Chapter 27-Mikey The Brave
Mikey's side…
"Aaaahhhh!" Mikey let out a girlish scream as he ran whilst being chased by some of the infected worshippers.
He then saw a door further down the corridor ahead of him, which he entered through it and closed it from behind him before locking it with a long bar. Shortly after doing that and placing his back against the door, the enemies who were chasing him banged on the door repeatedly to try and break it down.
Mikey instantly started to feel scared again as he heart raced like a speeding train, but then he remembered his brothers' words of encouragement from earlier and began to take a moment to ease his fears and anxiety through slow breathing.
"I won't run…Not anymore…" Mikey said firmly to himself.
"Wait for me, bros…I'm coming…!" He then told his brothers thoughtfully before he got off the door and started to have a look around the room he had hidden in.
It looked like a cross between a study and storage room, and it was there that he had noticed a gentle glow coming from the other side of a tall book cabinet. When he walked around the cabinet, Mikey spotted an antique-looking lantern shining a blue light on a stone pillar.
"Ok, I've got some light…That's good…" Mikey breathed in relief as he picked up the lantern since he was not a fan of being in the dark too much.
Shortly after taking the lantern, a door suddenly opened next to the pillar. Mikey walked through the door and entered a room with similar items in it before walked down the corridor with walls full of taxidermy animal heads. Before he reached the door, the deer head suddenly fell off the wall by itself, making Mikey jump in fright.
"Woah! Don't scare me like that…!" Mikey gasped before he caught his breath and continued on down the corridor until he reached and opened the door to the next room, where he spotted something up ahead.
"Is that a clock? It's broken, though…" He said curiously before he spotted a written piece of paper on the table next to the clock.
He picked up the note and read it inside of his mind:
'The resting forebears answer to the chosen time.'
'If it is the Lord's blessing you seek, have courage and fear no darkness.'
"Huh? What the shell does this mean?" Mikey questioned in confusion as he stared at the riddle with a raised eyebrow. The writing was also in Spanish, but Mikey understood it since he was able to learn a few words of the language during his captivity.
Knowing that standing around and thinking for a long time wouldn't get him anywhere faster, Mikey decided to move on to the next room. Once again, he was surrounded by books, meaning that it was another study room but bigger. He then noticed a gate-like door that he had soon discovered to lead into an elevator, but when he tried to open it, he saw that it was locked.
"Great…It's locked…Gotta find a key…" Mikey mumbled to himself before deciding to move on and find the key.
After walking through a maze made out of bookcases, Mikey found another stone pillar. He placed the lantern on top of it and watched as the bookcase on the left moved to the right, revealing a secret pathway. As he investigated, he saw a handle sticking out of the side next to one of the bookcases. He started turning it until something was lowered down on the other side ahead of him.
"A hidden staircase? It must lead up to a secret room or something…" Mikey thought aloud before he walked back towards the lantern, picked it up, and watched as the bookcase moved back to the left.
He hurried up the stairs and found himself above the library and facing a writing desk in front of him. It was then that he had spotted a set of keys on the desk, and they all had different designs on them.
"Keys…? These could be useful for something, I hope…Maybe one of them is for the elevator…?" Mikey said with a raised eyebrow as he placed them in his belt for safe keeping.
Just as he turned back around, however…
Clink! Clang! Clink! Clang!
The sound of clashing metal was suddenly heard from below the youngest turtle's feet.
"Err, what's that noise…?" He questioned aloud nervously.
He left the desk and cautiously walked back down the stairs, only to face a knight's suit of armour moving on its own with a parasitic creature partially exposed with its tentacles wiggling out of the helmet.
"No way…Are you kidding me!?" Mikey cried out before he made a run for it.
He had reached the locked elevator and took the keys out of his belt. He tried each key one at a time, but they weren't unlocking the door so far.
"Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man…Which one is it!?" Mikey hissed in a panic before he eventually found the right key, unlocked the door, and quickly entered the elevator. He pressed the button and watched as the doors took their time to close.
"Come on, come on…! Close…!" Mikey pleaded as anxiety and fear started to build up inside him, because he could hear and see the parasitic knights coming towards him.
"N-No! Stay back! I-I've got a lantern, and I'm not afraid to use it!" Mikey threatened the incoming knight as he held up the lantern whilst keeping himself from shaking in fear in order to stay brave.
The parasitic knight got closer to the elevator before the lantern's light touched it and made it freeze, allowing the elevator doors to close fully in time.
"Woah…this lantern must be magic or something!" Mikey thought aloud as he looked at the lantern with an excited smile before he felt the elevator slowly move upwards.
Just as it was almost at its destination, the elevator jolted to a halt below the door to the upper floor and its lights went out, leaving Mikey almost in the dark if not for the lantern.
