6-6: Failure
It hadn't taken them too much longer after that second room to realize that it was only going to be a matter of time before that final flame vanished on them. After the fourth room, they were forced to realize that the earth spirit was not about to let them go any time soon. By the seventh room, they knew that it was just biding its time, that it was trying to wear them down. It only needed them to make one more mistake, to fail completely after several grueling hours of trying their best to succeed, and their hopes would vanish along with the guiding flame that they were working so hard to protect. And in the end, that's exactly what happened.
Shrouded as they were within the pitch black of the unlighted room, the opening to the next chamber was still very much apparent to them. This newest room was somehow lit by an unknown source of light, and all this despite that there no longer remained any floating fires to guide the way. Tensions were high as they awaited whatever punishment that was to come with their failure to solve their most recent riddle. Yet, after a time, they noticed neither change nor activity within their surroundings. Save for the chamber beyond their current location having revealed itself, all was as calm and as peaceful as one could have hoped for.
Sakura breathed a heavy sigh of relief, "At least there isn't anything bad happening, like the walls caving in on us."
"Be careful of what you say," Syaoran warned her, "It could still very well happen."
Then, Tomoyo brought their attention to another matter, "Something isn't right... the next room doesn't have anything in it."
Eriol moved through the archway and into the next room with a bit more confidence than the others were willing to display, and started examining the room for himself as the others followed in slowly behind him with worried expressions. The first thing they took to noticing was that Tomoyo had been right – the room was completely barren. The lack of objects to represent a puzzle was overly obvious, at least, but that wasn't what had them truly worried. As the archway behind them re-materialized back into solid rock, as all the others had done, they soon found that there was no riddle-inscribed plaque inset to any of the walls.
Sakura checked about her again to make sure she had seen right, "But, wait. If there's no riddle here, then what are we supposed to do?"
"The puzzle may be something that we cannot detect. Either that, or there is no puzzle at all, seeing as we failed the last one," Eriol surmised. Already, he was scanning one wall with both his hands and his mind, "Whichever is the case, we should make a thorough search of the area."
After a short time of pacing back and forth along one wall, in an attempt to try and find anything of value or import, Syaoran just had to ask, "Any idea of what we're looking for?"
After her third round of searching along the wall where the entrance had been, Tomoyo finally gave up, "I can't find anything over here," she said.
"No luck over here, either," Syaoran called, then turned to the other two, "How about you two?"
Sakura and Eriol both shook their heads, though they still continued on with their searching. Frustrated with the lack of results, Syaoran eased himself onto the ground, leaning back against his wall while being mindful of his stone-cold arm. Thanks to Eriol, his broken limb had been placed into a sort of cryonic stasis by the use of the Freeze card, and so it no longer hurt as much as it had originally. Lacking any available materials with which to make a sling or splint, at Tomoyo's request, they had resorted to using magic to ease the pain and slow the damage. That being said, however, it still didn't stop the dull aching that was constantly creeping its way through the freezing and into his shoulder and upper body. It was a constant reminder of his delicate condition.
He grunted slightly with the extra effort of situating himself, which served to divert Eriol's attention away from what was so far proving to be a fruitless search.
"Let me see that arm again," Eriol requested, kneeling down to probe through the damaged bone and tissue once more. What he found was not to his liking.
He released a heavy sigh before revealing his newest findings, "I was afraid of that. Despite the freezing that should have held your wound in check, the fractures are still continuing to spread. It's making the remaining connection between the two parts of your humerus more fragile by the minute. If we remain here too much longer, I doubt that even the best of doctors would be able to mend it. We have got to get you out of here, soon."
This news was more than enough to pull Sakura away from her own search, "You mean he could lose his arm!?"
"Not physically, I don't think" Eriol replied, "Yet there may not be a difference, in the end. At this rate, he will likely lose his ability to maintain any effective motor control over it. Because of the multitude of fractures that are continually forming, the two ends of the break are no longer as clean as I had first detected. The now-jagged ends of the bone are, as such, tearing away at the muscle every time he tries to move about. Even with the Freeze limiting his arm's movements, there is still a slight amount of shifting every time he does something. If this continues, the damage done to him will be irreparable."
"Isn't there anything else we can do!?" Sakura asked desperately, despite that she had asked that exact same question just before they had turned Syaoran's arm into a block of ice. The response that she received back was also the exact same as the one that she had gotten back then, too: an uncomfortably still silence, and faces too ashamed to look her in the eye and tell her that it was hopeless.
With Syaoran once again resigned to his fate, he settled himself quietly off to the side, while the rest of the group continued their examinations of the room. They checked and re-checked through every crack and bump in the walls and floor that presented itself, meticulously searching their environment without any regard for the time that it was taking them to do so. In the process, they found no more than the obvious – solid rock.
On the topic of time, it was almost eight-thirty in the evening, by Syaoran's watch. They had spent almost four hours within this earthen realm already. It was then a half an hour later, after having arrived in this specific room, when Sakura dropped herself down beside Syaoran in defeat. Tomoyo soon joined in beside her, for the same reason, though Eriol was content to continue on with his rounds.
