The stench that had made Aiden’s stomach flip-flop only worsened as he made his way through the thick fog. It was a smell like rotten eggs that had been left on the porch for three days in the most humid weather possible, eggs that had been cooked on sweaty socks instead of a frying pan.
His hand flew to his nose and mouth, but the stench only worsened- his hand must have gotten splattered in droplets.
He gagged involuntarily and immediately he felt his stomach groan.
Aiden looked ahead with watery eyes to see the edge of the smoky wall and picked up speed, the edge of the pass becoming little more than fuzzy colours.
He vaulted himself out of the smog and promptly keeled over and vomited.
As his vision cleared, he saw Curtis kneeling beside him and holding out a bottle of water and paper towel from their bags.
He took it gratefully, cleaned his face and downed the entire bottle, standing up on shaky legs.
Dulcie smiled dimly.
“Here we go.”
Aiden was startled to see a cave sitting before them. It seemed to have just… popped into existence. That was unsettling to say the very least.
Maybe cave wasn't quite the right word. It looked like the descent down had been crushed like a can, but the top was left untouched and as smooth as a turtle shell.
Stranger still, the area around the long descent down was gouged out, leaving a pit nearly five feet wide in its wake, and if the cave was some eldritch abomination dragging itself out of the ground to swallow everything whole.
Except the figurative beast’s mouth was closed by a massive wooden door, and an analogue clock half the size of the door hung on the wall, which certainly threw Aiden off- after all, who would expect to see a massive clock in a place so untouched by mankind.
Aiden blinked furiously to make sure his vision wasn’t playing tricks on him- maybe the mist was some sort of toxin that was making him hallucinate?
But no. A full minute and the clock was still there. Aiden wondered briefly if the clock worked- after all, the screen was dark, the only hint of life being the dull grey numbers.
Curtis was the first to break out of his confusion and tried the door.
It was locked.
And now the clock was ticking down from five minutes.
Curtis’ hand faltered and his mouth dropped open at the sight of the suddenly functioning clock.
Dulcie was at his side in seconds and pulling him away from the ticking clock.
“Let’s go, idiots!”
Aiden was moving before he even realised what was happening, flying across the ground towards and through the mist in long strides.
He ignored the smell and his tossing stomach and broke through the edge.
Nitika and the rest of the horses were still there, grazing comfortably. They looked up when the group crashed through before simply going back to eating.
The group sat for five minutes, probably longer- none of them were willing to possibly be caught up in what the timer was counting towards.
They glanced at each other worriedly, hoping that they hadn’t decimated the mission by trying to open the door.
“I can’t wait any longer, let’s go back through.”
Pollux didn’t even wait for a response before he charged through the mist.
Aiden, Curtis, and Dulcie rose to their feet, slowly and carefully, as if one wrong move would make the ground explode beneath their feet.
Maybe it would.
Aiden groaned when he made it through the wall of smog, and put his hands on his knees, doubling over and retching.
After a few seconds of leaning over, Aiden managed to regain his balance and turn worriedly to face the cave.
The door was open.
Aiden laughed humorlessly and just stared at the cave in shock.
“Was this the first test?” Pollux asked, voice breathless.
“I hope it was,” Dulcie grumbled. “And not just a deterrent.”
Aiden sighed and walked up to the cave, comically shaking his fist at the cave.
“Damn you!”
The ground vanished beneath his feet.
Apparently, caves tended to throw hissy fits and push you down if you insulted them.
Aiden pictured falling down the entire descent, at which point his short life would be tragically cut short. The rest of the group sobbing over the cave and hoping he had a quick death, having to go back and tell The Ravens that a cave had eaten their friend.
What was below him?
Aiden shifted and found that he was lying on the floor of the cave, and aside from being slightly sore from his rough landing, he was unharmed.
He looked up and immediately felt the world tilt.
The light of the outside world seemed so far away, yet the three people screaming his name sounded like they were little more than five feet above him.
He smiled.
“Not so loud!”
He heard Dulcie’s shriek of surprise, then Curtis’ trembling voice.
“Aiden? How’d you survive that fall?”
“It’s not that far!”
He could practically hear the disbelief in Pollux’s voice.
“What do you mean, not that far? That’s got to be a thirty-foot fall!”
“I don’t understand it either, I guess… you know what, come down!”
Aiden backed up, and Pollux dropped to the floor.
Even in the relatively dim lighting of the hole, he could see Pollux’s mouth fall open.
