Part 1

- LUCAS BLUESCALE'S POV -

"Doesn't he look like a kid or something?" Proposed Dino, his head tilted in a somewhat curious and funny way.

"The way he is soo focused and excited at the same time...he really does look like one-" Added Dominik, holding back a chuckle as he cautiously polished his sword with a brownish cloth "- Though it's kind of worrying"

"And you start to worry only now?" One of my eyebrows raised in question as I spoke those words.

"Well...at first he seemed like he knew what he was doing but now...well, let's just say that a blind man would look less lost" Continued Dominik with a hint of fret in his tone.

I couldn't help but think he was right. It had already been more than three hours since Raphael began his experiments in the room yet nothing had changed within it. No new doors, no hidden mechanism, no showy bursts of mana, nothing at all. Only the repetitive sound of the drop of blue liquid splashing and the maniacal scribbling of pen on paper. He stood there, sitting legs crossed in front of the small caved pillar. His forehead gently touching the golden surface and his hands in a meditative pose whenever he wasn't writing.

I couldn't help but ask myself what he was sensing, seeing. It's true that I studied magic for five years, yet not even a lifetime of training could've granted me the insight my brother had in regards to mana. Being envious of it was out of the question. I had no talent in magic to begin with, whatever could I do with his insight even if I had it? Still, I couldn't help but feel inferior to him, not only because of his magic prowess but also because the score of our duels weighted largely on his side. He was strong, there was no doubt about it, strangely strong for someone his age, yet seeing his neck and collar drenched in sweat made me realize how humane he was.

[He may look like a crazed maniac but he's still pushing himself this far for us... I really wanna help you but... No, I couldn't help him even if I wanted. I would be just a burden] I thought with the equivalent of a mental sigh.

Then, all of a sudden Raphael began laughing and faced us with this victorious yet quite crazed smirk plastered on his face. His skin was pearled with sweat from forehead to neck and even the shirt had stains, sign of the great toll required for whatever feat he achieved. He took the bottle of blue liquid he kept by his side and swung it side to side in front of his face, as a curious cat would play with a mouse.

"I take it you figured it out, uh?" I asked, unconsciously relaxing my sitting stance.

The expressions of the two men sitting beside me lit up at my words. Their eyes dashed between me and Raphael in search of an answer, excitement burning bright in them. Proudly, Raphael puffed his chest and opened his arms.

"This room is just like a big old carriage. It only needs some good oil to get the wheels spinning!" Exclaimed my brother. His voice ecstatic in telling us about his discoveries yet his expression saddened as soon as he noticed that no one followed his words and looked at him dumbfounded.

"Ehm, and what does that imply?-" Asked Dino, almost hesitant to ask the wrong question or say the wrong word "- I mean, will we be finally able to leave this room or...?"

"*Sigh* Why are you in such a hurry?-" Answered Raphael with a deadpan expression, almost unsatisfied "- I was getting there, you know. Can't I show off a little? *Sigh* Anyway, what I meant was that this room is functioning perfectly. There are no puzzles, no tests and no overly complicated magic for us to beat. It's just an old room that felt the passage of time. Some of the liquid evaporated or part of the crystal broke, I don't know, but the canal system is missing some mana water, as I decided to call it, as you've all seen"

"So what you've been doing was..." Began to voice Dominik before being interrupted by Raphael.

"Figuring out how the room works, yes, yes. Listen, this whole mechanism is so old that I can safely bet there's no trace of it in any book, so excuse me if I'm not some outstanding genius able to solve this shit in half an hour, ok? Now, what I was trying to say is that we were lucky enough to have a bottle of the same liquid needed for the room to work. I'm guessing that everything was connected, I mean the city, the temple and the tunnels, when this place was populated. And before you ask, it took me three hours because I needed to understand how to safely add the missing liquid and the quantity needed not to break the entire equilibrium of the room"

"Wait, are you saying there's the possibility that this room may, what, collapse on our heads?" Worridely asked Dino as his eyes darted from one corner to the other.

"If I did my calculations wrong... yes, maybe, but I'm confident I've been quite zealous on them so there shouldn't be any problem"

"Shouldn't?" I asked with a questioning look.

