Ashera: Chapter 22

    Ashera stood alone in one of the many hallways in the middle of the labyrinth, looking around at the stone walls surrounding her. Fox, Ryan, and Shadow had all been separated from her, and Ashera had no idea how she would be able to find them.
    She quickly realized that this was the true test of the mountain. The hike, the riddle, the skeletons: all of them were merely building blocks leading up to this. She had to find the rest of her friends and, together, they had to find a way to defeat whatever was at the center of the maze.
    It sounded so simple when she put it in words, but Ashera knew that it’d be a lot harder than it seemed, if the rest of this journey was any indication. The group completed each other; where one member was weak the rest were strong. They needed each other. Ashera didn’t have Fox’s brain or Ryan’s strength or Shadow’s ferocity; she just had herself, and she didn’t know if that would be enough. But it had to be.
    Ashera tried not to think about all of the dangerous things that could be in this maze. She tried not to think about the certain death which was awaiting her. All that she knew was that she’d need everyone in their group in order to get out of here, so she would have to find them, which meant she had to get out of here.

    Ashera started down one end of the hall that she was in. She decided that it would be a good idea to always turn left when faced with the decision, so she’d know how to get back to the place that she started if she needed to.
    So, she walked and walked, turning left everytime she could. When she would come to a dead end, she would turn around, turn right, and continue on.
    Eventually, she came to a dead end which looked different from the others. Inspecting the wall, she saw that it had some wear on the sides of it. She also noticed a pile of blocks on the wall, and each of them had a letter written on them. Moving closer, she inspected them. There were eight blocks in total, which said A, C, H, I, K, R, S, and W.
    With a sickening crashing sound, a stone wall crashed down behind her, locking her inside of the tiny room. A deep, thundering voice filled the cavern. “Ah, an adventurer,” it said. “You dare challenge me? I will make your flesh into meat and your bones into the ice that falls upon my home and you will never, ever, get the Orb.” How could it know? How could it know what they were there for? “But before I destroy you, I would earn your respect. What is my name?”
    The walls on the side of the caverns started slowly moving in. Ashera swore loudly. She ran forward and grabbed the letters. “What is my name?” the voice repeated, but even louder this time.
    Ashera looked at the tiles, wondering what they could mean. If only Fox was here, she was so much better at these things than she was. No, no time for that, focus.
    Think, think. What could the letters mean? Maybe there was a clue in what he had told her. She tried to think of it, but she couldn’t remember all of it. He had mentioned the Orb, so she tried to spell out Reality, but the right letters weren’t there. She tried different combinations, but she never got all of the way through. The walls were at her sides now.
    Think, Ashera, think. This name had to have some importance to him, otherwise it wouldn’t be in a riddle. It had to be unique to this creature, this maze, this place. This place… This place…
    “Rickshaw!” she said out loud. She had to walk sideways to get through the walls now; she could barely get her arms out in front of her to put the letters into place. But she did, and as the walls threatened to crush the life out of her, they retreated and the back wall slid back up into its place.
    “Good,” the voice said. “Very good.”
    Ashera took a deep breath and left the cave. So this...thing that they were fighting was named Rickshaw. That made enough sense, she had often heard of creatures that named their lairs after themselves. She wondered what sort of monster it could be. Maybe it was the mountain itself. She had no clue.
    She kept walking, being careful of twists and turns. She looked out for traps or any differences in the maze that would tell her what the rooms did.
    Every so often, she’d find verses carved into the walls of the maze. Sometimes they were in languages that she recognized, sometimes they weren’t. All of the ones that she could understand seemed to be paragraphs about dying and giving up. She assumed they had been left there by adventurers who hadn’t escaped the labyrinth.
    As she was walking, she heard a scream come from her right. Ashera started running towards it, twisting and turning through the maze to try to reach the source of the sound. But the paths failed her as they ran around in odd ways, so it took Ashera much longer than she would’ve liked to reach the sound.
    When she finally got there, she saw a giant skeleton-not unlike the ones they had fought before they had gotten separated except for the fact that it was enlarged. It held a greatsword in its bony hands, and was leaning over a body with fiery red hair. Fox.
    She didn’t stop, she didn’t breathe, she didn’t think. Ashera charged, yelling and unsheathing her sword as she did so. The skeleton looked up as she approached, but it had no time to react as the sword slammed into its leg. The blow shattered the bone into thousands of tiny shards, which scattered across the room. The giant skeleton fell.
    Ashera turned to Fox, who was still lying on the ground, trying to catch her breath. “That was amazing,” Fox said.
    “It was nothing.”
    “No, you totally destroyed that thing with one hit!” Fox smiled, but her eyes were teary with pain.
    “Really, it was nothing, you weakened it plenty first. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
    “I think my right leg is pretty messed up. Old Skell over there threw me around a bit before you got here, and it snapped my leg.”
    Ashera leaned down to examine it. The bone had been broken just below her knee and it now sat at an odd angle. “I can heal it, but it’s going to hurt a bit.”
    Fox shrugged. “By all means. Can’t hurt worse than breaking it.”
    Ashera nodded, took a breath, and in one fluid motion, snapped Fox’s leg back into place. She shrieked in pain, but Ashera tried to ignore it, channeling her magic through her hands and into Fox. Beams of light wrapped around the leg, and in a few moments, it was completely healed.
    The tears stayed on Fox’s face and it took her a minute to compose herself. When she finally did so, she said, “I take it back. That hurt more.”
    Ashera smiled, lifting her to her feet. “We need to find Ryan and Shadow. Have you found anything out about this maze or the creature inside of it?”
    “No, it was just a hell of a lot of walking until I got ambushed by that thing,” Fox said. “Why? Did you find something out?”
    “The thing we’re facing is called Rickshaw.”
    “Interesting.”
    “What could it be?”
    “Anything, really. We have to be prepared.” Fox looked over at Ashera. “C’mon, let’s go find Ryan and Shadow.”