"Oh, for shell's sake! What now!?" Mikey exclaimed in fright.
He took a moment to calm himself down before he walked over to the elevator doors and pulled them apart to open them. He then climbed up on the edge of the next floor where the elevator had stopped halfway and entered the room.
"Ok, where am I now?" Mikey wondered as he looked around the room until he saw a metal barred door and approached it.
"Bros!? Are you there!?" Mikey called out as he tried but failed to forcibly open the metal barred door.
"Mikey!" "Are you ok!?" He heard his older brothers respond on the other side.
"Yeah! Hang on, I'll find a way to get to you!" Mikey answered back before he had another look around the room. It was then that he saw a deep shield-shaped indentation on the left side of the wall.
"Huh? What's this slot for? Is it linked to the door somehow?" Mikey questioned whilst tilting his head.
When he looked to his right, Mikey spotted a notebook which contained notes from a librarian who used to work in the castle. The orange-banded turtle read through the notes, and he discovered that the slot was for inserting the Salazar's family insignia, but the only way to get it is to go to a place called the Underground Mausoleum where it is said to contain cursed armour.
"Oh, great…the thing I need to open the door had to be in a cursed place…Why can't it be somewhere that's friendly and has free pizza…!?" Mikey groaned in annoyance and fear before deciding to move on and find a way into the
He ventured more around the room and saw another clock that looked the same as the one in the first room. There was also more bookcases standing next to each other and forming another maze-like path. It wasn't until he had reached the end of the bookcases that he spotted another writing desk, and he had found a note that looked as if it was written in a hurry.
'11:04 Clock.' Was what the note said.
"I wonder…" Mikey said when he thought about the riddle he had found in the first room.
He approached the clock and turned the hands to match the time written on the paper. A moment later, the clock chimed and it moved to reveal a secret door!
"Yes! It worked!" Mikey cheered quietly before he remembered something. "I know I saw another clock like that somewhere…Maybe I should try it with that one too…!"
Sensing that there was a hidden secret in the first clock he had found earlier, Mikey hurried down the stairs to start making tracks back to the first room.
As he got closer to the bottom of the stairs, he saw a shadow approaching the first step and heard the familiar sound of a metal armoured suit clinking and clanging at the same time.
He screamed as soon as a parasitic knight appeared, and he immediately raised his lantern up to stop it in its tracks and prevent it from attacking him. He then ran past it and saw a turning handle up ahead.
"I-It's all good, just take it nice and slow…" He told himself shakily as he did his best to calm his fast-beating heart down whilst turning the handle to reveal another hidden passage.
By the time it had opened fully, Mikey could hear the parasitic knight moving again. He hurried into the next room and ran past the bookcases before ducking and crawling under a small space under one of them just before the creature caught up to him.
"Don't look back, don't look back…!" He told himself firmly as he continued running.
It didn't take long for Mikey to finally reach the first clock from earlier, and he immediately moved the hands in the same positions as the last one. As he predicted, the clock chimed before moving to the side to reveal another secret passageway.
This time, however, the staircase was leading downwards to a lower floor level. Nevertheless, Mikey hasted down the stairs until he had reach a room with another elevator in it. He pressed the button to call the elevator up.
"Come on, come on…!" He pleaded just before it reached the doors.
As the doors opened, the parasitic knight that was chasing him earlier had somehow caught up to him. Mikey quickly ran inside the elevator and pressed the button to close the doors, which weren't closing as fast as he wanted them to be.
"Come on, hurry…! Close, please!" He pleaded as he watched the parasitic knight coming closer to him. Luckily, at the last second, the lantern's light stopped the creature in its tracks as soon as it made contact, and the doors had finally closed before Mikey felt the elevator slowly move downwards.
"Oh, thank shell…I am so done with suits of armour from here on out…" He breathed out heavily to catch his breath.
A minute later, the elevator stopped and the doors on the opposite side opened. Mikey exited the elevator to reveal a small flame-lit room full of more armoured knights, much to his shock and dismay.
"Wha-? Didn't I just say that I was done!?" He groaned in annoyance before deciding to make a run for the other side of the room. When he got there, Mikey noticed that a portcullis was blocking the way.
"Oh, come on…! Give me a break!" Mikey cried out in frustration.
Fearing that he might get ambushed by the knights at any moment, he quickly looked around the room until he saw four hanging gongs dotted around the room. He pulled the chain on the first one to make it chime before moving on to the next one and making it chime, but this action had caused the first pair of knights to come alive and chase after Mikey.
"No, get away from me!" Mikey cried out in terror as he hurried towards the third gong and made it chime, causing more knights to awaken, before rushing over to the last gong and making it chime.
