Charmed -:- Labyrinth

Author's Note(s):

Thank you very much to Guest and CharmedOpal for reviewing the first chapter, I'm glad you're liking it so far and that I'm not the only one who loves a smartass :P And also to the second Guest review; this is in the same universe as my other Charmed fic and Chris can't self-heal in that one either. For me I love Chris as the underdog who even though he isn't as overtly powerful as Wyatt, he could still match him purely because he uses the powers he does have smarter - I'm not personally a big fan of super-powerful Chris, which is why I like to keep him simple lol But that's just me.

Anyway - we are back with a next day update, purely because I wrote half of this on my lunch break at work. I can't guarantee a repeat tomorrow, but this fic is proving to be very easy to write so it shouldn't be too difficult to keep up a good pace... fingers crossed!

I've rambled enough now - Enjoy!

Chapter Two
-:-
No Exit

"Ow."

Wiser words had never been spoken.

As he blinked away the last of the haze brought on by the bright flash of light, Chris rubbed absently at the nice bruise that would soon be forming on his elbow after his rather undignified landing on the floor. "That was graceful."

He glanced around him as he pushed himself up and onto his knees, disorientated to find just how much things had changed in a few seconds. Whereas before they had been standing on wooden floorboards, as the earth had shook they had somehow managed to land on an unforgiving sandstone floor. The artefacts had all vanished too, leaving them in an empty 8x8 room lit purely by an antique brazier that hung precariously above them.

Well, it was almost empty.

"Wo-agh!" Caleb exclaimed intelligently as he pulled himself upright and came face-to-face with one of the room's occupants. The sightless eye sockets of a human skull gazed back, its jaw dangling open in an eternal scream. "What the hell?!"

"It's a skeleton," Ashleigh answered helpfully as she lifted one of the bony hands and made it wave cheerfully at the half-demon.

"I can see that!" Caleb retorted, attempting to salvage some of his manhood. And then he took a look around their new home and the several other long-dead inmates. "Oh god. There's more of them."

"Is everyone alright?" Wyatt asked, tactfully steering the conversation away from the skeletons. He rubbed at a cut on his hand that was taking its sweet time to heal. "Anyone hurt?"

Chris shook his head when Wyatt looked at him as he was assessing everyone's general health, and then pulled himself to his feet and took a closer look at their surroundings. He carelessly brushed the dust from his clothes, but then paused and looked from his hands to the floor, the strange powder catching his curiosity.

"I was fine until genius here proved that he was illiterate!" Kirk grumbled gesturing at James, who was at least able to look slightly contrite for a whole millisecond before he jumped on the defensive.

"How was I supposed to know that this would happen, huh?" he countered back using his considerable height to overshadow Kirk.

Chris ignored them as they inevitably spiralled into an argument, his eyes on the floor. The powder blanketed the sandstone, barely half and inch thick in most places, but it had built up into metre high drifts against one wall – the one wall where the majority of the skeletons had accumulated. The powder was the wrong consistency to be sand, and Chris had the sneaking suspicion that it might be something a bit more… organic.

"Will the pair of you please shut up!" Ashleigh snapped, drawing Chris's attention back to the others. "Can we just get out of here please?"

She then looked pointedly at Wyatt who had stayed eerily quiet during the fight when usually he would have been the one to intercede. He stared down at the cut on his hand that still hadn't healed, an odd expression on his face that was not in the slightest bit comforting. "I don't want to alarm anyone," he said carefully. "But my powers aren't working."

"Huh?" James grunted.

"What do you mean your powers aren't working?" Kirk asked, exaggerating the 'your' in reference to Wyatt's almighty Twice-Blessed-ness.

"I mean: my powers aren't working," Wyatt replied slowly as if speaking to a kindergartner. "I can't orb."

Though he already suspected the likely result, Chris decided to give his own powers a try. As predicted, nothing happened. "I can't either."

"What?!" James hissed, ever-so-slightly panicked. He then closed his eyes and tried to astral project, straining again and again until he went red in the face. The others began testing their own powers as well; Kirk attempting to levitate, Caleb trying to shimmer and Ashleigh clicking her fingers repeatedly to try and ignite her pyrokinesis.

"Oh shit," Kirk muttered after nearly a whole five minutes had passed without a single spark of magic. "Our powers aren't working."

Ashleigh rolled her eyes. "Thank you, Captain Obvious."

Kirk just glared at her in reply. Caleb meanwhile had discovered that at least some things were still the same. He stuck out his tongue and caught it between finger and thumb, and then stretched it out far enough that it could see that the end was still as forked as ever. He sighed awkwardly around his tongue "Ma ung's 'ill 'eeky."

"Wonderful," James deadpanned. "And that helps us, how?"

Caleb let his tongue go with an audible snap and shrugged.

"Now what do we do?" Hayden asked quietly. Expectant gazes all turned on Wyatt who shifted uncomfortably. He then took a deep breath and Chris could see his brother putting on his confident mask. It was unfair how they had all turned to him, right then Wyatt was just as human as the rest of them, but right of the bat everyone had already put their faith in him. For once Chris was incredibly not-jealous of his famous, all-powerful older sibling.

