BARRETT’S POV

Working through the early morning, the volunteer firefighters were able to defuse the infernal threat before it destroyed everything in its path. At about 9 AM, the fire appeared to retreat, as though it had lost the strength to keep going and needed to regroup.

This was hardly any comfort for Mayor Barrett. He knew the flames would be back. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday in the not-too-distant future, Whitehall would have to contend with the orange stuff. And when it came, they would need to be ready.

Well, we weren’t ready for this one, Barrett told himself. And we still came out of it with a relatively small number of casualties.

Of course, that didn’t make it any easier to notify the families of the missing. About a dozen lions had yet to be accounted for by midday, and though he hardly relished the thought of telling the villagers this, the mayor felt certain these Pokémon were all dead. Nobody could survive in such an environment for very long if they couldn’t escape the heat.

At about noon, Nurse Leyla left the clinic to inform Barrett that all her remaining patients were in stable condition. Other volunteers, such as Frala Pyroar, remained working at the hospital, but Leyla felt the situation had stabilized enough that the mayor could give a press conference.

Barrett grumbled. The last thing I want to do right now is to give a press conference. It’ll just be too hard.

But I’m a mayor. I can do hard things. I must do hard things, or else I’m not a mayor worth even half my salt.

Before the mayor could call this press conference, however, he had to deal with the fallout from the flames. Even if the event was not his fault, the buck stopped with Barrett.

Two Pyroar, clearly a couple judging by the way they clasped their paws together, walked over to the mayor with fire in their eyes. Was it grief, or was it anger?

As Barrett was about to learn, it was both.

“Hello,” the woman spat coolly. “Do you have a minute, Mayor?”

Barrett sighed. “I don’t have much more than that. I need to call a press conference to alert Whitehall about our next steps forward.”

“Well, Mayor, we need to talk” the man told Barrett snappily. “We need to talk about Emaire.”

Of course, Barrett recalled. These two are her poor parents.

Barrett sighed, then coughed a couple of times. Subconsciously, he was only delaying the inevitable here, and he knew it. Sooner or later, he would have to tell this couple the facts, because that’s what they deserved.

“Where is she?” Emaire’s mother muttered. “Did she hide in the guild hall from all the flames?”

The mayor frowned. “The guild hall was partially destroyed by the blaze. It’s estimated that about twenty percent of the village’s structures are either severely damaged or destroyed, and it could have been worse.”

Those last five words were all it took to infuriate Emaire’s father.

“I’m sorry,” he told Barrett mockingly (as though he wasn’t sorry in the slightest), “but our daughter is nowhere to be found. For all I know, she’s probably dead by now, and yet you’re telling me that it could have been worse?”

“Only about a dozen lions lost their lives in this blaze,” the mayor responded. “It’s a tragedy when anyone dies, of course, especially someone so young, but…”.

Emaire’s mother flashed her fangs, then scraped her paw against the parched, weakened grass. “Mayor, do you have children?”

“No,” Barrett admitted. “Never have, never will.”

“Then I’m sorry to say this,” Emaire’s mother replied caustically, “but your opinion doesn’t really matter here. That’s because you just don’t understand what it’s like to raise a child, someone who’s literally part of you.”

“Again, I’m sorry for your loss” the Mayor responded. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough” Emaire’s father spat. “Sorry isn’t going to bring her back.”

News flash: Nothing will bring her back. That’s not how the world works.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Barrett enquired. “Again, I feel for you two, but I just don’t know how to help.”

“Whoever started this fire, we have to bring them to justice,” Emaire’s father said. “We need to make sure they pay for killing our daughter and destroying part of the village.”

Barrett sighed, weighing his possible responses. None of them were likely to satisfy Emaire’s parents, but he had to say something. This is what he settled on:

“Look,” the mayor replied, “I know you’re deeply upset, but hear me out. It’s going to be difficult to find the person who set this fire. I don’t even know if they meant to start it; it’s possible that it was purely accidental, in which case…”.

