Chapter 6 – A Hot Mess
"Yikes!"
Sonic dug the heels of his sneakers into the grassy hillside and skidded to a stop at the bottom of the steep slope, tufts of grass clutched in his gloved hands. Lava burbled inches from his feet, glowing-hot and radiating heat, but otherwise indifferent to the spiky blue hedgehog that had nearly taken a fatal dunking.
He gulped, slowly pushing himself back up the slope to level ground, and sat on a large block of rough, purple-grey stone for several minutes to steady his breathing and calm his nerves.
He'd been in the ruined city a few hours now, wandering among the walls of dark stone half-crumbled on the hillsides, the columns of greenish marble leaning at angles against each other like drunkards, the tile-paved trails and grassy embankments that stood in for proper streets. Terraced courtyards and collapsing buildings littered the ridges among the cypress groves, and through it all, streams and pools of lava bubbled and flowed sluggishly.
And a single misstep had almost sent Sonic nose-diving into one such pool.
He shook his head and sighed. No running here, then, at least not without a clear view of what lay ahead. The last thing he needed was a lava bath.
Sonic stood and continued through the ruined city at a steady lope, trying to keep to the obvious thoroughfares when he could, occasionally detouring through broken buildings or over weed-choked outcroppings that skirted the lava flows. The channels wove through the ground like a river system, as though they had been deliberately cut by ancient hands, leading from the island's central peak down to the barely visible shoreline. The lava made the area warmer overall than the coastline, steam rising from vents in several places, the air thick with the smell of sulfur and molten rock. The ever-present heat certainly explained why there were no signs of recent habitation, though the flows at least looked stable.
The path wound down the side of one ridge, through the center of a double row of columns with partially intact capstones. Each one held a different relief, letters in an ancient script, gem-like shapes and rings and curious figures. They looked Mobian, albeit stylized, all lines and angles and no species Sonic had ever seen. Fourteen pillars in all, ending at an arch set in the sheer face of a cliff.
"Whoa."
Sonic stared up at the arch, a good seven feet high—more than double his height—cut out of the rock face itself. The open doorway led deeper into the side of the cliff, winding downward out of the sunlight. Rough-cut brick lined the tunnel walls, and the floor had been paved in more of the green and purple tiles. Ancient lettering framed the arch, half worn away by age but still visible in places.
Sonic flipped open his journal. About halfway through its pages, his uncle had copied down similar ancient text from an old book, and Sonic compared them to the words around the arch. Sure enough, a few matched.
"'Chaos...is Power? And something about...Heart..." He trailed off, voice catching in a throat suddenly tight as he squeezed his eyes shut against memories that tried to overwhelm him, memories he'd long since pushed down. Counted breaths. Focused on the warmth of the ruins, the twitter of birdsong, the breeze in his quills.
The pressure on his chest eased by degrees, leaving him alone with nothing but the feel of the sun on his fur and a dampness on his cheeks he quickly wiped away. One ear flicked in irritation.
Sonic glanced up at the arch again and quickly scribbled down the words he didn't know so his uncle could try to translate them later. Hopefully his uncle would be able to make out the characters. Sonic's penmanship left something to be desired on the best of days, let alone when trying to copy Ancient Mobian glyphs.
Sonic turned his attention to the tunnel inside the arch, at the lack of light sources beyond the sunlight that could only reach so far inside. Did he really want to go in there? But curiosity was quickly winning out over apprehension, egged on by a desire to run from old pain.
"Man, I wish I had a flashlight."
Tucking journal and pencil back into his pack, Sonic took one last look at the pillars around him before stepping through the arch and into the darkness beyond.
—
It didn't take long for all connection to the outside world to vanish with the light.
The darkness around Sonic was absolute, a black wall almost tangible and throwing off his spatial awareness of the tunnel in which he walked. He kept one hand on the nearby wall to try to avoid getting turned around and horribly lost, but even reaching his other hand out to its limits he couldn't feel the opposite wall, or the ceiling above. It could have been just a few feet away, or he could be walking in a vast cavern and not know it. The only sounds were the tap of his sneakers against the tiled floor, and the occasional shaky sigh when he realized he'd been holding his breath again in anticipation of something, anything jumping out at him.
Then the wall under his hand fell away and he stumbled, freezing in shock for a moment at the loss of his one anchor point.
"Get it together, Sonic," he murmured, gulping and forcing his breathing to steady again. He backed up a step, found the wall again, and almost laughed when he realized it hadn't disappeared, it had merely turned a corner. Carefully counting his steps forward, he managed to locate the wall again. He'd found a side hallway. This time he did laugh. "This place is making me jumpy."
Sonic spent a moment listening carefully down both hallways, hoping for some inspiration on which route to take. Silence answered back.
"Drat," he muttered. "I'd flip a coin, but I can't see a blasted thing in here anyway."
A faint whiff of warm air stirred the fur on one arm, feather light and almost unnoticeable, and he paused again, surprised. It had come from the side hallway.
"Better than nothing, I guess." He reoriented himself by the wall of the new hallway—still too wide to touch both walls at once—and continued walking.
—
Sonic stopped sometime later to blindly fumble some food from his pack to quiet his grumbling stomach. He couldn't be sure if he'd been walking for only an hour or half a day. The utter darkness of the tunnels made it impossible to accurately tell time, especially for an impatient young hedgehog.
Not to mention the dark and the quiet left too much free time for thinking about things he'd rather leave buried.
Sonic lifted the ration bar to take a bite, and paused. Ever so faintly, he could make out the shape of his hand in the dark, black on black. Which meant there was a source of light.
