Test of Courage

19

Midoriya's POV
The corridor eventually lead us to an old wooden door. It looked completely normal but Mina and Kaminari stopped us. They studied the door looking for any signs of a trap.

"I don't see anything wrong," Kaminari noted.

"I'm going to open the door and everyone needs to stand against the wall, incase of any traps," Mina instructed. Todoroki and I nodded. She turned the handle and the four of us stepped back, pressing against the wall. We waited for something to happen but it never did. Carefully I leaned forward to look through the doorway but it just lead to a room.

"I think it's safe," I say stepping towards the door. The others followed. I had my sword drawn and ready as I stepped into the room. I looked around but there was nothing. The stone walls were plain with no designs or anything on them. There was nothing on the floor and there was no door. Something didn't seem right.

"Look," Todoroki was crouching in the middle of the room. He pointed to a line that ran from wall to wall horizontally. Mina and Kaminari came over to inspect it too. Then there was a loud grinding noise. The line on the floor got wider and the floor began slanting towards it.

"Get to the door!" I yelped, but it was to late. The line on the floor was now a four feet gap into darkness and it was still growing. Todoroki, who was closest to it, lost his balance and yelled as he fell. "Todoroki!" I ran to catch him but I fell too. Wind rushed past me and I could hear Mina and Kaminari yelling above me.

The fall didn't last long and I fell to the ground with a thud. I groaned and rolled over. Mina and Kaminari fell near me not long after, the flame from the torch was gone, leaving us in darkness. I fumbled around until I had a match lit. Kaminari was next to me and he held out the torch for me to light. The flame grew and I could see the faces of my friends again.

"Is everyone okay?" I asked. Thankfully they were all fine and I pulled myself off of the ground. Kaminari moved the torch around so we could see. We were in a small round room. There were four old wooden doors equally spaced around us. Above each door was a different shape. One had a rectangle, another had a trapezoid, the next one had a rhombus, and the last one had a kite.

On the floor in the middle was a big sundial, without the gnomon. Words curled around the sundial and read, "Only one door is the right path, the other three will lead to your doom. Use the numbers 1-4-8-11-1." The words were old, worn, and hard to read.

"What does this mean?" Mina asked after observing the text on the floor. I looked up at the shapes again.

"It has to have something to do with the shapes above the doors," I say pointing to each individual one, "It must be some kind of riddle."

"I hope you guys are better at riddles than me, or we might be here for a while," Kaminari chuckled in attempt to lighten the mood.

"Maybe if I can figure out what these shapes have in common, I can figure out how it connects to the riddle and numbers on the floor," I start to mumble. I walked closer to each door to get a closer look at the shapes, In case there was something I missed. Unfortunately there was nothing else, no sign of another clue. I began to search for any patterns that could help in anyway. The only thing I could find seemed pretty easy and unhelpful. Each shape was a quadrilateral, but that seemed irrelevant. Even so I keep it in mind.

I went back to the center of the room to study the text on the floor. I search for any double meaning in the words, but found none. I looked to the numbers, maybe they had something to do with the clock? I went to one o'clock and looked in the direction it pointed, but it was just a plain area on the wall. Same with the other numbers.

I had no ideas as I tried to find any possibilities in the numbers and words. I was so focused I barely noticed Todoroki, Mina, and Kaminari doing the same around me. When I felt a hand on my shoulder I jumped. Todoroki sat next to me and held out a flask.

"Have some water, and give yourself a brain break," He said. I took the water gratefully and took a sip. We sat quietly as I sipped on the water.

"I can't figure out how the shapes tie into the numbers and the clock," I spoke up hand the flask back to him. I pointed to the five numbers given, "I have a feeling the numbers here have to do with the numbers on the sundial, but I don't know how." He thought for a moment, scanning the five numbers in the riddle, and the sundial.

"The one is repeated, maybe that means something?" He suggested. Looking over everything again, an idea popped into my head. I jumped up. In alarm, at my suddenly excitement, Todoroki got up too. "Did you figure it out?"

"I think so," I smiled. I went to one o'clock on the sundial and traced an imaginary line with my finger to four. Then I went from four to eight. Eight to eleven, and then back to one. "It makes a trapezoid!" My outburst startled Mina and Kaminari, who were using their own methods to figure out the riddle. They were trying to investigate the shapes above the doors.

"Did you figure it out?" Mina asked excitedly.

"Yep! The numbers 1-4-8-11-1 are on the clock and they make a shape, the trapezoid. Above one of the doors is a trapezoid," I felt giddy, having finally figured the riddle out. I smiled at Todoroki and he smiled back. I got lost in his heterochromatic eyes. I couldn't help but notice how beautiful each one was, even though the colors were completely different. One eye was a beautiful blue that reminded me of the ocean. His gray eye was the same shade of storm clouds right before it started raining.

I realized how long I was staring and looked away with an obvious blush on my face. I cleared my throat, "We should continue." Todoroki awkwardly agreed.

Through the door was another corridor. We continued down it, keeping an eye out for any traps. They were more frequent than the other corridor and harder to find. Todoroki and I had to help the other two look out and even then it was risky. We came close to losing a limb in giant blades or getting shot by poisonous arrow. Kaminari nearly fell into a pit of jagged spikes.