Mad panic seized Sagar, pushing on his chest, choking the air out of his lungs, as the walls of the Earth Shrine closed in on him and the rest of the party.

“I did not sign up for this!” he yelled desperately. “I’m too young and good looking to die! Especially inside and in the dark!”

Nobody replied to him. Instead, they all huddled together around the light of the torch he held, half of them facing one approaching wall, half facing the other.

The earthen wall Sagar faced was about ten paces away now and advancing steadily at about the speed of a fast jog. It showed no sign of slowing or stopping. They would soon be crushed.

“What do we do?!” the pup cried.

“Someone think of something!” Sagar shouted.

“I am strong,” said the Farrian monk who had brought them here. “I will try to hold them!”

“Are you crazy?!” Sagar yelled. “You better be bloody strong, baldy! Someone think of a proper plan, quick!”

The walls were about to reach them now.

Everyone screamed, including Sagar…

...except for Huld.

Sagar opened his eyes, which he had scrunched shut in anticipation of his imminent death.

The walls had stopped moving about half a pace away from them on each side.

They all stood squished up next to each other. Sagar held the torch up high so that it wouldn’t burn anyone. Even under the circumstances, he quite enjoyed the thought that he was being squished up next to the Princess and the Engineer-Bo...Woman. Was that the engineer-woman’s bottom that was pressed up against his own? Or wait, was it the pup’s? Urgh. He tried not to think about that too much.

And then Sagar realised why the walls had halted in their advance.

In the middle of them all stood the monk, his feet spread and set, his huge arms stretched out to either side of him, palms pressed flat against the walls. His jaw was clenched tight and his arms trembled with effort as he stared straight ahead and held the walls at bay.

“Wow, I guess you are quite strong...” Sagar reluctantly admitted.

All of a sudden the Farrian monk let out a huge, deep, strained grunt of exertion.

With a grinding, scraping noise like a rock being pushed over a hard surface, the walls came in a few inches closer, even as the monk’s hands were forced inwards and his arms began to bend at the elbows where he had had them held out straight before. The monk’s massive, sinewy muscles glistened with sweat in the torchlight, and veins popped out and throbbed on them.

“I…” gasped the monk. “I cannot... hold these… much longer…”

He grunted again. The walls came in another few inches. The rest of them screamed.

The monk hadn’t saved them, he had only delayed the inevitable. The walls were almost touching them now, and still moving inwards slowly as they forced Huld’s hands backwards little by little.

“Quick, someone think of something!” Sagar yelled. “Old Timer! You must have an idea! What do we do?!”

“I’m sorry…” whined the Old Timer. “I… I don’t know what to do!”

Huld grunted again and the walls came in a few more inches, touching them now, and Sagar had to hold up the torch even higher to stop it from burning him and the others. He was pretty sure that was the Princess being pushed up against him, but he didn’t even care any more right now--just at the moment he was more interested in not dying.

The princess had started to sob and pray out loud for their lives.

Sagar looked up at the flaming torch he held above them. He was almost at the point of praying himself. Almost. But no, he wasn’t going to do that. There wasn’t a ‘One God’, or any real god. If there was a God, why had they allowed this to happen? Why had they allowed his father to abandon him when he was a boy? Why had they allowed his mother to die from her illness?

Beyond the flickering flames of the torch, about ten metres up in the air, Sagar glimpsed the brown earthen ceiling. No god up there to hear the princess, just the ceiling, beyond the halo of the torch’s fire, and only stale air in between them.

“That’s it!” he said out loud.

“That’s what?” The old timer called back.

“The way out! Pup, use your fire projection to blast a hole in the ceiling!”

“What?!” the Pup said. “Why do you think that will work?”

“Have you got a better idea?” Sagar shouted. “It worked on the golems, didn’t it?! Fire is strong against earth, isn’t it? I’ve thought of something! It’s our best chance of escape!”

“What about conserving my mana?”

“To the hells with conserving your mana! We’re about to become pancakes! Just bloody do it!”

“Al...alright!”

“Everyone else, when the pup does it, jump!” Sagar commanded. On ‘three’! One… Two…”

“Captain Sagar!” cried the princess. “I don’t think this is a good idea!”

Huld cried out with pain and the walls came in to crush them.

“Three!”

“Fireaaaaaaaah!” the Pup shouted.

Orange and red flames rushed upwards from Ryn’s outstretched hands, engulfing the torchlight and taking it up.

The fire hit the ceiling. Dust and dirt and rubble fell down over them.

In the same breath, Sagar took a deep breath of air, crouched, jumped and shouted “WINDaaaaaaarrrrrraaaa!”

A colossal gust of wind rushed upwards from the floor towards the ceiling and lifted him and the others upwards as they jumped too. Sagar’s stomach fell out the bottom of him and for a moment the wild thrill of flight gripped him as he soared up towards the ceiling, surrounded by the others. The wind blew back the flames, and they shot through the opening that had been made in the ceiling above them.

The gust dissipated and Sagar fell forwards out of the airflow, landing hard on his front on a new, higher, earthen floor of the Shrine.

“Arggghhh!” the monk’s voice cried out again.

Sagar scrambled around.

The monk, being the heaviest among them, had come through the hole in the ceiling last, and only made it halfway through before the two encroaching walls below had closed in on his body and trapped him, vice-like, in their grip at the waist, exposing only his upper body and arms.

Sagar dashed over to help the monk, grabbing one of his hands.

“Pull him through!” he shouted as Ryn arrived and grabbed the other hand. They began to pull as Vish, Cid, Elrann, Nuthea all arrived too and grabbed onto Huld’s arms, trying to yank him up and out of the crushing walls.

They all heaved together, and Huld let out another roar of exertion as with his thighs he prised the two walls further apart for a moment, pushing them outwards in opposite directions, giving them just enough time to pull him up and through the opening.

Huld fell on them, and he was so big that he fell on all of them, but he quickly rolled away and lay on his back, panting from effort.