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“If we go back with the torch, we might run into those bugs again. We don’t have anything else to lure them away with,” Ellie pointed out.
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Princess.”
Ellie ran her eyes carefully over the walls of the cavern.
“This cave has been heavily modified,” she said. “Most of this isn’t the natural wall. It’s been filled in, particularly around the statues.”
“You’re saying that the way out must be behind one of the walls,” Adam offered.
Ellie stopped in front of the beautiful skull goddess. The statue drew her. It was somehow more comforting than the other gods. The lines of its posture were graceful.
Her eyes drifted to the base of the skull goddess’s throne. A lever protruded from a vertical slot in the center of it. It was pointed up.
She looked around. All of the gods had levers. All of the them were up.
“What do you think those are for?” Adam asked.
He stood in front of a giant spider god and tapped the side of the lever with his boot.
The lever thumped down to the base of the slot.
Adam stared down at it.
“Why do I have a feeling that’s gonna turn out to be a bad thing?” he said.
Ellie’s nerves jarred with alarm.
“It’s just a cave,” she assured him weakly. “Nobody has maintained any of this for well over two hundred years. What could it really do?”
A low, unmistakable grinding noise roared through the chamber from behind the bricked-up walls. The sound reminded Ellie of opening a giant window.Counterweights, she thought.
A stone thudded into place, blocking the tunnel through which they’d come.
Adam immediately raced over to it. He dropped the torch and shouldered at the rock.
Ellie’s eyes were elsewhere—on the center of the chamber floor, where she could now see that twelve holes, each a few inches in diameter, had been drilled into the stone.
“It won’t budge,” Adam announced as he hauled at the base of the slab blocking the tunnel. He gave it a frustrated kick.
The grinding behind the walls stopped. In its place rose a low, sibilant hiss.
“What’s that?” Adam demanded.
Ellie gazed down at the holes in the floor with a growing sense of unease.
“I think it’s coming from there,” she replied.
Adam moved to the openings and reached out to touch them. He yanked his hand back, waving it awkwardly.
“There’s steam coming out of them,” he declared.
“Steam?” Ellie echoed nervously. “How can there be steam in here?”
“I don’t know!” Adam retorted. “Maybe they tapped into a magma incursion or something.”
Ellie’s interest perked. “What a fascinating suggestion!” she exclaimed.
“Princess…” Adam growled warningly.
