Deep within the earth was a young woman with dark red hair and beauty that could only be found once in a generation. She was surprisingly well built for a woman with her body being toned to an extraordinary degree. This woman was angrily yelling at a grizzled old man. “What do you mean you can''t find the exit?”
The woman slowly built herself into a panic as she continued to yell. “This was only supposed to be a quick exploration to judge the expected difficulty of this sapphire cave. Let me think, how did you put it ''A quick in and out, barely enough time to get our feet wet'' " The young woman’s face started to turn red as her tirade continued "We don''t have any of our supplies in case you somehow forgot that minor detail, and we have so little information about this cave that it is no less than a death trap. Why are you even part of the team? This was your primary job to watch for traps and to help us navigate.”
Vicious words hurt the ones close to you most, this was made clear as the face of the older man crumpled in pain. These two had been friends for many years. The panic induced anger had not yet left the women though.
Just as she took a breath to continue her tirade a hand came down on her shoulder. A very slight wisp of a man stood behind her. He had a gentle smile on and looked like he would be composed and calm even in the direst of situations. “Ezabell my Love, Darian has both enhanced memory and perception. You know as well as I there is no way that he would have lost his way in such a simple maze. I have heard a story of the Ancient Logic caves that have existed in these lands from far before Emerald Cove was even founded. The longer that we spend in this mysterious underground labyrinth the clearer it becomes to me that we are in one of the older Logic Caves. I recall reading a long time ago about a cave that was capable of changing its own structure so quickly that it could trap divers within as easily as it is for us to take a breath.“
The young man turned Ezabell around to face him and despite their obvious difference in mass, they were almost the exact same height. He looked her directly into her eyes and said “I know that we do not have all the supplies and tools that we normally need to reach the core." At this point, he turns to the rest of his companions "But we are some of the most experienced Divers in Lord Aristall''s employ. We have lived most of our lives in preparations for a challenge like this. If we can not accomplish this task there is not a team within 1500 kilometers that could do it." He pulled Ezabell tightly to his chest and whispered into her ear "There is no giving in because we have to get out of here for Trillian. There is no ''try'' because we must succeed to return to our child.”
Ezabell''s panicked breathing started to slow and the resolve returned to her eyes. She slowly took a breath while they were still embracing, taking in the scent of the one that she loved. “Frederick, my love. You are the only one I trust, if you say we have to do this, then I will make it happen.”
The final member of the party was also a young woman. She was standing off to the side quietly while this intense conversation was going on. She had a cute face with short brown hair, but there was a wild cunning in her eyes as she watched this conversation taking place.
All four of them gathered together as Frederick continued his rapid planning “We have enough supplies for 2 days with us, and if you, me, Felicia, and Darian work together to the best of our abilities we will be able to solve this cave.“
It was clear to all of them that the majority of the work would fall onto Frederick’s shoulders. He was the member of the team that had a sapphire gemstone, so he was the only one that had his logical analysis enhanced enough to challenge an entirely logic-based maze.
Frederick had to give some depressing news “I am sorry to say, I do not have the confidence to conquer this cave in the time that we have, so we are going to be taking on far more risks than I normally would consider acceptable. Time is our main resource now, so if we run into any puzzles that I think will take longer for me to solve than we can allow; we will have to trigger the trap and hope we can avoid the cave’s attempts to kill us.”
Everyone had a very somber mood by the end of Frederick’s warning. They knew that there was an incredibly low chance of them all surviving if they were going to be triggering the traps along the way.
Over the next two days, the party of Divers dedicated every waking hour to solve the mystery of the Sapphire Cave. There were a multitude of puzzle doors and deadly traps and to add to that the maze was constantly shifting around them. Darian was entirely focused on the details around them. He was looking for any hint or clue that could be vital for Frederick to solve the next puzzle. Darian would point out everything that he saw that looked out of place to Frederick. Frederick was almost always frantically writing in his journal. If there was a clue that he overlooked that was necessary for them to proceed later in the maze it could set them back so far that they would have no chance of survival. He would draw maps of the current structure of the cave every few hours to try and find the pattern of changes that the cave would make.
