âI have never heard that legend before,â Jake said. We all agreed with him.
âWe have all heard the legend of how werewolves were created to protect the moon goddess, this was nothing like it. So what if it is a clue in disguise?â Amie suggested. I nodded.
âSo the man and the wolf carrying each other on their backs,â I thought out loud.
âIt may be telling us to do the same?â Jake asked.
âThat would make sense as it would mean we couldnât be five, it needs to be even numbers and thatâs why Iâm in here,â
Rames said.
âOh. Thatâs a good point,â Amie agreed.
âHopp up,â I told her and turned my back to her. She jumped up on my back with a giggle. âReady to test this?â I asked her.
âSure,â she agreed.
âEveryone be quiet. If you hear a click, let us know,â I told everyone. I slowly moved forward to the place Sam had been when the log had swung down. Nothing happened and soon we reached the wall. Nothing was triggered.
âSweet. Up you go, Jake,â Sam said. They joined us at the wall.
âHow do we get over it?â Amie asked.
âNow we know itâs safe. I can get a running start and leap up. Just hold on,â I told her. I backed up, ran up to the wall and jumped up. I got a good grip on the top of the wall and could lift both me and Amie up.
âDonât tell anyone, but that was kind of hot,â she mindlinked me.
âDonât tell me things like that in the middle of the game,â I said.
âFine I wonât tell you.â
âI change my mind, I want to know what you think is hot,â I said as I watched Sam take a running start and leap at the wall. He made it as well. âRamses sit tight, we will get you outâ I mind linked our teammate we had left behind.
âAlpha, there is a new line to the text,â he linked back to all of us. We looked back and he was right, a new line of symbols had appeared.
âCan you see my key and read it?â Jake asked.
âI can. Thank you for leaving it.â Jake shrugged.
âHard to take the floor with you,â he said, and we all chuckled.
âIt says: Looking forward can make you understand the present,â Ramses told us.
âWhat does that mean?â I asked out loud.
âLook at the floor behind us,â Jake said. I turned around, still with Amie on my back. What we had seen as a wall was really a ledge. We stood on a flat floor. There was a large floor surface with a grid in front of us. Each square was about two by two feet in size. In the middle of each was a symbol. The grid was four squares wide by nine squares long.
âIâm going to guess bad things happen when you step on the wrong square,â Sam said.
âTake my shoe off,â Jake told Sam.
âWhat?â Sam asked.
âTake my shoe off.â
âI heard you, I was more curious about why,â Sam added. Amie sighed, bent forward towards the leg Jake was holding up and pulled his shoe off. We all had sturdy hiking boots on our feet.
âToss it on a square in the first row,â Jake told her. Amie slammed the shoe down on a square in front of us. The sides of the cave came rushing out over the floor and smashed into each other as they met in the middle. Then retracted again.
There was a stunned silence.
âWhat the fuck was that noise?â Ramses asked.
âWhat the actual fuck!â Sam shouted. âAre they crazy? We could have become flatbread if we stepped onto that floor,â
he added. I bent down and picked up Jakeâs shoe, it looked like it had survived the smashing okey. I handed it to him.
âHow do we solve this?â I asked.
âWe need to look forward,â Amie told me. We all looked forward. On the other side of the floor, there was another wall.
Not as high as the one we just climbed, but not far from it. I could just see a door set into a wall further into the dungeon.
âThat door has symbols on it,ââ Jake said.
ââYeah. But I can only see four rows, the floor has nine,â Amie said. She and Jake looked at each other.
âOh,â they both said.
âOh?â I asked.
âLet me down, I need to sit on your shoulders,â Amie told me. I reluctantly let her down, worried it would trigger some new trap. But she got down without an issue. I hunkered down and she got onto my shoulders. I steadied her as I got back up.
âI can see it!â she exclaimed.
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âSee what?â I asked.
âThe bottom of the door. The angle was too steep before, we could just see the top part. But the door also has nine rows of symbols. The one in the bottom left corner is glowing,â she told us. Sam and I looked at each other.
âBottom left corner it is,â he said and walked over to it and stepped on the square. Nothing happened. I joined him, it was a little cramped, but we made it work.
âIs something happening?â I asked.
âYes! The symbol second from the left on the second row is glowing,â she told us. Sam and I moved to the square and we continued to move over the floor after the directions of Amie and the door.
