I'm back!
Chapter 2
Marina's POV
I was a little nervous. After feeling like a third wheel to the entire little adventure, I really didn't have much faith in getting through this tunnel by myself. What if someone attacked me? What if I died here?
"Um, hello?" I asked carefully. Talking to tunnels that didn't respond sure was fun. Walking on through the empty cave of a tunnel and my hands feeling the hard clumpy dirt on the walls, I continued. Not only could I not see a thing, but I could only hear my movements. I felt something was going to pop out at me any second, which scared me more than I could admit. As a child, I didn't really fear the boogie monster or whatever, but now, now I could see why children were scared of being in the dark on their own.
The wall glowed under my touch. I jumped, but pressed a finger back onto it. It lit up an unnatural green light. Either I was going insane or I was seriously going to be scared when something popped out. Pressing my entire palm against the wall this time, I saw another light. Lonesome to the color (blue), I jumped, releasing my hand from the wall.
It disappeared.
"Is anyone there?" I tried again. I rubbed my arms covered with the chill of goose bumps.
"Do you know where daddy is?" A voice. A human voice nonetheless. I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding.
"Here, let's try something. Can you please touch the wall?" I pressed my hand against the bumpy surface of the tunnel again. The same luminescent light popped up. A green light popped up again, closer this time. My heart raced. My breathing was getting a little heavy, too.
No answer, but the longer I pressed against the wall, the glow came closer. I wasn't sure what to do, but I didn't have to decide as I stayed frozen with fear. I couldn't move, I just watched as something came to me. I couldn't see anything other than the glow and the silhouette of my hand, but as the blue glow came, there wasn't a single sound. No footsteps, no breathing, and no anything.
Finally, it reached me, but the glow had no shadow or any sign that someone was actually there.
"Um…h-hello?" There wasn't any answer, but instead the glow joined mine. At first I tried to move my hand away, but I couldn't. It was stuck. Taking the wrist with my other hand, I tried to jerk it away, but this time I ended on my butt. Apparently the two glows had joined together completely. Words appeared,
When the two become one
It ended there. I wasn't sure what to do, so I pressed my hand next to it. Nothing. The words stayed and my hand couldn't make the wall glow anymore. I continued down the way occasionally pressing my hand against the wall to see if anything else would happen, but I went through the route without another distraction. I even tripped over nothing, but nothing attacked me. Either I was lucky or I don't know.
At least that's how I felt until I remembered something.
Who had talked to me in that cave? I felt a shiver resonate down my spine. Following the tunnel, I came upon an opening. My eyes had to adjust to the light, but a few blinks solved that.
"Daddy? You're not daddy, I want daddy!" A little girl with brown hair wailed. Her eyes were long swollen from what I guessed, crying. She started crying louder when I got closer. At least she wasn't a ghost or something, right? Seeing that I couldn't get close enough to the child, I edged my way around the skirt of the dead end opening.
"Um, so I guess I'll start with the usual. I'm Marina and if you could please stop crying, that would be great." I actually wished I had said that instead of, "I'll help you look for your daddy."
She somehow heard that over her deafening crying. She stopped bawling and looked confused. I felt just as confused; she stopped as if it were nothing.
"Really?" she asked. After taking her head away from her hands, I finally saw what she looked like. Well, at least most of her, her eyes were extremely swollen. She must've been crying for weeks or maybe even months. Her long brown hair was reduced to a ruffled mess that was a cross between a bird's nest and a Lady Gaga hair accessory. The only thing on her otherwise dirty body was an ancient dress; I recognized to be from Ancient Greece times.
The dress had two straps and was made by draping over a piece of fabric, and then tying the right places together. Her, what should have been white fabric was faded and the hems had the bronze square designs with straight swirls in the middle. The straps were tied with a bronze decoration of some sort. Her feet were bare and scratched almost raw.
She looked like she had rolled in mud and then ran through a maze of rose bushes.
"Really," I confirmed. She gave a wary look, but came running to me. The moment she made contact with me, the dead end turned into a one-way only. With nothing else to lose, I followed the tunnel with a small girl trailing me and was met with a really injured arm.
Felicity's POV
I held onto the old key necklace as I walked through the dimly lit tunnel. For an unknown reason the old keepsake kept me calm, even though it was from my father. It was a bit bittersweet if you asked me.
I walked into a clearing. Momentarily getting out of the tunnel, an iron gate closed behind me. I looked around; I was inside some sort of coliseum. The walls were paved making a round shaped ring of stones cemented together. I presumed it to be quite old as there were vines growing in between the cracks in some of the stones. A gate much alike the one behind me was in the middle.
What I was most concerned about was the chimera behind it. Appearing as a regular lion, the chimera had a goat's head on its back, and the tail was actually a snake. Watching the gate crash down, I felt terrified. Hera was the goddess of marriage, not one made for fighting despite her vengeful behavior.
It pounced at me while its tail hissed at me and the goat head 'baahhed' at me. A lion was a sacred symbol to Hera, but I don't think she thought very highly of me as her most sacred symbol, a peacock loathed me with a passion. I once went to a zoo and had one try to peck my hair out, the zookeeper had profusely apologized after and remarked that the creature was usually very kind and it was strange behavior. Her other symbol most likely wasn't very fond of me either. Cows never did let me near them.
From what I have concluded, Hera did not want a demigod child. Knowing this bit of information, I didn't feel particularly fortunate going against such a monstrous beast. Not having any friends, I didn't have anyone teach me fighting skills much less dodging skills. My clothes were already tattered with extra rips.
The chimera pounced again, this time it locked me down. It probably wasn't very helpful since I was very miniscule. I struggled against it as it started roaring –hissing and 'baahing' –in my face. It opened its mouth to sink the sharp teeth into my neck, but I rolled last second making it bite my arm. Kicking up, I rammed my foot into its scaly tail. It jumped back letting out a fearsome roar, its unlucky tail decapitated.
