Chapter 13: Traps and Challenges
It made perfect sense to Leppria that the ancient clerics had built their temple full of traps, the first door had caught them completely by surprise, but that didn't mean the place was guarded by magic.
Beyond the first door, the cats came to another room. It was actually more of a corridor, with another door waiting for them at the end of it. By looks alone, the hall seemed empty, with no suspicious keys or spikes to speak of. The only thing separating them from the door was a short walk.
It was entirely too easy, and they all knew it.
"The book could be just beyond that wall," Lion-O said, taking a step forward only for Panthro to stop him.
The large cat placed his foot forward only for the floor to give way as a pressure-plate beneath his paw triggered a spinning blade to emerge from the wall and nearly take his head off. One by one more blades came out of the walls, blocking their path forward.
Cheetara pulled the general back, "Legends spoke of a series of obstacles the ancients had rigged to keep outsiders away."
"Were those made with magic too?" when the older woman shot Leppria a look she just shrugged, knowing she was right. "What? There's probably pressure-plates like that all over this place, how are we supposed to get through?"
Instead of trying to convince her otherwise, Cheetara only smirked. "Gotta move fast!"
She took off running, body becoming a blur as a new flurry of blades surrounded her. Avoiding the pressure-plates was a fool's errand at best, but Cheetara was able to duck and weave around each blade with ease, leaving a trail of golden light in her wake.
One blade swiped beside her head, missing her by inches and slicing away a few strands of her yellow hair, her sharp intake of breath the only indication that she'd made a mistake. She did not let her misstep distract her, her feet flashing as she emerged from the blades on the other side of the corridor unscathed.
A collective sigh of relief left the others, Cheetara smiling as she extended her staff, each end pressing a pair of identical buttons on the walls. The door opened and the blades came to a stop, retreating into the stone and letting the cats safely pass.
"Nice work," Lion-O praised, the golden woman only passing through the door once everyone else had.
Unlike the last two rooms, this one was not swathed in darkness leaving the cats to rely on their night-vision, but instead held a pillar of light beaming down from the ceiling, the sunlight falling into a pool of water just below. It seemed to bounce off the surface of the pool back up to the ceiling, into the mouth of a stone lion's head.
Leppria furrowed her brow, staring at the statue. The light emitting from outside shone in through a mirror, condensing the light into a concentrated beam like a magnifying glass, and she couldn't quite see from the ground, but there was definitely something inside the mouth that the light was touching.
The kittens were the first to notice the bed of glittering gold coins within the pool, beaming at the sight of the riches.
"Look, treasure!"
"We're rich!"
They greedily stuck their hands in the water, grabbing the coins and shoving them in their pockets by the handful. Disturbed by their splashing, the beam of light wavered and moved from the lion's mouth, revealing the small metal button within its jaws.
She gasped, recognizing the tech from within the Thundertank.
A temperature sensor.
"Stop! Don't touch the water!" she called out, Kit and Kat freezing as they reached for more gold. The pool stilled again, but the trap had already been triggered.
The eyes of the stone lion burned red as water flooded from his open mouth, more falling from the ceiling and filling up the room from the floor. Leppria flinched when the icy water swallowed her ankles, breaking into a run as they split up to try and find a way out.
Climbing along the various ledges that dotted the walls, they touched every stone, hoping it would be a switch or reveal an exit, but they found none as the water climbed higher.
While everyone else was fervently looking for a way out, Panthro had pressed his back against a wall, eyes white with panic as he watched the water rise.
Kit cocked her head, tail twitching. "You okay Panthro?"
His fists clenched over his legs, claws trembling as he shook his head. "I never told you guys this… but I can't swim!"
It came as a surprise that the seemingly fearless General was so easily frightened by water, but it posed a bigger problem as the water swallowed half of the room. Leppria winced as the icy water lapped at her thighs, wading over to Tygra as he balanced against a stone pillar.
Pointing up, he spotted a grate on the ceiling. "Looks like an exit up there!" he called, the others moving through the water towards him. "We'll wait for the water to rise and float up to it."
"Easier said than done!" Panthro shook his head, scattering drops as the water rose to his neck. Their feet left the floor as the water carried them higher, Panthro struggling to stay afloat while the rest of them tried to stay calm and paddle upwards.
Leppria bit her tongue, her toes going numb under the water as she kicked closer to the larger cat, "Just keep paddling Panthro!" she called, blinking away water as his splashing worsened.
