PHOENIX

Chapter Sixty: Stronghold

The trek to the stronghold began and ended just as Eret predicted, with the group arriving by noon the next day. Although, it was not without its own trials and disturbances along the way. The amount of times I had to separate Tommy and Drista before they clawed each others eyes out, or had to stop Techno from nearly murdering Quackity after he had egged him on for almost an hour, or when there was an all-out cursing war which had Bad screaming, "Language!" for over an hour. I will admit, I did join in on teasing Bad. The look on his face had Dream wheezing when I called Sapnap a "Dumb Cunt".

Fortunately, we made it there in one piece. Majority of the group stopped to rest outside the structure while a few of us continued on through the stronghold, trying to find the portal room without dying to hostiles. It took an hour or so, but one of the groups found the room, marking their trail back out and reporting to Dream and I. We gave a little more time to rest up before leading the army through the stone walls, past a library and into the small, dark portal room. The group that had first encountered it had disposed of the silverfish running around inside of the room, so now the space was silent except for the occasional gurgle of lava nearby.

"So how do we light this portal-thingy up?" Ponk asks, peering into the empty portal.

"Don't worry, I have flint and steel!" The totem looking guy in the shark onesie rushes forward.

He attempts to light the portal while we watch him, facepalming at his attempt.

"Foolish," Puffy says with a sigh.

"What?" He turns around, genuinely confused.

"There's lava right below the portal. If it was activated by fire, it would be open by now," Sam explains.

"Oh," Foolish realizes, then begins to giggle, the laughter sounding more like a screeching noise than anything.

"This is sad," Techno observes dryly.

"It was a good idea," I defended, trying to hold back laughter.

"So how do you actually open it?" Foolish asks, steadying his breath.

"With these," Phil walks forward, standing next to Foolish. He produces a stack of ender eyes from his bag, giving half of them to the shark-totem man.

"Place them in the empty spaces, like this," Phil instructs, pushing one into place. When it's secure, a small chime erupts around us.

"Woah," I hear Lani exclaim from the back. "That's so exciting!"

Drista joins her in quiet excitement as Foolish follows Phil's lead, placing one of his on the opposite side. Another chime is heard.

In minutes, the portal is almost complete, only one eye missing.

"Do you want to do the honors?" Foolish asks, looking at me. "You're the leader".

I glance around, making sure there aren't objections before I take the steps forward to where Foolish is. He gently places the eye in my hand, then joins the rest of the group, watching me patiently with smiles and nods of encouragement. I look to Dream, the anxiety of not knowing what would happen when I place this eye eating at me the more time I take.

Dream gives me a short nod, and now more than ever do I wish I could see his face.

Holding my breath, I slowly lower the eye into the small space, giving it a small push to fit perfectly. I wait for the chime.

There's silence.

"Um, did I fuck it up?" I ask.

"That's strange," Phil comes closer with his brows furrowed. "It should have opened..."