CHAPTER 21

Even when it abates, the noise in the purple room never stops. Keeping low, we run down the corridor as splinters zip over our heads and spin across the flagstones. The flashes of blue light soon turn into a continuous, overbright flare before slowly winding down to the occasional pulse.

When we stop, past where the bits of wood can reach, we are covered in cuts and bruises. We spend minutes checking our skin and removing the more painful splinters. I apply a few more herbs to the worse-looking wounds. It’s only pure luck that no one is seriously hurt.

“Another what?” Hilde asks.

“Hmm?” I ask. I’m busy removing a splinter that managed to lodge itself in my earlobe.

“You said there was another something. Right before all hell broke loose.”

“Another exit,” I say. “On the wall to the left there. The room is so packed that I could only see it right before you pulled me.”

Hilde turns to look at the room, but all we can see from here is the wood zipping across the opening, lit by purple flashes.

“I’m not going back there,” she says drily.

“Me neither,” says Rue. He’s uncoiled from Hilde’s arm and settled on the floor.

“What do mean, ‘Me neither’?” I ask. “You’re unscathed.”

I searched him thoroughly and couldn’t find a single splinter in his body. It also served as an excuse to prod into his biology, but, as it turned out, Rue doesn’t have any. His body is a dark mass, both solid and liquid, without an organ or a muscle that I can make sense of, though that clearly doesn’t stop him from living a full life.

“It was scary,” he buzzes softly.

I shake my head and go back to pulling on the splinter, finally managing to dislodge it. Hilde watches us with unfeigned curiosity.

“What do you hear when Rue speaks?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Never heard him speak. All he does is hum. What language is that?”

“I…” I’m brought back to cavern under the earth, where The Digger spoke only to me. Reva said I was speaking in a different language. “I don’t know. I don’t know what language it is, and I don’t notice when I switch between it and Human.”

“Ah. So a Gift.”

I nod to myself. Years of watching Rev dancing with sword and spear like they were a part of her, wandering what my Gift was, only to find out it’s to understand blobs and digging enthusiasts.

“Wait,” I say, suddenly realizing. “I’ve spoken to both of you at the same time and you never had any trouble understanding me, did you, Rue?”

“I understand you fine, Malco,” he hums politely.

“Then you understand Human?”

The little blob of his body dips and rises again in a shrug.

“Rue,” I ask. Taking care to notice the sounds my mouth is about to make. “Can you say ‘Hello’?”

“Hello.”

“He said ‘Hello!’” Hilde says, eyes wide.

“And how would you normally say ‘Hello’?” I ask this without making a conscious effort, simply addressing Rue and letting my mouth issue whatever sounds it deems necessary.

“’Hello’.”

I turn to Hilde. Her face is blank.

“Nothing?” I ask, already knowing what the answer will be.

“Just a strange hum.”

“Yeah. So you’re right,” I sigh. “I guess my gift is to know a very specific tongue. What language is this, Rue?”

He spends a moment in thought. Or at least in silence.

“I don’t know,” he says eventually.

“Rue, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but...” I stop and search for words, but eventually give up. “What are you?”

Rue seems to go deep in thought again.

“I don’t know,” he says again.

“How can you not know?”

“I remember… Being in that room you found me in. I remember the corpse...”

Hilde looks to me with a question on her lips, but I raise a hand to stop her.

“And I remember… I remember talking to people, through the wall, only they never let me out. Or at least I think they never let me out. And then you came along.”

“And nothing else?”

“Flashes.” Rue seems agitated. His form doesn’t stay stable but shakes and trembles. Little tendrils extend into the air, as if he’s reaching for something just beyond him. “Being in a… big place. Being…” His shape contorts. “Being…” Again.

He vibrates loudly in an unintelligible pattern. I catch words here and there, seemingly random and unconnected.

“Is he all right?” It’s Hilde that approaches first, kneeling in front of him.

“I—I asked him if he knew what he was, if he remembered how he came into the dungeon, and he just…”

Rue’s body is now surrounded with tendrils whipping madly through the air. They dart like very small snakes, coiling and uncoiling, reaching for anything and nothing. In the center of the writhing mass is a humming core that moves like a prisoner, darting from wall to wall and never finding the freedom it’s looking for.

“Rue!” Hilde shouts, and reaches for him.

A tendril immediately latches onto her hand, and as soon as the one has a firm hold, every single one of Rue’s slithering appendages reaches for her. In the blink of an eye, Hilde’s hand becomes an even, oily black as Rue spreads himself on it.

The dwarf gasps, trying to free herself and failing.

I dart in and try to grip Rue as well, but his surface has suddenly become slippery. No matter how hard I try, I can catch a grip.

“Rue!”

“He’s squeezing…” Hilde grits her teeth. “He’s going to…”

“Rue, let go!”

All at once, the mass around Hilde’s hand ceases to move and bubble and Hilde breathes out at the same time. A ripple courses through the dark surface.

“Malco?”

“Gods, that’s unpleasant,” Hilde mutters.

“Let. Go.”

It takes a moment, but Rue obeys. Starting from Hilde’s wrist, Rue unlatches himself and slowly coalesces into a blob again, resting on the dwarf’s palm.

“What was that?” I demand. “You nearly broke Hilde’s hand! You have to—”

“Stop!” Hilde snaps.

I stop and look at her, surprised at the force in her tone.

“I was the one who did wrong,” she says. She turns to Rue, lifting him up until he’s level with her eyes. It’s a brave thing to do, I can’t help thinking, with something that just a moment ago was trying to grind your bones to dust.

“I don’t know if you can understand me, Rue,” she says. “But I know the past can be a painful thing. We shouldn’t have prodded you.”

Rue stays silent, humming monotone to himself without words, without rhythm, appearing to collect his thoughts. Suddenly, he dips and leans forward, the same strange curtsy-bow he made when we met.

