Elias did not look back, nor did he hesitate when he stepped over the rim of the pit. He had said what he wanted to say, and he wondered if the five behind him would follow.
He had an unhealthy attitude towards danger, and he knew that not everyone shared his particular… taste. There was a possibility that some among the five would not follow him, and that was okay, as long as there were enemies before him, Elias could fight forever.
The Lumina Constructs were gone because he could not afford to maintain them in the descent. He kept his shield and the cleaver-blade his Ascendant Swarm had reformed in his right hand, and he also kept a small reserve of blood-iron coiled along his spine.
Elias fell for a count of two before his boot caught on the first outcrop, which he had seen from the top of the pit.
The outcrop was a flat lip of the same scar-tissue stone that lined the rim, perhaps three feet wide and twice as long, jutting from the inside of the throat at an angle that defied easy geometry.
Elias grimaced. It was warm and also slippery, coated in a thin film of yellow mucus, and despite his weight, his boot slid forward six inches before Stone-Souled answered, and the boot bonded to the surface and held him.
He glanced upwards to see that the others had come down in their own ways, and smiled when he noted that all five of them had descended without fail, and gave him the chance to begin observing the abilities they possessed, as Elias was eager to know what sort of abilities his peers had.
He was not surprised that Tarian was first, just in the same way that he was not surprised that the prince was going to pick himself as one of the five.
Tarian dropped without sound, faint trails of lightning emerging from his body, as he floated down like a feather, before he settled onto a second outcrop ten feet below Elias's right with the silence of a leaf coming to rest.
From this display, Elias suspected that Tarian may have the ability to fly, and he noted down this detail. If it came to a battle between them, he needed to be aware that Tarian could move up as well as he could move sideways.
Sera came after him, walking down the wall, with her sword extended in a long line along the stone, the steel adhering as if it were a hand. Each step was a controlled motion as her impressive talent was making her a creature of the wall as much as a person on it.
Theron jumped, despite the fact that he must be among the heaviest of them, and not surprisingly, the outcrop he aimed for cracked under his landing. A piece the size of a man's torso sheared off and tumbled into the darkness below, and the report of it striking distant stone never came. Theron rode the rest of the outcrop down a short slide, hammered his boot into a fold of the wall, and stopped.
"That one was bad," he said, low.
Tarian, above him: "Pick the next one better."
"Working on it."
Elara stepped off the rim and vanished, the light around her bent inward, folded, and what reached the eyes of the others below was a faint distortion that drifted down past them and resolved fifteen feet below Theron on a fourth outcrop. By the time Elias's eyes registered her, she was already standing.
"Show off," Theron muttered.
She did not answer. Her grey eyes were on the curve of the throat below.
Kaelen came last, and he had the worst of it.
He did not have a graceful talent; what he did was reach out with his hand as he dropped, and the wall answered, a small ridge of stone bulged outward from the smooth surface to meet his palm. He caught it. The momentum of his fall nearly tore his shoulder out of its socket; Elias heard the joint pop and reseat. But Kaelen held. He swung once, twice, and dropped onto an outcrop just below Elias.
The outcrop he chose collapsed.
It was a clean break. The stone had been thinner than it appeared, and Kaelen's full weight on the leading edge sheared the whole shelf away from the wall. Kaelen had perhaps a quarter of a second to react. He slammed his hammer flat against the wall, and the head bit into the surface and held.
He hung from the haft, dangling above a drop he could not see the bottom of, his feet kicking once, twice, finding nothing.
"Shit…" That was Theron. He moved before he thought, and what moved with him was his arm, stretching further than an arm should reach, the long gift of the beast-speakers, and his fingers closed around Kaelen's ankle.
"I have you."
Kaelen's voice was tight. "Pull, Theron. Now would be good."
"Working on it."
Theron pulled, Kaelen swung with the motion, and the hammer came free of the wall. Kaelen landed on Theron's outcrop, and the outcrop held, and for a long moment, nobody on the line spoke.
Then Tarian, from above: "That is twice in two minutes. Perhaps I made a mistake picking you."
"You did not make a mistake," Kaelen said, breathing hard. "I am just finding my feet; this would not happen again."
"See that you do."
Sera, twenty feet below them, had not turned around. "If you two are finished, the wall on this side is angled. We lose another ten feet of vertical for every body length we move left. There is a vein here that runs deeper than the obvious path."
"We're coming," Tarian said.
Elias had not moved during any of this, as he was both observing them and watching the wall beside him. He had pressed his palm against the surface, and he was feeling what was underneath it, and he discovered that just like the surface of the pit, the walls were not stone or flesh but something between… and it was breathing.
They seemed not to be inside a pit, but heading down the throat of a massive beast, reminding him of the imagery he had of the pit when he first saw it, and he slowly took his hand away.
"Move slowly," he said. His voice did something the air did not expect. It carried in a way that did not echo, the walls drinking the sound of his voice. "The stone is not stone. It will give where it is thin. It will hold where it is thick. Touch with your hand before you trust with your foot."
Sera looked up. "How do you know?"
Elias did not answer.
"Right," she said, after a beat. "Hand before foot. Got it."
Elias glanced at her before he stepped down to the next outcrop.
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