Elizabeth and Felicia would alternate who would set off the traps when there was no alternative. While Frederick was able to solve 80% of the puzzles fast enough that he judged the time expenditure acceptable. There were those that would require hours to days to come up with the solution. The Party just did not have the time to wait for these. If they ran into one of these puzzles the 2 Dancers Elizabeth and Felicia were put in charge of triggering the trap. It was a simple matter, all puzzles have a fail-safe that triggers if they are damaged. Just take a chisel and gouge it into the center of the obstructions and it would cause a life-threatening danger to come
They only came into the cave with a day’s worth of provisions. This was not that large of a concern when it came to the food supply. The water on the other hand was the main concern. Frederick remembered something that he had read once “A person can only survive 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water and 3 mins without air.” They had just run out of the water at the end of the second day. They could have rationed it more, but Frederick had been pushing the team hard to get to the core before they had nothing left. It was far more likely for them to survive if they were at prime functionality for a few days rather than slowly lose effectiveness from the very beginning.
It was only an hour after they woke up on the third day that Darian died.
After everyone woke up from their second night’s sleep, the mood was somber. The party had once again come to a Puzzle Door the night before. Frederick suggested resting for the night to give himself more time to consider the door and because everyone else was exhausted. Frederick had known right away that he would not be able to solve the puzzle in any reasonable amount of time. It was a clustered puzzle that had multiple solutions that would require trying each solution in the next tier of the puzzle. The first tier was 7 Heptagons that had various symbols in them. Darian had already spotted all the symbols earlier in the cave and Frederick had mapped out what symbols meant which numbers. Depending on what Vertex you started on there were 7 solutions for each Heptagon and 7 tiers with 7 Heptagons in each. There were 823,543 solutions that needed to be tested. Even though Frederick had been working on it for over an hour he was still only up to the 5th tier. It was likely going to take him more than 9 days to solve the entire puzzle.
Frederick turned to everyone and said, “This is not going to work, we will be here for days if I am going to solve this.”
This had been the 3rd such puzzle so far, each time it put the whole party in mortal peril. So it was with a grim acceptance that Ezabell walked up to the Heptagons and stabbed her dagger into the first one. She was poised to act because the Cave retaliated swiftly with a deadly trap whenever intentional damage was done to one of its creations.Stolen novel; please report.
However, no one had predicted that the floor beneath the three party members 20 meters back would collapse underneath them.
Felicia had been lucky, she was near the edge. Right when her feet started to drop out from underneath her she swung her arm behind her and managed to grab onto the wall. She had only really dropped a few feet downwards.
Darian and Frederick were right in the middle of the collapse. As the floor started to crumble beneath them they both had a second to think before they were dropped into free fall. Frederick rather uselessly used it to contemplate how his wife and son would manage without him. Darian with his lifetime of experience used it to position himself to kick the back of Frederick’s back right when they started falling. This sent them both flying towards opposite walls.
Frederick scrambled at the wall scraping his hands bloody before he managed to find a handhold that he could grab. Darian unluckily hit the wall with his back and bounced off and continued to free fall until he landed gruesomely at the button of the 20-meter fall on some truly horrific rock pillars.
It is anyone’s guess what his last thoughts had been. It could have been of all the regrets he had from his many years of life, or about how he was happy that he had managed to convince those sisters into having a 3some with him. There is also a chance his last thoughts were happiness at the fact he was able to save a good friend and the father of his unreasonably smart 2-year-old godson. His death was sudden and brutal but no one had time to grieve yet, because Frederick was still in an incredibly dangerous situation.
Ezabell had started running at top speed towards the trap the moment that she had seen her husband in mortal peril. As she drew closer to the hole she created a plan in her head, she knew that she had only moments to act. Fredrick was brilliant but was not known for his rock climbing skills, or in this case his rock hanging skills.
Felicia had just managed to climb over to the edge and pull herself up when she saw a flash of a person as they dashed by her into the hole. The end of a rope came flying at her half a second later, as she heard a shout of “hold on tight”.
Ezabell did not simply launch herself into the trap after her husband, instead, she maintained her top speed as she came to the lip of the whole and tilted her body horizontally as she started running along the wall. Keeping herself from entering a free fall by keeping enough speed that the centripetal force kept her pinned to the wall of the circular pit. She had to run 2 laps around the edge of the pit until she managed to tilt herself down enough to get to her husband and she ran right over his body that was desperately holding onto the wall. As she was flying past him she simply strung the other end of the rope through his belt. Then kept hold of it as she ran her way back up and out of the pit.
When she got to the top she yelled out to Felicia to pull, and when they managed to get all the slack out of the rope they started hauling Fredrick upwards. It had only taken Ezabell slightly over 30 seconds to save her husband, but Fredrick knew firsthand that if she had been any slower he would have lost his grip. His hands had been covered in blood from trying to grab onto the wall while he was falling, and he had been slipping from the moment that he had latched on.