“But we’ll still have to try them in one of our courts,” Emaire’s mother muttered in one breath. “Even if it’s manslaughter, or ‘monslaughter, rather than murder.”

“That’s right,” Emaire’s father stated. “Somebody will need to pay for this. When we find the perpetrator, we are going to nail them in more ways than one.”

Barrett didn’t have the heart to inform this grieving couple that it was more a matter of “if” than “when” they caught the culprit. If they’d even meant to start the fire, they were likely far away by now. And sometimes there was no culprit except for a lightning strike, in which case you had to let them off scot-free. How could you punish the weather?

“Yes,” the mayor asserted. “We will. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for the town meeting.”

An hour later, in the early afternoon, Mayor Barrett stood in front of Whitehall’s damaged guild hall. Peering through the hazy orange air, he could see that there were literally hundreds of lions there, an impressive turnout considering the village’s population and the short notice on which he’d called the meeting.

“Thank you all for joining the meeting on this fine day” Barrett began. However, he could barely choke back a sob as he used the words fine day to describe the occasion. Given that the village was still reeling from the disaster, it had probably been an awkward phrasing.

Oh well. He had a whole speech ahead of him, much of which would be far more emotionally taxing to give. This was further evidenced by the anguished looks on many of the lions’ faces.

“Okay, maybe I should not have used those words” the mayor admitted awkwardly. “There’s nothing good about today. The AQI - air quality index, that is - is well over five hundred, nearly twice the threshold for Hazardous. Given that, it’s a wonder so many of you turned out. I’ll cut to the chase.

“Here is what we know. In the early hours of this morning, a wildfire began in the forest not far from here. It spread rapidly and reached this village at roughly 4 AM.”

A sizable portion of the crowd - more than the number who’d lost loved ones - began sobbing. They were clearly not just mourning the loss of the fire’s victims, but also Whitehall as they’d known it.

“Our crews got to work putting out the flames like the heroes they are” Barrett continued. With each word, it became harder not to get choked up. He knew what was coming, and so did his audience. Trying to delay the inevitable wouldn’t make it any more pleasant when it arrived.

“Now, I’ll start with the good news,” the mayor said. “We were able to prevent major damage to about four-fifths of the buildings in Whitehall, that’s eighty percent. Still a devastating fire, but I will see to it that nobody remains homeless here for long. I will allow those who have lost their homes to live temporarily with those whose homes have remained intact. And if such a Pokémon asks to live with you, you shouldn’t say no. We are a community, and we will look after each other.”

As annoying as it might be to need to share your home with someone else who hadn’t purchased it, Barrett knew one thing: The easiest part of the speech was behind him. He gulped before continuing.

“The bad news, of course, is that roughly a dozen members of our community have been lost. Those who worked tirelessly to quench the thirsty flames have sent me the list of the victims’ names. Those twelve families will have a missing place at their dinner table tonight, and I wish I could tell you all that I know how it feels. But I don’t know, so I won’t pretend to.”

There were even more wails, and the Mayor couldn’t help but shed a tear. The easy part was over, and the hard part hadn’t even started.

“I will now read the names of the victims. They were not merely names on a list, mind you: They were us. Born of the Earth, born out of stardust, they have returned to the universe. Gone, but not forgotten…”.

The mayor listed twelve names. At the mention of each deceased victim, the victim’s family (who were invariably in attendance at the impromptu town meeting) sobbed anew, and it was almost too much for Barrett to take.

Being the mayor is a difficult job in more ways than one, but someone’s gotta do it. Why not me?

“Now,” the mayor continued following a moment of silence, “there is something else I wanted to address before I adjourn this conference.”

Barrett sighed. Quite frankly, he didn’t really want to address this matter, but it was part of his job. He couldn’t bullshit the good ‘mon of Whitehall - he had to be honest with them.

“Even with all the resources we marshaled in order to prevent a worse catastrophe, it was a little too easy to put the fire out.”

“Tauros shit!” someone in the crowd bellowed. The message was clear: That’s clearly not true, Mayor, and you know it!

