The baron had not yet stopped screaming. The three Coursers slid helplessly down the seemingly endless tunnel, the baron first and then Alder and Lujayn together, Alder's legs firmly tangled in Lujayn's armour as he clung to safety. He'd have screamed, too, if not for the neck of the bottle in his mouth; he'd face much worse than a terrifying slip down a long passage if he lost the baron's new hair tonic.

Dim flashes of light and yawning tunnel mouths gaped off the main branch of the slide, thankfully (or at least Lujayn thought), not close enough to the main thoroughfare to lose one of them down a separate path.

Several seconds passed, and she could feel the tunnel's steep decline beginning to abate. She and Alder slowed marginally, and she prepared for a rough landing. She hoped Percy would find them - they would undoubtedly be injured from this.

Light began to seep from the end of the tunnel. Slime coated the floor as it flattened out in an enormous, high-ceilinged cavern, and Lujayn curled herself around Alder as best she could before they crashed, at great speed, into a stone wall. The bottle in Alder's mouth flew across the cavern and shattered against a rock.

The baron had stopped screaming.

Lujayn tested each of her limbs, making sure nothing was broken. The fact they moved was good, and even better was it meant her back hadn't been broken from the impact.

"Are you alright?" Lujayn asked Alder, who was shaking against her chest. The other Courser nodded, and began gingerly untangling himself from her equipment.

"Where's his lordship?" Alder asked, voice quaking. 

"There," Lujayn said, gesturing with her head. 

The baron was standing in front of two towering doors, each identical to the other save one thing: the faces etched above them. One bore a grotesque expression of anger, and the other a charismatic smile. 

Lujayn and Alder managed to stand, and Lujayn moved up next to the baron, who was riveted by the faces.

"Do you hear them?" Annaeus asked, tearing his gaze from the doorways.

Alder and Lujayn exchanged a look. The baron must have hit his head.

Annaeus let out a laugh. "Well, quite. That would be silly of me, to go through that doorway."

"Something's wrong," Alder whispered to Lujayn. "He's always been headstrong, but never...had rivets quite as loose as this."

"We'll have to wait for Percy," Lujayn said. "We can't handle him on our own."