How much she chafed at that.

And how much danger the both of them faced along with all their friends.

Indeed, everyone on the continent.

He opened his eyes.

“I must descend.”

Bond drew in an audible breath before he nodded.

“I did my best,” he said.

“You did, my brother,” Aramus murmured.

He then clapped his friend on the shoulder, and without looking at the others, he turned to the mouth of the abyss.

He was a large man, the path was narrow, the fall so far, he could not see the bottom, just hear the whoosh of surf all the way to the top.

But he did not hesitate taking his first step, or his next, or the ones after.

As his father told him, the farther he descended, the deeper the darkness that surrounded him.

However, unlike others, who, if they tried to take this journey, would eventually find themselves blind and either have to turn around, or end up falling to their deaths, he could always see the path before him, a magical light guiding the way of the king who was proclaimed thus by the gods.

But his father had not told him, for his father had never found reason to take this descent, about the sound of the angry sea at the bottom, and how, step after step, the volume increased, so as to become a din, a thunder, a roar.

And as it churned, it splashed, so much eventually the mist felt like rain.

Aramus was soaked to the skin by the time he could see the tempest whirling at the base. The water was agitated to the point it was all white, the chasm wide, the swirl violent, the knowledge immediate that if he should fall into that foam, he’d be sucked deep, perhaps his drowned corpse taken to the earth’s core.

It was humid but chill, wet, dank, dark, and as he wound his way around and around the abyss, again and again, he wondered if he’d been descending ten minutes or if time had warped and he’d been gone ten years.

A man could go mad down here, he thought, just as he saw the lanterns.

Orbs of green and blue glass, glowing from within, perhaps twenty feet in front of him. They hung at odd intervals, and only very dimly lit what appeared to be a circular opening to a cave on the side of the cliff path.

As his father had warned him not to do, Aramus did not hasten his step. One stumble on this slick rock, and it would not be Ha-Lah who would be lost to him due to the fates.

It would be he who was gone forever.

Carefully, he made it to the orbs and stood outside their murky glow.

“It is I, King Aramus,” he called against the crash of water behind him, feeling a complete fool.

“And it is I who receives The Head.”

The Head?

“Enter, King of the Sea,” the voice bid.