Chapter 7 - Sand, Mirrors, and Jellyfish
Author's note: Hi readers! I'm terribly sorry that I haven't updated any of my stories for over three months. I finally got around to updating this one, and I will respond to your reviews!
Guest, I promise Knuckles will have more dialogue sooner or later.
Avimo, I will try to get around to my older stories eventually. Now, on with the story!
I, along with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, felt scorching hot sand underfoot. "This is rather strangeā¦" I muttered, biting my lower lip as I looked around. We were standing in what appeared to be a vast, seemingly endless desert, surrounded with nothing but golden sand and sweeping dunes as far as I could see. The dune at the far end, however, was as tall as a mountain. Heck, it probably was indeed a mountain.
"Tell me about it," Knuckles replied, crossing his arms. "WHOA!"
The whole desert somehow lurched beneath us, causing me to lose my footing, and the wind began to blow sand particles all around me. I swayed, flailing my arms in an attempt to balance myself, but to no avail. I fell onto my back, rolling over the now knee-deep sand before I finally got back onto my feet. Sonic barely managed to stay up, and Tails quickly gave him a lift to safety. Knuckles firmly stood his own ground, even as we were pelted by the sand and howling wind. He gave me a hand up, letting me steady myself. The grains stuck to my hands and legs, and I wiped some off.
There was no door or ending in sight, just the sun's rays and an especially tall mountain of sand, almost beckoning to me across the desert.
I coughed as I accidentally inhaled a few sand particles. "It's hot in here," I moaned. "Let's go."
"I'm coming!" Tails said, swooping down towards me. I grabbed his hands, and he lifted me into the air.
Unfortunately, the sand seemed to be hungry for humans, hedgehogs, foxes, and echidnas today. The wind picked up and tossed a great cloud of sand into the air right towards us, as if the desert was alive. Even as Sonic sprinted towards the mountain of sand at the far end, the wind screamed towards him, sending sand particles flying at supersonic speed and nullifying his journey to safety.
"Let's just get out of here," I suggested. There was still a long way to go across this horrible, horrible wasteland. My lips were as dry as the air, and I longed to go back to the garden where I was able to rest, drink water, and eat delicious meals. Beads of sweat dripped down my forehead, neck, and back. The desert seemed to be getting even hotter, and we still had so far to go, even with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles at my side.
The whole area heaved as if we were in an earthquake. We all flew into the air as the wind kept howling around us. Hot sand catapulted itself at our bodies. I pulled up my shirt around my face to protect my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The sand cut at my exposed skin like millions of tiny daggers. Before long, gravity took over and I fell to the ground, grateful for a moment that the sand provided some kind of cushion. Still hard and painful, but better than concrete. Unlike concrete, unfortunately, the sand dune nearest to me was advancing very quickly, and it was starting to bury me alive, quickly making its way up my legs.
When it became apparent that the wind would not die down, Sonic and Knuckles came together with a plan.
"Tails!" Sonic called out, "we all have to stay low so that the wind won't blow us away. Knuckles and I will carve a way through the sand and hopefully the wind won't sweep us away anymore."
"I can do that," Tails said. "Just because I can fly doesn't mean that I'm always flying 24/7!"
"Guys, HEEELP!" I screamed as the sand dune continued to bury me. Before long, it had reached my chest and was well on its way to blanketing my shoulders. I could not move whatsoever. I was terrified that the sand would get through my mouth and nose to enter my lungs, choking me to a horrible, horrible death.
Knuckles relentlessly shoveled his way through the sandstorm with his powerful fists, and once he reached me, he cleared away as much sand as he could around me, and he pulled me out, much to my relief.
"You okay, kid?" the echidna asked.
"Shaken and stirred," I said breathily, while still trying to avoid all the flying sand particles that raged around the area. I frantically tore at myself, trying to get as much sand out of my clothes as possible, even as more grains continued to batter me.
Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles grabbed me and dragged me across the sand, much to my dismay as my pants started to be torn apart from the abrasion. Finally, we saw a door with a golden handle. We had reached the end!
I reached out to grab onto the door handle, but the whole desert lurched again, causing the three of us to tumble hundreds of feet, all the way back to where we had started. Or so I thought. But really, how could we know? It's easy to get lost in the midst of a raging sandstorm.
Sweating more profusely than ever, we all crawled as low to the ground as we could, fighting the storm's raging winds. It turned out that the door was actually much closer than I thought, but the door seemed to move farther away as we tried to get closer.
The door handle was so close that I was able to reach out my hand and touch it, and I hoped that the desert would not decide to put us in the middle of another earthquake or gust of wind. My teammates grabbed onto the handle as well, and with four hands on the door now, we unlatched the door. The door clicked open, revealing an inky black void.
The floor sloped forward. We all tumbled over each other through the doorway. The door slammed loudly behind us. The howling winds were finally gone.
"Whew!" Tails uttered as we all dusted ourselves off. "That sure was wild."
"I'm not sure about you, but I'm hungry for dessert," I said. "Dessert, not desert. No more deserts. Please."
"I found the next key, everyone," Sonic called out from a fair distance away. The area lit up with flaming torches, revealing the inside of what appeared to be an Egyptian tomb. He took the key in his hand.
"This is the Metropolis Key," the same voice as always announced. "The door has been unlocked."
"Metropolis, huh," Sonic said, crossing his arms. "We've got plenty of those where I come from."
"Me too!" I exclaimed. I watched as Sonic approached the door at the far end of the room and turned the key.
WELCOME TO THE METROPOLIS! a gigantic neon sign announced with glowing pink letters as we set foot in the aptly-named Metropolis. Indeed, this place was a full-fledged city, with towering skyscrapers, neon signs, traffic consisting of cars, trucks, vans, and buses, and even some restaurants and shops.
