The whale killing process was as gruesome as it was tedious, taking another several hours. Like last time, they took a while to show up once we turned the beacon on, swimming through the tube from the ocean outside into the giant pool area. Seeing the contraption the second time around, I had to conclude that this room was some giant game, set up so the owners of the castle could entertain themselves by pulping gigantic sea creatures for fun. There really was no other reason I could think of to warrant a weapon that caused such a mess.

  This time, however, it wasn't Aerion or me on the gun, but Rogar and Philip. We figured this was just about the best possible way to get them some meaningful Dominion brownie points. Not just because of the damage they inflicted, but on account of how unnecessarily difficult the contraptions were to use. Whatever civilization built this place seemed obsessed with levers. From the subs to their weapons, every goddamned thing was actuated by levers. Want to turn the Siege Launcher left? There's a lever for that and a separate one for turning it back to the right. Ditto for up and down.

  It was, at least, less complex than the subs, so Rogar and Philip's prior experience with those helped immensely, with the blacksmith picking up the mechanical task a bit more rapidly than Philip. Even so, Philip's years of experience meant he wasn't too far behind, and it only took them both a couple of misses before they were regularly landing shots.

  I even got a point to Grace for my effort demonstrating the device. Considering the nonexistent danger and how easy it was, I was happy to get anything at all. Grace was now at 70. It was tough to imagine I’d gained over 40 points in less than a week. All thanks to that Soul Seed and my suit.

  We took our time and did a thorough job with the whales, hoping to clear the area of as much wildlife as possible to ensure they wouldn’t decide we were a tasty snack when we left. Last time, we cleared the tower and immediately ascended. This time, we’d be tracking horizontally across the ocean floor, so the danger of that was much higher—and killing the whales here only reduced the local population. It did nothing for the ones on our route.

  Even so, we all felt better knowing there were fewer of those things lurking around. Even if the gore turned the sub pen into a horror scene.

  While Aerion and I were busy making a bloody, gory mess of the pen, the others headed to the nearby Sanctuary chamber to top up on miracle water and food supplies, which they brought with. No harm being over prepared, after all.

  That all done, we were finally ready, and nobody was more eager than me to get out of this place. I just wanted a hot bath and about twelve hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep. To get there, we needed to survive this deathtrap of a floor, first.

  Each sub carried sixteen siege bolts. On Aerion’s sub, Rogar would be responsible for loading the bolts into the torpedo tubes and manning the bilge pump unless Aerion became incapacitated. Then, he’d take over. Similarly on mine, Richard and Philip would work together to load the tubes.

  “Alright, then,” I said, slipping into my sub after the others. “Let’s all make sure we end up topside in one piece, yeah?”

  Aerion nodded, and we both closed and swiveled our hatches at the same time.

  Sitting at the pilot’s seat, I cracked my knuckles and grabbed the descent lever. “Everyone ready?”

  With all the hard metal surfaces everywhere, we’d decided it’d be best for the others to be seated, so Richard was on my right, behind me, and Philip on my left. Aerion even designed rudimentary seat belts out of rope that would hold them in place if we went inverted.

  “Ready as we’ll ever be, I reckon,” Richard said.

  “Likewise,” Philip replied. “I’m quite ready to be done with this Trial.”

  “Then hold on tight, and pray to Dominion things go better than last time,” I said, easing the lever down.

  As we descended in the enormous pool, water completely covering the bulbous glass window that formed the entire front of the short, squat sub.

  Not for the first time, I wished this thing had sonar, or some form of instrumentation that let me pilot it without having to rely on the image outside. I also wished Aerion and I had a way to communicate. The memory of almost drowning in this thing as Aerion tried desperately to tell me about the bilge pump was still fresh in my head.

  Sadly, neither of those were a thing in this sub that looked like it came straight from a steampunk movie set, so I made do by following Aerion’s sub closely. It’d have helped if we at least had the exterior lights on, but out of an abundance of caution, we’d turned those off as well.

  “Y’know, I always wondered what it was like, traveling in a sub,” Richard said, right after the sub’s hull groaned under the mounting water pressure. “But now, I think I’d rather not have known. Downright terrifying, this.”

  “I honestly never even knew such inventions existed,” Philip said. “But I feel similarly. The very thought of an ocean’s weight crushing us should something go wrong. This is the stuff of nightmares.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said casually.

  “Yeah? Vouch for the construction of these subs, do you?” Richard asked. “Have to say, it’s a relief that you’ve ridden these before.”

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  “Oh, no,” I said. “Almost died in this thing last time. Just that if the sub does critically implode, we’ll be dead before we realize it. Pressures at this depth are something else.”

  Neither of my companions responded. Spooking them wasn’t my intent, but it was true that shit could go sideways down here fast. The more aware they were, the better.

  I slipped the sub down the massive tube connecting the pool to the ocean outside, and moments later, Aerion and I reached the end, exiting into the deep, dark abyss.

  We then turned left, making a half lap around the castle, to follow the well-lit cog rail tube-tunnel we’d used to go to the second castle.

