Hours later, Geleb woke up to darkness, and damp spots on the back of his head and around his nose.
He shot up, his feet kicking against what he thought was a stone wall, and rubbed his forehead as he slowly remembered what had transpired.
"You up?" asked a voice in the darkness.
"Morne?" Geleb asked.
"Mhm. You've been out for a few hours by now, I think. Hard to tell with no sun to tell the time."
"And Earl?" the noble asked. He knew it was foolish, but some part of him held out hope that it was a trick of the light, or that hysteria had made him hallucinate.
Those hopes would be dashed with the next words out of Morne's mouth.
"Dead," Morne said flatly. He had known the man for less than two weeks, and Earl hadn't exactly improved Morne's opinion of him before his demise. The death affected him as much as a stranger's would.
Geleb, however, was the opposite.
The noble sat there in the darkness silently, staring down at where his hands should be as all kinds of complicated emotions flooded his brain.
His friend was dead.
And it was his fault.
He swallowed hard, gaze hardening as he clenched his fists.
He wouldn't let Earl's sacrifice be in vain.
He surged to his feet, ignoring the wave of dizziness that hit him as he did so, and turned to the sound of Morne's breathing as he wiped off the dried blood under his nose.
"Come on," he said determinedly.
To the surprise of no one, the tunnel closed behind them, trapping them in the next trial room.
This one was small, relatively speaking, only about twenty feet wide and circular. The ceiling was the same false sky as before, and the walls and floor were white stone. That stone was broken up into large squares, most of which were blank, but sixty or so bore a Mark on them.
In the middle of the room was the skeleton of a long-dead beast, though it was missing over half of its bones, including its head, so Morne couldn't tell exactly what it had been in life.
It floated in the air within a magical blue field; not too high up to be inaccessible, but also high up enough that its one complete leg could stay clear of the floor.
The specimen was missing most of its tail, but its spine appeared to be intact. Judging by what was there, it was a quadruped of some kind. What was here was seven feet long and five feet tall, though the former could double when the skeleton was reunited with its tail.
Finally, the sealed stone door that was the exit sat across from them.
The silver serpent's voice, quiet and as smooth as silk, floated to their ears, whispering words Morne couldn't understand. There was the expected "Tresek ot Emel," but there were also a handful of other sentences.
As he had twice before, he deferred to Geleb, who glared into the sky as he listened to the serpent's words.
When asked what he had heard, he gestured to the half-finished skeleton. "We have to put that back together. The missing bones are hidden in the walls with the Marks on them. Some of those panels have the bones, and others have poison gas that can kill us the instant we inhale."
"So nothing new," Morne replied. He wasn't surprised at his life being threatened yet again. At this point, he would be more surprised if one of the next trials *didn't* try to kill them.
"Nothing new," Geleb confirmed.
The noble took a deep breath, calming himself and pushing Earl's death out of his mind. Distractions would only hinder him. He could mourn his friend when he got out of this place alive.
While he was doing that, Morne approached the skeleton, studying it from every angle. Now it made sense why the remains were hovering like this. It would be easier to access every part of it this way.
It was obvious at a glance which areas were missing bones, though not so much how many bones were missing. For example, he could tell that it was missing a head and tail, but had no way of knowing how many bones were in each.
Was the skull intact, or split up into its individual pieces? Did the tail merely have this single tailbone at the end of the spine, or were there bones all the way through? It was impossible to tell, at least with the naked eye.
He placed a hand on a rib. "Reveal your secrets to me," he muttered, fueling his Mark with Chimh.
A figure started to form in his mind. It was fuzzy, but it had fur and claws and a long tail, and the silhouette matched the skeleton before him.
With a thought, the fur and flesh vanished, leaving behind only the skeleton. Smaller bones roughly the size of a human's finger bone or smaller were almost too blurry to recognize, but the larger ones were big enough that the blur hardly mattered.
He burned as much of the image into his mind as he could before it faded, then joined Geleb in studying the walls.
"I've got the skeleton's shape," he said.
"Mm."
"Have any ideas on which ones have the bones in them?"
"I believe so."
He pointed at one of the Marks, then a second, and then a third.
"See how all of these are the same?"
Morne nodded.
"If I'm not mistaken, which I doubt, this is their character for 'death.'"
"Which could apply to both the poison and the bones," Morne frowned.
"Yes, but see how these other two Marks are different from the first three and each other?" Geleb asked, pointing at two more.
"I do."
"I don't recognize these characters, but I believe they are the names of the missing bones."
"That feels too easy," Morne replied. Wasn't this trial intended for people that could speak and read this language in the first place?
Geleb shrugged. "It is only half of the trial." They still had to reassemble the skeleton, after all. "Well, then, here goes."
With bated breath, he pressed a hand against the fourth Marked stone he had pointed out.