"Now, now, let's not sweat the little details, eh?-" He replied with a smirk, clearly amused by the fret he had caused "- Now please shush. I have barely two minutes to prepare everything for the next drop"

Just like that, he began skimping through his papers and, once satisfied, he started cautiously molding a bowl from earth magic. It was squarish, clearly done with usefulness over aesthetics in mind, around the size of a bigger and wider teacup and of an earthly brown color. Once the molding was done, he cut off his connection to the ongoing magic and checked his sheets once again. With a nod, he prompted himself to pour some of the bluish liquid contained in the bottle inside the cup. Then, followed a meticulous trial and error sequence in which he poured some liquid, checked his sheets and poured some more. This went on until his stiff expression finally softened into an accomplished smug, just before the drop began forming on the tip of the crystal.

"*Huff* Here goes nothing!" He said as he approached the funnel, careful not to spill a single drop of mana water from his cup.

The moment the drop fell, Raphael's eyes widened in concentration and the muscles of his hand stiffened around the cup. He was waiting for the right moment to empty it. Then, when the crystal drop splashed into the funnel, the liquid contained in the cup followed. The liquid began spiraling in the funnel and rushing like an opened dam into the various canals. Raphael sprinted towards the small pillar while following the movement of the liquid with his darting eyes. All of us watched wordlessly as the water moved like it did countless times before. Yet somehow it felt different. The water's course was faster, more steady and uninterrupted.

[It's fully working!] I thought, feeling the excitement running like a chain of lightning between the four of us.

When the liquid would previously slow down, now it was running at a steady speed, the same in every corner of the room. The liquid still ignored the gates, which seemed to worry my brother, but it never slow down or stopped until it reached the small pillar. Like it previously did, the pillar absorbed the liquid and the white crystal on its top began lighting up. The sweat on Raphael's forehead was profusely marking his face and, together with his habit of biting his lower lip when frustrated, I could tell he was worrying about whether his work succeeded or not.

If it had gone like usual, the liquid would've all gathered inside the pillar then the small crystal would've turned a bright red color, only for the liquid to be shot up the ceiling and gathered back again into the crystal. And yet, the light never turned red. The liquid continued to gather into the pillar until its last remnants stuck to the canals on the side of it. For countless seconds, our heavy breaths seemed to be the only sound present in the room. Then, a deaf noise that built up louder and louder from below the room drowned everything else.

The crystal's white light turned the same color as mana water and jutted around the room randomly. It hit every nook and cranny of the golden surfaces as the noise built up so loud that we all were forced to cover our ears with our hands. Suddenly, the noise came to a halt and a single string of blue light connected the small pillar to the crystal. To our surprise, the crystal immediately began liquefying, creating a waterfall of blue liquid that traveled through the canals freely. Even more surprising was how, upon reaching the pillar, the liquid would be shot to the ceiling to start a new cycle.

"I- Is this it?-" Asked Dominik "- Shouldn't something else happ-"

His words got cut off by the same loud sound that deafened us moments before. It was close. So close that even the floor and walls trembled as if the sound was passing through them. With a shout, Dino called our attention just in time to see Raphael jump away from the pillar that had just begun spinning.

"Of course not-" Replied Raphael as he smirked at us, especially at Dominik "- Now comes the good part, look!"

The empty gold canals seemed to move together with the stone tiles in the area where Raphael pointed his finger. Like an unraveling puzzle, the pieces of the floor, delimited by the canals, began molding into something like an arched gate protruding from the floor. The movement continued until a beautiful shape, the same as the gates on the walls appeared clearly in front of our eyes. The tremors only heightened then, and with the sound of stone crumbling and wind whistling, a cloud of dust rose from the newly formed gate and exploded in the room.

Our coughs were now the only audible sound in the room as our blinded selves struggled to evade the brown cloud. A gentle wind, stale in scent but soft on the skin, came to our aid and pushed the dust out of our eyes and mouths. With our sight now reacquired, we were finally able to see the results of all that tremor. A stairway made of spotless grey stone descended from the newly formed golden gate. We looked in amazement as the black tunnel so magically appeared in front of our eyes.

"I'm guessing that's our way out, uh?" I said more to myself than the others.

