Cassie crawls through the now Methane gas free hole without worry. The hole seemed to lead to somewhere else. The tunnels that Cassie was taking appeared to go on in circles and Cassie would have encountered that god-awful narrow hallway where she was forced to crawl again. She would definitely not want that again. But she did not have to worry because the path she was taken seemed to lead her to a path with potential. There was was an orange colored light coming in from the end of the path and it made her eager to see what it was.
Cassie made it to the very end of the path and came into a massive room with mechanical gears and cogs all over the room. Cassie was speechless at the sight of so many cogs on the ceiling. "Man, just like in my previous adventures. Time for Medieval traps to unlock." She looked at the age-old lantern above her with fire inside. She no longer needed the flashlight as the lantern lit up the entire room. She puts her flashlight away and rubs her hands together like Miyagi from The Karate Kid. "Okay then, time to solve some riddles."
She walks to the farthest wall with the largest cog in the room. "Now Cassie, what do we do now?" She looked at the cogs all around her. She turned back to the largest one and put a hand on it. Somehow, nature did not manage to overgrow it. "Maybe if I turn the cog in a certain direction?" She grabs two of the cog edges and rotates the cog to the left. All the cogs to the left began rotating with the large cog, but none of the cogs on the right were. Cassie noticed this and stopped rotating.
"What's happening?" She stepped away from the large cog and followed the line of cogs on the wall. All the cogs seemed to be identical and lined up side by side so when one turns, every single one turns. "Let's see if I can find the one cock...I mean cog that is not working. Man Derek would love that joke." She kept following and following the line of cogs and planned to stop only when she saw something that may be the cause of the cogs not rotating. "Come on, where is the damn cog or cogs not working?"
"Finally," Cassie says as she finds one empty spot in the line of cogs. "Good, now all I need to do is either make a cog myself, or find the cog myself." She looked all around her to see if she could find some kind of cog. She saw not a single cog on the floor, which meant she had to look up. "Time for eyes in the skies." She groaned upon hearing herself speak. "That sounded better in my head." She narrowed her eyes to get a better view of the rocky ceiling above her. "Like playing a hawk."
Her eyes turned to two pillars that reached to the top of the ceiling. What was jammed between the two pillars at the top was a cog. Cassie's eyes un-narrowed and went wide in relief and excitement. "Hell yeah, mama found the missing cog!" Now all she had to do was find a way to climb up the pillars and retrieve the cog piece herself. While still looking up, she moves towards the pillars and calculated the approximate feet from the ground to the top. "Fifty feet, how can all of this fit inside this little pyramid?" Not little, big.
"Guess I am going to have to climb up the hard way. Oh man, all the jokes I am cracking and I have to crack them to myself. Poor me." She looks at the pillars in front of her and checks for handholds. "It's Drake time, the Cassie version." She grabs a handhold protruding from the pillar and climbed up. She glues her feet to the wall and takes out her piton. Time to get extremely serious. She jams the piton into a weak spot in the wall and climbs up, hand over hand over the handholds. Easy as pie.
Cassie removed the piton from the weak spot and continued to climb upwards. She kept the piton secured in her hand as she gripped a handhold. She tried her hardest not to look down but she was consumed by curiosity and looked at the ground. "Wow that is a long way down." She was already twenty-five feet from the ground and all the cogs looked tiny from her point of view. Once you go up, you can't go down...actually that is self-contradictory as everything that goes up come down eventually. Why the hell do I keep talking to myself?
Finally making it to the very top, she comes face-to-cog with the cog and secures herself before using one hand to grab the cog by the edge and pulling it downwards. She eagerly watched as the cog fell through the air and towards the ground. When it met the floor, the noise it made sounded like a loud entrance bell going off as if an intruder broke in. As soon as the noise faded into nothing, Cassie worked on climbing down, mesmerising all the handholds and footholds she used to climb up. Be careful Cassie, be very careful Cassie okay?
Landing on her feet like a cat as she made it to the bottom, she puts her piton away and reaches for the cog. She lifts it up and looks for the empty cog spot in the line of cogs. Carefully, she tiptoes over to the empty spot and places it on the wall very carefully, making sure that it lined up with the other cogs. Once it was secure to the wall of cogs, she rotated it as a test, making sure that all the cogs in the room were rotating with it. Time to turn that huge cog.
She makes a beeline for the huge cog from earlier and places her hands on the edge and begins the process of rotating the cogs. She looked from left to right to make that all the cogs were working. Much to her surprise, the one on the left were not working. Not a single. Suck my dick, she growls and walks along the left line of cogs. "What kind of can of worms do I have to deal with now?" Honestly, she was getting extremely tired of trying to solve this. Why can't I just turn the cogs, why not?
Like before, she found the one empty space between two cogs. Wait a second, how were these cogs working earlier but when I inserted the missing cog, this one ended up gone? She'll have time to solve mysteries later and this time, there were no pillars for her to climb and there was no missing cog in sight. "Now how am I going to solve this very elaborate riddle of looking for a second lost cock...cog?!" She curses at herself and mentally slaps herself for saying cock instead of cog. She face palms herself, groaning. Oh lord oh lord.