Barrett didn’t even laugh. “I am not saying that it was easy at all. It’s never easy to deal with an emergent hazard that you weren’t entirely prepared for. What I am saying is that the fire seemed to turn away from the village as soon as we’d sprayed copious amounts of water on it. We didn’t need the humans to come in with their planes to drop water from above - we were able to do it entirely from the ground.”

“Isn’t that cause for celebration?” another member of the audience exclaimed.

“Well, we certainly don’t want to allow any more destruction than necessary,” Barrett admitted. “But if you saw firsthand the way the flames behaved, you might feel differently. Wildfires aren’t supposed to just end like that, certainly not the raging sort we just went through. I will now take any questions that weren’t answered by what I just said.”

The first question (which would end up being the only question owing to its complexity) was from an older lioness. She asked the following: “Do you suppose that the fire was set deliberately?”

Barrett frowned. “That’s a very difficult one, Miss. But I’ll try to answer it anyway.

“First of all, if it were set deliberately, it would hardly be the first time. Arson is a crime that occurs all too frequently in Sinnoh, mostly recorded within human settlements. But to think that the humans would use arson as a weapon against us…”.

“It’s possible, isn’t it?” the elderly Pyroar lady enquired.

“Well, yes. Given the history between our two kinds, it is difficult to imagine that humans want us to thrive. But if their goal was specifically to wipe out our village, I have a hard time believing even humans would stoop to that level. Humans live in the Coronet Range too, and most of them are smarter than we give them credit for.” Not that they use their intellect for positive ends.

“There’s more,” Barrett continued. The mayor felt as though he’d just crossed a line, an invisible portal into a parallel world, and that there was no going back. This new world was one in which he released a preposterous, potentially dangerous theory into the hazy orange air.

“Continue!” the old lioness exclaimed.

Barrett narrowed his eyes “You see, the fire seemed almost calculated.”

“So you’re saying it was set on purpose?”

“I’m not saying the fire was set on purpose” the mayor clarified coolly. “I’m saying that the fire might have had a mind of its own.”

The effect on the crowd was nonexistent for a few seconds, then immediate.

“You’re insane, Mayor!” a middle-aged Pyroar man exclaimed. “You think the fire was conscious?”

“Maybe it was,” Barrett responded softly.

“Can we have a vote of no-confidence, please?” the same lion asked the crowd at large. “Our mayor is losing his marbles at such a young age!”

Barrett held his front paws in the air. “This isn’t a parliamentary system, my fellow Whitehallers. You can’t boot me out right now just because I disagree with you.”

They’re going to come back with pitchforks eventually. I just know it. Just for suggesting that fire can be sentient!

But the way it danced around in the air, creeping and crawling toward whatever it wanted to ignite…am I a poet now, just waxing on and on about how such natural, deadly processes are actually beautiful?

“Although it is my belief that the fire was likely not started deliberately, we cannot rule that out” Barrett said as authoritatively as he could over the jeers from the crowd. “Which is why…”.

“Cut it out, will you? We need stable leadership now, and if you can’t provide that, you need to step aside!”

Barrett tried to appear unfazed by his constituents’ doubts. He stood tall and made another announcement:

“I’m going to propose an emergency budget for Whitehall Village. I believe we would be wise to allocate more funding to our military defenses in the interest of keeping Whitehall safe from disasters both natural and artificial.”

“Why?”, a young Pyroar lady who looked like a college activist exclaimed. “Isn’t that really expensive? Shouldn’t we spend that money on something else? Don’t you hope you’re wrong?”

Barrett sighed. “Of course I hope I’m wrong, young lady. I hope I’m incorrect and that we never have to worry about this again.

“But I’ve been around here for a while. And even if you all don’t think I know much, I do know one thing: If you want peace, prepare for war.”

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SPENCER’S POV

I didn’t have any dreams, and I overall felt that my sleep was restful. If I were rating it on a scale of one to ten, I would have given it a solid seven (or several).

When I woke up, other than feeling hungry and thirsty, I had no complaints whatsoever about my shut-eye. And really, you’re supposed to be hungry after sleeping - that’s why the first meal of the day is called “breakfast”, isn’t it?

