Pure of Heart [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

Chapter 8: Into the Ruins

Charizard went first as the torch bearer of the group. I followed close behind him, checking the path for anything potentially hazardous with my newly recovered flashlight. The torches had helped immensely in recovering the device. Akemi and Mewtwo followed me closely, both of them floating off of the ground.

Charizard slid the last few feet into the next room, his scaly feet giving way under the loose gravel. I jogged, trying to keep up with my partner before turning to motion that everything was safe to Mewtwo. He continued to bring up the rear, still holding Akemi and himself in levitation.

The room was similar in size to the last, but the materials used were different. Cobwebs hung over the carving on the far wall and in every corner, and roots snaked their way down through the ceiling. A small pool of water congregated in the chipped flooring in the corner. The rest of the floor was in a similar state of decay, littered with broken ceramic pieces and damaged bricks. I moved with Charizard to the back wall to examine this room's unique feature: a mosaic. White bricks framed the damaged picture. The intact fragments reminded me of the Pokémon Kabuto.

"What's your genius idea for this room, Mewtwo?" I turned to ask the psychic type.

He was floating around the room, trying to gather clues to figure out what to do next. I notice he had placed Akemi down on the ground again. She was leaning against the wall. Her head rested against the bricks with her eyes squeezed shut and her teeth clenched in a grimace. She opened one eye and looked at me, then she smiled a pained grin before returning to her former appearance.

"You can help too. I am not required to do all of the work," he replied after a long pause.

His eyes were glued to the wall next to the open passageway. They flitted from marking to marking, trying to make a connection between the runes and the solution to the puzzle.

"Fine, let me see what I can do," I snapped back after understanding that I wasn't going to get a better answer.

I got to work immediately, starting with the mural at the back of the room. Several chips came off when I touched it, leading my eyes down to my feet where I noticed several dozen similar pieces laying in a pile. Disturbed dust rose up from where the newly fallen chips now sat.

"They come off for a reason," Akemi said through shallow breaths. I turned to face her. "Try putting it back together on the wall. It was probably broken when we got in here for a reason." She groaned and gripped her leg, letting her head loll back to rest on the wall again.

"Okay, I'll try it," I said, bending down to collect a handful of titles.

She made a good point. The mural wasn't complete when we walked in. I thought it was because of decay, but upon closer examination of the pieces, there was no dried glue on them in the first place. No residue or caked on concrete, just puzzle pieces fitting together in the wall; a wall with a slight slope away from the center of the room. I got to work, starting with the freshly dusted of tiles in my hand. Mewtwo soon joined me, I noticed, as pieces magically floated into their places. In almost no time at all, the picture was completed. The end result was a Kabuto like I had noted earlier.

The building rumbled once more.

"Here we go again," Akemi sighed when the noise stopped.

Suddenly, the door leading into the room slammed shut behind us, and the rumbling started up again. It was louder this time, accompanied by the roaring we had heard earlier. The floor beneath us split open, slowly retreating into the walls. I jumped back from the crack and scrunched myself as close to the wall as I could get. The mural fell apart behind me. Dusty pieces scattered everywhere. I had to brush a few of them out of my hair.