The Land of Dragons

Chapter 10

In the morning after Chapter 9

"GET UP!!!" a huge guard bellowed in probably his top volume, standing in the doorway of the drivers' room (or rather cell). The door itself had been smashed and its pieces were scattered in the room, a bigger one only centimeters from Lando's head.

"Wh... what?" Pierre said, confused.

"What's happening?" Max asked, more awake than the Frenchman.

"STAND UP!!! HERE, IN A LINE!!!" continued the guard even louder than before. Alex jumped back and covered his ears with his hands. Unbelievably, Lando was still only half awake, so the guard seized the bucket of water from the corner and splashed it over him.

In the meanwhile, another guard tied the youngsters' wrists behind their backs, pulling the rope painfully tight. Charles tried to fight, but the result was that the guard pulled his ropes even stronger.

What's happening? Did they find out about that amulet we found yesterday? Charles thought anxiously. Max was also scared, the image of the spiders looming in his head.

The Devils led them out the door. The lamps only made a dim light which created an unsettling feeling to the tunnels. They quickly reached a part where the walls were only roughly carved, resulting in the same "moving" shadows Max and Charles had experienced earlier. The atmosphere made the drivers feel uneasy and insecure.

After ten minutes of walking, they finally arrived at a door. The guards herded them in, then shut the door closed and locked it.

Everyone looked around uncertainly. Finally, Charles turned with his back to Carlos'. Like on the first day, the Spaniard managed to loosen the rope on his wrist. Charles wriggled free and cast an annoyed gaze at the small bruises the rope left on his arms. Then he turned and helped the others as well.

"So what now?" Alex asked. Everyone looked around, apart from Lando, who was inspecting his soaked clothes and trying to squeeze some water out of it. It was below 20 °C underground so he wasn't happy about his jumper suddenly turning from comfortably warm to uncomfortably wet and cold.

The room had the door where they came - or were thrown - in, which was locked and had no lock inside. On the opposite wall, there were another three doors. Charles went there and tried one of the handles. He was surprised to find it open.

"Those are open..." he said when he returned. "It's very dark inside." he added. The open doors seemed even more scary than if they would have been closed.

"Which way should we go?" Lando asked. If it was so dark inside, he would have rather stayed here and found another way out, but he kept the thought for himself.

"Maybe we vote?" Alex suggested.

"Let's go into the middle one!" Pierre said.

"I agree!" Charles added.

"I don't! Let's go to the right!" Max replied immediately. He still wasn't prepared to agree with Charles on anything.

"Alex? Lando?" Carlos asked.

"Let's go straight." Alex pointed to the middle tunnel.

"I vote for the right one." Lando smiled. He hoped it will turn out to be true.

"I vote for the middle one, so it's zero votes for the left, four for the middle and two for the right. So we go that way." Carlos summarized and pointed to the wooden door.

/ / / / / / | \ \ \ \ \ \

Sorry, short chapter again...

I'm trying to follow the chapters of this book's Hungarian version, which I made a year ago, and sometimes I'm surprised how short were the chapters I wrote :)

Edited 14.04.2024