It was all Sakura could do, at that point, not to lose herself to the despair that was welling up within her. She knew that there had to be a way out, and the fact that nothing she could think up or do was helping just made matters worse for her. She had even done a quick scan of her cards twice over in her head, hoping that one of them could maybe shed some light on all of this. A couple of them had seemed like possible candidates, too, but the only problem there was that she had so far been unable to find any useful targets with which to set her cards against.
Not only that, but time was also another big factor that was working against them as well, considering how long they had remained entrapped within the spirit's grasp. Sakura, herself, wasn't sure of how much longer she would be able to keep up her efforts without becoming tired, to say nothing of how everyone else, especially Syaoran, must have been faring. If anything, she could already tell that she was beginning to wear out, but she didn't quite feel like camping it out while within the grasp of an opponent that was dead-set on defeating her. The fear of finally being caught within this place was more than enough to keep her awake, anyway. Even so, it was all she could do just to stifle a few yawns here and there.
Then there was also the fact that there were people back in the real world that would soon begin to worry about them, if they had not started to do so already. Her own father would likely realize what she was getting into, since he was actually aware of her activities, and so she knew that he wouldn't go into a panic any time soon. Both Eriol and Syaoran didn't have anyone they had to check in with, with Eriol's guardians having returned to England to search Clow Reed's library for clues to their "rampaging spirits" crisis, and Syaoran's old caretaker Wei having stayed behind in Hong Kong. Now that she was thinking on it, those few people were not actually the real problem.
Tomoyo's mother, on the other hand, was a completely different matter altogether. She was still being kept unawares that her daughter was the self-designated chronicler of the local sorceress's activities. Then, after all of that, there was still the problem of their friends that they had left behind at the museum. They were likely to have already sounded the alarm about the missing half of the entourage, which was ultimately going to lead to search parties, police investigations, and generally just people getting involved in things Sakura did not want them getting involved in. It was going to be hell to have to deal with the results of all of that, and she knew it.
Her hands idly sought to distract her from the thought of being surrounded by inescapable rock and magic, yet finding only more rock just made her all the more aware of her inability to escape. Regardless, she soon found herself playing with a small pebble. Rolling it between her fingers, looking at it, anything she could come up with to help her mind relax. Yet the same dull brown color, the same unassuming texture, and the sheer familiarity of it all made her want to never to see the inside of a cavern ever again. She mindlessly tossed the pebble off to the side, as a result, in a way wishing that it was capable of taking away with it the stone-lined walls that constantly surrounded her. Her hand came back to rest upon the ground, afterwards, and as if to test her limits, it found another pebble. She picked it up in her tightening fist, taking with it a handful of dust in the process.
Then she stopped herself. Dust... pebble... ground... all of these came from within the earth. Within the earth... within... inside?
"That's it!"
Her sudden, silence-shattering outburst surprised even Eriol to the point of a heart attack, and he had been on the other side of the room. For those that had been resting right beside her, the scare was almost unbearable. Though they quickly replaced their fears with excitement, as they found a spark of hope written across her face. They immediately knew, from that look, that something had changed for the better.
"What is it? What's going on?" Eriol asked her, crossing over to where she was resting.
Sakura leapt up to her feet in a hurry, with Tomoyo quickly following along behind her, and Syaoran stepping up as best as he could. She looked to Eriol with her energetic smile, all while she was pulling a card out into the open, "I might be able to figure this one out!"
He wanted to inquire further, but saw a glimpse of the card that she had pulled from her pocket and immediately knew what she was thinking. Such an idea, he had thought, would have been way too complex a feat to work against such powerful beings as they were up against. As such, he had completely discarded the thought almost immediately. Indeed, Sakura had thought similarly, that it would be too tricky to just freely release Earthy's power and make it overtake their environment. Not only would the magic have no definitive objective to focus its power upon, but it would also be harder to control without that focal point. Past experiences had taught her that out-of-control cards could be quite troublesome in the best of scenarios, and she didn't even want to think of what would happen were she to lose control of a truly powerful card, but perhaps it was their only choice left to them, now.
"Unlock for us that which bars our path! Earthy!" she cried, accenting the incantation's name as she struck at the card's sealed form with her recently-released wand. Loosed to their environment, the avatar of the earth examined its surroundings once before dispelling itself into an ethereal mist, and from there it forced its power to merge into the walls all around them. The changes to their environment, that followed after the Earthy's actions, were immediately apparent to everyone. The color of the rock soon changed its hue to a more lively shade of brown, as opposed to the dullish gray-brown of before that had lacked a certain vibrancy to it. It was a color more suited to that of the natural earth.
At the same time, a shimmering light appeared on the far wall in the form of an archway. The shimmering intensified into a bright glow, flashing once before subsiding to reveal the pathway to a new chamber. When the light show finally dissipated, the ethereal mist of the Earthy card returned itself to its sealed form and flew into Sakura's hand under its own power.
"Even in failure, it sought to test us," Eriol muttered, attempting to make sense of it all for himself, "and with as simple an answer as that, no less."
