Chapter 3: Enclosed

Two birds land at the end of a hallway, dim and dreary.

Metal encloses every inch of the length of the hall, and a set of black double doors of steel completes the hallway with a lock, firm and true.

“We’re finally here! The maximum security block!” Sparrow cheers as Owl right beside her combs a hand through his greyish hair as he catches his breath.

“You could’ve slowed down a bit!” he heaves, “Seriously, you run too fast for someone that’s supposed to be behind me!”

Sparrow runs a hand through the back of her head, “Sorry~”

Owl sighs as he hears the small hints of unapologetic sass in her voice.

“Forget it, we’re in enemy territory anyways. We needed to move, as you said.”

“Thank you~” Sparrow replies with verve.

“That wasn’t a compliment!”

Sparrow giggles mischievously as she continues walking down the hall with Owl in tow, who thinks it should be the other way around.

The duo reach the set of dull black doors at the end of the hall. Sparrow looks to Owl and waves a hand, gesturing with grandeur as she steps out of the way, “Your expertise, Owl~”

Owl sighs with a smile, kneeling down to the doors and working his magic to make the doors come loose.

“By the way,” Sparrow starts with a questioning gaze, “you brought down the security matrix of the prison, right? Why isn’t the MS block’s security down as well?”

Owl bows his head with a sigh, “Sparrow, the MS block is powered by a separate, even more secure matrix to power the facility. I was able to bring down the main matrix, but not the auxiliary maximum security matrix, got it?

“...The twin headed dragon is not quite dead, huh?” Sparrow replies.

“Decent analogy,” Owl replies “but I suggest you drop it. I’m working.”

Sparrow crosses her arms and exaggerates an annoyed tsk, “You’re no fun.”

“And you’re being lazy by not doing anything,” Owl retorts, “Keep a watch for the hall in case Swallow and Raven come by… or our enemies.”

Sparrow smirks, her dark brown hair whipping behind her as she turns her back to the diligent Owl, “Aye aye.”

Sparrow walks away from Owl and goes through the long hallway again, but in the opposite direction.

In front of her is a fork in the path where the hallway splits into two identical halls, both equally as dim as the metal that covers them.

“...What boring architecture,” Sparrow says aloud.

Hands behind her head, Sparrow carelessly walks into the in-between, completely uncaring of the potential presence of an enemy.

She leans against the wall, unsheathing her daggers and juggling them around absentmindedly.

Her vision begins to come unfocused.

“Ugh, so bored.”

But then a sudden sound catches her attention. She catches it so fast that she forgot that she was juggling, her blades fall from her playful grips and is just barely about to hit the floor before Sparrow caught them in the nick of time.

“Phew…” Sparrow sighs. “Now, what the heck was that… groaning sound?”

The dark bird faces the hall to her left, the low light of the hall giving it an eerie glow but low visibility.

She squints her eyes.

Sparrow sees the shape of a knight slowly trudging towards her, walking as if they were still asleep.

“Don’t come any closer!” she shouts, her voice carrying across the hall.

“Please… Save me…” the knight gasps before collapsing to the floor. Unmoving.

Sparrow slowly approaches the fallen foe, daggers raised in defense and legs bent at an angle for fight or flight.

She leans closer to the dead knight… A single hole straight through the armor and the heart…

‘How the hell…’

Sparrow feels something move.

“Who’s there?!”

Blades raised to neck-level, she looks around the hallway… She sees nothing.

‘No… there’s gotta be something here.’

“You’re right,” a soft, but deep voice whispers in her ear.

Sparrow spins around, and her eyes widen to see the blackness stare back at her.

A hood of darkness, a veil of moonlight.

“Hush now,” the slender monster commands, “you are not my target. Get out of my way.”

But she remains rooted in place.

A low hum emanates from the beast as it moves an agonizingly slow hand towards Sparrow.

It picks her up, almost languidly, and then sets her to the side of the hall before sauntering away from her.

The lights suddenly go out, and when they come alive after a dreadfully long second, the monster is gone.

Sparrow feels vomit building up to her throat…

But then she hears Owl’s voice, making her wince.

“Hey Sparrow! The doors are open!” his echoing voice calls.

“Co–Coming!” she stutters, quickly pacing back down the hallway.

When her footsteps’ echoes are at their loudest, Owl turns around to face her.

“Sparrow,” he greets before narrowing his eyes and putting a finger up to his chin, his dark green eyes seemingly scanning Sparrow from left to right, top to bottom.

