Dewey
The secret door spun around, allowing Dewey and Della to dart through to the room on the other side. Looking around, Dewey saw that the two of them were in another corridor. To their left was a flight of stairs leading up. To their right, an identical flight of stairs led down to depths below the temple.
They heard the revolving door slam shut behind them, and they quickly turned around. The wall stood featureless before them, no sign of the secret door they'd come through. They couldn't even hear the sound of the beasts slamming against the wall anymore.
The two of them looked around, suddenly noticing the absence of Louie's distinctive green hoodie.
"…No…" Della murmured, going back to the wall and pushing against it.
It didn't budge.
"No!" Della cried, pushing against the wall with all her might. When it refused to move, she started to beat her fists against it in desperate anger. "Let me through! This is not! Happening! Again!"
She kicked her metal leg against the wall, the sharp sound of steel against rock echoing through the corridor.
No reaction.
Dewey watched as his mother put her hands against the wall, trying to weakly push it one more time, before resting her head against it. He could hear her ragged breathing, the fear in her voice… he looked around anxiously, darkness enveloping both ends of the stairs to each side of them.
"…Do you think those things will come back?" He asked her.
Della was silent for a moment.
Then, she straightened up, still facing the wall. "Louie? Huey?" She called out into the brickwork. "If you can hear me… me and Dewey are going to try and find you! Whatever you do, stay put."
She backed off, wiping her eyes with her sleeve before she turned around to face her son. "Come on, Turbo." She said quietly. "Let's get out of here."
Dewey looked between the two staircases. "Which way?"
"…I don't think it matters." Della admitted, turning towards the stairs that went down. "The doors in this place could lead anywhere."
With that, the two ducks began to walk down the stairs, Della leading the way with a flashlight while Dewey followed her from behind. He looked around the walls, seeing symbols that he didn't understand and wondering if they could contain a secret message for getting out. For a split second, he wondered if it was even possible that they could get out. He dismissed the thought quickly.
"…Mom?" He asked.
"Yeah?" She replied, looking around carefully as they made their way down.
"…I, uh…" He scratched the back of his head. "I kinda… overheard you talking with Scrooge, back at the mansion."
She paused, looking over her shoulder back at him.
"This isn't part of the plan, is it?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"…No." She replied, turning back around. "It isn't."
She suddenly held out her hand, then pointed downward. "Careful. That step doesn't look as stable as the rest."
They carefully stepped over the flagstone she'd pointed out. Dewey's eyes scanned the walls as they passed the potential trap, doing his best to focus and look for others, but questions plagued his mind, and he found it hard to stay on task.
"Should we really have lied to him?" He asked.
"To Louie?" Della replied as she carefully looked over her surroundings.
"I mean, won't he be mad if he finds out?"
"He won't find out."
They made their way to the bottom of the stairs, ending up in a large, paved stone room that seemed to stretch on beyond the radius of the torchlight. Looking around, the room seemed about thirty feet wide, with a number of load-bearing pillars leading forward to the darkness beyond.
They heard a grinding sound from behind them. Turning around, they saw that there were stones being pulled out from the walls and the floor to close the entrance to this room. After a couple of moments, a new wall covered the entrance that they had come through, and any path back was blocked.
"…Shit." Della muttered.
After a moment of silence, Della sighed, facing Dewey. "Look, I know that if it were me, I would be pretty mad… but we had to start safe. For Louie's sake." She looked around, anxious and frustrated. "Not that any of that matters now…"
"I just… he's been saying for such a long time now that he doesn't want us to be so protective of him." Dewey said, trying to explain himself. "He's said himself that he's okay now, and-"
"He thinks he's okay, Dewey." Della interrupted him sternly. "That's not the same as being okay."
Dewey scratched his head, looking away. "Okay, well…"
"Why did you take Scrooge's old gun?"
The unexpected question threw him off. Dewey looked at his mother's uncharacteristically fierce expression, and he froze up as he realised that he was actually in trouble.
"…Uh…" He stammered. "I… thought it'd be cool?"
"…You thought it'd be cool." Della repeated slowly.
"…Yeah."
"Webby said that you were going to ask Scrooge if you could have it." Della interrogated him. "Why didn't you?"
"I, uh…" He looked away, trying not to meet his mother's eyes. "…I thought he'd say no."
A heavy, intense silence fell over the two of them.
He heard Della take a deep, slow breath. "…I don't want to see this thing in your hands ever again, Dewey." She told him. "If I ever see you holding a gun, or God forbid I see you use one, then you will never go on another adventure. Understand?"
Dewey's gaze snapped back to her again in horror. "What? But mom-"
"No. Buts." Della interrupted him again, glaring directly into his eyes. "This is not negotiable. I never want to see a weapon in your hands, or your brothers' hands, ever again. Do you understand?"
Dewey opened his beak, then closed it, seeing the expression on his mother's face. He looked down at the ground guiltily and muttered, "…Yeah. Yeah, I… I understand."
"…Good." Della turned around and started to make her way down the corridor. "Let's go. Stay close."
Dewey took a moment before he followed.