    It took them another couple of hours of walking, solving riddles, completing puzzles, and fighting enemies in the maze, but Fox and Ashera worked well together and made quick work of it. Eventually, they ran into Ryan and Shadow, making their way down the hall.
    “There you are!” Ashera said, running to Ryan and embracing him. “We thought we were never going to find you.”
    “I’m glad you did,” he said. “Are you okay?”
    “I think we’re a bit tired, but we’re not hurt or anything. Ashera has seen to that,” Fox said. “How about you two?”
    “There were a couple of close calls, but we’re fine.”
    “The thing that we’re fighting is named Rickshaw,” Ashera said, petting Shadow’s head.
    “Like the mountain?”
    “Yes, did you find out anything else about it?”
    Ryan thought for a moment. “There were a lot of writings all over the walls that were talking about frost, but that’s the most that I could pick up.”
    “There’s not anything else?” Fox asked. “‘Frost’ isn’t exactly a substantial piece of information.”
    “Well, it’s not information, but Shadow and I found the center of the maze. There’s four pressure plates and a huge iron door. I think that it’ll take all of us to get in.”
    “Why didn’t you start with that?” Ashera asked. “C’mon, lead us there.”
    They followed Ryan into a wide, open room. As he had noted, a huge iron door stood in the center of the wall. To each side of the door was two stone pressure plates, making four in total. A carving on the door read, In order to enter, you must be complete.
    “I think this is it guys,” Ryan said.
    “I do too.” Ashera ran her hand along the carving. “Are you all ready? Does anyone need to be healed?”
    They all said no. “Let’s face this thing,” Fox grinned. “Are you ready to become heroes?”
    “You know it.”
    They all walked up to the pressure plates, each one of them standing on one of them. As Ashera placed her foot down on the last, a screeching sound hit her ears as the iron door swung open.
    The door revealed an open cavern, with gold and jewels in every corner. It was a treasure room. There was a case for what seemed to be the most prized item-a black sphere the size of Ashera’s head. The Orb of Reality, it was here at last.
    And sitting behind this case was a creature sitting on a pile of gold. Ashera looked up at it and felt herself gasp, for standing before them was a humongous, scaly, white dragon.

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