The Ivy Walls

Chapter 7

The group of now 4 had packed up their camp and were back to walking around the seemingly endless maze. Dale spent most of the time messing around and singing and dancing to nothing in particular. Jesse laughed at how childish Dale acted, he would expect him to act more mature considering all he had been through. Yet he was still happy and outgoing and loud. It made the atmosphere of the whole group lighten.

They walked around for a couple of hours and decided to take a water break. They had recently received new supplies so they had plenty to drink. They were all laughing and joking around when they felt the whole maze violently jolt up and down like a two second earthquake. "Did the whole maze just hiccup?" Dale asked, trying to keep up the light mood, but it was no use, the others looked around and grabbed their weapons and signalled each other to be quiet. Dale grabbed out his dagger and gestured for the rest to follow him, suddenly becoming dead serious. 

He slowly lead the group around a few corners towards where the source of the impact was. Dale slowly crept around the corner and froze, his breath hitched in his throat. In front of him was a beast he couldn't have ever imagined. The others hadn't seen Dale get scared before, he wasn't afraid of anything, to them. So seeing him freeze was a chilling sight for the girls and Jesse especially, seeing how he acts even after all of the conflict in his life.

They warily crept forward to see what was so terrifying and immediately regretted it. The creature they saw was not of this world. It looked like a huge insect, twice as tall as them, three massive red, bug eyes and knives spiking out all over its back. Green goo was oozing out from around where the knives protruded from, almost like the knives where stabbed through it, causing it to bleed. All six of it's long, almost bony, thin arms stretched in every which way. The insectoid let out a growl that sounded almost like rocks and bones being grinded up in an electric grinder. The sound alone made the whole groups spines seem to shudder at the sheer magnitude of the noise. 

Jesse signalled the group back around the corner so he could whisper a plan without the monster hearing them. "I have a plan. You are going to have to follow my exact instructions and trust me with your lives though. I know you probably don't believe me but you will just have to trust me." Gwen and Teddi looked at him in disbelief. "Are you kidding me!? You expect us to trust you? We haven't known you for even a whole day yet and you-" "I trust you." Dale cut Teddi off. He had a determined look in his eyes and nodded. The girls looked at him incredulously, like he had just sprouted wings or something. "Look, we have no choice. Jesse is clearly very smart, if he says he has a plan and that we should trust him, I trust him. We can't have a team or more a friendship without trust." Dale explained, surprising the whole group with his surprisingly motivational speech. He was a lot smarter than he seemed.

Teddi and Gwen looked at each other and sighed. "Sure. Whatever, if I die in this maze, I may as well die fighting. I'm not gonna just lay down like a wounded animal. Let's do this, what's the plan?" Teddi whispered, suddenly pumped up for the fight. Gwen kept quiet but nodded, matching Dale's determined expression. "Ok so what where gonna do-" Jesse explained the plan to the group and they all nodded. "This is an insane plan," Teddi shook her head smiling, "Let's do it." She looked Jesse in the eyes and they nodded.

"Ready? On three." Jesse said, no longer worrying about whispering. "One! Two! Three! Charge!" 

Ooh cliffhanger! I'm sorry (not really), but I love writing cliffhangers, I hate reading them cuz then I have to wait but I fully understand why other authors write them. It's so fun to write. Anyways this was really fun to write, next chapter is gonna be an interesting one (:.

Word Count: 717