With everyone, still alive, safe once again. They all had a moment to breathe. Fredrick had to gasp out “It never ceases to amaze me what you dancers are capable of.”
After that moment of shock, both Fredrick and Ezabell cried in each other’s arms about the loss of a mentor and a friend. They had to get themselves together as fast as possible, they could not spare the water for tears or the time to grieve.
Felicia had just been waiting for them down the corridor, she had just been added to their diver team a few weeks before and had not developed a close relationship with anyone in the team yet.
Frederick took out his notebook once his hands had been wrapped well enough that he would not get blood all over it. He started writing in it desperately. The Cave had just changed the pattern of how traps were triggered which until then had always targeted the person doing the damage. This bit of information reduced the options for where the Core room could be, drastically.
Frederick had long ago learned the restrictions for how the Cave was able to change the layout. He had determined that there was a limitation on the direction that it could prevent them from going. After this new bit of information, it was clear that the Cave could never prevent them from going towards its Core room.
With this additional information, their progress through the cave became much faster. They doubled their clear rate because they were no longer just trying to find the Core room by random chance, but instead going directly towards it. There were still countless traps and puzzles that were blocking them from progressing throughout the expedition and the closer they got to the Core Room the more it seemed that the Cave was actively trying to kill them, Fredrick postulated that this was because the closer they got to the Gem Heart of the Cave the more control it had over everything around them.
After a full day had passed since Darian''s death they were progressing through a complex maze that required strong communication skills, as well as good logical analysis. There were 2 plates in each room, and to activate a plate a member of the party would have to stand on a plate and solve the puzzle associated with the plate. When both plates in the room were active all the doors in that room would open. If someone got off the plate it would deactivate and the doors would shut. The only exception to this is if one plate was active in 2 connected rooms, then the door between those 2 rooms would stay open.
The 3 remaining divers had been progressing through a maze of such rooms for 4 hours and it was draining their energy. They were already dehydrated, and now they had to deal with constantly shouting out instructions on what each puzzle was and the instructions to solve each as they moved slowly one person a time into each room.
Frederick and Ezabell had just activated the 2 plates in their current room and Felicia moved from their last room to the next one. They heard a shout of happiness. “It is the Core Room. I finally found the end of this horrific maze”
It was standard practice while Driving a Cave to collect all the Pure Gems in the Core Room. This would lead to 2 things happening. The First would be that the Gem Heart would protect itself by dropping directly into the stone of the earth. The second thing to happen would be a direct result of the first because the Gem Heart gave up control of its cave, all the doors would open and the traps would deactivate. Allowing the party the freedom to walk out of the cave with their spoils. Over time the Gem Heart would once again build its connection back with its cave and everything would be rebuilt. The presence of the Gem Heart with a connection to a Cave will create Pure Gems in the Core Room and Common Gems everywhere else within the cave.
There was one other thing that could be done in a Core Room, and that was to take the Gem Heart. This was almost never done because it would remove a renewable resource found in nature and because it would cause the rest of the Cave to collapse. Generally, once the rest of the cave collapsed an opening would appear above the Core room allowing the Divers to escape.
The excited shouting continued from the Core Room “I finally made it, Lord Aristall is going to be so happy with me.”
Both Frederick and Ezabell looked at each other from across the room. This was not the type of thing that they wanted to be hearing. The fact that Felicia was shouting “I” not “We” was creating a huge red flag for them. Even the simple fact that a Pure Gem had not been harvested, which would have released them from having to keep the plate active was causing them to panic.
Frederick shouted “Felicia, could you kindly start harvesting the Core Room. We can come and help you once the Cave goes into hibernation.”
Felicia stuck her head back out the open door, and they both sighed with relief. However, their relief was short-lived. “Sorry, looks like this Gem Heart is Inheritance Class.” Both Frederick and Ezabell gasped in shock. Felicia continued “Lord Aristall, told me that if I ever get a chance to get an Inheritance Class Gem to not let anything stop me.“
Ezabell shouted with a hitch in her throat “We have a child. We will do anything” Felicia turned away with a simple “Why does that matter to me?”
Frederick had already fallen to the floor in despair. How could they have come through such an impossible trial and lose everything this close to the end? Because of the simple greed of the Lord of a small district in the City of Emerald Cove, and an uncaring sycophant.
The Husband and Wife looked at each other and whispered “I love you”. Their last thought was a prayer for their son as thousands of tuns if stone crashed down on their bodies.