Using her staff, Cheetara pushed against the grate, but to their horror, it didn't open. It didn't even budge. It had been another trap set by the clerics, to dangle a possible escape and not realize it was a trick until it was too late.
"I can't open it from this side!" she cried, pushing with all her strength and even hitting the door with her staff to no avail.
The water had gotten so high that Leppria could grab onto the bars of the grate. Already feeling the weight of swimming weighing her down, she used all her strength to pull on the bars, Lion-O swimming beside her and doing the same.
Panthro's splashes got quieter, the panther breathing heavily as his arms turned to lead. "I'm not gonna last…"
Panic flashed in Lion-O's eyes as the General's head slipped under the water, the red-headed king quickly diving under after him, both of them disappearing into the darkness.
"Lion-O!" the leopard yelled, her grip on the bars nearly slipping as she searched for him. She held her breath every second he didn't resurface, Snarf clinging to her shoulders as water slipped around her ears.
After a painstakingly long moment, a familiar scarlet mane emerged from the depths, gasping for air and struggling to tread the water.
"Panthro's gone…" he said.
Hopelessness began to set in quickly as they grappled with the grate, desperately clawing at it, pulling and pushing on it to try and get it to budge. Leppria coughed when an inhale filled her mouth with water, the twins letting out whimpered meows as their energy was quickly running out.
The water rose higher, nearly covering them entirely as the Thundercats began to realize they were going to drown.
"Hang on!"
Panthro's voice broke through the roar of the water, and as if he'd been sent by the Great Sky Cat himself, the grate lifted.
"Panthro!" Kat cheered tiredly, "You're alive!"
Sucking in all the air she could get, Leppria accepted Lion-O's hand as he pulled her out of the water, her legs shaking as she wrung her ponytail. Beside her, Kit and Kat vigorously shook their bodies free of water, their fur puffing as they did.
"I guess not being able to swim has its advantages." Panthro explained, flicking water from his arms casually as if he hadn't almost sunk like a rock.
Taking a few moments to rest and catch their breath, the cats shuffled back to their feet and found another door, this one open wide as it beckoned them forward.
What they found looked to be the crumbling ruins of another chamber. Every corner of the vast room was covered in sand, crumbling pillars and cracked walls with another door just beyond the untouched dunes. By all accounts, the room was falling apart, the entrance broken and partly swallowed by sand.
It was a simple path forward.
Then again, the previous rooms had seemed like simple paths forward too.
Leppria grabbed Lion-O's shoulder when he took a step forward, stopping him from laying even one paw on the sand.
"Hold up!" she hissed. "Every part of this temple has tried to kill us since we got here, there's no way we're just waltzing across."
He made a face like he was going to argue, but Cheetara's hand on his arm silenced him. "She's right," she said, "Any step we take could activate another trap, we have to proceed with caution."
"How are we supposed to get across if we can't see the correct path?" Tygra growled as he scanned the ceiling, searching for a way to perhaps cross over without touching the ground. Alas there was nothing.
Leppria stared at the sand, fingers tapping against her thigh as she ran through possible crossings in her head. Each room they'd passed through had been rigged, yet each trap contained a puzzle that could be solved. The first room contained no correct key, yet the lock could be picked. The pressure plates on the floor couldn't be avoided but the blades in the walls could if you were fast enough, and the third room flooded but had an easily accessible exit through the fountain.
None of the challenges had been impossible to solve, they only needed to be looked at a certain way…
You needed to use what your eyes could not see.
"What your eyes can't see…" she muttered, rubbing a lock of her hair between her thumb and finger. She suddenly gasped, standing up straight and reaching into her pocket for the glass lens and wires she'd been tinkering with all morning.
The others watched her as she grabbed her smallest screwdriver, the one Kit and Kat had used to pick the lock, and vigorously began attaching coppers threads together over the lens.
Lion-O leaned closer to her, his head peeking over her shoulder. "What are you…?"
"Shhh!" she hushed, startling him. He furrowed his brow but did not interrupt her again.
Using tweezers, Leppria placed a fleck of Thundrilium in the device, and the clear lens turned and opaque green. The wires glowed a faint purple as the device powered up and she fitted it behind her ear, the lens falling perfectly over her eye.
It beeped twice and blinked to life, and Leppria cheered loudly as it showed her exactly what their eyes could not see.
"Yes!" she roared, pumping her fists.
"What?!" Tygra barked, just as confused as everyone else.
