A month can be a wealth of time, or it can pass in the blink of an eye.

  For Diya, it had passed in what felt like a heartbeat. A precious span of days spent practicing her newfound scrying technique. A precious span of days spent gathering flowers and fruits so that Tamsin could experiment with an assortment of vibrant new dye formulations—as a result, their outfits, and Shikra’s harness, boasted an array of hues fit to rival all but the most breathtaking of rainbows.

  Diya sighed, glancing down at the marvelous new outfit that Tamsin had sewn for her: a deep peacock blue silk blouse, fitted but flexible, embroidered with gold thread, pants green like the most perfectly cut emerald, made of the softest wool she’d ever felt, and an orange sash embroidered lovingly with what appeared to be a mighty bird that resembled Shikra.

  In the deep, damp subterranean tunnel, lit only by torchlight, the stunning getup looked dull and monochromatic. She was on day three of the Trial of Malediction. The name sure implied a horrific and trying adventure, but so far, the only thing horrific and trying was the way she had teetered between boredom and claustrophobia-induced panic attacks.

  Stone walls strangled by moss pressed close, sweating slow beads of mineral water that ran in thin veins down the stone. Every few hours, her torches sputtered as if exhausted by the ordeal itself, throwing the corridor into a brief, desperate darkness before flaring back to life.

  Diya breathed steadily, in and out, in and out, in and out, and kept walking. Controlled breathing had been the greatest ally in her battle against the claustrophobia of the labyrinthine tunnels slumbering beneath New Avignon.

  Three days.

  Three days of listening for footsteps that never came, of spinning at echoes that might have been the other nine initiates or might have been the tunnels settling like an old man adjusting his weary bones. Three days of wondering if the Trial of Malediction was less a trial of curses and more a test of who could remain sane the longest.

  Her hand hovered over the stone wall, not quite touching. Junira’s cryptic warning pulsed in her mind: The labyrinth is alive with old resentments. Don’t touch what doesn’t want to be touched.

  The hell does that even mean? Why are the details around these sacred trials always so unclear? If I end up being the chosen one, I’m writing an operations manual for these trials. Diya thought.

  “And if it doesn’t want to be touched, then maybe it could open a hidden door or two,” she muttered. Her voice scampering down the corridor like a startled lizard.

  Diya pushed onward, trying earnestly to ignore the desire to make camp for the day and give her eyes a rest from looking for signs in the shadows of stone.

  She rounded a bend, and the air shifted.

  Not the faint, stale draft of dusty stone. This was a breath of fresh air. Literally. A slight breeze blew against her cheeks, and the scent of rosemary tickled her nostrils. The tunnel opened into a dark grotto. Through the stalactites, a trickling waterfall washed down into a steaming pool.

  Her pulse kicked hard, rhythmic like a drum. Maybe she was finally close to her goal, the hidden and sacred ritual site where her aptitude would be tested. Or maybe she was walking straight into the mouth of some ancient thing waiting to swallow her whole.

  You had multiple opportunities to run away, she reminded herself. Well done, Diya.

  Her heterochromatic eyes narrowed as she noticed the pool. Steam? Warm water? My own little heaven hidden in hell?

  Running over to the water and sticking her hand in to check the water temperature, Diya made a sound of pure elation.

  Three days without a bath. She had certainly gone longer before, but something about face-checking spider web after spider web in an underground maze really made one yearn for a bath. She wedged her torch between two man-sized stalagmites.

  Any remaining drop of willpower aimed towards pressing forward towards the ritual site evaporated in the steam of the hot spring. Diya unburdened herself, throwing her knapsack, weapons, and clothes off and diving headfirst into the pool. A damn fine dive. Hardly even a splash.

  Hot water enveloped her, washing her stress and fears away with the grime and lingering spiderwebs. Treading the water and clearing her mind, she thought for the first time about the other nine initiates. I wonder if any of them have found the ritual site? The competitive part of me absolutely wanted to be the first to reach it, but now I think I might not care at all if I was last to arrive if it meant soaking in these therapeutic waters a bit longer.

  This grotto was a welcome reprieve from the monotony of the tunnels. It was as if the labyrinth had sensed her claustrophobia getting the better of her and willed this cavernous grotto into existence as a remedy to steady her nerves. The thought was outlandish, but she was all too happy to entertain it after the mind-numbing days of darkness.

  It was there in the waters that an idea struck her like a pick against an ice block. She felt like an absolute fool for not thinking of it sooner. Diya had an advantage that none of the other initiates did—she was attuned to the art of scrying.