The room continued for a while, taking the two of them a minute of carefully crawling past the pillars that seemed to lead them down to the end of the room, whereupon they were greeted not by a wall, but by a lack of one. The room seemed to be broken in half, with a large, fifty-foot-wide chasm extending between their side of the hallway and what looked to be the rest of it, continuing on for an untold distance ahead. Above them, they could see that this chasm seemed to have split the ceiling above them as well. They could see no end to the gap neither above nor below them.
"Okay…" Della looked around, frowning. "What do we do about this…?"
Dewey scanned the gap as well, trying to figure out a way around this. He couldn't see any hanging ledges, outcrops, or conveniently placed brass rings that he could use to swing his way across to the other side. His whip was only about six feet long, he knew, but he figured that if there was at least a row of swinging spots, he would be able to whip to each of them in succession… probably.
He crossed his arms and frowned to himself. What would Ford Windfall do in a situation like this? He seemed to remember a bit in the Temple of-
…What the hell am I doing? He suddenly thought to himself. Ford Windfall was an imaginary character from a movie series filmed in the eighties. Dewey was a real adventurer who'd done so many dangerous things in his life, he could barely remember them all. Why was he trying to be this guy, when he should already know what he was doing?
Dewey turned to the wall of the hallway they were in. Stone brick, tightly packed, virtually impossible to climb. But the wall that intersected with the chasm seemed to be rough, cavern wall. Even here, he could see numerous handholds in its surface.
He turned to his mother and pointed towards the cavern wall. "We could climb over to the other side."
Della turned to look where he was pointing, and then back to Dewey.
"Nope!" She said emphatically. "That is way too dangerous."
"What choice do we have?" Dewey asked her. "We can't go back the way we came, and we can't jump this gap." He shrugged. "I think we gotta climb."
Della hesitated for a moment, her expression conflicted.
"…Stay close to me." She said reluctantly.
"Okay." Dewey said readily.
The two of them approached the edge of the room, moving towards the point where the brickwork and the cavern wall intersected. Della was the first to jump, taking a couple of steps back before running and leaping off the edge. Dewey felt a sharp spike of fear, then relief as she caught onto the rock and didn't fall. Taking a deep breath, Dewey did the same, taking a few steps back before running, leaping, and catching onto the stone surface. He gripped on tight and looked up at his mother, who nodded at him and proceeded to slowly advance across the wall. Dewey did the same.
It was difficult work climbing the wall. The handholds were narrow, and for the most part the two ducks were dangling down from the ledges they were gripping. Dewey planted his feet firmly against the wall as he climbed, doing his best not to look down into the abyss below.
Five seconds passed.
Ten seconds.
Dewey's eyes remained focused on the other side.
Fifteen seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Dewey's fingers were beginning to hurt a bit. He gritted his teeth and kept moving.
Twenty-five seconds.
He looked across from where they were. They were half-way across the chasm now.
"Turbo? You doing good?" Della asked from where she was, slightly above him.
"…Yeah." Dewey replied.
"…Just a bit longer, okay?" Della told him. "We're almost there."
They kept moving.
Thirty-five seconds.
The other side was still twenty feet, maybe a bit more, away from them.
A loud hiss from below drew their attention, making both of them freeze.
Dewey looked down.
Emerging from the darkness, directly below them, was the giant, golden snake, its crimson eyes glinting in the shade. It slithered out from the darkness, rapidly approaching the two of them with malicious intent gleaming in its eyes.
"Oh… those things can just appear wherever, huh?" Della panted. "That's great."
Dewey stared at the beast as it gained on them, desperately trying to think of a solution to get them out of this. Both sides of the hall were too far away to jump, and there was no way they were going to out-climb this thing. What were they going to do?
The creature approached them, opening its jaws.
Making a snap decision, Dewey pushed away from the wall and began to fall.
He wasn't quite sure what he expected to happen as he fell, plummeting just past the snake's jaws and sailing past its golden, scaled body. He reached out and grabbed onto the snake itself, holding on tight as he slid down its metallic, serpentine form. He yelled in pain as the metal scraped against his palms, but didn't loosen his grip until he felt himself begin to slow down.
He looked up, heart racing, and cried out again as he saw Della leap out after him – right into the snake's open jaws.
He saw the snake writhe and screech as Della shoved something in its mouth, a ferocious expression upon her face. It swung back and forth in fury, its jaws held open by a metallic rod, and Della swung off from its head and hurtled downward. Dewey saw her grab the side of the snake and slide down to meet him, her robotic leg absent.
"Dewey!" She gasped as she arrived beside him.
"Hey!" Dewey grinned at her. "You used your leg to hold its mouth open? That was so cool!"
"Thanks, I didn't think I could do it, but what were you thinking? What if-?"
The snake dislodged itself from the wall, and Dewey lost his grip for a fraction of a second. Looking up, he saw the snake start to loop around, angling downward into the chasm.
"Hold on, Dewey!" Della cried.
The snake descended down into the inky blackness of the chasm, taking the two ducks with it as they clung on for dear life.