If my clothes weren't so tattered, I would have been looking around this place with wonder and awe. Since my clothes were tattered, however, I darted into the nearest clothing store. Everything was free, so I was able to pick out some new clothes, including underwear and socks, went into the fitting room to change, and threw all of my old clothes into the garbage. I breathed a sigh of relief now that I was dressed in comfortable clothes again.
Next, we located an ice cream parlor, and we each had a hot fudge sundae for dessert. I savored every single spoonful of chocolatey, fudgey goodness, and then we continued to wander around the street. Suddenly, the ground shook, and an enormous, purple mechanical caterpillar slithered towards us! Its body consisted of eleven segments, and the head boasted two green antennae that pointed straight upwards. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles just went to town on that thing and destroyed it in mere seconds.
"Piece of cake! Too easy!" Sonic boasted.
"Just like the Badniks back home," Tails added, "but bigger!"
Suddenly, a spotlight shone on a pair of doors across the street, at the base of a tall skyscraper. As we got closer, a key shimmered into existence, and I grabbed it.
"This is the Maze Key. The door has been unlocked."
I frowned in confusion. "Uhhh, aren't we in a maze right now?"
Tails cocked his head sideways. "Never heard of a puzzle within a puzzle?"
"He's right," Sonic said with his trademark grin. "Let's blast through it with Sonic speed!"
"Okay!" Tails smiled.
"Alright!" Knuckles said, punching the air with his fists. "Let's go!"
"Ooh, I haven't been inside one of these in ages!" I grinned as I looked at my surroundings. Thousands of mirror images of myself, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles surrounded me in all directions, and I realized that we were inside a mirror maze, much like the Hall of Mirrors attractions you can find at many amusement parks. I walked the entire length of the hallway, and once I found an opening, I entered through it, only to be further disoriented by all the reflections. What was worse, I found out that each time I tried to backtrack, new mirrors would spring up, so the path through the maze was constantly changing. After several minutes of turning left, right, backwards, forwards, this way, that way, bumping into mirrors and finding clear paths only for them to change once again, I quickly began to grow frustrated. I untied my right shoe and threw it at the nearest mirror as hard as I could, and my ears were filled with the cacophony of glass shattering. Suddenly, I remembered who was in my group.
"KNUCKLES!" I shouted as loudly as I could, hoping that he would hear me. "Use your punches to break the mirrors!"
"I've got a better plan!" was the echidna's reply. "I'll do a ground punch! Hiyah!"
The entire room shook, and all I could hear was the earsplitting sound of glass shattering in all directions. All of the mirrors were destroyed, and Tails safely carried me above the razor-sharp shards of broken glass. At the far end of the room, Sonic stood with Knuckles, who was holding the key. Behind them was a tall mirrored door that was studded with all sorts of jewels.
"This is the Crystal Key," the voice announced. "The door has been unlocked."
"Ooh, crystals!" I said, rubbing my hands together with excitement. "This should be interesting."
This next area was unlike anything I'd ever seen before, even though I could say that about virtually every other room I had experienced so far.
We were standing at the foot of a long "bridge" of stone that was floating in the air. An eerie, glowing blue-green liquid below us cast light onto craggy purple cave walls. Colossal stalactites seemed to hang from the roof of the cave, while stalagmites pointed upwards from beneath the eerie liquid. In addition to stalactites and stalagmites, there were glowing pink, blue, and purple crystals all around that further lit up the room. Small groups of glowing near-transparent jellyfish drifted all around, and lastly, along the "bridge", there were tons of enormous mushrooms that came in every color imaginable.
Of course, Sonic just sprinted towards the other side at the speed of sound. Tails gave me and Knuckles a lift to fly us across the cave so we could catch up with Sonic, but as soon as we reached him, a massive stalactite broke away from the roof and smashed right through the path in front of us, and the ground on the opposite side of the newly-formed chasm began to crumble as well! A weird flash of what looked like lightning illuminated the cave for a moment, and then there was total silence.
"I'm sure we could just fly over the void to the other side, right?" I asked Tails. The fox grabbed onto Sonic and Knuckles and tried to fly upwards, but he wasn't able to move a single inch in the air.
"Whatever happened a few seconds ago somehow rendered me unable to fly!" Tails cried out. "I guess we're stuck here for the time being."
"No, we're not!" Sonic interjected. He pointed at a group of jellyfish who were floating towards us, and they stopped right at the edge of the broken bridge. One of them extended a tentacle and waved it slightly, as if beckoning us to come closer.
"Uh uh," I said loudly, crossing my arms. "You know jellyfish can kill you, right?"
"Not these jellyfish," Knuckles noted. "I can feel some sort of radiance emanating from them. It's almost like what I get from the Master Emerald!"
"Well, the tops of jellyfish do not sting," Sonic said, "so maybe they could help us get across. One way to find out!"
I felt myself floating in the air ever so slightly as I neared the creatures, and an invisible cushion of sorts allowed me to stay in place on top of one of the jellyfish.
"It's nice and comfy here!" I reassured Sonic and his friends, and they took their own "seats" on top of this group of jellyfish. The jellyfish safely whisked us across the cave, and they did seem to radiate some kind of healing energy that rejuvenated me from the inside out. Before long, the jellyfish set us down at a small platform at the far end of the cave, where the next key floated in midair. There was a purple door nearby, and of course it was locked.
"This is the Cartoon Key," the voice announced as usual. It was starting to get quite annoying. "The door has been unlocked." Without further ado, I used the key to open the door, and we walked inside the next area.
Author's note: I hope you enjoyed this chapter! As always, feel free to review, and stay tuned for more! :D
