“I feel like we missed something…” Litvir muttered as he stared at the colossal heavy metal doors behind him.
There was no immediate answer. Retvik was busy ripping off his diving gear, throwing himself on the floor and breathing heavily. Arkay though was busy staring at Litvir.
“What do you mean by that?” Arkay almost hissed.
“What?” Litvir replied back.
“What do you mean, that you feel like we missed something?”
Litvir shrugged. “I do not know. I just feel like, well, we missed something. Something happened. We did the thing, it happened, but we did not really notice. I am not even sure what the thing we did was, because the thing we did was definitely not… shown in any way.”
Arkay eyed Litvir some more.
“What? I feel like I have done something wrong.”
Arkay continued to eye Litvir, but closed his eyes and spoke to him telepathically. Retvik wasn’t paying attention, he was busy trying to sort himself out, but Arkay needed to speak to Litvir in a way that Retvik couldn’t hear him.
“Litvir, since when could you… see that sort of thing?”
Litvir seemed confused. “What do you mean?”
“You almost touched it.”
“Touched what?”
“The nature of existence.”
“I still do not follow. I just commented on how we… seemed to just skip that whole underwater maze. We were going to just do it normally. But Retvik started panicking because his mask got knocked off and then just burnt a hole straight through the maze, causing all sorts of chaos, most of which I cannot remember. It happened but… I do not know how to say this, but it felt like it… was not… described in any way?”
Arkay continued to eye Litvir.
“Whaaaaaat?” Litvir telepathically whined.
“You are…” Arkay trailed off, then gave in. “Never mind. It’s nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Clearly…” Litvir tutted. “Anyway, Retvik, are you alright now?”
Retvik took a deep breath, then picked himself up off the floor. “I am fine now. We are out of the underwater maze, I can feel no water in my lungs, I am doing alright. Shall we get going?”
Litvir glanced around, then realised there was a small problem. “I mean, we can, but I do not know where to go. We are still in some sort of maze.”
“You say that, we’re breathing air again, and there is a gigantic metal door ahead of us that isn’t the one that just closed behind us!” Arkay exclaimed. “Clearly there is a way to go.”
“The door looks locked though.”
Arkay gestured at the big locked doors behind them, which were blocking off the water from the maze just past them. “I don’t think doors or even walls are a real problem for us. Clearly mazes aren’t either. Just like the old bear hunt fairy tale, we didn’t go around it, we didn’t go under it, we didn’t go over it, we went through it.”
Retvik and Litvir both looked at Arkay, not sure what he was on about. Not for the first time.
“Alright, I’m just saying, the only way on from here is that gigantic door. I say we knock on it, see if anyone answers, then if no one does, we open the door and go from there.”
Litvir shrugged. “Sounds fair to me. Shall I go and knock?”
“Sure.”
Litvir headed over to the door, then knocked on it lightly. When nothing happened, he knocked a little bit harder. Retvik though was impatient and knocked even harder. Nothing happened, but Retvik’s knocks did clue the team in that there was something hollow behind the door.
“Is the door locked?” Arkay asked as he floated over and inspected the door. Apart from being gold, it didn’t seem to be anything special.
Retvik bashed on the door again and it seemed to move. But Retvik did also notice that the door had a handle on it. A handle he could just tug on. So he did just that, and the door could just be pulled open.
“I feel dumb now…” Arkay muttered. “Why didn’t we think to try that?”
“To be fair, who leaves their front door open?” Litvir grunted. “I mean, we still lock doors at Savepoint and we have constant guards and two Time Drakes on duty all the time. Also, they had a massive underwater maze with an underlying telepathic fear command to stop people coming here, locking the door would make sense.”
“I guess they did not expect us to get through the maze?” Retvik suggested. “After all, it did seem to do a pretty good job of keeping people away. Or maybe they just opened the door in advance because I just exploded us through the maze and they do not want us doing any more property damage. Admittedly, I did forget we were meeting someone, and I am going to have to apologise for the mess I made.”
Arkay shrugged, then pulled the door open properly. Inside was a single straight corridor, that was dimly lit, and it potentially led to a very large room. While Arkay couldn’t see the end of the room, he could sense the presence of something there, potentially a Voidborn.
“You think this is the right place?” Litvir asked.
“Pretty sure…” Arkay muttered. “Shall we get going? I have a feeling that they’re waiting for us. And that they’re not happy.”
Litvir nodded in agreement. “I am definitely getting “slightly miffed” vibes” from down that hallway, but I can only sense one being. No idea who though.”
“Same…” Arkay sighed, then took Litvir and Retvik’s hands. “I’m weirdly feeling a tad nervous now.”
“Maybe that mental fear command is affecting us now because we are deeper in this base…” Retvik grunted. “We should get going though. The quicker we are out of here, the better.”
“Agreed. Fingers crossed these guys aren’t too upset about what we did to their maze…” Arkay muttered as the three of them headed off.
“I am sure they are fine!” Retvik tutted. “They were the ones who wanted this meeting, that is on them.”
“True. Alright, let’s go…”