Disclaimer on chapter 1

Chapter 3: Raging Rivers of Lava

Sonic hit the ground hard after the fall; he took a moment to recover and shook his head.

"Where the heck am I?" he muttered, "So dark in here, wish I had a light of some… Kind?" he stopped mid sentence as he noticed his gem glowing. The blue shine light up the cave with its naval blue.

"What the? Are gems meant to do that? Could this be the power that Eggman was talking about? What did he call it… a Chaos Emerald? Whoa!" Sonic's trail of thought was again interrupted as he saw a powerful looking mural on the wall. It pictured a shining creature, its body a bright, snow white colour that almost looked like it glowed in energy. It looked almost demonic looking in appearance due to its bright, blood red eyes. Surrounding it was seven different coloured gems. "What the heck is THIS?" he muttered. Sonic took careful note of the picture, the shapes of the gems where the same as the blue crystal he now held in his hand, and one of them was the same colour. "These must be more Chaos Emeralds. Let see, blue, yellow, purple, green, red, grey, and light blue? But what is this thing in the middle? There is some writing but I have no idea what language it is. Could this be some kind of prophecy? Or something that happened in the past?" Sonic lifted the Emerald higher for a better look, only to find the wall move away like a door, it shrunk into the ground. Sonic was so surprised he nearly fell over, but he then had to cover his eyes as the blue gem's light grew, and was echoed by another coloured light from behind where the mural used to be

"Whoa…" Sonic said bemused. What he saw was a pedestal, upon which was a gem, of the exact size and shape as the one he held. It was glowing in a yellowish light, mirroring his blue gem. Sonic walked over to the gem and lifted it from the pedestal, then it stopped glowing, and the room went dark again "DANG IT! Now how am I meant to…?" again he was interrupted, he was getting sick of it, but it did answer the question he was about to ask, the wall behind him rose again and the one in front fell, he felt the temperature rise to almost unbearable levels as a red glow filled the room. He hoped it was the red gem, but he was mistaken, what lay in front of him was a gigantic hall, a lake of lava reaching from end to end in it, with the only exit on the opposite wall, and the only way of crossing a few platforms floating in the lava.

"You have GOT to be KIDDING me!" Sonic Exclaimed "A boiling lake of lava? This is ridicules!"

XOXOX

It walked across the ceiling carefully, it had not expected to see a wall open like that, never mind the one the doctor had warned it about standing behind the wall

"You have GOT to be KIDDING me!" Exclaimed the blue one "A boiling lake of lava? This is ridicules!"

It cared not about the lava, even if it was built not to include the ability to walk along ceilings like it can, it could fly, it took delight in this prey's fear of the molten liquid below it.

It watched intently as the blue one jumped from rock to rock, and then exclaimed "Oh no!" as the wall behind it closed up again. "Great, just great, I guess the only was to go is forward now."

XOXOX

Sonic was not pleased, since he woke he had been attacked by a lot of robots, tripped over some magic rock, had to fight a man shaped like an egg, fell down a big hole and now had to traverse a room of lava. It may have been the only day he remembered so far, but so far, he could already tell it was not one of his better ones.

Just then a bubble of lava burst, its residue hitting sonic on the backside

"YOW! BarbequedhedgehogisnotonthemenutodaythankYOU!" he exclaimed so fast it was barely understandable "Man this place is treacherous, better be more careful."

From then on he continued slowly, some of the steps where unstable, one false move and he would fall in the lava and he definitely didn't want that. He nearly got to the exit when something swooped at him, he ducked in time, good thing it was a stable rock or he would have been face first in lava. He looked up to see what attacked him, it was a new "badnik" shaped like a bat. It went back up to ceiling, well out of Sonic's reach.

"DO NOT MOVE; DROP THE EMERALD WHERE YOU ARE AND LEAVE. THE NEXT ATTACK WONT MISS." Said the badnik

"No way bat brain! You are gonna pay for trying to dive bomb me!"

"ILLOGICAL, HOW DID HE FIGURE OUT THE NAME OF THIS UNIT?"

"You wha? You mean you actually are called bat brain?"

"AFFIRMATIVE"

"…… he needs to come up with better names."

"IRRELEVANT. DROP THE EMERALDS NOW"

"No way! What does he want with these portable night lights anyway?"

"CLASSIFIED!" said more than one voice. Sonic looked round and noticed he was surrounded by the things.

"I could be in a bit of trouble" he whispered to himself. He picked up the pace, ignoring each of the bat shaped torpedoes as they swooped at him, he was now desperate to get out of the area before one knocked him into the lava.

He jumped quickly from rock to rock, trying to time it just right. He got to the last platform and burst through a door, slamming it behind him. Suddenly, he tripped on some rubble and fell on his face. Good thing too as he heard a noise he defiantly didn't like.

Click-jingle-jingle-jingle-jingle-jingle -SHA!

He slowly looked up to see that a platform with dagger sharp blades had just impaled onto the ground in front of him.

"Eh-heh-heh… pointy" he said. As he looked up he saw that the area in front of him had similar tricks, traps and lava pits, formed into a kind of upward staircase of doom. Yup defiantly not one of his better days…

XOXOX

"WHAT? What do you mean LOST him!"

SIR HE CLOSED DOOR BEHIND HIM, WE WHERE ONLY ABLE TO ENTER THIS CURRENT ROOM VIA SKYLIGHT, WE ARE NOT BUILT WITH TOOLS REQUIRED TO OPEN DOORS. Came the reply of Bat Brain 17

"GAH!" an obvious design flaw on his part. He designed Bat Brains to be able to smash wooden doors open, but the doors of the marble ruins where solid stone. They would need a blaster for it. "And you're SURE he obtained the Yellow Chaos Emerald?"

AFFIRMATIVE. SCANNERS SHOW YELLOW EMERALD CURRENTLY BEING TRACKED HAD PASSED US ALONG WITH BLUE EMERALD ALREADY IN HIS POSSESSION DURING PURSUIT.

"Now he has TWO Emeralds to our ONE!"

SORRY DOCTOR

"He won't get away with this. When he reaches the containment unit in this area, I will be waiting for him."

SHOULD WE STOP ATTACKING IF WE LOCATE?

"Negative. Attack him. Do anything you can to stop him. Just make sure he doesn't drop the emeralds into lava. I need them."

AFFIRMATIVE DOCTOR

As Eggman turned off the radio. He thought carefully about what he was going to do to the hedgehog when next they met.

XOXOX

As sonic climbed he found that the traps seemed to increase in number. There where weights in similar design to the spikes, crushing pillars, crumbling ledges, spikes which poked out from the wall every so often, more lava pits along with various other kinds of traps. He reasoned that this must have been the "normal" way in as well as the way out, and that the people who made the traps figured that deeper chambers would need less traps as people would be les likely to survive the further they got in. Or maybe they just got tired of making as many. Ether way, there where more bat brains and caterpillar badniks (which he had learned where called "caterkillers") on the way up as well so he needed to be much more careful than he was before. Especially if he didn't want to be hot hedgehog soup.

He was now close to the surface, that he knew as skylights littered the ceiling, allowing daylight to shine through.

"Almost out" Sonic said to himself.

He began to jump across Stone pillars slowly making his way for the exit, along the way dodging bat brains along the way. There, at the exit he found another of those odd shaped canisters.

"Hmm, another one, does he have on in each area?"

At that point he heard a familiar voice laughing.