Nine of the Lyrehs carted the motionless Bunnie, Sally and Tails into a small room built out of stone cemented together, and dumped them inside. Then one of them drew a gun from its vest pocket and pointed it directly at Sally. Though her mind screamed at her in terror to move, there was nothing she could do to avoid the blast.
The blue light they had seen before shot out of the barrel and filled the room. The Lyrehs slammed the door and bolted it in the other side. The paralysis was wearing off.
"Tails what in Mobius are you doing here?" Sally demanded. "I told you to go back to your hut!"
"I'm sorry, Aunt Sally," Tails interrupted.
"How did you get here?" Sally demanded.
"I - I sneaked into Sonic's backpack," Tails finally admitted.
"You're sorry, you say? Is that all you've got to say for yourself! Sometimes I think you never listen to a word I say! You can be just so - so - So Disobedient!" Sally cried, waving her hands in frustration. Tails shrank away from her in shame, wishing she'd stop shouting at him.
"I'm sorry," He gulped again. "I'll listen to you next time, I promise!"
"We'll talk about this later," Sally sighed. "Right now we should work on getting out of here, and getting home."
"Maybe AH c'n bust us outta hare, Sally - girl!" Bunnie suggested, inspecting one of the stone walls.
"You gonna kick right through one of the walls or something?" Tails asked in wonder.
"Ah'm gonna give it a good ol' try, honey!" Bunnie told him. After inspecting the wall carefully for wherever there might be a weakness, Bunnie had selected her target. She backed up a couple of inches, slipped her feet into a fighting stance and pelted the wall with a single powerful kick that produced and impressive cracking crushing sound - but did nothing at all. The blow merely glanced off the wall, leaving the momentum to force Bunnie over backwards. The stone wall was untouched.
"Ah guess it's tougher than it looks!" she said sheepishly. "Seems like we're stuck hare, Sally - girl!"
"What's gonna happen to us?" Tails stammered, his eyes wide with fright.
"Hey, honey!" Bunnie cried soothingly, moving over and hugging him. "It's gonna be all right. We'll make it outta hare, ya'll see."
"You promise!" Tails asked. Bunnie tried not to hesitate.
"Yeah, Ah - ah do!" she stammered, At least that seemed to reassure the poor fox cub a little, though deep down, Bunnie felt almost as scared as he did. Sally, meanwhile had been inspecting the door.
"It's sealed tight in the frame, no hint of any crack, and there's no sign of the lock on this side." She told the other two. "But there is this strange design on the top right hand corner, see?" she said, as Bunnie came over to look. There was a circle engraved into the wall, with three designs engraved around its centre. "It most be for - something." The two stared at the markings for a moment, wondering what their secret was. Tails sighed deeply and flopped down into a sitting position.
"It sure is hot in here," he complained, shifting his position. Then he shifted again. For some reason, he just couldn't get comfortable. Frustrated, he got up and looked down where he had been sitting. The floor was made of earth, baked hard, with a light covering of loose dirt on top.
Where he had been sitting, Tails could just make out a peculiar shape in the ground, which didn't quite seem to belong there. It looked like something had been buried there. Curious, Tails dropped down on all fours and began scrapping hard at the earth.
"Whattya got there, honey?" Bunnie asked. Both girls had lost interest in the door and were staring over at the fox cub digging in the dirt.
"I think I found something, Aunt Bunnie!" he cried, eagerly. As the two wandered over to see, Tails finished his task, and held up his prize for all to see. It was a small, slightly rusted tube of metal, shaped like a clover.
"Let's see that - " Sally said, reaching over for it. Tails handed it to her and she wandered back over to the door, and stretched up to slot the shape in the engravement shaped the same way in the door. It was a perfect fit. As soon as the shape was placed, the circle in the door moved inwards a little. At first, Sally hoped it might keep moving until it fell out of the door, but no, it had stopped short. "We have to find the other two of those objects to open the door!" Sally realised, wiping her brow. "Is it me or is it getting hotter in here?"
"It's getting hottah," Bunnie complained, waving her normal had over her face like a fan. "We'd bettah find them other keys fast!"
The three ransacked the room, looking under rocks, digging in the dirt floor and searching the walls and ceiling for secret hiding places. All the while, the room grew steadily hotter and hotter till it became almost unbearable and the animal's fur was wet and sticky with sweat. Bunnie found the second 'key' lodged between two rocks in the wall, but the third key had still not been found.
"Ah don't know how much more o' this ah c'n take, Sally - girl!" Bunnie complained, thumping down on a rock. "It's burning mah arm and legs." she tenderly rubbed the areas where the metal plating stopped and the flesh began. The metal was conducting the heat right onto the fur... and it hurt!
"The third key must be in here. We just have to keep looking!" Sally said, defiantly. She and Tails began searching frantically for the remaining key while Bunnie nursed the burns.
"Aunt Sally! I FOUND it!" Tails yelled in delight. He had found that one of the tiles on the roof was loose, and it had swung open to revel the last of the three 'keys'.
"That's brilliant, Honey!" Sally cried, happily hugging him as he handed over the key.
"Good thang yah were hare, Shugah!" Bunnie said. "You're tha only one who c'n reach tha ceilin'!" Sally slotted the last piece in place, and the round lock fell from the door, making it swing open. Instantly all three felt the glorious sensation of the cool air outside, wafting in through the doorway, and they ran out into it, longing to cool off. Hissing and steam rose from Bunnie's cooling metal parts and she sighed with relief that the burning had stopped.
They were now in a long hall made of stone. There were several more doors along the way but all of them were secured with strangely shaped padlocks , similar to the one they had just unlocked.