“Woah, no way.”
Dulcie came rushing down next, landing nimbly before falling flat on her face.
She stumbled a little and rubbed her face, looking up.
“Wow. Freaky.”
The young teenagers watched Curtis comically climb down the wall, which would’ve been a feat had the ground not been five feet from the pit’s opening.
He squinted.
“The mezr?”
He was talking to nobody but himself and seemed to realise what he’d just said because he started to explain.
“The mezr. Illusionary magic, making something look like something it's not. We have to be careful down here if we don’t want to run into any walls or… other things.”
Aiden nodded grimly and turned to go down an entrance.
He walked into a wall.
“Ow.”
Curtis groaned.
“What did I just say?!”
Aiden ignored his comment.
“Walls hurt.”
Curtis sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Yes, walls don’t much like idiots.”
Aiden continued on, touching entrances before trying to go through them. As the cavern went on, the number of illusions shrunk until everything was real.
But, of course, the minute Aiden let his guard down, he walked into a wall.
He grumbles and kicked the wall, checking every single entrance this time.
Eventually, the group was met with another door, much smaller and lacking a clock.
It was, to Aiden’s relief, unlocked.
They stepped into the second room and as Aiden’s eyes adjusted to the sudden light from several torches hanging from the ceiling, he could easily see several pillars. The walls were decorated with images of kings.
Aiden furrowed his brows and glanced around, confused.
Suddenly, the door closed with a loud bang, and water started to drop from the ceiling, increasing in could with each second.
The room was filling with water.
Dulcie grabbed her brother’s shoulders and started shaking him.
“Pollux! You’re the smart guy! What do we do!?”
Her twin looked startled at being shaken so vigorously, and only sputtered out a quiet “I don’t know!”
Curtis started to run the end of the room, but slipped in a slowly growing puddle and fell to the floor.
He rose to his feet and braced himself against a pillar.
Pollux slowly pushed his sister off him and started to walk across the slowly filling room.
“Kings,” he muttered.
“Maybe there’s some kind of clue?”
Pollux studied the paintings.
“King Paola, King Cahyo, King…”
He faltered.
“Wait for a second!”
Curtis raised an eyebrow.
“King Scott! A long time ago, all members of the royal family, including the previous King of Chodel, were killed! There was a huge search for distant family members all over the city! Eventually, a man named Scott stepped up and claimed to be the cousin of the previous King. Except he wasn’t.”
The water was up to their knees now, but Aiden realized what it meant.
“A fake King…”
“A fake pillar!” Dulcie finished.
Aiden was going to say wall, but pillar made more sense.
Pollux nodded excitedly and pushed over the pillar closest to the painting.
The ceiling exploded.
Wrong pillar!
Pollux fell back as water rushed from the ceiling. It was far over Aiden’s head and his lungs, nose, and eyes were all screaming.
He swam forward as fast as he could and kicked over the pillar on the other side of the painting.
A slab on the other side slid open and the water started to rush through, taking Aiden and everyone else with it.
Water filled Aiden’s lungs and made everything into a blur of colour and shape, no discernible lines in sight. When his hands flailed, he smacked walls.
The dark area at the end of the water-filled tunnel opened into bright light and Aiden slipped out.
Water dropped into a grate beneath him, and Aiden shakily rose to his feet, rubbing his elbows as the others tumbled out of the tunnel.
Pollux shuddered and slumped against the wall, rubbing his arms.
Dulcie cracked her knuckles.
“Alright, what deadly puzzle now?”
Aiden turned to face two signs in the centre of the room. One was higher than the other, and both were lazily tacked onto the same pole.
The group, still shaking, cautiously moved across the room to read the signs.the upper sign was simple.
Below this sign is your demise,
Be careful, certainly, but be more wise
Aiden had to disagree with the lower sign being their demise. It was a very simple riddle;
I'm tall when I'm young, I'm short when I'm old.
Curtis snorted. “Candle.”
For the second time in a row, the ceiling exploded.
Spikes flew out of the ceiling, out of the walls, zipping around the room like wild animals.
Pollux fumbled with his holster, ducking and dodging, before pulling out the gun and shooting at as many spikes as possible.
Aiden studied the sign again as Pollux’s accurate shots missed half their targets.
What if…
“The upper sign!”
Aiden grinned.
“It was the upper sign the whole time! We weren’t supposed to answer the riddle!”
