Huey
"…Wait, what?"
Huey looked around panickily at the empty room he and Webby had found themselves in. It appeared to be some kind of ritual room, going by the large, ash-filled stone bowl that stood in the centre of the room. The walls were more intricate and detailed than any of the other chambers that the family had been in so far, seemingly detailing some kind of story regarding the minotaurs.
No sign of the rest of the family.
"Mom? Dewey? Louie?" Huey called out, his voice echoing out from the chamber.
Webby took a few steps backward, putting her hand against the wall segment they'd emerged from and tried to push it. Huey watched her push once, twice, each with no success.
"…It's sealed." She said faintly.
Huey's hands flew to the side of his head and he backed away, staring at the wall. His heart was pounding. "No…" He whispered franticly. "No, no, no, no, no…"
"Okay… um… there's still options for us." Webby said, trying to sound hopeful. "We could take either of those two doors over there," She pointed to the end of the room. "Maybe they lead somewhere…"
"It's happening again." Huey muttered, his gaze shifting the ground. "It's happening again, it's going to happen again-"
"We could try… hey. Hey!"
"We took so many precautions, we have an airplane full of supplies and none of it mattered-!"
"Huey! Snap out of it!"
Webby clapped in front of his face, temporarily breaking his feverish muttering. He looked up at her, seeing her staring at him with an expression that seemed to waver between fierce determination and fear.
"It's going to be okay, alright?" She told him. "We're gonna get through this! We're the McDucks, remember? We can take this temple on, can't we?"
Huey stared at her for a moment.
"We don't know where our family is!" Huey cried. "We are lost in a constantly shifting labyrinth, with two giant monsters hunting us down, and no idea whether each step we take is going to take us closer to or further away from our goal! How can you tell me that this is going to be okay?"
Webby opened her beak, then closed it. She opened it again, then closed it again.
"…Because… we're the McDucks…" She said with a weak smile.
"You don't know!" Huey shouted, pacing away in agitation. "You can't tell me that this is going to be okay, because you have no idea what is happening or what's-!"
"What do you want me to say? I'm just as scared as you are!" Webby shouted back. "I don't want to be responsible for another shitty adventure, I just want things to go back to normal!"
It was the cursing that broke Huey out of his panic. He double blinked, then turned back to her, seeing her panting, a slight tremble to her beak and staring at him with anger born from fear.
"…Wh…" Huey started to say. "…Why do you think you're responsible for this?"
Webby blinked. "Uh… I… I dunno, I just… you know, just because I've been bothering you guys about… going on another adventure for so long…"
She seemed to realise how weak the rationale was as she was saying it. She looked away from him, rubbing her arm.
"…I know it's dumb…" She murmured quietly. "But… I still feel like all of this was my fault."
"…Your…?" Huey started to say.
For a moment, he saw an image of Webby kicking a female ocelot into a deep pit, Louie tumbling along with her.
"…Oh."
They were quiet for a moment, neither of them looking at each other.
"…If…" Webby said, finding her voice again. "If we just give in to fear, though… then we're gonna die. You know that."
He did know that. He'd been on enough adventures to know what could happen if he gave in to blind panic.
Rule 10: Always decide on a meeting point before venturing out.
"…Let's try and explore for a bit." Huey suggested shakily. "If we can find a door that leads back to the main hall, maybe we can wait for the others there."
Webby seemed uncertain. "Like… the main hall is a central point or something? Is that how it works?"
"I don't know, but it's about the only thing we can try."
"I guess you're right…"
First, they peeked through one of the doors to see where it led, seeing that it led out to featureless corridor that extended to the left and to the right. A quick inspection through the other door showed that it led to a set of stairs leading upward. Opting to take the corridor, the two young ducks slowly advanced down the right-hand corridor, their eyes sweeping the walls and the floor for potential traps.