"So, we gonna look for the others now, Aunt Sally?" Tails said, excitedly.
"Yes, but we must be very careful now. You will stay with us at all times and when I tell you to do something, you do it immediately, understand?" Sally told him, forcefully but calmly.
"Yes, Aunt Sally!" Tails said. "I promise!" Bunnie chuckled and playfully ruffled the fur on the fox's forehead.
"Ya're really one arv tha team now, honey!" she said. "So whare do we start, Sally - girl?"
That question actually answered itself. They heard a sort of snorting sound, like a large animal sneezing, and a large black panther bounded around the corner and raced up to them. Bunnie squeaked in fright but did not run, because her friends remained calm, recognising the creature as Freya, Emyain's pet. Tails reached out a paw and she wandered over to him, rubbing up against his waist as he stroked her.
"I thought Emyain left her at my hut," Sally said. "She must have followed us here or something."
"Maybe she could help us find Emyain," Tails said.
"She may have been tracking her scent when she found us," Sally agreed. Tails bent down on his knees and lent towards Freya's ear.
"Go on, girl! Find Emyain!" He whispered to her.
The panther's ears pricked up at the sound of her owner's name, and after Tails gave her an encouraging nudge, she padded down the tunnel, ears erect and nose twitching as she sniffed the floor along the way. Sally and Tails ran after her immediately, but Bunnie stopped just inside the room they had just escaped, and picked up a round object from the floor, before hurrying after her friends, limping painfully as the metal rubbed the burned flesh.
They followed Freya's nose until she stopped at a door at the top of a flight of stairs, and pawed at the thick wood.
"Emyain must be in there!" Tails said, excitedly.
"Yes, but it has the same lock as our door had and we left the keys behind," Sally groaned, her face betraying more frustration than her tone let on.
"No we didn't!" Bunnie said, happily. With a flourish, she revealed the lock from the door, with all three keys still inside it. They where easy to push out and insert into the other lock on the wooden door.
Emyain was chained tightly to a stone wall in the room beyond the door. She was delighted to see her new friends, and asked how they managed to unlock the door. Tails recounted the story excitedly, while Bunnie worked at pulling the chains apart, wincing at the pain from her burned limbs.
"How did you get burned like that?" Emyain asked.
"It was when tha room was gettin' hottah an hottah. Mah metal parts got a lot hottah than tha rest o' me an' cos thay conducted tha heat, thay burned me," Bunnie told her. She gave a small grunt of effort as she pulled the last chain free. "Thare ya go, Emy - girl!"
"Thank you, Bunnie. Thank you all," Emyain said, gratefully.
"Aw shucks, it was no - thang, shugah!" Bunnie replied, warmly.
"Do you know where any of the other are?" Sally asked.
"No, I don't, sorry," Emyain said. "If we could find my half brother, he might know, but I don't know where he is either!"
"Ah guess we'll just hafftah keep lookin'," Bunnie sighed.
The five friends searched fruitlessly for at lest an hour, until Freya's nose picked up the scent of something again. She followed it a very short way down the tunnel before stopping to paw at the bottom of a stone wall beside her.
"Whattcha got thare, girl?" Bunnie asked, bending down to see what the cat was clawing at. "Hey, part of this wall's loose..." she realised. Her ordinary hand scrapped around the wall, as she tried to tease out the loose stone block from he wall with her claws. It came out very slowly, millimetre by millimetre, until at last she could get hold of it, yank it out and reveal a small folded piece of paper behind it. There was writing on it, but in a strange language. The only thing Bunnie could understand was Emyain's name.
"Ah thank this is fer y'al," she said, passing it to Emyain.
"It's in Lyrehnian," Emyain realised. "And it's my half brother's writing."
"What does it say?" Sally asked.
Emyain read the note rapidly, and her eyes grew wide somewhere near the middle. "I can't translate the Lyrehnian directly into Mobian, but it basically says that everyone caught by the Lyrehs today was put into holding rooms until locations were allocated to them in the Eramli realm. That is the place where our worst fears become reality, a sort of living nightmare realm made of everyone's dread. What it means by 'places were allocated for them' is they searched the Eramli realm until they'd discovered enough Adi falls which is where everything in the realm manifests. Sometimes prisoners are taken out there as a test where every bad thing they imagine manifests and attacks them. If they survive, they are sometimes accepted as a new citizen of Lyrehtis,"Emyain explained.
"So... do you now how we can get to this Eramli realm?" Sally asked.
"Yes, that part is simple, but not easy. We have to think of the one thing we fear the most and concentrate on that image."
"That's it?" Sally said.
"Yes, but you must concentrate hard," Emyain said. She knelt down, hugging her pet's shoulders. "Okay, girl. Go home now. We'll be fine. Go!" she whispered into her ear. The animal made a purring noise and licked her hand with the tip of her tongue. Then she padded softly away, and the friends where ready to leave. Sally concentrated hard on what might happen if Knothole's secret location was ever discovered by Robotnik. Bunnie thought about what it would be like to be completely robotisised, and Tails recalled what he could of the nightmare he'd had last night. All three had closed their eyes in order to concentrate, but Emyain must have kept hers open, because after a few moments she exclaimed:
"We're there."
Where they were looked surprisingly normal. They were in a woodland clearing, loosely surrounded by shrubbery and trees. The sun was shinning high in a cloudless sky and small insects were dancing about in the tepid air.
"You sure we're there?" Tails said.
"Oh, we're in the Eramli realm alright!" Emyain said, a touch of fear or hatred tainting her voice. "We're just not near any of the Adi falls, not that we want to be. I think our best bet is to look in the caves. This way!"
Emyain ran off through the trees, and the others followed her.