I panted; my athletic ability wasn't like an Ares demigod either. I also almost regurgitated when I noticed a snake head ooze blood onto my shoes, a little bit of purple poison came from its poor mouth. If only Lisa had been the one to cross this tunnel, animals were to her advantage. If planning a wedding had been mine, then I might have done better than this.
Clutching the key until my knuckles became white I looked for anything that could help me. The chimera whimpered at its lifeless tail, and tried to nurse it, but no luck. It remained that way. It was about then I noticed a rusted metal lever close to the gate. If I could maybe lure the creature into the cage and shut the gate, I could make it out of here alive.
"…C-chimera...here, chimera…here." It may have been pathetic at how quiet and nervous voice had been, but the chimera bought it. Leaping in anger, seeking revenge for its tail, which at the moment was being dragged on the floor while it circled me.
I gulped and picked up the head of the snake. Shakily, I threw the head into the cage. With my loudest voice I yelled, "Go get it!"
Taking a moment to register the item flying through the air, the chimera chased after it. The head skidded a bit before landing nicely inside the cage. With it, the lion monster came into the cage almost stampeding it over. With my slightly slow reflexes, I pulled down the lever before the goat on its back could tell the lion part that it was a trap. I fell to the ground, checking up on my arm. There was a tooth lodged into my arm with three other holes into my arm thanks to the beast.
Carefully ripping out the tooth, I let out a scream in pain. I noticed a second gate appear and open, "Please…no more." I panted up a sweat. I was without any aid for my arm. Waiting for another monstrosity to come out of the gate I bit into my cheek as I got up. Any movement caused me a great ordeal of pain; I trudged closer to the entrance of the cave. No one was there, but I could faintly make out a light.
Sinking my teeth deeper into my cheek as I bit back the tears, I slowly made it through yet, another tunnel. At the light of the entrance I let out a happy sound, I was not quite aware I had even made a sound, but I saw Jimmy and May turn their heads in surprise, interrupting their card game.
"Y-your arm! Never mind, I think I have something for that. Just wait." I watched as Jimmy stumbled, accidently kicking down the neatly stacked unused cards. He rummaged through his bag and even threw a few things out, but he got out the disinfecting spray and bandages.
"This might hurt a bit…"
Lisa's POV
I swear I've walked a mile and these tunnels haven't changed. I wondered how the others were doing. Maybe they weren't as bored as me. You know, walking through tunnels doing nothing, but smelling dirt. Yippee.
I wasn't quite sure when I started humming, but soon enough I was singing lyrics to my favorite theme songs from anime. Kind of ironic when I was Chinese and not Japanese, but I couldn't care less. Seeing an opening I yelled, "Yosh!" meaning 'yay.'
Going through the gap I saw lovely, lovely fruit scattered everywhere in baskets. I also saw a poffin machine and a pokeblock machine. There were oran, cheri, pecha, and every other fruit. Everything was by the basket, but what was weirdest of all was the creepy nutcracker head made of imperial gold.
It was also about the size of mine and it had its gigantic mouth wide open. From what I could guess, I was supposed to feed it a poffin or pokeblock. Seeing as there were no specific instructions I simply got a few cheri berry and put them through the pokeblock machine. After the oven thing went ding! I took out the red blocks and fed it to the nutcracker.
SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!
"Way to savor the taste. Jeez," I said as I watched it crush the few red cubes. The creepy eyeball glowed red and a few hundred darts shot through the room. Not testing to see if they were poisoned, tranquilizer darts, or both, I ducked hiding behind a basket of cheri berry I had momentarily dumped on my head. As much as I hated wasting food, I wasn't about to die trying to reduce.
When the little failure signal was over, I picked up as many cheri berry as possible. Who knows? Maybe the nutcracker liked the taste of dirty fruit. At times like these, I had a trusty website called, Google. After pulling out my phone I instantly realized that I didn't have any Wi-Fi.
"I guess no Google for me." Admitting defeat to my first plan, I decided to go with my second one. Experiment until I got it right.
After mixing about a million (twenty) concoctions I was sick of it. I tried poffins, pokeblocks, and even the actual fruit. This was getting ridiculous. I've tried mixtures that would taste amazing, some that would be vomit inducing, and some in the middle. I was even running low on a few berries.
So, being the person that I am, I got a bunch of bluk and tomato berries, and made them into poffins and blocks. Knowing that bluk berries turned your mouth black and that tomato berries very extremely spicy I felt like this would be a nice offering to the nutcracker. You know, since he's exhausted me to death.
Feeding this last batch, the nutcracker proceeded to do the same thing. His golden teeth, previously stained with fruit guts and leftover coordinating food, they were now stained an ugly blackish color. The eyes turned green this time, though. Apparently he'd liked that disgusting blend. I dropped to the floor when the room started shaking. Earthquake? I thought he'd liked it!
After a few baskets dropped on me staining my clothes with fruit juice –not that I wasn't already covered in it –I saw a wide hole in the wall. Sighing, I wiped myself off which only worsened my sticky situation.
"Time to jinx things, it's not like things could get worse, right?" Taking up any leftover berries, I poured them into two baskets. I guess I used more than I had thought. Going through I saw my friends bandaging Felicity's arm. The bandaging looked relatively new, but blood was already seeping through. Mmm, yum… I definitely wanted to see that.
"I think I deserve points for these." I held up the basket of oran berries. They helped heal a little, but still better than nothing.
Last chapter I said that I'd do the next three. Well, I did, but at the time I guess I forgot Simon. Whoops. Next chapter I'll include his little adventure and an inside on the outside world. REVIEW!
~TDF~