The Temple of Nightmares

Chapter 4 - Trapped

...

"Brandon, is there a copy of the quest?" Ritchie glanced at his brother, who shook his head at the question. "Damn it. Ok, I'll be back in a second," he said as he storm-blinked away from the group.

"Inmo, can you take us to the island?" Brandon asked the half devil, who eagerly nodded his head.

"Wait. I'm going too." Kit announced. Both Lucas and Devin were nodding next to her, agreeing with her statement. "We can take Miss P's ship. It would surely be faster." Lucas suggested to the group.

Brandon really wanted to protest to his guild, but being guild leader for all of these people teaches you one thing. They are stubborn and when family is on the line, nothing can change their mind.

"Fine, can you ask Miss P if we can use her ship, she'll most likely agree but still," Brandon asked Lucas who ran off with Plant following right behind him.

Just as Lucas ran up the stairs, Ritchie storm-blinked back down to the guild hall with a bag in his hands. Brandon walked up to him and patted on his shoulder.

"We're taking Miss P's ship to the island," he said to his brother as the rest of the guild also headed upstairs to the boat. Ritchie put together in his head what the 'we' meant and was about to protest.

"You know just as well as me that nothing is going to change their mind," Ritchie sighed at his brother's words, because he couldn't agree more. It was really endearing but also so frustrating, but he wouldn't change it for the world.

He nodded as he held out his hand to his brother who gladly took it and the next second, they storm-blinked on to the ship which was ready to head off.

*

When the guild arrived at the island, they docked the ship and got ready to head to the temple. Though it took some time as Lucas took at least 5 minutes telling Plant that they cannot come with and should stay at the ship, which they did.

As they walked through the luscious forest of the island, everyone was quiet, other than the occasional soft instructions that the guild leaders were giving, so no one would fall.

Of course, this silence was broken by Eden, just of course.

"What if we are just going to find three corpses?" "Eden! Not helping," Devin replied to his other half, who just mumbled something about not even trying to help. Before anyone could think about that outcome, more Inmo piped up.

"It's over there! The temple!" He picked up his pace as he led the rest to the mysterious temple. "Mario, I got the guild!... Mario?" Inmo slowed down as they reached the entrance of the temple.

There was no Mario in sight, but that wasn't what freaked everyone out. The entrance to the temple was wide open. There was no way that Mario could have gotten them out because then they would have run into them as they were walking through the island. So, there was only one answer, inside, they were still inside.

"Didn't you say that the entrance was locked shut," Kit asked as she crept closer to the entrance. "Yeah, it was! And Mario was right here-" Inmo stood at one point before facing the doorway with worried eyes "- He must have gone in to look for the other two,"

"Do we also go in?" Devin asked, "What could go wrong?" Lucas asked sarcastically as everyone turned to stare at him, "What?"

"Don't jinx us, Lucas" Kit hissed at him, "I'll bet you so much that David said the same exact thing before he walked in there-" he pointed at the temple "- so we're probably already jinxed knowing our luck."

"Great," Ritchie said as he approached the entrance. It looked just like how you expect when you imagine an "abandoned temple". There is only one weird thing.

"The torches" "What" Brandon asked as he came closer. "They are lit up, they have a metal case, so it would hard to light them if you don't have fire magic,"

Ritchie spent a few more seconds observing whatever he could see from the outside before he stepped forward and entered the temple, which freaked out everyone, but nothing happened.

"It didn't close" He mumbled as he looked around, now he could actually see the design of the inside. There were multiple passages, three if you are counting, but also an assortment of murals as well. All of them depict a kind of the same context, people sleeping and having nightmares, if Ritchie had to guess from the depiction of the faces.

"Wow, creepy." Lucas said as he also entered, "Is this temple some kind of worship to a demon or something?"

"What do you mean?" Ritchie asked as Lucas walked next to him and pointed at the biggest mural, "Don't you see it? Each mural has one person awake and from the looks of it, it's not human" He finally realised what Lucas was talking about. Every mural had just multiple people who were having nightmares on them, but no one who was awake except a figure behind them all.

It's really hard to see the figure, but when you look hard enough, you'll find it.

"It must have been," Kit said, which surprised the two since they didn't notice her entering. "Which way would we even go? There are three directions, and I'm not sure about separating," she said to the other two as each stared down a different passageway.

"Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that either," Brandon said as he and Devin entered the temple. Suddenly, everyone got a weird feeling that ran down each of their spines, kind of like a warning. Each one of them were on guard, but none of them could've guessed what would happen next as Inmo finally also entered.

That's when the entrance shut, which made everyone jump away from it. Everything was silent before someone spoke up.

"The murals!" As everyone stared each mural looked the same except the figure that before was almost impossible to see was almost opaque and bigger than it looked before.

Everyone was too shocked to say anything, but unfortunately it just kept spiralling from there as the torches slowly started burning out one by one, before they left in complete darkness.

"Well, that was- Woah!"

"Lucas? Are you okay?" Ritchie was going to ask more, but suddenly he felt extremely drowsy and the next thing he knows is that he's falling to the ground out of pure exhaustion.

Just before he blacked out, he swore he heard a deep chuckle which did not sound human.

(1091 words)