As they moved inch by inch down the corridor, Huey took out his phone and experimentally tried to call Della. Predictably enough, the device had no signal, likely due to a combination of the thick stone walls of the temple and whatever extra-dimensional trickery was going on. He frowned and put the phone back into his pocket, trying his best to focus on looking for hazards instead of worrying about what had happened to his family.
Their progress was slow, almost agonisingly so. They couldn't lose their focus for even a moment – if they were taken down by a trap now, there would be nobody to come to their aid. In this corridor, they came across only one trap, spotting an arrowhead poking out of a slit in the wall. Noticing that the arrow was positioned at chest-height, they opted to crawl underneath the arrow's line of fire, rather than waste time looking for a pressure plate.
At the end of the corridor, a wooden door greeted them. Opening it, they found themselves looking out to the main hall, emerging from one of the doors on the left side of the bottom floor. Back where they'd started. There was a fleeting moment of relief before worry overtook Huey once more.
"So… we just wait here?" Webby asked as the two of them made their way to the main staircase, still uncertain about the idea.
"I think so." Huey replied, taking a seat on one of the steps. "If we just wander around this place blindly, we could easily get ourselves killed. If we wait here, there's a chance that at least some of them will make their way back here and find us."
"And if they don't?"
Huey looked away. "…I don't want to think about that. Let's… just focus on what we can do."
"Alright…" Webby took a seat beside him.
A few minutes of silence passed between the two of them. There wasn't even any ambient noise to distract them. No creaking, no crumbling of stone, just… silence.
"…Webby?" Huey said after a while.
"Yeah?" She responded.
"I know that Scrooge and Mrs Beakley have probably already told you this, but what happened to Louie wasn't your fault." He told her. "Dewey and my mom feel the same way as you do, and it's nonsense. None of us had any way of knowing what was going to happen, you can't… you can't hold yourself responsible for it."
She turned to look at him.
"At the very least…" He continued. "I know that Louie doesn't blame you."
Webby turned away, her expression guilty and unhappy.
"…I don't believe that." She said.
Huey frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know." Webby sighed, leaning up to look at the ceiling. "He's just… Maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but I feel like he's… meaner towards me. In a way that he isn't with you guys. Like, I keep offering to help him out with stuff and suggesting schemes, 'cause… I want to make it up to him, and…"
"You don't have anything to apologise for, Webby." Huey told her again.
"Yeah, I get why everyone keeps telling me that, but I feel like I do." Webby replied insistently. "And every time I try to talk to him, he just shuts me down! And… it just feels like it's personal, you know?"
Huey took a couple of seconds of formulate a response. "Well… I don't think it's just you." He said slowly. "I feel like he's been distant from all of us for a while. He doesn't like us being so… overbearing, and… I guess his response to that was to push us away."
"I guess…"
"If you want, I can talk to him, let him know that he's making you feel that way. I'm sure if-"
They heard one of the nearby doors fly open, slamming against the wall. They both jumped and leapt to their feet, Webby immediately moving in front of Huey protectively.
"Back here again?" Snarled the figure who emerged from the door. "What in the blue blazes is wrong with-?"
"Uncle Scrooge!"
The two young ducks ran towards their uncle, who turned towards the two of them in surprise. Webby got to him first, wrapping her arms around him tightly. "Kids!" Scrooge cried as they came up to him. "Are the two of you alright?"
"Never mind us, are you okay?" Webby replied, looking up at him. "You fell down a pit!"
"I'm fine, lass. Scrooge McDuck innae one to fall for a mere pit trap!" He told her, hugging her back. He looked up at Huey. "Where are…?"
"We… got separated. We don't know where the others are." Huey admitted.
Scrooge loosened his grip, his joy quickly shifting into worriedness. "Separated? How?"
Webby stepped back from him, looking up at him. "After you fell, we got chased by these… I think they were golems?"
"Magical constructs, at any rate." Huey nodded. "We hid in a storage room, and tried to leave through this… revolving door, but…" He shrugged. "I think it led to different places for each of us."