  Stepping out of the water, she was unpleasantly greeted by the cold subterranean air. Water rolled down her skin and fell to the uneven stone as she tiptoed to her knapsack. After pulling a spare cloth from it and drying off, she grabbed a palm full of stonemoss, placed it in a dry corner of the grotto and set it ablaze with her torch. There was a slight crackle and pop as it burned, then the familiar earthy scent filled the air.

  Next, there was a creeping, chilling doubt that brushed against her skin and gave her goosebumps, or perhaps it was the brisk air, for she was still unclothed. Her eyes closed and she tried to focus her mind’s eye on her goal, the ritual site. Unfortunately, she had no idea what that place might be. Still, she focused, not on the physical location, but rather on the essence of the place. What it meant to her.

  The next step was towards harnessing the power she needed to save her people. The next step in her journey of self-improvement. The next step towards securing a better future for everyone. It was the next step that was always the most important.

  In a moment of clarity, the cold vanished, and in its place burned a bonfire of near infinite warmth. Diya gasped.

  Her eyes shot open—shooting spears of light that penetrated every dark recess of the grotto—with all illuminated, she saw clearly for the first time in three days.

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  Like being frozen in ice, she was suddenly paralyzed. That’s when the vision came to her. A secret passageway behind the waterfall. An ancient tree with a crown of yellow leaves, and the shape of a perpetually screaming man entombed in its gnarled bark. It was outright disturbing, yet somehow majestic in its ghastly grandeur.

  There she was examining the unsettling oak when the petrified man’s eyes opened, and he spoke. “The song of the crow, a hidden despisal. Beware the deathblow, manifest by a sudden arrival.

  She cocked her head, struggling to fish meaning from the murky depths of the enigmatic message. Before she could, the man screamed—a wailing, unnerving noise that sent shivers down her spine. If she had a copper piece for every time a man-tree hybrid shrieked in her face, well, she would have exactly one copper piece, that’s to say it was quite a surreal experience.

  Collapsing to the floor, Diya found her hands and feet trembling. Though she was now safely back in the grotto, or at least as safe as one could be while in an ancient labyrinth built by blood witches, she struggled to shake the strange scene from her mind.

  A few minutes of controlled breathing had her feeling mostly back in control of her emotions. After splashing some water on her face from the pool, she got dressed and packed up. When she was prepared to set off, she stood still a moment, musing on the validity of her vision and frankly, leaning towards disbelief. It was all a lot to process. However, reflecting on her countless sessions with Junira helped her carve the accuracy of the visions firmly in the stone that was her mind.

  Diya watched the flow of the waterfall pouring out of a vaguely maw-shaped opening in the ceiling. It was exactly the same as in her vision.

  And so, her course of action was clear; she climbed along the slick stone behind the downpour, warm water misting her. Her boot slipped, and she nearly lost her footing. After shouting a few obscenities and flailing her arms wildly in an attempt to regain her balance, she was able to regain her foothold. There were three more close calls before she finally made it to the spot from her vision directly behind the waterfall.

  Scanning the rock for some sign of a hidden door and finding nothing, she began to feel her frustrations boiling up. It was far from her most dignified moment, but she slammed her gloved fist into the rock wall in rage.

  First came the wave of hot pain. Next came the realization that the stone didn’t feel solid. Knocking her knuckles against it revealed that the section she had punched was inexplicably hollow. Interest piqued, she gripped her flintlock pistol and began hammering away. After a few sturdy whacks, the thin stone cracked away, revealing a copper button about the size of a belt buckle.

  Is this too convenient? I suppose it could be a trap. Perhaps a gout of flame will light me up like a torch when I press it.

  She pondered it for no more than thirty seconds before her curiosity got the better of her and she pressed the button.

  Diya flinched away—nearly slipping off the slippery rocks yet again—awaiting the fire, or acid, or poisoned spikes, but pleasantly none came. Instead, the stone shook, with a sound like a small earthquake, then it slid apart at the center, revealing a dark, dusty tunnel covered with spiderwebs.

  Excellent. What a lucky lady I am? Right after I’ve washed the last three days of webs from myself. Could this get any worse? More spiderwebs…

  After a grunt that seemed to convey just how sick she was getting of these trials, she did her best to burn a path through the webs with her torch. Then she stepped down into the secret tunnel. Apparently, her best wasn’t quite adequate, and she felt the silky webs sticking to her hair and face. She grumbled, making a mental note that if she ever got the opportunity to don the mantle of arachnid exterminator supreme and cleanse the planet of spiders, she would jump at it.

