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Caspian, who was just behind me, tensed. “What is it?”
“A trap, I think,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “I felt something move under my foot.”
“Don’t move,” Murtagh cautioned. “These ancient places are littered with traps. It could be anything from spikes to a collapse mechanism.”
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, the sound deafening in the silence of the chamber. “Great, just what we needed. Any bright ideas on how to get out of this?”
Caspian scanned the bridge and the walls around us. “We need to distribute the weight evenly. If it’s pressure-activated, we might be able to cross if we’re careful.”
“Or we trigger it and hope for the best,” Murtagh added grimly.
I let out a shaky laugh. “I vote against triggering ancient traps.”
Carefully, Caspian stepped onto the bridge, distributing his weight as evenly as possible.
“On three… One… Two… Three,” Caspian said, and the two of us moved in unison, slow and deliberate, painfully aware that one wrong step could be our last.
Halfway across, the bridge groaned ominously, but held.
“Almost there,” Murtagh murmured. “Stay focused.”
Finally, I reached the other side, and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. Caspian closed in on my side and his arm wrapped around my waist.
“We need to be more careful,” Caspian said, his usual confidence replaced with a note of caution.
I nodded, glancing back at the perilous bridge. “Lesson learned. Let’s hope that’s the last of the surprises.”
“Next time, I vote we fly over the gap and don’t use the bridge,” Murtagh said, his voice strained.
“I agree,” I quipped, trying to lighten the mood despite my lingering anxiety.
“I think we go that way,” Caspian said, pointing to where the flames extended on into the darkness.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I offered, and I waited for Murtagh to go first.
As we cautiously followed the direction Caspian had suggested, the narrow corridor opened into a larger chamber. The air was cooler here, and the walls echoed our footsteps back to us. Suddenly, Caspian held up a hand, signaling us to stop.
“Do you see that?” he whispered, pointing to the floor ahead where a series of tiles were intricately patterned, different from the surrounding stone.
We looked to the left and right, and we saw a few skeletons. Old ones; with spiders on them. After a tenth of a second, my brain realized what I was looking at, and I jump back straight against Caspian’s chest.
He put an arm around me, soothing me until I calmed down. “Shh. It’s okay. That’s not going to be you,” he assured me.
Murtagh knelt down for a closer look. “Pressure plates,” he deduced. “Step on the wrong one, and who knows what kind of trap we’ll set off. The ceiling is too low for us to fly, too.”
Caspian crouched beside him, examining the pattern. “There must be a safe path across,” he mused. “But how do we figure out which tiles are safe?”
We studied the tiles, looking for differences in color and realizing that there were stones sticking out of the tile. Some were in diamond, some in emerald, some in amethyst. Some didn’t have anything on them at all.
“Step on the ones with nothing,” I said before the thought had fully even popped into my mind. I knew it didn’t make sense when it came out of my mouth—I wanted to walk on the diamond ones, honestly. And then I wanted to take the diamond ones home and use them for decoration.
“How do you know?” Caspian asked me.
I passed him a weary expression. “I didn’t come with an informational guide. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies,” I added humbly, shrugging. “But as crazy as it sounds, the gems don’t want us to step on them.”
We studied the tiles until slowly, a path began to emerge, and I could see a winding route across the chamber with blank stone tiles.
“I think you’re right. Smart thinking, little girl,” Murtagh praised, and I smiled.