“What is it?” Sparrow questions.

“Did something happen to you?” Owl asks, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

At that, Sparrow flinches.

“I– I’m fine,” she sputters before motioning towards the door behind the spectacled man.

“Just open the doors already…”

Owl gives her a strange look before shrugging and doing as she is told, opening the black double doors to maximum security.

When the duo enter, it is nothing like they have ever seen before; a towering circular chamber highlighted with the red emanated from the myriad of floating embers that hover calmly throughout the room, with rows upon rows of cells encircling each and every layer, with only two elevators on either side to lift them up.

“This is it, huh…” Sparrow mutters.

“Each and every layer here is numbered from one to twenty… We must get to the ninth floor for our target,” Owl exclaims, rolling his neck as his gaze slowly pans across the room.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“We have to wait for Raven and Swallow,” Owl declares.

“Why’s that?”

“The security is top-notch, and…”

The menacing red glow of the chamber slowly transitions into a ghastly teal green, as the embers sway and drift towards one singular direction: the first floor.

“...You’re about to find out why we need the full team,” Owl says as he slowly backs away, only to find the doors behind him locked in place. “Damn it…”

Sparrow feels her brow lower as she sees the emerald embers fly into a whirl of flames. The heat sears against her skin as she takes a step back.

“Owl, get behind me!”

The flames continue to whirl until finally manifesting a bestial maw of a roaring lion, and below that is a muscular structure of a man, arms long and bulky and flaming legs crushing and scorching land.

“A Flame Construct…” Owl murmurs, sweat dripping down his forehead.

“Sparrow, we need magic to fight that thing, and none of us have unlocked our Trifecta.”

Still, Sparrow brandishes her blades, “Don’t worry, I got this. Just break our target out.”

Owl wipes the sweat from his forehead, “...Just stay safe, alright?”

Sparrow smirks, “Gotcha.”

The monster roars a lion’s breath and charges forward with an arm raised.

“Go!” Sparrow cries as she meets the flaming beast’s challenge; dashing towards the beast with her blades raised, and she ducks under the monster’s punch– its fist crashing against the floor –and goes underneath its groin, nearly searing her hair as she slides below and behind it.

Owl could do nothing but watch in fear for his friend as the monster spins around with another precise blow– just barely missing her as she leaps away.

“Owl! I said go!”

Owl snaps back to reality, “R– Right!” and he runs towards the side of the chamber– towards one of the elevators.

Owl hops onto the elevator– it shivers under his weight, a small cage held up by two chains, the small elevator large enough to carry a mere three people.

Feeling his way around the elevator, how it has no device to control it, how it shakes unpredictably wherever he moves, he feels a warmth tap upon his chest the longer he stays, how his hairs raise on end despite the heat in the room.

This elevator is enchanted.

Understanding this, Owl touches the bars of the elevator and resonates with the magic within, feeling his way through it, and eventually feeling the reins of the horse he rides, he feels the chains of the elevator move and lift him upwards.

‘1…2…3,’ he counts in his mind the number of levels he has ascended to, until he finally reaches the ninth.

He steps away from the rickety elevator and onto a metal platform that stretches to encircle the level.

He begins walking, feeling the cold steel beneath his boots, how the metal clangs noisily with his footsteps, how eerie the place feels now that it’s plunged in green.

He hears yelling beneath him, he resists the urge to look and worry, he has a mission to do.

He looks to his left where the cells are lined; he cannot see into them, as a white magical barrier is preventing both him and the prisoner from looking in or out.

He absentmindedly rubs his hand across one of the cell barriers; it feels cold.

He then ignores the cells for the most part, until he finds one numbered 992.

‘Found him.’

Owl knocks twice on the surface of the cell’s barrier and hears two knocks back.

‘I’ll getcha out,’ he thinks to himself as he places his CCT onto the surface of the barrier.

He resonates with the device, and he extends his resonance to the barrier connected to it.

His soul feels a hard, spiritual wall, a wall so thick and dense that it may be impossible to break.

But to Owl, that’s just another hurdle to overcome.

‘If I can’t break the wall, then I’ll just have to fly over it.’

And so Owl begins his work to bring down the barrier that separates both him and his target.

Meanwhile, Sparrow is struggling on the ground floor below.

Dodging attack after attack, close-call after close-call. She feels her hair stand on end and then suddenly singeing at the seams as she leaps away from another flaming fist.

