that glow with faint internal light. Two positioned at the entrance to each walkway, their stone eyes dark but ready.

  "Of course there are golems," I mutter. "Can't have a trial without murderous stone constructs."

  I crawl to the edge on hands and knees, peering down into depths that my enhanced vision can't penetrate. Darkness absolute, carrying that sense of vast emptiness that suggests incredible distance.

  "How deep?" Gorvash asks, joining me at the edge.

  "Deep enough." I reply grimly.

  Looking at the bridges, I can see the counterweights, the gears, the deliberate engineering that keeps the bridges suspended over that impossible drop.

  "There," Thrak'zul points with his webbed hand toward the far side of the chasm.

  Four more stone golems stand at attention on the distant platform. Eight guardians total. Dormant but watchful.

  Movement to my left draws attention. Near the chamber's entrance, eight pedestals have risen from the floor, each topped with a shimmering blue stasis field. Within each field floats a sphere, and even from here I can see they're all different, with varying sizes, colors, materials.

  Kor'ik approaches the nearest pedestal cautiously, his throat sac pulsing with nervous energy. "What are these?"

  "Trial components," I say, pushing myself to my feet despite my body's protests. "They have to be. Everything in these ruins is deliberate. Nothing exists without purpose."

  I join him at the pedestals, examining the spheres more closely. The nearest one appears to be made of some crystalline material, maybe four inches in diameter, its surface reflecting light in prismatic patterns. The next is larger, perhaps eight inches across, and seems carved from dense wood with intricate symbols etched into its surface.

  My hand extends almost unconsciously toward the crystalline sphere. The stasis field hums as my claws near its surface, then parts like water around my touch.

  The moment my fingers make contact with the sphere, the field vanishes entirely.

  And the sphere drops.

  Not gently nor gradually, it plummets from the pedestal with the sudden violence of something that had been held weightless being subjected to normal physics without warning.

  The impact when it hits the stone floor is tremendous. A deep, resonant boom that echoes through the chamber. Fortunately the sphere doesn't shatter despite its crystalline appearance.

  "Heavy," Gorvash observes with characteristic understatement.

  I crouch beside the fallen sphere, careful not to touch it again. My scientific mind is already working through the implications. "The stasis fields weren't just containment. They were support. Negating the spheres' weight entirely."

  "So they all heavy?" Kor'ik asks nervously.

  "Let's find out." I move to the next pedestal, this one holding what appears to be a metallic sphere maybe six inches across. Again my hand extends, again the field parts, again the sphere drops.

  But this impact is different. Lighter. The sphere bounces slightly when it hits the stone, rolling a few inches before coming to rest.

  "Different weights," I announce, already moving to test the third sphere. This one is barely heavier than air, drifting down like a feather when the field releases it. The fourth hits with bone-jarring force, even heavier than the first

  .

  By the time I've tested all eight, the pattern is clear. Each sphere has a distinct weight, ranging from almost negligible to devastatingly heavy. And they're all different sizes, different materials, clearly meant to be distinguished somehow.

  "A puzzle," Ko’ik says, coming closer to examine the fallen spheres.

  He's right. We most likely need to transport these spheres across the chasm using the suspension bridges, but the bridges appear to be counterbalanced. Add too much weight to one side, and it drops. Not enough, and it rises.

  "Look." Gorvash points toward the chamber walls, where I'd initially missed a crucial detail.

  Blue runes. Dozens of them, carved into the stone at a specific height on both sides of the chasm. They glow with the same faint luminescence, creating a clear line around the entire chamber.

  "Dead zone," I say, understanding immediately. "If either bridge rises or falls past those runes..."

  "Guardians awaken," Thrak'zul finishes grimly. "Like trials before."

  And hanging on the far wall, impossible to miss now that I'm looking for it, is a massive hourglass. The glass is filled with glowing sand, currently resting in the upper chamber. But I can see the mechanism that would flip it, start the countdown.

  "Time limit too," I add to our growing list of problems. "Once we trigger the trial, we have however long that sand takes to drain."

  Kor'ik's throat sac pulses rapidly. "This is impossible. Look at us." He gestures at our battered group. "Gorvash's arms are broken. Thrak'zul can barely walk. You're..." he trails off, taking in my collection of injuries. "We're in no condition."

  "No choice," Thrak'zul says simply.

  The brutal honesty is almost refreshing. No false comfort, no empty encouragement. Just the stark mathematics of survival.

  I look at the bridges again, really studying their construction. The chains connect to a central pulley system overhead, a massive wheel of corroded metal that looks like it hasn't turned in centuries. As one bridge descends, the other should rise by an equal amount. Perfect counterbalance.

  "We need to test it," I say, moving toward the right bridge before anyone can argue. "See how sensitive the mechanism is."

  The bridge platform is maybe three feet wide, the stone smooth. No railings, no safety features. Just a flat walkway suspended over certain death by chains.

  I step onto it carefully, distributing my weight evenly.

  Immediately, the bridge begins to drop.

  Not in any catastrophical manner, but unmistakably. Each inch I move forward shifts the balance, the chains overhead groaning with the strain. On the opposite side, the left bridge rises in perfect counterpoint, its platform tilting upward as mine descends.

  My heart hammers as I watch the blue runes on the wall. The bridge is dropping toward them, steadily. Maybe ten feet of clearance left. Then nine. Then eight.

  I leap backward onto the solid platform, my shoulder screaming in protest at the sudden movement.

  The bridges shudder to a halt, swaying gently. The left platform has risen almost to touch the runes on its side, stopped only by my retreat.

  "Close," Gorvash breathes.

  But we'd learned something crucial. The bridges respond to weight with mechanical precision. Add weight to one side, it drops. Remove weight, it rises. The system is perfectly balanced, which means we can theoretically control it.

  Theoretically.

  A grinding sound echoes through the chamber. The massive hourglass on the far wall rotates on its mount, flipping to start the sand flowing. Glowing grains begin their inexorable descent from upper chamber to lower.

  And all eight golems' eyes flicker with a dim light. Not active yet, but awakening. Waiting.

  The trial has begun.