The spikes stopped flying around and exploded into what looked like glass shards, and dissipated once they hit the ground.
The door opened.
Aiden grinned behind him at his dumbfounded friends, and Curtis patted his back.
“I think all of us will be indebted to each other by the time this is over. I know I am to you- one of those spikes nearly skewered me!”
Aiden smiled a little uncomfortably and headed for the door.
Instead of another room, Aiden found himself standing in a clearing where the mist hung thick.
He slapped a hand over his mouth and nose and turned around, relieved to see everyone else standing behind him.
There was an ear-piercing shriek and Aiden whipped around to see two eyes staring back at him. Fire thrived in those eyes, and Aiden felt his stomach sink.
The beast had arrived.
It shrieked again and came forward, fast as lightning. It had four horns, each thin and deadly like they could kill you on a whim.
The stinking mist that had plagued Aiden was pouring from its mouth and nose, and if its breath was enough to cause vomiting, Aiden didn’t want to know what else the thing could do.
Its head almost seemed to bubble like cauldrons in fairy tales, but as the creature's tail entered the scene- a shadowy mass with a mind of its own that dropped with deep crimson, Aiden knew this was no fairy tale.
This was real, and it was a nightmare.
The creature’s entire body seemed to be composed of shadows, and Aiden trembled as it came closer on four powerful legs.
Its face was close- too close to Aiden, and he shuddered as the creature smelled the air in front of him.
The beast repeated the action with the others before grumbling and dropping to the ground, scratching behind its bat-like ears like an overgrown dog.
“Why did you have to interrupt my nap?”
Aiden blinked. The creature's voice sounded like it belonged to an exceptionally screechy teenager.
It was an annoying voice.
“...What.”
Pollux voiced what they were all thinking.
damnit, we came all this way and run into another teenager with the screechiest voice. If I survive this, I’ll have nightmares about that voice.
“Are the lot of you deaf? I was sleeping. It was a nice dream. I killed some kids who woke me up from my nap.”
Aiden shuddered.
Dulcie suddenly hiccuped into her hand before bursting into hysterical laughter.
“What, not scary enough?”
Dulcie stopped laughing.
“I guess that’s fair.”
“So…”
Aiden gulped.
“We have three guesses on why adults aren’t allowed here or you’ll eat us?”
“Eat you? Ewww, no! Humans. Gross.”
The look on the creature’s face implied a personal experience that Aiden was not the most interested in hearing.
“Let’s play twenty questions. I like that game, but I don’t have all that many people to play with, you see. You ask me a yes or no question, and I’ll answer it to the best of my ability.”
Aiden wondered if that was very much, but he didn’t make the comment, thinking that pissing off the monster would result in him lacking a head.
Curtis started.
“Do you hate adults?”
He turned red at how stupid the question sounded.
The creature smiled.
“No.”
Aiden blinked in surprise.
Pollux looked up and then frowned.
“Are there other demons?”
“Yes. Ask me my name, please. No one’s asked that before. It won’t count to your questions, I swear.”
“Okay…”
Aiden shrugged.
“What’s your name?”
“Habex. Glad you asked.”
Dulcie sighed. “Stop stalling. Are some demons higher than each other?”
“Yes. Some live in trees.”
Curtis rolled his eyes.
“Do some demons have higher ranks?”
“Yes! You’re getting close with these questions.”
“Do the higher ranks decide things for the lower ranks.”
“Yep.”
“Are you low rank or high rank?”
“Yes or no only.”
“Are you high rank?”
“No.”
Aiden ran through the list of clues in his head.
Habex isn’t doing it because he hates humans. There are other demons. Some have higher ranks than others. Habex is a low rank.
Aiden snapped his fingers.
“I have a guess!”
“Shoot.”
“Was the disallowing of adults decided by the higher-ranked demons!”
“Yep!”
Habex grinned- not creepily, he simply grinned.
“The higher-ups have a habit of making things difficult. Now… what kind of treasure are you looking for? A cloak that will turn you into a human flamethrower? All the gold in my trove? A sword whose edge is determined by your passion? A potion that makes you invisible?”
Habex stopped talking for a second.
“I mean, it might be poison… Probably don’t pick any liquids, I can never tell poison from a potion.”
Aiden rolled his eyes.
“We’re looking for a stone. It lets the user control fire. We're trying to get it before some other guys get it. No idea what they’d do with it, but the outcome…”
Habex blinked wildly and looked up.
“I think… I think you’re too late.”