Well, my hunger battled with my desire to relax for a couple minutes upon returning to wakefulness. I didn’t want to open my eyes, because to do so would be to face the day, a daunting challenge.

But the ground was firm, not like a mattress at all. And once I finally did open my eyes, I became aware of why this was.

“I’m not in Whitehall anymore” I mouthed.

Enfield stood over me, smiling sadly, yet almost mockingly at the same time. “Uh, that should hardly be a surprise, right?”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

And then, as though I were being slapped in the face once per second, the memories of “last night” returned to my possession.

Slap. Going to bed in Frala’s home, feeling hot already due to the dry, warm air.

Slap. Waking to the sound of the fire alarm’s blare.

Slap. Running outside to find the village in a panic.

Slap. Racing through the forest to find the entrance to the Labyrinth, which we had now entered.

I sighed, suddenly resolving not to close my eyes again for as long as possible. Even if I hadn’t suffered any nightmares the first time in the maze, it seemed only a matter of time before my subconscious decided to torture me again.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Yep” I muttered. “That happened, didn’t it?”

Calvin the multicolored Litleo stood over me, looking positively morose. He appeared as though he’d just lost a loved one and was watching them slowly be lowered into a grave.

And then it occurred to me why he was so clearly bent out of shape. Quite frankly, it was a perfectly valid reason to be upset.

“The village…” I began. “It’s gone, isn’t it?”

Calvin turned closer to me, and now I could see that his eyes were wet with tears. His nose was running too, much like a faucet that just won’t turn fully off. He moved gingerly in my direction.

“Spencer…” he said. “I don’t know if all the village is gone, or just some of it. But if I’m a betting ‘mon, I’m not putting any chips in on its survival.”

Calvin did not need to elaborate, because I wasn’t much more optimistic than he was. More importantly, I understood completely why he felt so bearish on the state of Whitehall.

As a small settlement in the middle of the mountains, it would hardly be prioritized by the firefighting departments of Sinnoh’s government. From a utilitarian perspective, this made perfect sense; it’s better to save more people than fewer.

But there was also little doubt in my mind that if Whitehall had been a human village, the response from human authorities would have been very different.

I moaned. “Oh Arceus, please, just wake me from this dream.”

“I’m afraid we just did,” Enfield muttered.

Please, just let me exist in denial just a little longer. I don’t want to admit that my found family might be gone.

“Frala…” I trailed off. The question was likely clear to my teammates: Did Frala make it out alive?

Yes, she might be annoying sometimes with how forcefully she insisted we spend time together, but she was still Calvin’s mother in every way that mattered. And…I didn’t even want to think about it!

“Mom’s a strong lioness,” Calvin asserted. “It’ll take more than this to finish her.”

I didn’t have the heart to point out that this was likely wishful thinking. Frala might have been Calvin’s mother, but that hardly made her invincible. In my fantasies, our status as Fire-types might have made us more difficult to burn, but difficult isn’t the same as impossible.

“I hope you’re right” is all I managed to say before glancing down at the brick floor of the tunnel.

“I know I’m right,” my fellow Litleo said, though his tone suggested that he didn’t know at all.

“Thanks” I told him. “So what are we going to have for breakfast? I’m famished.”

Calvin and Enfield gave one another awkward glances, as though silently debating the best way to break unfavorable news to me.

Enfield broke the silence. “I don’t know. The food’s all gone - we lost the satchel, remember?”

Oh, right. That fucking sucks.

Before I’d gone to sleep, I remembered Enfield and Calvin going at it over whose responsibility the satchel was. It seemed that the Emolga had given up on wanting someone to blame for its absence, likely deciding it was best to simply move forward. We could not, after all, summon that green onion fairy whenever we wanted.

“So we don’t have any food,” I muttered, “or water. Therefore, we should probably leave the Labyrinth and restock if we can.”

“It’s even worse than that,” Enfield replied, “because we can’t do that. We don’t have any Escape Orbs, remember? They were in the satchel.”