The spotted girl gave the prince a thumbs-up, still smiling as she turned back to the sand-covered room. Through the lens, she could quite literally see what her eyes normally could not. It turned out there was no floor beneath the sand and it was a trap just as they'd thought, and the incorrect step across the sand would result in them being swallowed whole.
Luckily, there was a safe path across, and Leppria could now see it clearly. Icons blinked across her vision as the device showed her where to step, highlighting the safest route in bright green.
The leopard waved to her comrades, "Follow my footsteps, exactly where I step and nowhere else."
They all nodded, and with a deep breath she stepped forward. Her foot touched the sand, and when nothing happened she breathed a sigh of relief and continued on, stepping only where her device told her to, the other cats following identically behind her.
Step by step they made it closer to the door, until Leppria reached the center of the room and heard the sound of the stone ceiling cracking above her. The group turned their heads up, stomachs dropping as a chunk of the ceiling broke off and fell towards the floor. If it touched the sand there was no telling what would happen!
Leaning over as much as he could, Lion-O threw his arm out, catching the stone before it touched the ground. He wobbled and shook on his feet but quickly regained his balance, settling once again within Leppria's footsteps. Turning his gaze to the spotted girl, he smiled triumphantly, everyone letting out the breaths they'd been holding.
Then another stone fell, smaller than a pebble, and bounced off the rock in Lion-O's hand onto the sand below.
As soon as it touched the surface the pebble was swallowed by the sand as began to sink, rapidly consuming the entire room.
Leppria swallowed, turning to the others, "Run!"
The floor gave out as they ran, the stone path previously invisible beneath their feet crumbling and breaking apart while they made a break for the door. Leppria reached out her arm, nearly brushing the steps to the next room with her claws, only for the ground to disappear beneath her.
With a high-pitched scream she fell downwards, slipping away among the cascading waterfall of sand.
"Leppria!" Lion-O cried, diving after her as the river of sand carried them further down.
The others stopped, trying to reach them, but the ground swallowed them as well, washing them out like debris after a flood. Lion-O quickly caught up to Leppria, grabbing her hand tight before she disappeared under the sand again and pulling her up beside him.
Digging his feet in and trying to slow down, the king quickly spotted light coming through the flurry, tracing it to a platform connected to a door in the wall.
It rested beyond where the sand dropped off into a dark chasm. They'd have to jump to make it there.
"We have to jump!" he shouted, hoping the others heard him. His feet let go and he slid towards the edge faster, gripping Leppria's hand and watching the fear in her emerald eyes quickly shift to manic determination. "Now!"
He planted his feet and jumped, sands scraping the pads of his paws as he free-fell, dropping onto the platform and rolling out with a grunt. Lion-O rose to his feet only for Leppria's full weight to drop onto him from above, the two landing on top of one another in a heap.
Kissing the floor, the lion saw the others land on the platform, Panthro carrying the kittens and Snarf on his back. Leppria groaned from atop him, pushing herself up and practically leaping away from the king when she noticed their position.
He really needed to stop running into the leopard like this, it was starting to get embarrassing.
"Guess you were right about the traps after all," he mused, climbing back to his feet.
Shaking sand from her mane, Leppria smirked, pocketing her new device. "I just didn't look too hard in one direction… don't want to miss what's right in front of me after all."
Lion-O nodded and turned to the door, the corridor it was connected to leading out to the sunlight outside. "Who wants to bet that leads to the temple?"
Not wasting another moment, they ran down the hallway, their bones heavy and their fur soaked and covered in sand and sweat, but they pushed on until they stood in the light of the sun again.
They had to blink their eyes to adjust to the light, but once they could see clearly, the light in their hearts was quickly squashed.
There was no grand tower standing before them, just the ever expanding wall of jungle.
They'd come so far just to be met with another trick.
The Temple of Omens was not there, if it ever truly had been.
The sand trap was inspired by a similar trap in the movie Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, I also wanted to call back the trinketLeppria was fiddling with last chapter, as well as her abilities with tech. I wanted to reiterate that Leppria believes in science rather than magic, so she relies on logic and her own abilities to solve problems. Also each of the traps in the episode were solved using each member of the group's particular skills, such as the kittens' lock-picking, Cheetara's speed, and Panthro's strength, which is why this trap was solved with Leppria's brain. Stay tuned as next chapter Mumm-Ra will enter the fray, and Leppria will see real magic in action. Ciao!