Gaining Courage: The Search for the Lost Keys (a Fairytail Galu story)

Chapter Thirty-Six: Step Forward

The next morning I was awoken by Horologium just before sunrise and got up with a headache from crying half the night. Glancing over I saw Gajeel never came back to camp last night and had to stop myself from starting to cry again. Getting up I left the tent where it was in case he came back and walked towards the entrance in the semi-dark. As the sun rose over the desert horizon I once again called on Crux as I walked towards the door.

"Miss Lucy my advice to open up the ruins is via a special sequence of glyphs pressed in the right order until the sun hits the last one."

As he finished speaking a small light highlighted the first glyph carved into the door. Following directions I pressed that one and the next six that lit up until just as the sun hit the door the last glyph lit and then the door rumbled up. With the warning that the doors will reseal at sundown ringing in my ears, I had no choice but to enter the Ruins and start exploring the site even if it was without Gajeel.

Once inside Crux quickly took to scanning the nearby carvings on all the walls most being covered in vines didn't detract from their beauty. As I stepped closer to one of the mosaics a lovely depiction of what I thought was some sort of mating ceremony Crux made his usually exclamation of discovery.

"Miss Lucy you have done it. According to the writing on that wall this is the Temple of Righteousness the meeting and last treasure vault of the Mashima People."

I barely stopped myself from going over and hugging Crux as I was so releived and thankful that finally one of my quests looked like it was coming to an end. Waving him goodbye as he faded back to the spirit world I has just slowly started to venture further in but before I could leave the wide entrance chamber Gajeel suddenly appeared out of nowhere half scaring me to death. I was about to make some random comment about nice timing when he held up his hand and grunted.

"Let's get this damn mission over with."

As he stalked further in I recognised that he was intent on ignoring what happened the previous night so I held in the urge to try to talk to him and followed more slowly. Once at the first juncture I called on Pyxis to help navigate the maze of corridors that spread out from the entrance. Quickly I changed into Leo's star dress and produced enough light to guide the way. Each corridor was more overgrown and filled with dirt and plants than the entrance and as we head further into the ruins I couldn't help but feel closed in for some reason.

The stairs down to the next level were treacherous in themselves but what really took the cake was that at each level door we'd run into a puzzle/trap that they had to solve. First up is a simple rune puzzle where I had to put the squares in the correct position something that I did in a matter of minutes trying hard not to look at Gajeel as I knew that Levy had taught him how to work a similar puzzle on a job they had done some years ago.

The next level held a musical trap that almost caused us to be stuck as the only way across the floor was to step in sequence. Gathering my courage I called out Lyra and had her play a soft melody that matched the notes written in the wall. Forcing myself to turn I gestured as I spoke.

"Gajeel we have to step in sequence, the only way across is basically to dance."

I couldn't help but wince at the last word. I was about to speak again when Gajeel grabbed me and dragged me into his arms. My gaze shot up and my eyes were caught by his as he proceeded to waltz us across the room. I held my breath I my eyes drank in his face this close up to me especially after last night. Just before we reached the end I could of sworn I saw something that looked an awful lot like love in his eyes before he broke eye contact and stepped back away from me.

"Keep moving Bunny."

Once more forcing my feeling down, I promised myself that when we got out of this darn temple we would have that talk that I had been putting off even if I had to tie the man down to do it. Shoving all that away for now making my way to the next door didn't take much time and was one of the more easy ones to do at least it was once I thrust Gajeel onto the back of Apus and had him fly us across a room with balance beams as flooring.

The second to last level at least according to the glyphs had three doorways: two leading to a death trap and one which would lead travellers on. In order to pick the right way you had to solve a riddle which forced me to call out Gemini in Hibiki form in order to use archive magic to read the riddle and help find the answer. As GemHibiki rabbited off different meanings to different parts of the riddle I looked closely at the walls around each doorway as I knew that whatever we had to do must involve something on the wall in order for the correct door to open. It took me several minutes to puzzle through the translation of 'broken but falls' and come to the conclusion that all we had to do was push on the depiction of the sun that was displayed next the second door.

By this point I noticed Gajeel had become edgy, I had been doing most of the work which was mostly brain work and he probably didn't like the fact that he hadn't really contributed. What I couldn't know was that it gave him time to think as he had spent the entire night coming to grips with the fact that he had fallen in love with me and there was nothing he could do about it.

As we continued on through the last floor to the last lock according to the writing on the wall I noticed that there was an added warning to this one. There apparently was a guardian of the Mashima treasure and removing anything would call forth the terrifying beast. When I warned Gajeel I wasn't surprised when he grinned as I knew how much he liked a good fight. As we came to the last door I was shocked and dismayed by what I saw; in order to open the last level blood had to be spilled.

I took a breath and held in a sigh as there was no way as was telling Gajeel that fact as I knew he wouldn't let me do it. A quick look round the chamber gave me a small idea so before he could become suspicious I distracted him waving at some nearby statues and then used my hidden boot dagger to quickly slice through my palm and smash the bloodied hand against the stone doorway. His shout of outrage once he realised what I'd done was muffled by the grinding noise the door made as it slowly creaked open.

As the dust settled I got my first good look at what lay beyond: gold as far as I could see, mountains of jewels, and piles of scrolls. The words 'welcome to the treasure chamber' were waiting to come out but I held it in when I saw the fierce scowl on Gajeel's face, he didn't seem to be happy that I'd tricked him not that I thought he would be. Knowing it was little compensation for what I'd done, I waved to show I'd let him go first. As I followed Gajeel as he all but stomped into the last floor, the thought flashed through my head that I hoped they'd make it in time as sunset wasn't far off and my danger senses had all come online the moment I stepped foot through that last doorway. This Temple had more trouble for us I could just feel it.