I noticed again that Enfield didn’t glare at Calvin as he said that, as though he’d decided that the loss of the satchel was an unfortunate reality rather than an act of negligence on Calvin’s part.

“Well, that sucks,” I muttered. “That really, really sucks. Are we just totally screwed?” As I asked that question, I tried not to imagine what being totally screwed meant in this context.

Calvin shook his head. “I don’t know about either of you, but I was raised to never give up. This maze is a different beast from other mystery dungeons - it will drive you crazy if you let it.”

“Oh, so like all mystery dungeons?” I asked rhetorically.

My fellow Litleo glared at me. “More so. The maze literally runs beneath much of the planet - you could take a few turns here and there and end up in Alola.”

You know, an all-inclusive beach resort sounds way better than this.

“There’s no way to know,” I echoed.

“Correct” Calvin stated. “You might as well just flip a coin and decide which way to go based on the outcome. That’s how you navigate this maze as far as I know.”

I shivered despite the warm air inside the tunnel. After helping us get through so many mystery dungeons, seemingly always knowing what to do, Calvin’s guesses were as good as ours. And that was a sobering realization, to say the least.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “Where do we go from here?”

Calvin narrowed his eyes. “We’re going to explore the maze and look for an exit. And then…”.

“But we could be in Alola by then,” Enfield pointed out. “That’s thousands of miles away.”

Calvin swiveled around, jabbing his fist in the Emolga’s direction. “Of course it is. But so what? If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

It seemed telling that Enfield didn’t say anything after that. This gave Calvin the excuse he needed to clear his throat.

“Okay then. You’ll all have to follow me. Splitting up is always risky, but it’s downright idiotic in the Labyrinth.”

We began our exploration there, walking through the tunnels that vaguely resembled brick pizza ovens. And the emphasis is on the word oven - the path sloped gently downward, and the air temperature gradually rose.

I was reminded of the story about how you cooked a frog (or Politoed). You didn’t drop it right away in a vat of boiling water, because then it would jump out. Instead you’d place it in a pot of water that was pleasantly warm, then slowly turn up the heat. Needless to say, we were the frogs here, slowly getting used to the unpleasant heat.

Make no mistake: Before long I was sweating bullets, though by no means as forcefully as I had in the midst of the wildfire.

Every so often, Calvin would select a given fork in the road, then double back on himself within seconds. The first few times it happened, I didn’t give it much thought, but after a while I wondered if his dungeon-navigating abilities were more advanced in the Labyrinth than he had let on.

He probably doesn’t know any more than we do. And if he does, it’s not like he’s nefariously keeping secrets just for the hell of it. Maybe he’s just…actually, why would he make us worry unnecessarily? If he knows he can get us through here, why not just tell us that?

As we descended deeper into the maze, I couldn’t help but feel increasingly dizzy thinking about just how much dirt was above us. I’d never been this far underground before, not unless a tram ride through a mountain near Coronet City counted. Despite this, the lighting was surprisingly strong as we turned corner after corner.

“Okay,” Calvin said eventually, “I think we might be somewhere.”

We had arrived in a room roughly the size of an airport departure hall. The floor was made of what looked like sandstone, and it was indeed covered in a thin layer of sand. There was a large pool of wet sand in the middle of the room, large enough to hold the Olympics in.

“What’s with this room?” I asked.

Enfield frowned. “How should I know?”

The next thing I noticed was that the wall was made up of various colors of sand. For all the world, it looked like one of those sand art pieces you could purchase at small-town festivals, only on a far greater scale.

“That must be a mural!” Calvin exclaimed. Suddenly he didn’t sound anxious or frustrated anymore; the awe he associated with exploring this massive world was flooding his bloodstream once again.

“Uh…” I started. That’s fine and all, but why are you stopping to appreciate the architecture? It was just yesterday - no, early this morning - that you were rushing!

“You don’t understand, Spencer,” my fellow Litleo insisted. “This is quite the discovery. For all I know, I could become rich and famous one day if I write this stuff in a journal!”

