Ascendant

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DRIVING OUT FEAR

"I found a door!" Arne shouted.

"Me too!" Tuffnut replied and both of them entered separate doors, running through the tunnels they led to.

"Guys! Don't split up! We've been over this!" Astrid scolded with annoyance.

She heard an "ow!" from both men and the sound of a tangled thud as the two collided and hit the ground.

Faelan peered in there to see them there in pain. "Yeah I don't think that is going to be our problem."

"Hey! Over here!" Gregor called.

The gang regrouped to follow after him as he had a door open to a new room.

Astrid was the first to step into the space and what they found was a huge empty room with a pedestal at the center, a round carved button atop it waiting to be pressed, while behind it on the wall, was a gear powered mechanism that flipped wooden planks over, each one revealing a different number; a countdown.

The sound of this machine clicking each time a new number was dropped broke the otherwise silence of the atmosphere. And once inside, the door shut them in, leaving no way out.

"Oh... wonderful," Arne said, accepting it at this point that they won't make it out alive.

"What's the button for?" Tuffnut asked.

"Let's press it—" Gregor said.

"No," Astrid interrupted, grabbing his arm before he could.

"There's a crack in the wall here," Faelan said from the other side of the room.

"So the wall opens?" Astrid asked him.

"What else would it mean?" Tuffnut scoffed. "Idiot."

"I've given you a black eye before, don't make me do it again."

He took a step away from her.

"Alright so we figure out this puzzle and get the wall to open for us?" Arne thought out loud.

"Arne, you can't get anything to open for you," Faelan commented.

Astrid wasn't expecting to hear that and she put a hand to her mouth as Gregor laughed and said, "It's true."

"I'm going to kill all of you," Arne threatened with anger burning behind his eyes.

"Guys, the thing is counting down," Tuffnut pointed out,

"Yes, Tuff, thank you. Let's get back on track."

"Arne can never find the track—" Faelan ducked from the flask that Arne hurled at him, the metal bottle clanking against the wall where his head was.

"We're getting close to zero!" Tuffnut announced. "I... I think."

"You think?" Arne asked.

"Hey who has time to learn numbers?!" he demanded.

"We have to solve this or we're going to be stuck in here," Astrid said.

"There's nothing to solve! Look around woman!" Tuffnut said angrily.

"We can't just sit here!"

"Eh, I've been stuck in worse places," Arne pointed out before he looked over at Gregor and Faelan who were standing weirdly close together while smiling at him. "What? Why are you standing like that?"