  It was impossible to tell for sure in a dark tunnel lit only by a torch, but she was pretty sure she could make out a copper door at the end of the passageway. For the first time in three days—with the exception of the heavenly bath in the hot springs—she felt energized, the vision had provided a spark inside her. She was going to complete this trial, she was going to prove Tamsin right, and she was going to save her people. No amount of spider webs could stand in her way.

  Upon reaching the door, she pushed it open without a second thought and stepped into the room beyond.

  What awaited her was the room from her vision. It was just as she had seen. The mighty oak stood at the center with the screaming man frozen in its gnarled trunk. The yellow leaves fell from its canopy gently and littered the tile floor. There were four ornate copper doors, one on each of the four walls. The one she had entered through remained open, and the faintest sounds of the waterfall could be heard from it. Meanwhile, the other three remained shut.

  Diya stepped into the chamber; it was a cavernous place, and when she looked up, she found she couldn’t see the ceiling. Above simply ascended into a sky of infinite shadow. A single crow perched on a branch, seemingly watching her. Almost unconsciously, she found herself kneeling beneath the branches of the tree, resting in a sea of fallen leaves. The leaves were a beautiful pale-yellow hue that seemed to glow in the dark place. Diya sniffed. Curiously, they had a unique smell, almost akin to turmeric. She stuffed a handful of the leaves into her knapsack, pondering how they might be interesting to experiment with whenever she got out of the hellish maze.

  A door creaked open to her right, and she jumped.

  There stood a man. One of the initiates, she didn’t know he was the man with the obsidian glass eye from the night of the banquet. He looked as though he’d been wrung out by the journey. Sweat matted his white hair to his forehead. His one good eye was wide, unfocused, full of something like terror. Or perhaps guilt.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered. “…it happened so fast.”

  A chill skittered down her neck like the spider that had woven all the webs. “Mean to what?”

  “He… he showed me things. Unlocked something inside of me. He showed me what I could do. What he… no… I wanted to do.” His voice cracked. “The curse came so easily…but it wasn’t like he said it would be.”

  Diya stepped forward, gesturing with her hands reassuringly. “It’s okay, we can talk through it. Everything will be alright.”

  Tears streamed from his one good eye, the emotionless obsidian eye seemed to look through her. “No…things will never be the same…”

  At that, he stepped forward, for the first time close enough to be illuminated by her torch.

  Her gaze flicked to his hands. They were covered in blood. In one hand, he held a bloody and shredded initiate's cloak, and in the other, he had a small knife. Drip. Drip. Drip. The blade dripped blood onto the stone floor.

  Her stomach twisted. Who was the ‘he’ that he was speaking of? What sort of curse did he perform? And quite possibly most importantly to my present situation, what has he done to that other initiate?

  The lone crow began cawing boisterously.

  That’s when the words of the screaming man from her vision came back to her.

  ‘The song of the crow, a hidden despisal. Beware the deathblow, manifest by a sudden arrival.’

  Diya looked at the manic man with the glass eye.

  Is he the sudden arrival? She mused.

  Before she could consider it any further, her thought was interrupted.

  CRUNCH.

  In the blink of an eye, the man with obsidian eye had been reduced to little more than a crumpled mass of gore on the tiles.

  The space he had occupied no more than a second prior was now occupied by a spider-like monstrosity nearly ten feet tall. Most disturbingly, it had the lower half of a giant spider, but the upper half of a girl. Not just any girl, though, Diya recognized her as one of the initiates, her initiate’s robes still hanging torn and frayed from her disfigured frame.

  It doesn’t need to be me. I think it would be alright if someone else wanted to don the mantle of arachnid exterminator supreme.

  Diya’s heart beat like a hammer. She glanced down at the puddle of gore that moments prior had been the man with the obsidian eye and shook her head. “What did you do—”

  Before she could finish her accusation, the monster skittered towards her, far faster than anything so large had any right to be.

  She tried to jump out of the way, but her reaction was much too slow.

  The gigantic eight-legged abdomen crashed into her mid-jump. A sudden forceful impact that sent Diya hurling across the room. Her awkward flight was halted abruptly when she smashed into the stone wall.

  Waves of searing pain emanating from her right leg left little doubt in her mind that at least a few bones were likely broken in the collision. Diya tried to get back to her feet, but her uncooperative leg wouldn’t allow it. She found herself falling back to the hard stone floor. As she landed, the back of her head cracked against the rock.

  As her vision went black, the last thing she saw was the eight-legged monster slowly skittering towards her.