Trapped

---Aaron---

The portcullis was only raised a quarter of the way, so we had to duck under. The granite doors were mostly open. We spilled into the main hallway of Lord Victor's stronghold with our weapons ready. Compared with the chaos outside, the interior of the fortress was eerily silent. It was like we had entered a different world. Lionel and his twenty soldiers picked their way carefully through the bodies that littered the ground. Katherine looked around apprehensively.

"Are they all dead?" I asked. I didn't see any fatal wounds on them, except for two who looked like guards. The rest were soldiers.

"No, they're just unconscious." Katherine replied as she prodded one of them. Then she sniffed the air. "There's a faint scent of incense. Sleeping incense, perhaps?"

"But who—" Lionel began to ask, but stopped as all three of us came to the same realization. 'Indigo.' Why else would the doors be opened just as we were fighting our way in? She was somewhere in this fortress, and she had been helping us. But where was she now?

"Stay on high alert! Search this fortress for Indigo and Lord Victor!" Lionel barked orders at his soldiers and began leading them further into the fortress. Katherine and I started to follow, but Katherine stopped suddenly next to a stone pillar.

"Wait!" She crouched and studied the ground with a frown. "There's blood. And it's fresh."

I crouched next to Katherine and spotted a folded piece of parchment under a small pile of rubble. I pulled it out and unfolded it to reveal a hand-drawn map of the fortress. "Kath, look."

Lionel doubled back and peered at the neat labels and drawings. "That's Indigo's handwriting. I would recognize it anywhere."

Katherine and I exchanged a look. "She's hurt," I said. "Lord Victor must have caught her trying to help us. We need to find Indigo, now."

With the map in hand, we hurriedly set off in our search. One of Lionel's soldiers spotted a trail of blood splatters that led down one of the hallways. We turned down that hall, checking the map periodically to see what was up ahead. We followed the blood splatters down one hall, then another, and another. The torches lining the walls threw our shadows against the stone walls, and I couldn't help but think they looked more like ghouls than humans. Our footsteps were muffled by the carpet that lined the ground.

Strangely, we didn't encounter any guards on our way. No Evils leapt out from the shadows, no soldiers patrolled the halls, and no Lord Victor suddenly appeared. We passed the storerooms and the armory. The blood splatter trail continued. We rounded the corner, and a dungeon came into view. The stone corridor was lined with dark cells, each barred by an iron door. Torches flickered on the walls.

"Indigo? Indigo?" Lionel called out, his voice anxious. We proceeded through the corridor, looking through all the cells. Most were empty. Some held only skeletons. Indigo was nowhere in sight.

"Sir, the trail of blood ends here." A soldier reported to Lionel, who frowned.

"That's odd. If the trail ends here, then–"

Shouts from behind us cut off the rest of Lionel's sentence. Katherine and I turned to see a swarm of Evils run in through where we entered, baring their fangs. The soldiers bringing up the rear immediately engaged in combat. Up ahead, more Evils appeared and blocked off our exit. We were trapped.

Lionel cursed. Katherine and I pulled out our swords. There were so many Evils, and the narrow corridor limited our movement. I couldn't use my wind power without affecting our soldiers. It was chaos. Katherine and I slew Evil after Evil, but more took their place. The monsters just kept coming, and we were steadily losing.

"Everyone! This way!" Lionel waved his arm toward us. He and several other soldiers had managed to fight a way out through the front. We ran down the length of the corridor and turned the first corner we saw. The Evils pursued us from behind, getting ever closer, while other Evils leapt out from side passageways and corners. We blindly ran through the dungeon, fighting as we went, until finally Lionel spotted an exit and we burst out.

"Shut the gate!" Katherine shouted. Lionel pulled the lever mounted beside the exit. With a groan, a stone gate descended and hit the floor just as the Evils in pursuit reached the exit. They crashed into the gate, sending tremors through the entire wall. The gate held firm.

We paused for a moment to catch our breath. There were only five soldiers left. Lionel looked grim. "Lord Victor knows we're coming. We have to be careful of more traps along the way."

"Where to now?" I asked. Katherine consulted the map.

"Um, I think we're here," she pointed at a spot on the other side of the dungeon, which Indigo had labeled as "Unknown". "If we get past this unknown territory, though, there's a path that will eventually lead us to the throne room."

"Well, we can't go back, so the only way is forward." Lionel brushed off some monster dust from his sleeves. "Let's go."

The unknown territory was filled with booby traps. Every turn brought a new danger. We narrowly escaped poisonous gas, almost turned into porcupines from sudden volleys of arrows, almost fell into a pit with large metal spikes at the bottom, and fought off another group of Evils. We entered a large, empty circular room with twelve different paths leading out. The first seven paths we tried all led us back to the same room, and two others were dead ends. On our tenth try, we found the right path and exited the room.

By this point, our group of more than twenty that entered the fortress only consisted of five people. We followed a series of stone steps up, and then through another hallway painted a grisly shade of red that reminded me of blood. Eventually, the path ended in a large square room about twenty meters wide. It was empty except for four torches that flickered in the corners. There was a square-tiled floor that stretched to the other side, like a giant chessboard but with only light-gray squares. A narrow border of regular ground existed on three sides—next to the entrance and by the walls on either side. We walked in, surveying our surroundings warily.

"There's nothing here," remarked Katherine, "but I don't believe that this is the end of the path."

Lionel looked at the tiles in thought. He picked up a pebble from the ground and threw it at the tile directly in front of his feet. Nothing happened.

"I'll walk across and test the ground. Everyone else, stay here." He cautiously placed one foot on the first tile, and then both feet. Nothing happened. He stepped on the next tile, walking forward in a straight line. Nothing. We held our breaths as Lionel slowly made his way to the center of the room. No arrows shot out, no poisonous gases filled the room, and no Evils suddenly jumped out.

"Lionel, do all the tiles look the same to you?" I asked. He studied the ground.

"Yes. They're all the same shade of light gray," Lionel replied as he took another step forward. 'Click.'

Loud rumbling came from behind. We all turned around just as a stone sliding door appeared at the entrance and sealed us in. Katherine ran up to the door and started searching for a crack, a crevice, anything to pry it open. Nothing. It was as if the entrance never existed.