  As if affected by the pressure, all three of us fell into a stiff silence, the only sounds the whoosh of the propeller and the water against the hull, occasionally broken by groaning or creaking sounds.

  Until this experience, I’d always thought of the ocean floor like the diving ads in Hawaii—clear, brilliant blue, with sunlight dancing across the sandy bottom, where coral and tons of other wildlife lived.

  That was, of course, only true for extremely shallow areas of the ocean. Most of it was dark. Real dark. It could’ve been midday topside, and we wouldn’t have known. Light didn’t penetrate this far. This place was always pitch-black, utterly devoid of light. There was no wildlife growing on the bottom. Only sand. Endless sand, and if it weren’t for the light of the cog tunnels, we’d have been utterly blind.

  As it was, they served as a comforting presence. A bastion of civilization in this hostile, alien place, like a fire at night in the woods. Amazing what even a little bit of familiarity did for the soul. Not that the tunnels would help us if we had an emergency. No, we were all alone out here. Two tiny cylinders of metal in an endless expanse.

  I shook off my wandering thoughts. Now was not the time for daydreaming. Despite the illumination of the tunnels, it took everything I had to spot Aerion’s sub in front of me. We couldn’t get too close to those tunnels for fear of hitting them, so we traveled about fifty feet away.

  It was beautiful, in an eerie sort of way, with the lit-up tunnels disappearing off into the distance.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Richard said in a hushed tone. “Those lights almost make this experience feel familiar. Without them, I reckon we’d be panicking to hell and back right now.”

  “True that,” I replied, wondering if we were all thinking the same thing at that moment.

  The second castle came into view some time later—longer than it had taken on the cog railway. We weren’t moving nearly as fast in the subs—something that gave me a bad feeling about the later castles.

  The second castle’s honeycomb structure looked just as bizarre to me as it had the first time around, but it soon came and went.

  “Is it just me, or is the rail tunnel leading away from the castle almost at the same place as the one we used to arrive there?” Philip asked.

  “Nope, you’re right,” I said. “Can’t be more than a handful of cells away from the one we used to enter it.”

  Richard whistled. “Insidious, really. Bet most delvers would jump clear across the structure, expecting the exit on the other side, when in reality, they need only burrow under a few cells.”

  Insidious, and intentional, I reflected. Dominion was clearly testing his delvers with this little trick.

  The castle, if one could even call it that, disappeared from behind us, and we continued on in silence. The gap between the second and third castles was even longer, and this time, the castle resembled the first one, just larger and deeper.

  We flew a wide arc around it before finding the tunnel on the other end and following it. How many hours had we just saved? I couldn’t even begin to guess.

  The fourth, fifth, and sixth castles came and went, each larger than the last. The fourth castle resembled an enormous translucent fishbowl, bisected with levels visible from the outside that ran vertically instead of horizontally. I didn’t have the slightest clue how gravity worked in there, but if I had to guess, it wouldn’t have been fun. The thing was also massive, easily larger than the previous castles.

  The fifth was just like the first one, but upsized, and the sixth was, well, it looked like a giant sea turtle of epic proportions, with the castle entering just under the turtle’s shell. Needless to say, I had no clue what the inside of that one looked like. Nor did I have any intention of finding out.

  An hour later, we breezed past the seventh castle, which had the usual architecture, but far too much of it. The thing must’ve been a half-mile in length alone, to say nothing of its height. I couldn’t even see the tops of its massive spires. What horrors of the deep lay in wait there? What treasures sat there, begging to be found?

  With any luck, we would never know.

  The final castle took a full two hours to come into view, and during all that time, I swore we’d be gobbled up by some gigantic sea creature.

  Our journey was utterly uneventful, though, with Richard and Philip striking up a conversation about the politics of Basecrest to stave off the boredom. I tuned in and occasionally participated, and it was thanks to that that I didn’t notice the two hours it took to get to our next destination. All in all, we must’ve been traveling for at least six. I thanked Cosmo that it was the last. The last castle finally appeared, along with the cylindrical staircase that speared upward, penetrating the inky depths.

  The thing wasn’t so much a castle, but a maze on the bottom of the seafloor, leading to that staircase. We could see the well-lit area plainly from here, and if we did have a means of communication, it would’ve been trivial to guide someone through, avoiding the many monsters that waited along the way.

  Of course, that would have required someone flying all this way in the sub. That was besides the point, though. I had to wonder just how many shortcuts and cheats there really were for each of these Trials. I wondered how many would go forever undiscovered.

  Aerion brought her sub to a halt and spun around, facing me. She nodded and held up three fingers, before dropping one, then another.

  When her index finger went down, we both reached for the ballast levers and pulled back all the way.

  “Well guys, hope you’re ready,” I said, as the sub lurched upward. “Because this is where the fun begins.”

  Richard chuckled, while Philip tightened his grip on his restraints, as evidenced by the sound of twisting rope.

  If only I’d known just how horribly true those words would become only moments later, I’d never have dared say them.