"Shall we?" Retorted Dino with a look of curiosity jumping from me to Raphael.

"I don't know about you, but all this gold and light is really getting on my nerves-" Said, to my surprise and the other's, Dominik "- I'll lead. Are you following?"

A solid nod of our heads was all the agreement he needed, and so the bearded man took the first step into the dark staircase.

Part 2

- RAPHAEL BLUESCALE'S POV -

The ceiling was low so Dominik had to walk hunchbacked while the rest of us barely managed by tilting our necks forward. The crude stone was finely smoothed out to not leave any imperfection in the archway. Even the steps seemed as if none had ever set foot on them before. Only a frail layer of dust stained their otherwise spotless stoney skin.

The only thing that lit up our way was a small fire burning on my palm, bright just enough for Dominik, who stood in front of me, to see a couple of meters ahead. Behind me was Lucas with his sword at the ready. The distance between us was more than I'd like it to be but there was nothing I could do about it. The stairway was too narrow for us to walk in couples or to freely swing a sword, hence the need to space ourselves from the swordsman.

It had already been ten minutes since we first stepped into the dark stairway yet it didn't give us any sign of stopping or opening into a wider hallway or tunnel. It simply went down with the same, constant inclination. Boredom was catching up to us so to pass time, we began telling tales of our lives. Some were interesting, some dark and sad, and some were outright comical, especially Dino's memories involving nobles and their peculiar kinks and quirks. One story which seemed to interest both Dino and Dominik was that one time I and Lucas saw the Black Ogre Demigod. Dino was especially curious about it and asked us questions in every minute detail. before I could realize, an hour had already largely passed and the stairway was starting to widen up, even if just slightly. It was only after another hour of walking towards the bowels of the Earth that the stairway finally opened into a full-fledged hallway.

Long to no end and wide enough to fit several carriages. The ceiling was about five meters tall and everything was made out of chiseled grey stone. Smooth to the eye and the touch, the stone had no interruptions, except for the floor in which bricks were carved out of the live stone.

"It looks just like one of the hallways of a dwarven castle, doesn't it?" Said Dino as he caressed one of the pillars close to the entrance to the staircase.

"Why?-" I asked both curiously and tauntingly "- You've seen one?"

"Only in paintings unfortunately...paintings, I'm sure, someone as classless as you may never find interesting!" Replied the noble with a devious grin.

As I was about to increase the output of the flame on my palm to light the hallway, a series of torches evenly spaced between pillars lit up instantly with a soft blue fire. Finally, the walls covered in a veil of darkness appeared to us. Empty nooks on the walls between pillars gathered the shadows of the torches in an eerie way, turning their emptiness into an uncomfortable feeling.

We began walking the hallway, in the same line we held on the staircase, and I couldn't help but shake the feeling that something was amiss. Yet I kept telling myself nothing was wrong whenever a pile of rubble and chunks of crumbled stone would appear in one of those nooks. I even discussed it with my brother and we concluded that it was wiser to keep our guard up.

Alas, after thirty minutes of empty nooks, something appeared. I instinctively jumped to the side and soon realized how bad it looked. What I feared was an enemy was in truth a motionless statue. My companions were fast to jump to the jokes. Full of shame, I walked back in line with my brother poking at what happened like a little kid. Ever since, my eyes never left the statues for one moment.

Dwarfing us with three meters of height, those stone colossal stood motionless inside their nooks. They were all statues of knights in fancy armor, with helms, chestplates and all. The minute details of coats of arms on their chests and pauldrons emitted an air of great importance, like the statue of an ancient warrior or a king. They were all similar in shape yet some details changed with every different statue, their weapons for example. Some had a big shield resting at their feet, others a greatsword held in front of them while some carried a sheathed shortsword. I was wary of them, even scared, yet I couldn't help but admire the finesse of those monuments. That is until Dominik stopped suddenly and spoke with a tremble in his voice.

"I think Raphael was right to be scared" The man declared as he gripped the sword more firmly in his hands.

"Wha- What are you talking about?" Asked Dino in a hurry.

"Look-" He replied, pointing the tip of his sword towards the end of the hallway "- They move!"