Once all the gongs chimed, the portcullis was raised up. By now, all the knights had come to life and started making their advance towards Mikey, who immediately ran towards the doorway that lead towards a long corridor with blue flames on fire stands and wall torches.
As he ran, Mikey noticed that he wasn't being chased anymore, meaning that the blue flames had stopped the knights from advancing any further. Soon, the orange-banded turtle reached the last room which contained a locked stone vault and more knights.
"What the shell…?" Mikey questioned in confusion until he realised that he was in the Underground Mausoleum.
He approached the vault and noticed that there were three pedestals with lanterns like his own standing on two of them, and they were each shining different shapes. However, the lights were not matching the shapes on the walls of the vault, which means that the only way to open the vault was to align the lights of the lanterns with the correct shapes on the walls.
"Ok, so this lantern goes here, and then that one goes over there…" He said aloud as he arranged the lanterns in the correct places.
Once the shapes were correctly matched, the wall in front of him and the portcullis had opened up and revealed the Salazar's family insignia. Mikey immediately rushed towards the front opening and took the insignia off the stand.
Suddenly, all of the lanterns went out!
"Oh, no…No, no, no, don't go out now!" Mikey gasped before he heard movement shortly after, meaning that the knights around him were waking up.
"Not again! I've had enough of this!" Mikey cried out as he ran for his life.
Luckily, there was still a single blue flame burning in the corridor, causing some of the earlier knights to stay frozen in its light. The way they were standing had created a tunnel-like pathway with their swords raised and clashed against each other on all sides.
"Ok…You all be good knights, and stay very still for me…" Mikey told the knights politely as he slowly crawled underneath their swords.
"Woah!" He then cried out as the knights lowered their weapons just seconds after he moved away from their aim.
Mikey ran for his life as he dodged the parasitic knights' attacks and reached the elevator, the doors of which had closed just before the knights had reached the elevator. As soon as he reached the upper floor, Mikey ran up the stairs where he encountered another parasitic knight and dodged its attack before continuing on through the library room, which were also filled with parasitic knights that Mikey had to avoid, until he had returned to the room where the insignia slot was. He approached the slot and inserted the insignia into it.
"Yes! It fits!" Mikey cheered with relief before he watched as the door opened seconds later. He then ran straight through the doorway.
"Bros!" Mikey called out to his brothers to get their attention whilst running down some stairs until he reached a balcony, where he was able to see his older brothers again.
"Mikey!" "You're ok!" Leo, Raph, and Donnie cheered in relief as soon as they saw him, alive and unharmed at the top of the balcony.
"Yeah! It wasn't easy, but I made it!" Mikey replied bashfully with a little laugh.
"Thank shell…We were starting to get worried about you…!" Donnie breathed out.
"Well, don't worry; I'm fine…! But you're all still trapped in there…!" Mikey replied worriedly.
"Yep…Caged like birds…" Raph grumbled his reply.
"Hold on, I'll find a way to get you outta there!" Mikey assured them before he spotted a dead worshipper on top of a lever.
As he worked on lifting the body off the lever, a key felt out of his robe pocket. Mikey picked it up and headed back to the edge of the balcony.
"Here, try this key!" He shouted before he threw it towards them. Leo was the closest to the bars and was able to catch the key with ease.
"Great job, Mikey! You did good!" Leo praised proudly.
"Do ya think ya can get down from there, bro? We'll catch ya…!" Raph asked.
"Err…Yeah, I think so!" Mikey answered after assessing the dropping distance from the balcony to the floor below him.
The three older brothers nodded before they hurried over to the door of their prison to use the key to open it.
Just as they were about to do that, however…
"Aaaaaaahhhhh!"
They paused at the screams of their youngest brother before they quickly turned around to see Mikey being grabbed and taken away by one of Salazar's tall servants.
"Mikey!" They cried as they ran back to the other side and watched their little brother as he struggled to get out of the monster's hold.
"Let him go, ya freak!" Raph shouted as he took out his gun and started shooting at the monster.
"Careful, Raph, you might hit Mikey!" Donnie warned as he held him back.
The trio watched as the large creature stopped and turned to look at them with its glowing red eyes before it growled at them, turned again, and continued its walk away from them with a still struggling Mikey in its strong grip.
"Grr…Fer cryin' out loud, they took him again!" Raph shouted in anger after a moment of silence.
"We know that, Raph, and we will get him back, but we need to keep a calm and level head in order for us to do that…!" Leo told him firmly before he turned to Donnie.
"Donnie, get the door open quick!" He commanded.
"I've already done it, Leo…" Donnie instantly replied, pointing at the now unlocked door.
"Alright, let's go!" Leo said before he and his brothers left the confinement of the cage.