âWe made it across the floorâ I mind linked Ramses as we stood on the other side of the squares. As the wall was lower, I didnât need a running start to climb it. Now I could see the door with the symbols on it. None of them were glowing. To the left of the door there was what looked like a tunnel.
âI can see new symbols,â Rames told us as Sam had joined us. âStep by step, everything has its own place. The whole will bring freedom, but what has been sacrificed will be lost,â he read.
âThe easy part of that is the tunnel will lead us to the outside but we will lose Ramses,â Jake said.
âWe wonât be doing that,ââ I told them. They all agreed.
âStep by step,â Sam hummed. âOh baby, gone get to you girl,â he sang. âGreat, now I will have that on my mind for weeks.â
âWhat if we need to press the symbols in the order they lit up?â Jake asked.
âThat would fit the clue. âEverything has its own placeâ,â I said.
âDoes anyone remember the order?â Amie asked. There was silence. âGreat.â We took a moment to think and started to talk about how we had moved.
âAre we confident?â I asked.
âNo, but I donât think we will have a sudden epiphany either, so we need to go with it,â Sam said. I hesitated. My instinct told me I should push the symbols. But I was carrying Amie on my shoulders. If a trap was set off, we would both be caught in it.
âJust do it, Finn. We will be okay,â Amie mindlinked me. I took a deep breath and stepped up to the door. I pressed the nine symbols in the order we had agreed on. Then I jumped back. The symbols lit up, but nothing else happened.
âI think you need to use the handle, like any other door,â Amie pointed out. I sighed and tried the handle. The door opened. Nothing exploded, nothing shot out or slammed down. Behind the door was a stair leading down.
âDown we go,â Jake said. I mindlinked Ramses and told him what was happening. We walked down the stairs and ended up in a small square room. On the opposite wall was a door with the classic green âExitâ sign above it. The roomâs walls were decorated in symbols and there were two benches, one on each side wall.
âThere is a new line; Exit is the way out,â Ramses told us.
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âIt canât be that simple,â I said.
âNo, it canât. The speaker said we would have a chance to set Ramses free. Not that it would be automatic,â Amie agreed. We looked around to see if we could see another exit sign or something like it. We found nothing.
âThis reminds me of the symbols at the beginning,â Jake said, pointing at a couple of symbols.
âThey do look like them,â Amie agreed.
âOkay, I might be wrong. But are we supposed to spell âexitâ with the symbols on the walls?â Sam asked. We all looked at him.
âYou are a genius!â I told him.
âRamses, describe the symbol for âEâ,â I mindlinked him.
âEh, itâs a circle with a squiggly thing going from the centre of the circle down to the right,â he told us. Jake and Sam took the left wall and Amie and I took the right.
âFound it!â Amie said, reaching up almost to the ceiling to point at it.
âHas anyone found another one?â I asked. No one had. One by one we found the symbols and then we pressed them in the correct order. There was a klick and we all dived for the floor. I tried to get down in a way that didnât hurt Amie. The click was from a secret door opening on the right wall.
âAlpha, a door has opened in the cell wall,â Ramses told me.
âGo through it. I think it will lead you to us,â I said. It didnât take long for Ramses to join us.
âSo we just walk outside now?â Sam asked.
âI guess so,â I said and opened the door marked exit. We stepped out into the forest and a horn sounded.
âCongratulations, Blue Mountain pack. You have completed the third game. Your time was one hour and forty two minutes. All of your team made it out. Please follow the official and he will show you to the rest of your pack,â the speaker said. I gave Amie a hug and the others a pat on the back. We had done it again and without anyone losing a limb or turning into a pancake. We joined the rest of the pack. The spectators were sitting in large movie theatres looking at a screen. The screen was divided in four, each part showing an identical dungeon.
âYou did great,â Willie told us as we sat down.
âHad me scared senseless half of the time,â my aunt said. But she gave us a smile as she made sure we had food and water.
We looked on the screen and saw a team trying to put in the correct symbols on the door. The symbols lit up like they had done for us. But when they grabbed the handle to twist it, ten inch spikes shot out of the handle and pierced his hand. I jerked out of instinct and the palm of my hand started to itch. I scratched at it until Amie took it in her hand.
âI would pay good money to watch your brother carry his Beta on his back through the dungeon,â she mindlinked me.
The water I was drinking spurted out my nose as I tried to cough and laugh at the same time.
âAre you trying to kill me, Red?â I asked. She just giggled.