That, or Sonic was going crazy. One of the two. But for a glimpse of light, Sonic would take his chances with crazy.
He gulped the ration bar down in two bites and quickened his pace, sneakers scuffing on the coarse stone floor and fingers trailing along the tiled wall. His footfalls echoed back at him in the darkness.
He didn't know how long he walked in the cloying heat of the tunnel. He lost count—of the seconds, his footsteps, his heartbeats—somewhere around three hundred, and still the interminable blackness stretched on, both suffocatingly close and immeasurably vast around him. The dark and the quiet grated on the young hedgehog, giving his mind a blank canvas on which to paint whispers of memory once left behind. Occasionally a faint tremor vibrated the floor beneath his feet.
Sonic was about to turn around and gamble at backtracking—he'd only taken the one turn, right? Or was it two?—when he realized he could make out his hand against the wall tiles, the slight variation where masonry met rougher cut stone. The light was getting stronger, if subtly. Defeatist thoughts of turning back forgotten, Sonic broke into a near jog, the light just barely enough to avoid breaking an ankle or worse.
It was easier now to see that the tunnel wasn't perfectly straight. It curved slightly, angling around in a gentle arc. The light grew steadily as Sonic trotted onward until he could see well enough to let go of the wall without getting lost, could make out the patterning of the tiles or the grain cut into the floor by stoneworking tools.
The tunnel twisted in a sharp bend ahead, a warm light outlining the wall and the corner in sharp detail, a slice of red in the purple-black shadows. Sonic blinked his eyes at the unexpected brightness.
He edged forward cautiously, pausing a moment to brace as a rumble passed through the floor. Chaos only knew what could be lurking around the corner. It had to be better than going back into the dark tunnels, but no sense charging in headlong.
Heat shimmered in the air as Sonic peered around the corner. The passage continued on past a doorway, filled with angry red light, painfully bright after the impenetrable darkness of the tunnels. As Sonic's eyes adjusted to the light, his ears picked up a faint grinding sound, metal scraping on stone. The tiled wall vibrated softly beneath his fingers. Sonic rubbed at his eyes and blinked to focus through the heat-shimmered light, and squinted into the room beyond the door.
A ledge extended a few yards beyond the door, before dropping off abruptly in a jagged edge over a pool of lava. The entire floor of the chamber, wall to wall, was actually lava. It provided the sole source of light for the room, casting the tile and stone in a lurid glow.
"You're kidding." Sonic laughed despite himself. "Wish I'd spent more time playing 'the floor is lava' as a kid."
Sonic stepped out onto the ledge. Though he could just make out a door at the far end, there was no visible path he could see to cross the room. No way was he going to be able to wall-run the whole way, either.
He looked back into the passage behind him. No other option. He was going to have to go back into the darkness.
He took a step toward the tunnels.
The ruins rumbled again. Something crashed in the darkness, sending a choking cloud of stone dust billowing over Sonic as he dropped to one knee. He gagged for air and scrambled back into the lava room, coughing out a mouthful of grit and struggling to breathe.
The dust settled slowly with no breeze to help clear it. Sonic cupped one hand over mouth and nose to try to keep from breathing in more dust, and looked back into the dark tunnel.
Or what had once been a tunnel.
Now the way back was blocked by a fallen chunk of ceiling, which had pulled shards of splintered tile with it. Sonic might have been able to squeeze around if he were smaller.
"Just great," he muttered behind his gloved hand. "Stuck between a rock and a hot place." A chill ran down his spine despite the heat. If he'd still been in the tunnel when that quake hit...
He stepped back down to the ledge to overlook the lava pool. Still no sign of a way across, but maybe he could find handholds in the wall or something, and at least try climbing instead of sitting down and waiting to cook inside his fur.
Another tremor rolled through the stone surrounding the young hedgehog, and he braced himself to move in case more of the ceiling decided to cave in.
A chunk of stone dislodged from the ceiling out over the lava, splashing down with a splut just close enough that Sonic could jump out onto it with a bit of a running start.
Maybe...
Another rumble. Another block of stone further out.
Just maybe...
The room shook again, violently.
Sonic didn't give himself time to think further, throwing himself to pure instinct. As the tremors shook more stone from the ceiling, Sonic leaped out across the lava to the first impromptu platform. His foot slid briefly against loose rock, skidding across the surface, before he pushed on to the next jump. Sweat streamed through his quills.
The next platform tilted precariously as everything seemed to churn around Sonic. He scrabbled for purchase and kicked off, skipping across the next two stones and landing on another just as it hit the lava. Another jump took him to the last fallen block.
The exit was still too far away, and Sonic was out of platforms.
He barely registered the danger as he kept going, leaping toward the nearest wall. No stopping now.
Sonic kicked off the wall, pushing with everything he had.
The floor rushed up to meet him as he landed at the exit, stumbling and rolling gracelessly through the doorway into the cooler hallway beyond.
Another rumble heralded a crash of stone behind him. A block of masonry slammed down into the ledge, breaking it off and collapsing into the molten stone.
Sonic gulped down air for several moments, staring back into the room, then flopped back and laughed like a nutcase.
It took several minutes for the hysterics to subside enough for Sonic to move again, for the adrenaline shivers to give way to pure exhaustion. Sonic's lungs burned with exertion and dust and heat, and his injured shoulder ached from his sprawled landing. He'd have to touch up the bandages again.
But not here.
Sonic lurched to his feet, checked that his pack was still in one piece, and took off down the dim tunnel to find a safer place to curl up and rest.