"Right," Wyatt began, just to break the silence. "Let's start by finding a way out of here, shall we?"

It was then that everyone seemed to realise that they were in a stone box with no doors and only a flock of skeletons for company. The walls were made of large slabs of rock and rose up about seven ft. tall on all sides. It felt uncomfortably like a pen.

Chris headed towards the side of the room that was home to the skeletons, figuring that maybe the drifts were relevant somehow; there wasn't any obvious explanation for it after all. His gaze was drawn to the wall that was covered in haphazard scratches. He brushed some of the dust off, realising that the scratches were actually words – the same phrase written over and over again in several languages.

Omnilingualism was one of the few Whitelighter gifts he had inherited that Wyatt had not, and even though his powers weren't actually working at that particular moment Chris had always had a gift for languages. As he uncovered more of the rudimentary etchings he recognised some Latin, Japanese, Greek, French, Russian and even some Mandarin; all saying the same thing:

NO EXIT.

"Well," Hayden said after a few minutes, pointing up with a 'duh' expression on her face. "There's no roof."

Kirk followed her hand, saw the open gap and grinned broadly at her. He then hugged her briefly but warmly, turning back to study their chance of freedom before he could see her cheeks flush red from the contact.

Above them two thick wooden beams crossed, cutting what would have been the ceiling into quarters. From the centre hung the crude chandelier, its ring of candles occasionally dripping wax on the floor. Beyond that there was nothing but darkness, as if it were night time wherever they were, but the stars had all vanished. It wasn't exactly inviting.

Well that doesn't make any sense, Chris thought to himself, squinting back at the scratched words. Why write 'no exit' when there blatantly is one?

"Right," Wyatt nodded, assessing the best way to go about reaching the top. "Jay, give me a leg up."

"Okay," James agreed, coming to kneel at the base of the wall where the beam intersected above. Wyatt then used him as a step so that he could just about reach the top, straining just a little to pull himself all the way up. "What do you see?"

Wyatt was surprised to find that there wasn't a sharp drop on the other side of the wall. Instead he found himself crouching in bed of tall grass. That's all there was, as far as the eye could see. Aside from their little square hole in the middle, there was nothing but an endless field. Where the hell were they?

"Well? What's up there?" Ashleigh called impatiently.

"Uh…" Wyatt didn't really know how to answer. "Not a whole lot really."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kirk asked incredulously, his foot tapping impatiently.

While Wyatt investigated the outside, Chris kept focusing on the wall, trying to figure out what he was missing. In the middle of the scratches there was a long rectangle carved into the wall full of smaller squares, each individually carved with repeating symbols. The more Chris studied it, the more it was beginning to look like a combination lock. But why?

James, who had stood up once Wyatt had climbed up, knelt back down again and gestured at the others. "Who's next?"

Kirk shrugged and stepped forward to volunteer, but Chris gestured at them to wait, knowing that something wasn't right. "I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Why?" James asked. "We want out, so let's get out, right?"

For the first time that day, he and Kirk were in agreement. The smaller teen stepped up on James's knee and took the hand that Wyatt offered him.

Chris's eyes flickered from the wall down to the skeletons around him. He then noted how most of them were not whole. In fact, a few of them appeared to only actually be half of a human skeleton. Chris looked up to the ceiling, and then back down again, a theory clicking in his mind that he didn't like. Before he could voice it however, everything went horribly wrong.

They were thrown into darkness as the chandelier disappeared, along with the two beams that were holding it up. The only light came from the odd glow of the night sky way above them. The sudden loss of light was enough to set Kirk of balance, his grip on Wyatt's hand slipping and sending him plummeting to the floor.

"Ow!" he yelped as he landed on James and sent them both sprawling.

Like a total eclipse, a huge shadow then began to move across the sky, as if someone was sliding a lid closed on a box. Abruptly, Chris realised that was exactly what was happening – and his brother was on the outside.

"Wy! Come down!" he yelled above the sound of scraping stone. Thankfully, Wyatt decided not to argue and dropped down just as the ceiling cut off the last of the outside world. Chris breathed a small sigh of relief - getting split up here was not an option - and then he reached into his rucksack and pulled out his phone. The screen cast them all in an eerie glow, but it was better than the darkness.

"Now what?" James demanded. Ashleigh and Caleb pulled out their cell phones as well, just about illuminating the small space.

"We'll think of something," Wyatt said with far more confidence than he felt. He then turned to Chris with question in his eyes. It was pretty common knowledge that of the two brothers he was the brain to Wyatt's brawn, and right then it was intelligence that they needed. Chris turned back to the wall, glaring at the square carvings as if they would somehow surrender the answer if put under intense scrutiny.

"That's just great! We are stuck in a stone box in the middle of freaking nowhere and our only chance of escape just vanished!" Kirk ranted, his face growing pale in the glow of the cell phones.