Sakura stared at her card kindly, placing a silent word of thanks to it before she spoke her thoughts, "At first it seemed too risky of an option, because I didn't want to release a card without something to set it against. But I figured, since they're both the same element anyway, that I could use the ground itself as a target and just release Earthy's magic freely into it. I'm glad it worked out as it did."
Her celebration, as well earned as it was, was found to be short-lived, when a singular flame flared into being at the entrance to the next chamber. Brought to a stunned silence, the four of them could only watch as it danced momentarily in front of them before flying away into the room beyond, hovering in place a ways out before shooting up and away from view. They held their position only long enough to assure Syaoran's condition as acceptable, and then they shot off after it.
The rock face restoring itself behind them was fully ignored, with their attention instead having been taken by the scope of their next challenge. Before them ran a grand, marble staircase leading downwards, and beyond that – being brightly lit from above by a legion of dancing flames – was set a rock-walled labyrinth unmatched in size by comparison to anything they had ever seen before. Sakura dared to think that it perhaps dwarfed even her Maze card's powers by a considerable amount. Though it was narrow in width by comparison to that same card, for it didn't seem to be too much wider than the end-to-end length of Seijou High's soccer field, the labyrinth drew itself far into the distance. The dark horizon at the far end was met only by the confusing twists and turns within the architecture.
Then their goal was made clear to them, in the form of a bright light suddenly emanating from the distant side of the massive underground chamber. Even though they could not pinpoint its source, they could still somehow tell that it was emanating from the far end of the labyrinth, and that they had to make their way towards that light in order to finally escape. As this was likely to be their final hope for being able to free themselves from the earth spirit's hold, they allowed themselves no doubts in this regard.
"I'm guessing we have to go through that?" Sakura wondered aloud, still trying to size up the maze before her.
"We shouldn't enter it until we know what we're getting into," Syaoran cautioned, "We don't know what awaits us in there, be it more riddles or some kind of a trap, and we have no idea how far it will be before we can make it to the other end."
Eriol nodded in agreement, "I have to concur. It will not be much longer before we will require some rest. Also, I fear for the strain that such an amount of excessive traveling will put onto your injury."
Syaoran countered Eriol's concern almost immediately, "No, my condition can't be helped. We will have to keep going at some point, and my arm is only going to get worse, regardless of whether we wait or proceed onwards. No, our real concern should be on how we're going to proceed through to the other end. It may look normal, but this maze was produced by magical means. We don't even know if the spirit will play fair with us."
That happy-go-lucky grin of Eriol's, the one that Syaoran despised so much, appeared before him, "Don't worry about that. I have an idea on how to counter whatever changes might be made to the labyrinth. As well, if I remember my stories right, it would seem that we have an expert on mazes with us, as well," he noted, indicating Tomoyo with a tip of his head, "If we work together on this one, we can make it out safely, regardless of what is thrown at us."
"We all know how good Tomoyo is with mazes," Syaoran agreed, causing the girl to blush slightly in embarrassment, "but what idea makes your plan so foolproof?"
Instead of a reply, Eriol turned to Sakura to form a request, "Sakura, draw out and summon your Arrow card, please."
Taken by surprise at the sudden request, she hesitated only for a moment before doing as she was asked. A cry of the card's name and a swirl of magically-induced winds saw the release of the Arrow card to its true physical form. When all had finally settled down, what stood before them was a diminutive, pale-skinned child dressed in blue, coming equipped with her trademark bow and glowing arrow.
Eriol turned to the awakened card, greeting it with a serious expression instead of his previous, cheerful demeanor, "Card once created by Clow, now born under the light of the Stars. I would beseech you, through the agreement of your master, that you grant us the use of your powers."
Arrow tilted her head up, seeking such an agreement from Sakura and receiving a reassuring nod in return, before she granted Eriol his wish with an affirming nod of its own. Glad that the card would agree to work with him, he continued his speech, "Before us here lies a labyrinth created of magical means. I would ask that you act as our compass. Set your arrows to the firmament as we travel, so that the hunter's senses would guide us by these markers, and keep our direction true."
It wasn't often that Sakura got to hear her cards talk, as they often communed to her either through her Mirror card, or through empathic feeling. Thus, when the Arrow card's child-like voice replied to Eriol's request, she found herself momentarily surprised that her card had actually spoken, "Our direction shall be as true as my arrow's aim."
Pleased with the result, Eriol finally offered his more genuine smile to the card, "Good. Then, with everyone's permission, and if our guides are ready, we should probably start out as soon as possible. Despite the risks, there really isn't any use in us standing here and further pondering our situation. We will also just have to take rest within the labyrinth itself, should we come to require it."
With everyone in agreement, they took to the staircase and descended their way towards the labyrinth's entrance. Eriol and Tomoyo made to take the lead of the group to guide them, while Sakura remained close to Syaoran's side as they followed along. The Arrow card thus took up a position as the rear guard, taking but a moment to fire the first of many arrows into the ground before passing into the labyrinth's walls for herself.
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