“Hello,” he hums in common.

Hilde smiles. “Hello.”

It’s a strange and touching moment and, accordingly, it only lasts the barest instant before it’s interrupted.

“Who’s there?” says a new, different voice, edged with threat. We all turn.

On the end of the corridor opposite the entrance to the purple room there is a feeble light. A candle held aloft and illuminating a quartet of gaunt figures. They’re all wearing the Black Sword uniform. Challengers.

We stand slowly. These can’t be Reva’s group, can they?

“Stop there,” the voice barks. “We have weapons.”

I nod. The feeble light is enough to see they’re each carrying a long dagger.

“You won’t need to use them,” I say. “I’m Malco and this is Hilde.”

“I remember you,” the voice says, pointing at Hilde, the word ‘you’ carrying a lot more meaning than it should be able to. “But not you.”

“We’re both Challengers.”

“Yeah? Where’s your uniform, then, Challenger?”

“Uh, lost it.”

“Yeah? Great that you found some clothes, then.”

There is a little pause as each group considers the other. I feel Rue covertly wrapping itself around the rope that still trails between me and Hilde.

“Look, we clearly aren’t here to do you harm. We just crossed the floating room, and—”

“Oh, you did? And how did you accomplish something like that?” the voice demands.

His yous are really starting to annoy me. I’m about to ask him how he thinks we got here, then, when my thoughts are interrupted by the sound of hurrying steps. A new face peaks over the shoulders of the trio in front of us.

“Oh, for…” the newly arrived says. “Edd, they’re clearly Challengers. Just let them in.”

“It may be a trap,” Edd says through gritted teeth. I can tell he’s not happy about the interruption. “They might want our stuff.”

The new kid pushes through the trio to get to the front, where he stands next to Edd.

“Do you want our stuff?” he asks us.

“Depends,” I say. “What sort of stuff do you have?”

“See?” he says with a smirk. “They have a sense of humor. It would be the first trap we find with one. Come on, let them through.”

The other two relent, though they keep their guard up. Only Edd seems to openly mistrust us.

“I’m Tale,” says our savior. “How’s the Challenge been treating you?”

Following his vigorous waving, I approach. In the light, I realize Tale and Edd are twin brothers. The only difference is that Edd is taller, and Tale doesn’t sport a permanent scowl.

“Like you can see,” says Hilde.

Tale nods sympathetically as he looks over our cuts and bruises.

“At least you’re not as bad as some of the others, right?” he says in a cheerful tone which rings somewhat hollow in the wood-strewn corridor. “We’re just down the passage here, in the library…”

“You’re telling them too much,” Edd says. His arms are crossed in front of his chest, but his dagger is still in full prominence.

“Oh, lay off,” Tale says, rolling his eyes. “And friends, unless you want to go back down the way you came, your only option is to come with us. Your call, I guess, but I suggest the path that doesn’t involve death by woodchips.”

I share a look with Hilde.

“Going with you is fine,” I say. “Just put the daggers away, will you?”

The trip to the library is short but involves a few twists and turns that Tale guides us through, talking all the while, his sullen brother bringing up the rear. Rue, nearly invisible in the semi darkness, passes from the rope to my hand and then hides inside my sleeve.

Tale has time to let us know the situation, which isn’t any cheerier than what we’ve seen down below. This group also had the right idea: they banded together under the impression that if there’s something one person can’t take on, then maybe the group can. The strategy served them well. They managed to get all the groups in their floor together, not losing a single person, before running into anything too deadly.

“We were starting to think we were getting the hang of it,” he sighs.

“Did you see a girl,” I interrupt, not able to contain myself. “Tall, very blonde hair?”

Tale looks over his shoulder to give me a quizzical look and shakes his head.

“No one here that looks like that. Sorry.”

I make some noise of noncommittal thanks while a sudden worry grips my brain and squeezes. Katha’s absence is starting to bug me, and everywhere I go looking turns out to be a dead end. There’s only thing keeping panic at bay: Hilde mentioned Rev had also been asking about a girl. My sister had a whole day among the Challengers while I only caught a glimpse of them together on stage. The natural assumption is that the two have already found each other, and all I have to do is make my way down and find them.

Then why doesn’t Hilde know Katha? Whispers the insidious, treacherous part of me. She was in Rev’s group.

I ignore it and focus back in the conversation. Hilde has been explaining to Tale what the level she’d started in looks like. Apparently sand is a big part of it.

“Lost anyone to traps?”

“You saw them, Tale sighs, nodding back to the Floating Room. “Other traps we found weren’t really like that,” Tale say. “They’re easier to spot. You open a door, and there’s a wall of fire in your way. Or a big ball with spikes swinging back and forth. The other groups here confirmed it. That’s how we found each other wandering a big corridor, not really able to go inside the rooms.”

“Which is where you found the monster,” Hilde says.

Tale looks over his shoulder and flashes a smile. “Guess the pattern repeats, huh?” He nods. “Yes. That’s where we found the blobs. They’re these… well, they’re…”

“Slimy?” I suggest.

“Exactly. They move slowly, but they came from everywhere at once. We got separated, some people were pushed into the trapped rooms, and well… they pushed us in here.”

The corridor ends in another room, long, tall, and wide. The air here feels different, somehow heavier with dust. After a couple steps, Tale’s candle illuminates a shelf, and I understand why that is: the room stocked to the brim with books. I look on, almost dazed by the number of spines and colors in painted leather as we pass the rows and rows of shelves.

“You weren’t kidding,” I mutter.

“Exactly. Me and Edd were joking that if father knew the Godtouched had libraries this big he would have found a way into the Challenge himself. Wouldn’t he, Edd?”

Ever the charmer, Edd grunts in response.