Enfield grimaced. “Have you forgotten that you don’t even have any paper to use as a journal? Or a camera to take a picture?”

Calvin sighed. “Don’t remind me.”

But I had to admit: There was something beautiful about the sand art on the wall, which clearly was a mural upon closer examination. There were a series of S-shaped objects in a veritable rainbow of colors, zigzagging their way all over the place. They all sat on a sand-colored (ha) plain beneath a dark sky, along with a giant creature wearing a golden crown.

Beneath it all were the words TEMPLE OF THE CHAOS SERPENT.

“Chaos Serpent, huh?” I asked. “What could that mean?”

Wait a minute. That means the S-shaped objects are creatures. They’re snakes, aren’t they?

It was then that Enfield froze up like someone in the middle of a walk who suddenly, desperately needs a bathroom. He shivered despite the high temperature, and I could practically hear his bones chattering.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this place, guys,” the Emolga said weakly. “I don’t know what is about to happen, but I’d rather not be here when it does.”

“But this is amazing,” Calvin stated. “You don’t see art like this except in cathedrals! And now we’ve found it in the midst of an underground maze!”

“Again,” Enfield stated, this time more forcefully, “we should leave.”

“Like, right now?” my fellow Litleo enquired. “I’m too fascinated by this mural.”

The Emolga spread his wings as though he were about to spring off the ground and fly away from us. “Yes, like, right now” he said. “Unless you want to be right in harm’s way when danger strikes.”

Suddenly, I felt it too. A sense of impending doom, even if I couldn’t quite place why I was so eager to leave. Perhaps there’s just something unnerving about a cavernous room with nothing in it, especially in a mystery dungeon.

“Calvin,” I uttered in a deadly tone. “We need to get out of here. Yes, the art is amazing, but your life is more so. Maybe you’ll find something equally beautiful when you have the ability to document it.”

Yet he was still unconvinced. That is, until a hissing noise made itself known high above us - by then it was far too late.

“Okay, now let’s run!” he exclaimed.

As the Emolga flew (and Enfield did attempt to fly this route), the fastest way forward was through the sand pit. What that didn’t take into account, however, was that wet sand is very difficult to traverse with any speed.

Snakes fell from the ceiling. What had to be hundreds, maybe even a couple thousand of the slithering creatures were now worming their way all over the surface of the sand pit, as well as the edges on all sides. As far as I could tell, there was hardly a square meter that didn’t have at least several (seven) snakes in it.

I screamed bloody murder; I couldn’t help myself.

“Don’t just stand there!” I heard Calvin shout. “Do something!”

How ironic, given just how lackadaisical he was a minute ago. But okay.

So I leaned my head back and tried spitting some fire. Unfortunately, it did not meet any of its targets - the snakes just slithered to avoid them.

“We’ve gotta fly!” Enfield yelled.

“Easy for you to say!” Calvin retorted. “Spencer and I don’t have wings!”

“It’s a figure of speech!”

But then the Emolga was cornered. I could barely pay attention to Enfield’s plight, of course; I was too busy stepping over and around the snakes. I knew that one bite could mean disaster, depending on just how venomous the fangs were. Because we had no Antidotes, we had to assume the worst.

Enfield launched a small bolt of electricity out of his orifices, but it snaked (no pun intended) over the floor so unpredictably that it might well have been made in a lab specifically so as not to hit our enemies.

I, however, had to dodge that bolt. Before I could complain to Enfield (not that this would have been productive), a snake with silver and purple scales hissed, sticking its forked tongue out at me.

It’s a distraction. There are thousands of them.

Soon I found myself with the sudden agility of a ballet dancer, leaping and bounding over the snakes as they launched themselves at me with their fangs at the ready. I’d never been this athletic as a human, and I knew that it wouldn’t last.

Then I saw the door on the other side of the room. There was the exit, our salvation assuming the snakes didn’t follow us. And all we had to do was get there!

There was no hiding in this room, and before we could run, we had to do some fighting. I took a step forward…

…and my ankles sank into the sand.

