Lucas landed hard on the stone floor. Not jarring like when he fell the first time, but enough to make his spine ache. He groaned as he stood, brushing dust off his trousers, then blinked at the passage ahead. Another tunnel, probably leading to more scenarios he wasn't going to like.
No time to rest, he thought. He hadn't wasted much strength, and his mind wasn't affected like in the first case, so he just shrugged off the tiredness and marched on.
The corridor sloped downward into a vast, dark chamber. A single torch burned on the far wall, casting flickering light over a massive plain stone door. Chains wound across its surface, thick as a man's arm, locked in place by three heavy padlocks. Below, a few feet in front of the door, a circular hole yawned open, utterly black and silent.
Lucas checked the chamber, but there truly was nothing else. The torch simply granted light, and when he looked down the hole, it was bottomless. He cast magic to probe the void, even tossed a stone and listened, but nothing.
He moved to the door, tugging on the chains nailed into the wall that kept the door closed and even the padlocks that stopped the removal of the chains; they didn't budge. He tried using magic to create a thin flame to cut through the metal chains, but wards suddenly lit up and stopped this.
He judged from the wards that they were merely strengthening and reinforcement wards, serving to stop the chains from being destroyed, so he activated his veil sight and looked around to notice that the only magic was on the chains and padlock, all meant to help seal the door and stop them from being destroyed.
He leaned his ear towards the door and listened for anything, and when he received silence, he knocked; nothing returned his greeting.
With no other path, Lucas came back to the hole and stood over it, staring into the void, contemplating what to do. Casting some wind and gravity magic to help slow the fall, Lucas took a deep breath and took a step into the hole, dropping into the darkness.
The fall only felt like a few minutes, but when he hit the ground, even with his magic cushioning it, pain lanced through his ribs and his ankles. He didn't take the time to check himself, instead pushing himself up and looking at his surroundings.
The chamber was familiar.
The white stone floor. The infinite hallway of doors. He was back where he first fell...
Lucas froze, confusion flaring in his chest. He had completed this. Hadn't he? Was this a different but similar place, or had he just been brought back to the beginning? But he believed himself to be safe as there seemed to be no immediate danger, so he took a rest and recovered from the fall before getting back up and repeated his escape.
Opening a random door, just to be brought back to the beginning, just to make sure he had the right place, and then he used his illusions to create a false door, and like the original attempt, willed the illusion to open, allowing him to escape this chamber.
Another corridor, flickering lights. It was all the same. Lucas was confused, unsure of what was happening, but had no choice but to continue. He walked through the flickering corridor until he was back in Camp Half-Blood, watching it change from its normal appearance to a nightmare. He rushed straight to the big house and found the typewriter, using it to create another trap door to escape.
He had returned to the corridor that led to the chamber with the chained door. When he entered the chamber, he noticed one of the padlocks and clicked open, allowing some chains to fall from the door.
He made his way to the door and tried it without any hope; it was indeed still closed; the chains wouldn't budge, and he still couldn't damage anything. He was back to his confused thoughts on what was happening, but since dropping down the hole led to a change, he decided to do it again.
The process repeated, the doors, the camp, and back to the chamber with the door. This time, another padlock was unlocked, leaving only one to hold the door.
But Lucas didn't continue jumping down the hole. Instead, he just sat down and stared at the chained door.
This place was too different compared to those before. The previous places felt like tests, stripping him of his self, forcing him to overcome an obstacle, but here? It was too easy. Too simple. It felt wrong.
Something wasn't right.
Why was the door chained in the first place?
He learned when he was young to respect the unknown, and he felt he really should follow this advice and not tempt whatever was on the other side of the door.
He got up and paced, his eyes scanning the chamber; nothing had changed in the chamber except the loss of the padlocks. He had truly checked twice over, but nothing had changed in the chamber...in the chamber.
Lucas stopped pacing, an idea forming in his mind; he turned and left the door chamber, returning to the corridor he had come from and reaching the end. When he looked up, there was a trap door, the same one he had come through, open and waiting.
He exhaled. He climbed the wall with effort, hand over hand. The wall lacked any good grip, but his natural strength and dexterity allowed him to progress. He pulled himself through the trapdoor and into the Big House once more.
It was the same as when he left, except for one thing. It was frozen in time. Everything felt still, dust stuck in the moonlight, except the typewriter. On it, there was a script describing how Lucas climbed through the trapdoor and returned to the big house; it was explaining his current scenario.
Then, it paused. The typewriter shook. The keys clicked without his touch again.
"The final padlock shattered. The door swung open. @~%* was released. The chamber collap-"
Lucas stood up so quickly that the chair toppled over. His breath froze in his chest; something was wrong. Something unseen but immense. He felt it in the walls, in the air.
He quickly sat back down and began typing.
"Lucas returned to the beginning. Back to the first location. He found the hole he had fallen through and chose to climb to freedom."
He didn't wait.
He ran.
He made his way through the frozen camp, back to the hill where he arrived from the hall of doors. He reached the place, but there was no exit, and he cursed himself for not writing it in when he was at the typewriter. He was thinking of going back to create one when the feeling of wrongness grew; his sense of danger flared, warning him that if he turned, if he saw what escaped from the chained door, he would die. No. Worse.
With no idea what else to do, he resorted to his previous tricks; he created an illusionary door and entered, returning to a random door located in the hall of doors. Guessing he needed to escape from the original spot, he opened the door across from him and entered. Since he knew the trick, he did feel his mind becoming slightly sluggish and foggy, but it didn't really affect him. Instead, he returned to the place where he had landed the first time, the marks on the ground confirming this.
He looked up.
A hole was there. His escape.
He started climbing, but soon after he heard it, one of the stone doors rumbling open as it scraped across the ground. Whatever escaped through the chained door, it had followed him here and was catching up.
He climbed faster.
Fingers gripped the edge of the hole; he resisted the urge to look down, knowing how dangerous it would be, even if he felt the danger nipping at his heels.
He pulled himself up and felt himself pass an invisible barrier. The feeling of constant danger disappeared.
Lucas lay on his back, breath ragged. He had escaped.