The horse plunged through the newly opened passage without breaking stride, carrying Moon and Selene into the tunnel beyond just as the chamber behind them finished its lethal shut.
They heard a crushing sound of space being eliminated completely, the walls eting with force that would have pulverized anything caught between them.
But they were through.
Mirage slowed to a halt once they were safely inside the new passage.
Moon sat frozen for a mont, his heart hamring, adrenaline still flooding his system.
"We’re alive," Selene whispered against his back, her voice shaking. "We’re actually alive. How did you know?"
"...I didn’t, I guessed. If I’d been wrong..."
He didn’t need to finish that sentence.
Selene laughed in a slightly hysterical tone. "Next ti you make a guess like that, maybe warn first?"
"There wasn’t ti," Moon said, but a grim smile touched his lips despite everything.
Mirage snorted, shaking his mane as if requesting his own reassurance after the terrifying experience. Moon patted the horse’s neck gratefully. "Good boy. You trusted even when it looked insane."
Moon’s eyes widened suddenly as he noticed sothing wrong.
Mirage’s tail had been cut or rather, shortened. His gaze darted back toward the passage entrance they’d escaped through, which was now sealed completely shut, and he realized with horror that Mirage’s tail must have been caught when the walls closed.
Selene noticed his sudden worry and panic imdiately. She moved closer to examine Mirage’s tail, her expression focused.
"Don’t worry, Mirage is fine," she said after a quick inspection. "The chamber only closed on the long coarse hair growing from his dock, the external part. It’s mainly used to swat annoying flies and for visual communication with others. It will grow back out eventually with ti."
She ran her hand carefully over the base of the tail. "The dock itself is completely unhard. If that had been caught, it would have been an issue, because the dock is the muscular, bony base of the tail which contains vertebrae, muscles, nerves, and blood vessels. Damage there could cause permanent injury or mobility problems."
Moon’s worry lessened considerably upon hearing her explanation and seeing that Mirage wasn’t showing signs of pain or distress beyond the stress of their near-death experience.
"I was worried for a mont there," Moon admitted. "How do you know so much about horse anatomy?"
Selene remained silent for a brief mont, her expression becoming distant. "I encountered a few..."
Her tone made it clear, she had no intention of elaborating further.
Moon understood imdiately that Selene didn’t want to go into details about whatever experiences had taught her about horses. He didn’t push for more information.
He gave Mirage another reassuring pat, checking that the horse seed stable despite losing part of his tail. "You did great. We’re all alive because you trusted ."
Mirage seed to accept the consolation, his breathing steadying.
Moon remounted quickly. "Let’s go. We’ve already wasted precious seconds standing here. The chamber might contract again on a cycle, and we need to find the next stable point before that happens."
Selene nodded hurriedly and jumped onto Mirage’s back behind Moon. "You’re right. I tried using my earth elent manipulation while we were in that chamber. It was completely negated, as if the walls treated my pillars as nothing but paper."
Moon processed that information with growing concern. "Yeah...the walls are really tough. I don’t think my earth elent could stop the closing either. Whatever this place is...it’s not normal by any ans."
"Then we can’t rely on using our elents to try and stop these weird closings," Selene finished grimly. "We are limited to timing, and trying to understand this place. Maybe once we have an idea, we would be able to find a way to escape."
That was a significant limitation. Losing the opportunity of using their elents as mages made their situations considerably more precarious.
"Let’s continue on our way, if things do look grim. I will use my strongest attack to try and break through these walls, although it seems like it would be difficult to do so
He urged Mirage forward at a steady but fast pace. They couldn’t be moving slowly, especially when they didn’t know how far the pathway was going for. They had half a minute to find another pathway before this one closes.
The passage they were now in curved gently, its walls maintaining that disturbing motion of moving subtly.
Moon kept his senses hyper extended, watching for any signs of another major crushing cycle beginning.
They had perhaps survived the first life-threatening situation. But Moon had no illusions that this labyrinth would give them many more warnings before trying to kill them again.
They arrived at another split pathway, the tunnel branching into two distinct routes that curved in different directions.
Rumble!
The walls began to move once again, the walls starting their deadly cycle.
This ti, Moon remained considerably calr than before. He had an idea now, based on experience. He was no longer guessing blindly—he was simply waiting for the environntal hint to reveal itself before committing to a route.
One of the two pathways imdiately began its sequence, the walls compressing inward to seal it shut. Simultaneously, their own current pathway started the sa lethal process.
’Left!’ Selene thought internally, using her own growing understanding of the chanism to predict which direction would open. The pathway that was currently closed would likely expand during the next cycle, while the pathway that remained stable now would close.
Indeed, Moon swerved Mirage sharply to the left without hesitation, spurring the horse toward the pathway that had just begun opening as the cycle reversed. They entered the newly expanded passage a re second before the crushing sound of the walls eting echoed behind them—the passage they’d just vacated being eliminated completely.
Both awakeners sighed in relief, their breathing heavy but their confidence growing.
They had understood the chanism.
The rhythm was predictable once you recognized the pattern—passages operated in opposing cycles, opening and closing in alternating sequences. Watch for which pathway begins contracting first, then move toward the opposite route that will be opening.
Things were looking better from that perspective. Survival seed more achievable now that they’d decoded the fundantal rules governing this deadly environnt.
But there was still a critical issue at hand.
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