“The fuck is this?” I bellowed.

The sand had wrapped itself around my paws to create a thick suction. I wasn’t sinking any further (at least not quickly), but that wasn’t actually the biggest danger here.

No, the real problem was that I could no longer move.

Enfield gasped as he looked at me from ten feet above. “Why aren’t you moving, Spencer?”

“I literally can’t!” I protested, spitting a fireball out in between each word. A few of them found their targets, but what little success I had only seemed to make the remaining snakes mad adders.

“Oh my Arceus!” Calvin shouted. “I should have known!”

So, to recap: The three of us were in a giant room filled with countless pythons, adders, and other types of snakes that were no doubt highly venomous. The snakes were ruthlessly attacking us, and I’d just gotten stuck up to my ankles in quicksand, my enemies surrounding me. If I couldn’t defeat them all before receiving a bite, it was game over.

Naturally, you might think that it couldn’t get any worse than what I just described. Unfortunately, you’d be fractally wrong.

For Calvin, the heroic Litleo he was, decided to rush to my aid. Knowing what I know now, I think he was just trying to assist me any way he could - we’d have enough time to free me from the quicksand once all the snakes had been dealt with.

But it didn’t work out that way as, with an almost humorous squelching noise, the sandy substance trapped Calvin’s ankles.

If there’d been any doubt before, it was now totally absent: We could not run from these snakes. There were just too many of them.

And yet, I had to keep hope alive. I recalled that in the manor atop Thunderhead Mountain, we’d been at the center of a massive horde of enemies just like this. And we’d survived all the same.

Of course, what I conveniently forgot to note was that Kemp the Drampa had bailed our asses out of that situation, calling the monsters off at the last moment. Lightning wouldn’t strike a second time.

Whatever the case, it soon seemed that we were making progress. Not quickly enough, but at least it was a start. We’d dispatched a couple dozen snakes with our fire breath when I found myself taking a step backward instinctively.

Wait a minute…we’re going back toward the middle of the sand pit.

Still, I didn’t see any reason to be more worried than I already was. Our first priority was dealing with all the hostile creatures around us.

Panic faded temporarily, to be replaced by pure adrenaline. Calvin and I stood on opposite sides of a small circle without any enemies, Enfield providing air support with his Electric attacks. Of course, Calvin and I spat fire every few seconds, a process that tired my lungs out as much as swimming a long distance would.

This worked…for a while. But after a few minutes of this, the snakes (a few of which were actually Ekans) just seemed to regenerate. It was almost as though when you took one down, two more would spawn in its place.

“Do they never end?” I panted eventually in between Embers and Fire Fangs.

In response, I felt a jolt against one of my ankles. At first it was a mild tingling sensation, much like when one of your feet “wakes up” after “falling asleep.” Uncomfortable, to be sure, but not exactly painful.

But then the tingling intensified immensely, and I let out a scream that didn’t produce any fire. It worked its way up my body, like electricity being conducted by a series of power lines. In fact, that analogy was apt, because I heard Enfield yell “Sorry!” from the air.

Oh boy, I remember thinking bitterly. Now we’ve got friendly fire to worry about too!

It took a solid minute for the pain to go away, by which time Calvin and I had taken a few steps closer to the sand pit’s center. This hadn’t been a conscious decision on my part; I’d felt increasingly hemmed in by all the snakes, to the point that I had to keep moving.

And this led to disaster.

The snakes had begun to retreat, and I felt the urge to celebrate this. Perhaps they would avoid Team Earthlink from here on out because we’d proven to be exceptionally strong fighters, and they were too scared to go against us. For a brief moment, I even allowed myself to believe this.

The real reason was far less rosy.

Another couple steps resulted in my legs sinking deeper into the muck. The snakes were all slithering away at a rapid pace now, but my sense of triumph was soon to be replaced with frustration that I couldn’t move an inch.

“Oh no!” Calvin shouted. “We’re in quicksand!”

I grunted. “Do you think I didn’t know that already?”