She starts searching around the place for the lost cog and she always ended up finding nothing but dirt. Even when she searched underneath the debris, she found nothing at all. She did find a gold coin with Early Slav writing on it. Yay, a souvenir. She places the coin in her pocket and continues searching underneath the debris from the Methane gas explosion. She digged like a dog to unearth whatever was underneath the debris. Wait a second, where was that Methane gas coming from? She looks around herself. Where was the Methane coming from in the first place?
It was then when she felt something underneath a large piece of debris. Her curiosity instantly gets the better of her and she yanks the object from the wreck. Much to her surprise, it was the missing cog to the puzzle. She gets to her feet and with her back bent over, she yanks the cog out of debris completely. "Holy crap! This is heavy. Crap, how did the people who build this pyramid, or people who made this trap even move this thing without a forklift?" Possibly the same way I moved the first cog in the first place, course.
Finally lifting the cog out of the debris, she cradles it in her hands like a rather large baby and turns towards the left line of cogs. Feeling the heaviness of the cog, she asks herself, "Where's an uninjured Derek when you need him? This cog is so...daggum heavy. Wait a second why did I say that southern thing? Okay, now I sound like a racist." She mentally slaps herself. "Pay attention Cassie. Focus on nothing more but getting the cog back to where it belongs. Stop talking to yourself." She knew she could not stop self-talking to herself.
She shoves the cog back into place and tests to make sure that all the cogs rotate along. "Not out of the woods yet, still got to see if all the cogs are attached before you rotate the giant cog. Hopefully that I have all that is required...don't want to start climbing pillars again or start unearthing things through debris." When she is satisfied that all cogs appear to be in place, she pats the cog in front of her and begins walking back to the big cog. Hopefully, this is the last part of this puzzle. I tired.
Cassie made it to the first cog that she begun with in the first place and put her hands on the edges and began rotating. She rotated and every single cog started rotating. Cassie rotated the cogs for the better half of a minute and nothing appeared to happen. "The hell? I thought something was supposed to happen." She voiced her confusion aloud. "Aren't these cogs supposed to activate something somehow?" She growls at the thought of going through hell again. "No way, there must something I am missing. Something right?" These cogs must initiate something, but what I wonder.
"These cogs were placed here for a reason and I am determined to find out the reason." As she stopped turning, the cogs rotated back to their original position. She looked around her to see what she could find as the cogs rotated back to defaultness, and saw only one thing moving other than the cogs: the lantern above her with the fire inside. The lantern was descending from the ceiling from chains that suspended it off the ground. Then Cassie saw something odd on the lantern: there were strange symbols on the side. The lantern is the key, Course.
Cassie followed the light that followed the light that shot out the lantern and looked at the wall. She backed away from the big cog and took position underneath the lantern to see the symbol that the lantern illuminated. Cassie squinted her eyes and studied the symbol, folding her arms and rubbing her chin like a curious scientist. It was a the Sun Wheel symbol those Albanians used on their shirts. Just several feet above the orange fire-y symbol's position was a gigantic carving of the Sun Wheel symbol. "Well well well." The First Crusade use this symbol. Definitely unexpected.
"Alright then, I guess I am supposed to line up the fire symbol up to the carving. The cogs are used to lower and ascend the lantern. I now understand yet I still don't know where that Methane gas came from." She hurries to the first cog and starts rotating so that the fire symbol lines up with the carving. It was very difficult to see, but she was relying purely on instinct. "Now let's see what this baby opens up to. I hope it's the Cold iron." The cog stuck into place, alarming Cassie. The symbol was in the right place, but the cogs were not working.
Like the rise of a curtain, the whole entire wall in front of Cassie, with the cogs, ascended into the ceiling above her. Cassie's eyes followed very carefully until the entire wall disappeared into the ceiling. Cassie's mouth was left open as she looked at the sight in front of her: a large room with all kinds of gold that decorated the ground and piles of jewelry piled against the wall. But in the center was a pedestal, with a U shaped object lying down. My heart's pumping, the Cold iron, holy shit!
Trivia
In my Uncharted Universe, Cassie Drake was born six months after the events of Uncharted 4, which took place in January 2014. Elena was already three months pregnant with Cassie by the time. Derek was born during the events of Uncharted 4.
Only two more chapters left. I can't believe it. In the sequel, I have already started production and this is what I can reveal: Cassie and Derek will be globetrotting the Middle East and we will also meet a character(s) who will become recurring in the stories to follow.
I will update the last two stories tomorrow on June 6, I promise. Tomorrow on Cassie's birthday, the 74th anniversary of D-Day and the release date of the 180th issue of The Walking Dead comics.
See you in the next chapter my fellow readers and Uncharted fans. Remember, I would really appreciate it if you would give your reviews.
