14 An Unexpected Dream

Three screams and a thousand clucks, buzzing wasps too. If anyone stood outside the Den of Tests, they would only hear the echoes of chaos and decide to take a raincheck for the license quest. No one would come to the group's aid. The dead, such as Jeff whose body accumulated a crowd of flies, didn't count either.

The chickens were relentless. They were clearly starved beforehand. Their deranged beady eyes were constantly shifting, unable to decide where to begin on the moving buffet. It was the most food they had seen in who knows how long and they were determined to have their fill. Be it feed or flesh. How else did they survive captivity within the cavern walls?

Maya thrashed her arms and torch around as she ran. She clubbed a chicken on its side and its tongue shot out like seaweed between its open beak as it got the wind knocked out of it. It's feathers caught fire and, like that one irresponsible and selfish person in survival movies that's a hazard to everyone's safety, the clucking fireball set aflame the feathers of others it bumped into.

The clucks weren't only fueled by hunger now but also pain. It sounded grotesque, like the damned souls of the underworld were upon the group.

"Why would you enrage them so?!" Athalos cried. His tears streamed down his feed-smothered face. Instead of prodding his staff, he held it like a mop and slid it in a line forward. "Why would you imbue them with fire?!"

"Just shut up and run, Athalos!" Maya shouted as she swung a homerun of another chicken. It soared like a blazing cannonball and bore a hole through the poultry wall, even snagged a few wasps in process. She found it highly stress relieving despite the danger they were in. After another swing, she realized something as she saw her arm coated in gooey feed. "Oh my god, we look like a pack of rejected rice krispies on the run."

Frina stopped strumming. She couldn't concentrate because of the constant pecking that could be implemented at the highest forms of torture. With her apparently indestructible lute, and a crack of irritation on her wall of indifference, she slammed her instrument on every chicken she could. Each hit produced a distorted twang of her lute's strings. Odd enough, hens gave a higher timbre while roosters registered a lower one.

"Hmm?" Frina sniffed the air and her stomach grumbled. No, it wasn't Maya but something much more appetizing. It was the smell of crispy chicken skin. She reached for her shoulder bag and brought out jars of spices. If the earlier bouquets of flowers were any indication, she was the epitome of the curious treasures and endless depths a woman's bag held.

"Hiyah!" One by one, Frina tossed the jars in the air and smashed them open with her lute. They exploded into flavorful clouds and, with the help of the cavern's natural draft and, the spices wafted evenly and seasoned the feathered horde, wasps included.

"Frina?! What are you even—" Maya's furrowed brows eased up. She smelled it too. She would've scolded the bard for such actions if Gregory hadn't eaten most of their rations. She wiped the drool off her mouth. Hunger was as good a motivation as any other and she swung even harder. "Keep going, Frina! Season the right side too!"

However, there was a problem. The cooked and seasoned chickens were left behind on the stone tiles they passed. There was no way for them to retrieve them.

But then the sound of flapping wings.

"Ha-ha!" Graff, hammer and a short sword of his own held out, shouted from high. He rode above Gregory, his knees tucked around the bat's neck. Like a miniature valkyrie of the night, he sailed in safety behind the crowd. "Bet ye never laid yer on such a beautiful sight!"

"I hope you fall and break your small neck!" bawled Athalos. He didn't want to look. The pain he could endure was at its limit.

"G-Graff!" exclaimed Maya with joy. In all honesty, she kinda forgot about him amidst the chaos and cookery.

"Don't worry, Lady Maya! Aye. I can smell what yer cookin' and damn me silky face if this dwarf ever missed a feast! Fly low, Greffodil!" Graff commanded but it went on the bat's pointy deaf ears. The beast held its glide steady near the ceiling. Graff groaned and conceded, "Fine! Blast it…Gregory."

Athalos snorted.

Frina took out a wooden basket from her bag and hurled it over the chasing crowd.

Graff and Gregory flew low then the dwarf leaned to his side and hooked the handle with his hammer. He was in business. The tandem of dwarf and beast picked up the debris of cooked chicken. Graff stabbed with his sword and Gregory plucked them off the ground with his claws, eating a few whole chickens every now and then. The bat's excuse was that its hands were full.

Maya couldn't get over the many useless things they packed for the dungeon and how useful they proved to be. "I… I'll take it. Can't complain really."

CLICK.

Athalos' staff triggered a trap. The fear of being pecked open was there but he wasn't afraid of the next trap. With a giddy smile, a bending whistle and a chicken pecking his head, he was actually excited. "Think it's gonna be potatoes? Maybe we could mash them up? Dare I not be thrifty with my cravings and say gravy?"

Nope. Far from it. Something unlatched from the ceiling and was followed by the metallic rattles. Spiked iron balls held by chains swung and charged towards them in a line.

"Spiky balls from the ceiling, Athalos!" warned Maya.

Everyone running towards the death trap screamed. Gregory and the chickens too. The wasps were smug and haughty about the incoming ordeal.

