Chapter 2: The Labyrinth (Part 1)
1179 Words
And so it began.
The participants headed into the large building while the audience cheered. As they went inside, the gates were shut behind them.
They looked around. The place was filled with mechanical traps, and gears were constantly turning. Multiple floors across the labyrinth kept shifting. The sound of metal clangs echoed across the large, dark room.
Suddenly a white glowing orb about the size of a fist appears in front of the warriors. Everyone except Axel draws their weapons and gets ready for a fight.
“OK, everyone just calm down, please,” Axel said. “That’s not a threat. It’s a control orb. It activates and deactivates large enchanted objects.”
“Very good, Mr. Brooks,” the sound of the announcer boomed across the labyrinth. He must be using some amulet to enhance his voice, Axel thought to himself in disgust. “And rather disappointing. I enjoy watching warriors attack an innocent floating orb in these trials. Oh well.”
The orb floated near Axel. “Since you know so much about the orb, why not be the one to use it to activate the labyrinth?”
Axel looked around. Everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to begin the trial.
He held the orb with both his palms and muttered a spell. The orb started to flicker, and then disappeared. Immediately the entire room roared into life.
“Let the trials commence!” The announcer exclaims.
Walls shot out from the floor all around the warriors, blocking them from all directions. Then the floor started rising. On the ceiling was a metal machine with huge jaws that started closing and opening periodically, like that of a large beast.
Some warriors tried attacking the walls while the mages began shooting projectiles into the metal jaws, to no avail. The floor continued rising at a terrifying pace. At this rate the contestants would be dead in seconds.
One of the mages shot a bolt of electricity into the jaws. This managed to disable the mechanical jaws; however the floor continued to move up. Now they had to stop the floor before it crushes them into a b****y pulp.
“Damn these walls!” A dwarf yelled in frustration while hacking at it with a battleaxe. Axel headed to another mage in green robes and said, “All of us mages are going to have to work together to create a portal, alright? None of us has the power to make one by ourselves.”
“I don’t know the incantation,” The mage replied.
“Magicae fenestra,” an elf chimed in from behind, then moved in close to help. Axel and the other two mages read a spell to combine their powers, and then began repeatedly chanting ‘Magicae fenestra’. A portal slowly started to open, leading to the corridor right outside the rising floor. The portal was gradually growing in size. The dwarven team of three immediately scurried through the portal. As the portal became large enough, the mages jumped through it, followed by everyone else. Luckily, everyone managed to survive.
Not for long.
“NO!” One of the dwarves screamed, staring hopelessly at the body of his teammate right in front of him stuck on a vertical wall the size of a door with spikes poking through his body. Clearly he must have stepped on the wrong tile, activating a trap that sprung from the ground and impaled the poor fellow.
“How do we know which tile is the correct one?” Belle questioned. No one moved a muscle, fearing they might step on the wrong tile and die a gruesome death.
The elven mage raised both his arms, and using the power of telekinesis, pressed all the pressure pads on the floor of the corridor without physically touching them. Multiple traps with spikes sprung from the ground, then stood completely still, as if disappointed they didn’t impale anyone.
“Let’s keep moving,” the mage said. Axel didn’t have anything against the elven mage, but the fact that he used telekinesis made him feel a bit uneasy. Telekinesis brought back memories of the war. Ender is a telekinetic.
Axel tried his best to remove these thoughts from his head and followed the rest of the warriors. One of the dwarves was crying because of his dead friend.
A human warrior kicked the dwarf and taunted: “Stop crying, you weasel. You’ll all be dead by the end anyway.”
The dwarf, in sheer rage, swung his axe directly onto the warrior’s foot. His piercing scream echoed across the labyrinth. Before he could fight back or anyone else could interrupt, the dwarf grabbed him and swiftly pushed him into one of the spikes, impaling him as well.
The dwarves and two human warriors readied their weapons and almost attacked each other, when an Auremian (a race with golden scales and very large claws) intervened, saying, “Let’s not kill each other before we even get to the final trial.”
“He’s right,” another human warrior said. “We’ll need to work together, or else we’ll be dead before we even get to the arena.”
One of the fighters leaned on the wall while the arguing continued. The wall pressed in, almost making her fall. A clicking sound came out of the walls, ending the argument and catching everyone’s attention.
“That can’t be good,” The warrior said.
“What have you done?” A contestant said from behind, with panic in his voice.
The clicking sound continued. Everyone was stuck frozen in place, anxiously waiting for something dreadful to happen.
Suddenly concrete statues of a hand popped out from the walls on one side. One of the warriors immediately swung his sword at it, which did nothing.
Belle immediately knew what it was. “Oh no,” she said, horrified. “Run.” She turned towards the rest. “Run!”
The entire group started running frantically, avoiding the spike traps standing on the floor. From far back, one of the concrete hands charged up a ball of fire, then shot it across the walls of the corridor. One after the other, all the hands followed.
The group continued to run as fast as it could, with the fighters in the lead, and mages blowing up any spike traps in the way as the fireballs kept getting closer and closer. One of the warriors stopped immediately at the end of the corridor, realising there was a gap.
“There’s a gap!” She shouted far behind. “Jump across when you get to it!”
She immediately jump across, and the rest followed. One almost slipped into the pit below, but managed to survive.
The flames kept getting closer and closer. Belle was at the end of the group; she had slowed down on purpose. Before she could jump, the fireballs caught up to her. She absorbed it with her left hand and then immediately jumped. The corridor erupted in a fiery explosion behind her.
“That was too close,” Axel said, panting for breath.
“I thought if I could absorb the fireball, I could use it later,” she explained, looking at her left hand which was glowing red, like a metal heated to its melting point.
“Ah, well, good thinking,” Axel said. “Though you should take less of a risk next time.”
“Relax, I handled it, didn’t I?”
“No one touch anything from this point on,” a Reever said in a rasping voice from ahead, glaring at the fighter who set off the trap.
“Noted,” she replied.
- Writer