"Uh guys…" Caleb muttered.

Kirk ignored him. "And air! We're going to run out of air! Suffocate on our own poisonous breath and slowly asphyxiate and die!"

"Guys…"

"Kirk, are you claustrophobic by any chance?" Ashleigh asked.

Kirk shook his head vehemently. "What? No! I just think the fact that we are all going to die horribly is a pretty acceptable thing to get worked up about!"

"Guys!" Caleb shouted, surprising even himself as six pairs of startled eyes all turned on him at once. "Is it just me, or is this place getting smaller?"

Hayden turned on the spot to find that she was right next to the wall that had been a few metres away just a little while ago. "Oh god. He's right!"

"WHAT?!" Kirk almost shrieked, beginning to hyperventilate. Hayden was by his side in an instant, trying to sound reassuring even though she herself was shaking as the walls closed in on them.

"I thought you weren't claustrophobic," Ashleigh pointed out, smirking at the panicking teen despite the situation.

Staring at the symbols etched in the stones, Chris finally recognised them as Ancient Greek – though in his defence, it wasn't exactly a language he was well versed in. Starting at the left hand side, Chris pushed at the first column, relieved to find that it did indeed move like a dial on a combination lock. He kept turning it, listening to the quiet ticking underneath the sound of grinding stone and heavy panicked breaths.

A louder thunk sounded as he reached the symbol: γʹ

"Chris…" Wyatt muttered motivationally. "Now would be a good time for you to prove that you're a genius, don't you think?"

Chris took a deep breath and replied through clenched teeth "Working on it…"

The 8x8 room had quickly become a 3x3 cell, the seven of them crowding together in what little space was left. "Work a little faster…"

Chris blocked them all out, quite a task considering the space was getting so small that they had no choice but to invade his personal space. He didn't have time to crack the rest of the combination the same way – he still had six more symbols to figure out! No, he would have to make a guess, and it would have to be a good one.

γʹ - gamma… three…?

Could it be that simple?

There was no more time to second guess. He could feel Ashleigh pressed against his back as the space shrunk even smaller. The skeletons crumbled as stone mercilessly crushed them; their disintegrated bones adding to the mass of dust.

Chris spun the other dials as quickly as he could, every successful 'thunk' making his confidence grow.

αʹ δʹ αʹ εʹ θʹ βʹ

As the last symbol clicked into place the wall made an ominous rumbling noise. Too slowly for his liking it gradually began to rise, a golden light shining through the growing opening.

Not able to wait any longer, Kirk dropped and rolled through the small gap, taking a deep breath as he discovered the other side wasn't a shrinking closet of death. At least, not yet that is. The others quickly followed suit until all of them were safely on the other side. Not that it appeared to be much better though.

"Phew," Kirk murmured as he leaned heavily against the wall and closed his eyes. "That was way too close."

"You weren't worried at all, were you?" Ashleigh jibed with a friendly half-smile. Kirk grinned sheepishly at her, silently apologizing for his psychotic break before. She then turned to Chris who was putting his phone back in his bag. "How did you do that?"

Chris shrugged self-consciously. "I kinda… guessed."

"That's comforting," James muttered under his breath.

"It was a combination, right?" Ashleigh persisted, clearly impressed. "How did you figure it out?"

"Um…" Chris hesitated, not entirely sure if he should admit the truth. Then he decided to just go for it – he did just save all of their lives after all. He looked to Wyatt. "I got it from that film Mel made us watch the other night – the one with monkey and the guy with a lisp."

Wyatt furrowed his brow "You mean 'Night at the Museum'?"

"Seriously?" Ashleigh asked with a grin.

"Yeah," Chris admitted. "The combination in the film was pi, and once I figured out that the first number was three, I kinda just went with it."

Ashleigh lightly punched him on the arm. "Nice."

"Okay, this is all very wonderful," James interrupted. "Thanks for not guessing wrong and all that. But has nobody else noticed that we're not exactly home free yet?"

Chris had to admit that James was right; even though the jock had just ended the only non-sarcastic conversation he had ever had with Ashleigh. Ever. They were still stuck god knew where, with no idea as to why or how they were supposed to get back home. Now they were in an endless sandstone corridor that was lit intermittently by the torch braziers on the walls.

They definitely weren't in California anymore.

"We can't go back," Wyatt gestured at the wall that had closed behind them, shutting off that exit. He then pointed the other way. "So I guess we're going that way."

"And then what?" Kirk asked tiredly. "How do we know that that leads to an exit?"

"We don't," Wyatt replied coolly. "But I don't see any other options, do you?"

Kirk sighed resignedly and shook his head. Wyatt took this as his cue to lead their merry little troupe on their quest deeper into the catacombs, silently hoping that the only way was also the right way. Kirk tagged on to the end and muttered under his breath

"Worst. Field trip. Ever."

Yay! They survived the first challenge! Smart little Chris figured it out just as we knew he would :P Little do they know that I have so many more fun things in store for them – mwahahaha!

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