"How the hell do we dodge that?!" Maya yelled as she casually snapped the neck of chicken that was about to clip her ear. With only their torches' meager light and vision wobbly from running, she couldn't gauge the spiked balls' trajectory. "Do we duck?! Do we jump?!"

Frina removed a chicken stuck between her lute's strings and the shredded feathers floated in the air. She squinted her eyes but even if she knew she had the best eyesight among them, there was just no time to adjust to the darkness from which the trap came from. "I-I'm not sure! It's too dark!"

"It's a riddle," escapes from Athalos' mouth. His eyes widened with enlightenment but sadly still without sight. "We have to duck."

"A ridd— Where is that even coming from?!" screamed Maya. She was flabbergasted. She just couldn't understand the way Athalos' brain worked sometimes.

"We're being chased by poultry so the answer has to be duck!" Athalos explained his theory with the tone of infallible truth.

Silence. Both Maya and Frina had no words. They didn't even know where to begin and they also felt a little dumber than before.

"H-Have faith, Lady Maya!" Athalos had to break the silence or he too would doubt. "It has to be! Gregory, the bats, the wasps, these chickens which should be sent over a cliff! They are all winged, are they not?!"

Maya didn't want to admit it because it felt like admitting defeat. But Athalos' reasoning made sense somehow, probably for the first time, and the time for discussion was at its end. The spiked balls were loomed larger and nearer. She bit her lip and, like a child forced to apologize by a friend's mother, she spoke, "W-We duck."

"Are we really going to do that?" Frina was in disbelief that they would place their lives on a hunch… on Athalos' hunch.

"If you have a better idea, you better say it fast because those balls are coming down!" Maya's torchlight was close enough to make the spikes glint. They had to act now or be impaled and their bones crushed to dust. Maya held Athalos and Frina's shoulders and waited until she shouted, "DUCK!"

All three of them dropped to the floor and so did their hearts. Sprawled on the floor, they held their breaths. Cheek to the ground, Athalos' face wasn't one of hope but it was as stoic as a rock. Maya and Frina knew then that they shouldn't expect to live through this.

The heavy swoop of the spiked balls arrived. To Maya, they sounded like moving large furniture across the floor. Specifically, a piano. She looked at her right hand; All her fingers except her thumb had a lined scar above her knuckles.

It's said that on the brink of death, memories of the good times flash before one's eyes. That wasn't the case for Maya. She remembered the time she stayed after school in order to practice the piano in the music room. She liked the solace of it. It was just her, the music, and the afternoon sun on its way to dusk. Simpler times.

One afternoon, the amber glow shined through the windows as always, Maya played a slow song and Io Hara was there with her, her pleated skirt folded as she leaned on the edge of the piano's body. Maya shared with her her dreams of becoming an idol. She expected encouragement or even feigned happiness would have sufficed, just as one would want from a friend.

The piano moved. It's legs scratched the wooden floor, a mark that time couldn't fade so easily. The piano's fallboard was open again. The white keys were smeared red and it wasn't as noticeable on the black. Maya held her bloody fingers close to her chest. When Io Hara left the room, she broke in tears. How could she have known she had the same dream too?

The three of them on the ground screamed again on full blast at each other. The spiked balls swung down and, whether it was intuition or a miracle, passed over their backs. Chickens and wasps were bouldered through and scattered like pins in a bowling alley.

"We-We're still alive, right?" Athalos eyes blinked rapidly.

Frina looked like a mummy preserved for a thousand years. She returned to her quiet self but for life threatening reasons.

"Come on and get up you two!" Maya shouted as she got on her feet. She had the face of one who wasn't an early bird woken up at seven in the morning. She had just a dream she didn't want to remember and it left a bad taste in her mouth. She spat and unfortunately for Athalos, it hit his back.

"Huh?" Athalos was dazed from the close call and had trouble returning his spirit back into his body.

"Those big balls are gonna come back!" Maya reasoned as she peeled the almost lifeless two off the ground and pointed at the survivors of the mob. "And I'm pretty sure it didn't get all the chickens and wasps!"

"Split the sky, Gregory!" Graff held onto Gregory's fur and the basket of seasoned chicken. The bat screeched as it flew vertically as it went between the chains of two spiked balls. Graff was pissed that some of the chicken spilled and wanted to retrieve their hard work but the crash of the balls on the ceiling behind made him reconsider. Worried, he shouted to the group up front, "Balls are comin' back! Run ye fools!"

The other two were still in a state of shock and sudden old age. Maya had no choice and hauled both of them like luggage underneath her pits. She ignored the fact that Athalos' rear was ripped open by the iron ball's spike. Their grips still worked so Maya placed her torch in Athalos' hand. She took one last glance at the reduced horde and the approaching spiked balls then ran forward with a roar.

But the very first step she took made the sound they most dreaded.

CLICK.

And the next several rows of stone tiles vanished. It was replaced by a bottomless gorge.

"Oh god."