Abrianna Hartney & The Temple of a Thousand Treasures

Chapter 1

Abrianna walked up the steps of the temple. They were weathering away, but she could still make out the hieroglyphics above the door. Only the purest of hearts may enter the temple of Inti.

'Great.' Abri thought to herself. 'Pure of heart. I got this....I hope.' She took a step into the temple, praying that it wouldn't crumble under her.

After a moment she looked up, the doorway hadn't fallen yet, so that was a good sign. She took little over 10 steps in when she heard the sound of moving stone. 'Crap. What'd I do?' She thought. As she looked around. Up ahead she saw a stone slowly sliding to the side of a wall revealing a beautifully carved face in hardened clay.

She looked down, and of course there was a block of the floor slightly pressed down. "Fudge!" She yelled as she dove down, expecting the worst.

Less than a second after she hit the ground she saw an arrow flying where her head would've been. She quickly scrambled to where the floor didn't have death tiles.

'Okay.' She thought. 'I got this.' She studied the tiles. Each one had a different symbol on it. There were 5 columns and 5 rows. Each symbol was a letter in the ancient Latin Alphabet, the code could be nearly anything.

She looked around and saw carvings, specifically carvings of the sun god. 'Inti....this is the temple of Inti!' She realized. She tried it, she slowly moved her foot onto the I which was a straight line. Nothing happened. She then moved to the N, which looked like a lowercase y. Then she hopped to the T which was a few tiles away, barely making it. Then to an I again. The temple remained intact, which seemed like a good sign.

After she had made it across the tiles she moved forward, studying her surroundings. She couldn't see an exit, but she could hear scurrying, lots of it. Some sort of bug maybe?

She tracked the sound to a wall lined with torches. 'Easy.' She thought, as she started to pull on each of the torches. One of them was bound to open a secret door. After none of the 8 torch levers opened anything she was sure something was off. She knew that one of these had to do something.

'Maybe it's Inta again..?' She thought. Unlikely, but she still tried it.

I is the 9th letter in the Incan alphabet, 9-8 is 1 so she pulled the 1st lever.

N=14, 14-8 is 6, so she pulled the 6th lever.

T=20, 20-16 (8 twice) is 4, so she pulled the fourth lever.

She then pulled the 1st lever again for I.

Nothing happened. 'Alright, let's try again. Inta... Inta was the Inca god of the sun! It has to be the sun!' She reasoned.

S=19, 19-16 is 3, so she pulled the 3rd lever.

U=21, 21-16 is 5, so she pulled the 5th lever.

N=14, 14-8 is 6, so she pulled the 6th lever.

She waited for a moment, hoping that it worked. Suddenly the floor slid out from under her, and she was falling into a pit. There were vines hanging from the ceiling, so she quickly grabbed hold of one, catching herself at the last second.

She looked down. Spiders. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!" She squealed as she quickly started to scramble up the vine. Of course it was spiders. She kept climbing to distance herself from the spiders. Abri couldn't stand spiders. Next to needles they were her worst fear.

She studied the room, there were lots of statues, that were probably beautifully crafted, but she didn't want to look because of the spiders.
After a few minutes of her calming down. (And after her arms were getting  tired.) she started to look for a way to escape.

There were 6 pillars each with a different statue on top. 3 men, 3 women. There were inscriptions under each pillar and instructions on the wall. The instructions were in Latin, but the inscription was in another language, Greek maybe.

The instructions read 'Knowledge of the gods pleases Inti. Prove to Inti that you are worthy by showing your knowledge of the gods birthright.'

She turned to the pillars, each one had a statue of a god, and and an inscription, after a minute of examining, she determined that it was definitely Greek. "Greek." She said aloud. "I kinda remember this from school. Okay....that one says.....er- Hades, God of Death. And that one, Demeter, Godess of Grains." She paused. "Okay, these are all Greek Gods...what does that mean?"

She looked around for a moment, "the inscription said birthright right? That must mean the birth of the gods.....which one was born first? Zeus right?" She questioned.

She kept reasoning to herself for a moment, until her sweaty hands slipped. She was falling. Closer and closer to the spiders. Until she grabbed onto another vine at the last second.. "Fudge!" She yelled. Her arms had finally given in, without her realizing it.

She started to hurry, afraid she was going to fall again. "Hestia. Hestia was born first." She concluded. In a moment of quick decision making, she swung over to the Hestia pillar and knocked it over with her feet. Then to Demeter, then Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and finally Zeus.

She watched the spiders scurry out of the way, trying not to get hit by the falling pillars. Finally a door opened with a bridge connecting the vine's area to it. She carefully climbed down the vine onto the bridge, careful not to get near any of the spiders as she moved on to the next task.