“What the hell’s going on?” I shouted up at them. “Why the hell did the guillotine go off? The challenge Wheel already selected the rats. One peril, that’s the rules of the test!”

“Hang on,” Connor said, his voice full of uncertainty. “We’re experiencing some kind of technical difficulty, kid.”

“You hang on!” I shouted back. “If something’s gone wrong, just get me out of here. Lower the rest of the rope.”

“That would fall under the banner of technical difficulty,” Connor said. “The winch is jammed.”

None of the Oubliette challenge was going according to what I had studied, and now I heard the sound of approaching rats. I rolled onto my side, feeling an ache in my lower back. I positioned my arm on the stone floor to push myself up, but one of my still-gloveless hands came to rest on something, and my mind automatically slipped into psychometric mode.

Given the distractions of pain and trying to orient myself, I didn’t even get a chance to think about controlling my power. Suddenly, I was sucked into the past of someone else who had been in this Oubliette. This poor guy was neck-deep in slithering snakes, and thanks to the fact that I was experiencing everything he was, I was treated to the sensation of a thousand twisting tails and flicking tongues all over my body. With desperation, I concentrated on pulling myself out of the vision, but found it near impossible with so much sensory input overwhelming me. I closed the eyes of the person I was, blocking out at least the visual of him slowly going under in a sea of snakes. That seemed to help, and as I returned to my own mind I traded the sound of incessant hissing for the squeak and chittering of the approaching rats.