The stone clicked and vanished, revealing a square-shaped hole housing a few bones.
Geleb released his breath and handed the bones to Morne. "Here. Start putting the skeleton together. I'll get the bones out of the walls."
Morne nodded and took the bones, returning to the skeleton and slotting the first one in. The placed bones joined the others in hovering in place.
It turned out, the trail was that easy.
Morne suspected that putting the skeleton together was the focus of this trial, not finding the bones. And thanks to Marrow Memory, the "difficult" part was only a minor inconvenience.
There was some difficulty when Geleb had gotten about half of the hidden bones.
The Marks morphed to resemble the ancient Nasnami character for "death," just as the squares bearing the poison did, and Geleb had to spend several minutes picking out the slight differences that set them apart from the poison squares.
A longer loop here, a thinner profile there, thicker lines over there. Some were more obvious than others, but Geleb managed to get through all of them without getting himself and Morne killed.
Within a few hours, Geleb had brought Morne the final set of bones, and Morne slotted them into the appropriate positions.
The complete product was a mixture of snake and wolf, with the head and bone-filled tail of the former and the body of the latter.
The duo waited a few minutes for the exit to open, only to frown when it didn't.
"We're missing something," Geleb said.
They scratched their heads for several minutes, trying to think of what they had done wrong.
Neither one thought that they had failed. If the last two trials were anything to go by, failure meant death. No, there was another step to this that they were unaware of.
Morne's eyes roamed the walls, the floor, the skeleton, everything, but he saw nothing that would indicate what they had to do next. Frustrated, he tilted his head back to look at the sky above.
Even now, that expanse of blue lacked clouds or a sun. It was just endless blue.
Wait, the sun.
Morne's eyes narrowed as he remembered the entrance to the trials, and the flame that had accepted his life force even though it had no business being able to do so.
If they could do that with fire, could they do it with an ancient skeleton that was probably thousands of years old?
Of course they could. When he recalled everything that he had seen in this place so far, especially the last trial, such a task seemed like child's play for them.
He stepped forward and put a hand on the skeleton as Geleb watched on. "Bestow life."
He knew it worked immediately. The skeletal remains drank his life force greedily, and when it had its fill cut the flow off on its own.
Morne stepped back as the skeleton's empty eye sockets glowed dark red. The magic field keeping it afloat tightened to hug the beast's bones, allowing it to drop to the floor and keep itself together.
Its gaze flashed, and the remaining Marked squares burst apart, releasing clouds of yellow gas into the air.
Geleb and Morne cursed in unison, pulling their masks over their faces to protect themselves from the poison.
But they had overreacted. The gas passed by them harmlessly, giving them a wide berth, and flowed toward the stone door.
The horrible grating of stone on stone was heard as the door morphed before their eyes, gaining two vertical and two horizontal pipes along its length with open ends, into which the gas went.
In moments, the yellow gas was gone, and the pipes hissed shut. With a *click*, the door swung open.
As soon as it did, the wolf-snake's magical field dissipated, and it collapsed into a pile of bones, the red glow of its empty sockets slowly fading.
Morne and Geleb wasted no time in walking into the newly-revealed dark corridor.
Morne had cast Marrow Memory once more after the first time, so he'd need an hour or so to replenish the Chimh he had spent. The corridor would cover at least half of that, and they could wait for the other half at the threshold of the next challenge.
Geleb hadn't used any of his Spells, so he was fine in this regard.
Neither one wanted to stay in this room, just in case there was any more of that poison gas floating around that they couldn't see. The silver serpent had been very clear that even a single inhalation was enough to kill them, and they could be forgiven for not trusting this place.
They stopped five feet away from the light of the next trial, hunkering down as they waited for Morne's Chimh Well to fill.
Though they tried peering in to get a glimpse of what was ahead of them, all they saw was the bright white light.
"This one should be the Trial of Clouds, then it's the Trial of Stars," Geleb told Morne. "I doubt that information will help us, considering the last trial had nothing to do with hills."
"So two more?" Morne asked. It almost sounded too good to be true.
Geleb nodded, then repeated the confirmation verbally when he remembered that they couldn't see each other. The light from the next trial stopped at the threshold, so they were still cast in darkness.
"Let me know when your Well is full," he said.
"It's full," Morne said after a while, heaving himself to his feet.
Geleb did the same, dusting himself off.
Together, they crossed the doorway into the next trial.
The door swung shut and disappeared behind them, but they had grown used to that by now and paid it no mind.
Instead, they appraised their surroundings.
'Five doors,' Morne thought. 'And none of them are the exit.'
Each door had a Mark above it, with each Mark being distinct, but they all lacked the appearance of the exits the two had grown accustomed to.
"Tresek ot Emeln!" declared the golden serpent, its voice smacking into them with the force of a hundred lions' roars.
The five doors became hazy as a figure of clouds stepped out from each one. They made no move to attack, but each movement they made carried with it a hint of danger.
"I'm starting to guess a theme," Geleb said dryly.