Chapter 8 - Dread (Jethro)
759 Words
The place was cursed. I could feel evil all around me and honestly thought of going back. It was too late now.
“You really think things through, Jethro,” Arthur said, slapping me on the side of the head.
“Look, if you never take risks in life, you’ll never succeed in anything.”
“We won’t succeed in anything when we’re dead!” he retorted.
“We won’t die,” I said, gesturing for him to follow me. Ahead of us was a seemingly endless tunnel. There were no turns anywhere, which meant we could only go forward.
We walked down the tunnel for around half an hour before realizing a horrifying fact. We had never actually gone anywhere. The tunnel restarted every time you were at the end, which meant you could never reach the nonexistent exit.
“This place is evil; even I can sense it,” Arthur said with a shudder.
“There has to be a way around this. Let me try something real quick,” I said, picking up a rock and throwing it on the ground. It teleported back to us, and that’s when I realized how the system worked. You had to walk in a specific pattern, or else you’d never reach the end.
We continued our experiment and found that the correct pattern was left, right, left, left, left. It took us at least four tries to get to the end of the tunnel because of its exceeding length, but we finally made it to the end.
I looked around and found three metallic doors that each had a wild animal figure on them. On the first was a hog, on the second was a wolf, and on the last was a bear. Arthur tried opening the first door, but a current of electricity blasted him away from it.
“What just happened?!” he asked, perplexed.
“A spell protects the door. There’s no way to open it without removing the spell first. Usually, you answer a riddle to make it go away.”
“What if you fail the questions?” Arthur asked anxiously.
“If you’re lucky, the door remains locked. If not, you suffer an incredibly painful death on the spot.”
“Good to know…” he murmured as he went to the first door again. He asked it to give him a riddle, and the hog figurine became alive.
“You will have a series of five questions. If you answer any wrong, you will be trapped here forever. You may ask one other person for help, but if you cheat, you will be destroyed on the spot,” it said in a deep, raspy voice.
“We will not cheat,” Jethro said reassuringly.
“What is the difference between the Left-Hand Path and the Right-Hand Path of magic?” the figurine asked.
Since there was no way Arthur could answer the question independently, he asked me for help.
“The Left-Hand Path actively uses black magic while the Right-Hand Path proscribes all sorcery,” I whispered in his ear.
He walked up to the hog and answered with what I told him.
“You are correct. What f*******n ingredient is used to brew necromancy potions?”
He walked over to me and asked for help once again.
“Human flesh,” I whispered with a shudder.
I need to get out of this place.
“Human flesh,” he anxiously answered the door.
“Correct. What metal is so sharp it can cut through stone?”
He walked up to me with gritted teeth and asked for help yet again.
“Olivarium,” I whispered.
“Olivarium!” Arthur exclaimed in the door’s direction.
“Correct. What monster will paralyze anyone who makes eye contact with it?”
For once, Arthur had the answer to the door’s question.
“Beholders.”
“Correct. You have one last question before you can proceed. What is the only way to revive someone without using black magic?”
You can already guess what Arthur did next. He begrudgingly went over to me and asked for one last hint.
“You need a few drops of thunderbird blood, three phoenix feathers, and a claw from a blade fang.”
“You need a few drops of thunderbird blood, three phoenix feathers, and a claw from a blade fang,” he said verbatim.
“You may proceed,” the hog said in a joyful tone. The door opened automatically, and we ventured deeper into the underworld.
- Writer