"No, no, no…" Scrooge muttered, pacing back and forth. "This wasn' supposed to happen! This was just meant to be a simple adventure! A safe one!"
Webby shrugged. "I mean… we knew the risks. We can only make our adventures so safe."
"We were planning on waiting here for the others." Huey told him. "I'm thinking that this hall is a nexus for all the other different rooms. If the others are trying to find their way out, they should eventually make their way back to this room."
Scrooge twisted his cane in his hands, looking towards the ground in intense thought. "Aye… that makes sense… but if somethin's happened to them…"
The ducks were quiet, Webby and Huey looking anxiously at each other as that cold thought arose to the forefront of their minds.
Scrooge turned back to the door that he'd entered through and opened it, looking into the room inside. He shook his head. "Different room… this place is constantly shifting." He closed the door again.
"More reason to stay where we are." Huey said. "If we explore blindly, we're more likely to get lost."
"The others are still trying to find their way back here, though." Webby pointed out. "We might have a better chance of finding them if we go looking."
Huey shook his head. "No, it'll be less likely. It's like, multiplying probabilities together. Besides, I feel like this place is trying to split us up."
Webby shook her head in frustration. "This isn't- I don't like feeling so passive! We have to-"
Suddenly, they heard the grinding of stone above them. Each of them looked up towards the platform at the mid-point of the staircases at the end of the room, seeing bricks being supernaturally pulled out from the wall to form a large, misshapen hole.
Emerging from this gap was a large, animate wooden boar, its wooden limbs creaking as it moved. A hole in the side of its head revealed a flickering, deep purple light within its core. It snorted loudly, glaring at the three of them, and it pawed the ground as it prepared to charge.
"Get inside!" Scrooge said quickly, throwing open one of the nearby doors. "Now!"
The three of them quickly darted through the doorway, running through and slamming the door behind them. They backed up away from the wooden portal, jumping in fright as they heard and felt the beast slam against the stone door frame. Dust and rubble fell upon them from the ceiling as the monster vented its frustration against the ancient brick.
"…Okay." Huey muttered. "I guess we have to explore now…"
"Both of ye, move behind me." Scrooge told the two of them. "We're movin' quickly and carefully."
The adventurers swiftly moved away from the door they'd entered through, moving as fast as they felt they could without accidentally triggering any traps. Quickly, they darted through the corridor, taking a right turn, then a left, before running straight down another corridor. The terrifying slamming of the boar against the door behind them started to fade into a dull, far-away thumping behind them.
They advanced carefully, their eyes slowly scanning the area around them. As they did, Huey found himself recognising the path they were on – this was the same maze-like corridor that they'd lost Scrooge in.
He saw Webby keeping close to Scrooge in front of him.
It didn't take long for the three of them to find themselves back at the intersection that the beasts had first appeared at. Huey tried not to look at the red smear that coated the corner of the path to the right. Yet, as they approached it, he saw Scrooge slow down, looking down the tunnel that the blood stain seemed to lead down.
Somehow, Huey instinctively knew what his uncle was thinking.
"I don't want to know what's down there." He told the group.
Scrooge didn't say anything.
"…Uncle Scrooge?"
Scrooge took a deep breath, then shook his head. "…I have to know what happened here."
"Aside from the temple defending against intruders?" Webby asked. "I don't know if there's a lot more that we need to know."
"There's more that I need to know." Scrooge replied, turning back to look at the two of them sternly. "Stay here. I'll be but a moment."
"What?" Huey cried in alarm. "But if something happens to you-!"
"It won't. I'll have me wits about me this time." Scrooge told him reassuringly. "I won't even be a minute – trust me."
Hesitantly, Huey nodded. Webby seemed wary and confused as well, but agreed regardless. With that, Scrooge turned around, following the bloody trail further into this maze. Huey did his best to swallow his nervousness as he watched his uncle disappear into the shadows beyond.