Chapter 3
Ronon, Teyla, and John all looked at each other, eyebrows raised. "No? No one? Hm. Why am I not surprised? Well, may I suggest we leave this room and try a different one before someone gets--Oh crap." Rodney put his head down. "What is it?" Teyla asked. Rodney shook his head. "The door we came in, it's gone," he said agitated, pointing behind them. He buried his face in his hands. "I hate this place."
The others turned around and saw the wall had somehow closed up behind them. John took a deep breath and looked at Teyla, trying to smile. "Ok, well I guess we have no choice then but to figure out this puzzle. I'm sure one of us here is intelligent enough." He looked at the others.
Rodney lifted his head. "Yeah, well I certainly wouldn't place that hope into any of you three." Ronon started towards him, but Teyla placed a firm hand on his arm. Rodney flinched and continued. "I think it's pretty obvious here people it's going to have to be me! I don't know what you three actually do for a living, but I don't think MENSA is knocking down any of your doors." Ronon and Teyla looked at him with blank expressions. John cleared his throat and said, "Well then brainiac, why don't you just get to work then?"
Rodney turned and examined the tablets carefully, making sure not to touch any of them. The others came over and peered over his shoulder. Rodney murmured to himself for awhile and appeared to be making notations to himself, using his fingers to write in the air. An hour or so passed and while he continued this, the others had sat down together, backs against the wall, remaining far away from the tablets. "Are you ok?" John asked Teyla hesitantly. She smiled and nodded." Yes, thank you." She paused for a moment. "Do you think Twitchy will able to solve the puzzle?" John smirked. "Well, he seems pretty confident, so yeah, I'm sure we'll be fine." Teyla looked down, her eyes thoughtful. John kept going, seeing her furrowed brow. "We'll get our memories back soon. Don't worry." His voice was soft and caring. She looked up at his hazel eyes and felt a shiver as they seemed to burn right through her.
"I've got it!" Rodney yelled. They all stood quickly and hustled over to him. "Ok, see the big picture here makes a sort of symbolic circle. The only difficulty was trying to figure out which symbol went where in the ring. I'm pretty sure I've deciphered the text correctly. Now all we need is for one of you to uh…try it out," he said carefully not looking any of them in the eye. Ronon raised an eyebrow. "Pretty sure?" Rodney looked at him defensively. "Well, I'd like to see you give it a try!" John stopped the argument then and there.
"Shut up both of you! I'll try it. Show me which order to press them in and then all of you step back." Rodney gratefully showed him the sequence while Teyla and Ronon walked back to their position against the wall. Teyla looked up at Ronon. "He is very brave, is he not?" Ronon looked at her after a moment. "Yeah, let's hope he doesn't get an arrow through his face."
They both returned their gaze towards the others. Rodney had finished telling John the sequence and stepped back to join Teyla and Ronon. John took a deep breath and looked back at them before he said, "Ok here goes. You'd better be right about this or I'm gonna be really pissed off!." And he closed his eyes and stepped on the first tablet with full force.
A hidden door began to rise from the ground across the room. Rodney leapt in excitement. "It's working!" he exclaimed. John opened his eyes and smiled proudly. "I always knew you could do it, Twitchy," he said breathlessly as he finished the sequence without a hitch. They all happily made their way through the fully raised doorway with Ronon even slapping a congratulatory hand on Sheppards shoulder.
They entered the next room which was much darker than the last. Only four or five torches barely made the scope of the room visible. There was a long thin beam leading across the room and no other means of crossing, as it was surrounded on either side by endless black pits.
Rodney's face went from prideful joy to utter horror. "There's no way I am crossing that! I can barely walk in a straight line as it is!" he cried. They all looked at each other, worried, when they heard a deep creaking from behind the walls of the room. Suddenly, ten extremely large swinging axes came flying out of the wall and began criss-crossing over different parts of the beam, each at different intervals in the form of a deadly gauntlet.