eye, and he slammed the Jester’s face into the wall.
The brick turned from black to red, streaked with fresh blood. Kaleo rammed the Jester’s face against the wall once, twice, a third time, then spun him around and pounded his fist into his shattered nose.
“Stop!” The Poet rushed toward them, pulling Kaleo’s shoulder. “What are you doing? You have to stop!”
Kaleo jabbed at the Poet’s eye, sending him wailing into his hands. The Jester crumpled into a pile, and Kaleo squatted beside him and yanked at his hair, repeatedly smashing his face into the floor. Each blow was brutal, the sound of teeth cracking punctuated only by the squelch of mangled tissue. Blood sprayed across the stone in spurts, and the Jester went limp, his body resting in a pool of crimson.
Kaleo hopped to his feet, wiping his painted hands on his pants before staring at the sea of stunned faces. A Lord stepped forward, his terrified gaze darting between Kaleo and the lifeless body. “Why in God’s name did you do that?”
Kaleo’s crystal eyes were vacant. “I suppose I just didn’t find him that funny.”
With a whistle, he strolled off through the tunnel, leaving the others behind. Drake and Antaeus soon followed, walking straight through the mess, but the rest of the men kept still. Tobias tried to look away, but his eyes were locked on the body and the blood slowly spreading across the floor.
A man was dead, and the tournament had only just begun.
Milo stood at Tobias’s side, his expression bleak. “I won’t speak. Not another word.”
The men continued their journey, though the atmosphere had shifted, filled with a palpable tension. The Poet’s whimpering cut through the quiet, his hands clasped around his quickly swelling eye, and his sheer presence sent the barbaric scene racing through Tobias’s mind. He turned away only for Kaleo to waltz into his line of sight, filling his vision with those slender, raised scars along his arms.
Kaleo became an afterthought. The monotony of the tunnel ended, interrupted by a single green vine twisting along the ceiling.
Tobias trained his eyes on the vine, following along as it split into two, five, nine. More vines appeared in clusters, and as the forest overhead became dense, his heart beat harder, faster. It wasn’t long before greenery covered the tunnel, with vines climbing down the walls, spilling from the ceiling like rope.
“What does it mean?” the Physician muttered.
The instructions. Tobias scanned the walls, the ceiling, only to find heaps of tangled vines. Panic surged within him, until a streak of color appeared on the floor ahead.
Red.
Blood—but the red was shaped into letters. Paint. He read over the message.
HANG
Hang? Tobias skimmed the word repeatedly, trying to interpret its meaning, until another materialized in the distance.
ON
His stomach dropped. Hang on. The men around him frantically wrapped their arms in vines, and he spun toward Milo. “Grab the vines.”
“What?”
“The vines!”
A rumbling tore through the tunnel. The stone pathway disintegrated, and before Tobias could act, the floor disappeared beneath him.
Tobias plummeted into an abyss, reaching for the ceiling that stretched farther and farther away. For a split second there was nothing but darkness, until it exploded with color—with visions of his father, of his sister running along the hilltop. Is my life flashing before my eyes? The visions died as a long, thick something swung into his line of sight.
A vine.
He grabbed at the vine, his fingers grazing, then slipping, then skidding down its rough surface, finally latching on just shy of its end.
Tobias whipped from side to side, clinging to the vine and gasping for air. His body eventually slowed, leaving him to dangle aimlessly, his pounding heart threatening to burst through his chest. Hesitantly, he glanced down into the abyss, then looked away, cursing his rattled nerves.
With a cringe, his gaze panned up the vine, studying his path to the ceiling—the long, foreboding climb he absolutely had to take. Hoisting himself up, he fought past the ache of his arms and the burn of his palms, his mind on the perilous drop beneath him. One hand in front of the other, higher and higher, until the sting of his blisters went numb, and the darkness lifted. Hanging vines once again surrounded him—along with the petrified men who clung to them.
A deep breath filled his lungs, and he basked in his survival before it hit him. Milo—he was entangled in a slew of vines a short distance away, gaping at him.