“But that’s why the snakes are retreating!” my fellow Litleo exclaimed. “They don’t want to get stuck here!”

The snakes and Ekans hadn’t left because they didn’t think they could beat us. They’d left because they didn’t want to end up in the death trap that was the quicksand pit. Alternatively, and even more chillingly, maybe they thought they’d finished us off as it was.

“Well, too late for us, I guess,” I muttered, trying to step forward yet finding myself unable to.

Calvin probably wanted to glare at me here, but we were facing opposite directions. The most he could do would be to glance at the mural that had so captivated him before the slithering beasts had fallen from the sky.

“We are too strong a team to go out like this!” Calvin barked, which was followed by the sound of a squishy impact against the sand.

The message was clear: We’ve survived a reckless sled run, a radioactive manor, a pit of spiders, and a wildfire, yet THIS is going to finish us? I don’t think so!

I tried to take that message to heart. I really did. But every time I tried to make a move, struggling to get out of the muck, it seemed that I only sank deeper.

“That’s what quicksand does!” Calvin shouted, as though he could understand me. “The harder you try to get out by brute force, the deeper you’ll sink!”

Right. That’s what I’ve heard.

It is a strange thing, but sometimes it doesn’t matter how many times an action plan has been drilled into your head: When the time to actually put that plan into motion comes, you’ll forget what to do.

If you’d told me six months ago that I’d have to escape a vat of quicksand, I would have had you committed to an asylum. But that was then, and this was now.

My heart pounded as though it were trying to fit in a lifetime’s worth of beats in the few minutes that remained. Needless to say, that made it hard to concentrate on Calvin’s words.

“I’m already out, Spencer!” Calvin exclaimed in a tone that was half angry, half encouraging.

“You’re not helping!” I bellowed. By this time I was immersed in the muck almost up to my chest. Before long it would reach my neck, at which time I’d have to fight to keep my head above the surface. And after that, I’d sink under and never be found again.

Don’t think about that!

“Just lie down!” I heard Calvin shout, but in the midst of the panic, I barely heard him.

“Pardon me?”

“Roll over, you idiot! That’s how you get it to loosen its grip! And then you just roll away until you’re at the edge of the pit!”

Something about the instructions being specific made it easier to pay attention, and I was able to collapse onto my back. For a moment, I might well have been practicing the dead ‘mon’s float like I’d done at the hot spring all those months ago. Like this was one of the many swimming lessons I’d taken as a child, my parents insisting that it was one of the best activities for kids like me.

“Okay, now do a barrel roll!” I heard Enfield exclaim.

I frowned. “Do what now?”

“Just roll sideways until you reach the edge of the pit!” Calvin yelled. “You can do this!”

You can do this. I can do this. I can roll my way to safety.

That’s exactly what I did, trying to avoid thrashing about as I slowly but surely made my way to the end of the quicksand. Eventually it became more solid, and I was able to stand. Make no mistake, though: Assuming the standing position took more energy than I liked to admit, and my breath came in short, labored pants.

“Do you need to rest?” Calvin asked me. “You’re bound to feel tired once the adrenaline wears off.”

I shook my head. “No breaks, right?” I gasped, scarcely possessing the strength even to lash out at my teammate for delaying us here. He hadn’t known it would be so risky to admire the mural (though he arguably should have known).

More importantly, getting angry would not serve any of us well. We were still a team, after all, and if there was one thing a team could not afford to lose, it was cohesion.

“So this was the Temple of the Chaos Serpent” Calvin said eventually, once we were in the next corridor (which was thankfully devoid of snakes). It was an assertion, not a question.

“Yes?” I asked from right behind Calvin. (Enfield brought up the rear - his body was built for flying, not walking).

“I’ve heard stories about Chaos Serpents” my fellow Litleo responded. “And trust me, they’re not as pretty as that mural.”

“Honestly,” I replied, “after that fight, I’ve had enough snakes for a lifetime.”

To this day, I won’t forget the way Calvin turned around and stared at me. In those three short seconds, I got the message clearly: Oh, you sweet, sweet summer child.