Her body feels as if it were burning.

She grunts as she dodges a torrent of flames shooting her way, she feels every bead of sweat pouring down her brow evaporating as she feels herself bend too close to the sea of fire.

“Damnit Owl, hurry up!” she gasps through heavy breaths, as she prepares to jump again from another blazing arm thrusting its way towards her.

The attack barely grazes her, the heat licks against her beige coat, scorching black marks upon it.

Sparrow dodges again from another punch, this time the attack grazes her boots– she feels the heat of fire close around her.

‘I can’t keep this up!’

Another fist crashes next to her– her arm feel burned.

A barrage of punches get thrown, one after the other– dodged, dodged, dodged.

A cowl of green engulfs the room turned gladiator’s arena, searing flames no longer restricted to the body of the beast.

The Flame Construct grits its monstrous teeth and lets loose a roar towards the heavens in frustration, letting the flames that cover the chamber to rise.

“Tch–”

Flames lash out at Sparrow as she strafes to the side, letting another punch miss her just barely.

The blaze intensifies, the embers caresses her boots.

It’s getting hard to move, Sparrow feels her consciousness starting to slip.

The monster capitalizes; punch, punch, punch, wanton destruction beats into the ground as the little Sparrow leaps and flies through it all, her impeccable footing fading with each evasion.

She coughs dryly, feeling her lungs starting to get heavier. Pain flashes through the bird’s golden eyes as she accidentally steps on a small pool of searing heat, temporarily setting her boot on fire before putting it out.

‘Need to… move!’

She jumps away from another crushing blow, but…

‘Shit, I’m cornered!’

Backed up against the wall with raging flames dancing around her, there exists only one road for her and Sparrow sees it clearly– the maw of a flaming lion.

The Flame Construct’s roar rips across the blazing air, sending green embers flying.

Sparrow screams wheezily in response, one that is drowned out by the sound of fire and her own smoky coughs.

She raises her daggers up high and pushes herself into a stance.

A fire is reflected in her golden eyes, one unlike the horrid green.

Her lifelong companion, defiance, stands alongside her.

Her brow furrows and her teeth grind into a grit, “Bring it… on!” she yells exhaustedly.

The construct raises its arms as if it were calling her for a hug– and charges.

Accepting the challenge, Sparrow runs like never before.

She feels the heat searing into her eyes as she draws closer to her target.

Those vile green flames sear into both her mind and her body as she prepares to meet a likely end.

But then… a chilling cold bites down onto the entire chamber.

Suddenly, the inferno that had reigned over the room had fallen silent, and the beast nowhere to be found, gone like the wind… stomped and silenced like a campfire.

A heavy darkness now wraps around the chamber. Sparrow feels alone… but she knows something is with her.

The head of a… thing reveals itself to her from the pitch black: a familiar black hood and a swaying veil of moonlight sparkling through the blackness. It unnerves her.

“I was wondering where all this heat came from.”

Sparrow feels her body lock up in response to that… familiar voice.

That haunting, deep, almost distant voice.

“Still afraid of me, little birdy?”

Sparrow holds her breath.

“Even after I saved you~” the voice slurs in the darkness.

Sparrow gulps down her fear, if only for a moment, and finds a voice.

“Wha–”

But before she knows it, the darkness vanishes, slinking out of the room through the now open doors, leaving only the whispers of words in its wake: “Still, you are not my target.”

She feels her lungs constricting her.

“Wha–”

She suddenly hears the distinct sound of a rickety elevator.

“Sparrow, I have our target!” Owl calls with a wave, showing off the dark skinned man with messy brown hair that stands alongside him.

Sparrow waves back halfheartedly.

When Owl and the prisoner step out of the elevator and approach Sparrow, the prisoner narrows his eyes at the dark haired girl.

“Fear.”

“I’m sorry?” Sparrow replies confusedly.

“You’re afraid,” he clarifies. “I feel your fear from here.”

“Wha– What do you–”

“What are you afraid of?” the man questions.

Sparrow couldn’t reply, instead standing completely motionless, eyes blank.

“Um..?” Owl hums in worry.

“Sparrow, are you alright?”

“Y–Yeah, I’m fine… Let’s just take our target to the extraction point, shall we?”

“Um, sure?”

Sparrow walks away in a haste, leaving the other two scratching their heads at her weird behavior.

“Sparrow, wait! You still haven’t told me how you’ve beaten the Flame Construct!”