~ Andrew made his way around the room, tapping on wall panels with the butt of his flashlight and feeling at seams, sliding his hand around where bookshelves met the wall while Takyle and Jaden continued to busy themselves with brushing hard packed dirt off and out of pottery.
"Wonder how the other teams are doing?" Jaden mused aloud.
"Mm, let's just assume that they're ahead of us," said Takyle, absently.
"Well that's very... optimistic..." Takyle raised her eyes from her work long enough to give him a look that was mostly amused with a bit of admonishment tagged on the edges.
"We're in a competition. It's dangerous to be optimistic," she stated succinctly. "I prefer to think more realistically, that way I'm a lot less likely to be disappointed."
"Well I suppose that's, um... logical," conceded Jaden, reluctantly. Takyle laughed.
"I'm not telling you to give up hope, Jaden. You keep being optimistic, I'll worry about the other end of things." Jaden reached over and set the shard of painted pottery that he had been cleaning on the end of the table, adding it to the short line of objects that had already been cleaned.
"These aren't very dirty. Makes me think we're just doing busy work," Jaden said.
"Yeah, well we probably are. Part of the race name is 'endurance', I just didn't think it would be this type," Takyle said, using a tiny brush to scrub grit out of the chain of a necklace. She looked up as Andrew rejoined them and raised an eyebrow in question.
"I didn't find anything. As far as I can tell, all of these walls are solid." He reached across the table to pick up a brush and gasped, pressing his hand to his stomach. Takyle was around the table in a second and holding his arm.
"Are you alright?" Andrew nodded, but remained leaning heavily on the table's edge, his breaths coming shallow. "Why don't you lie down for a bit, Andy? Jaden and I can finish this." Andrew paused for a moment before answering, and Jaden knew that he was trying to decide whether or not it was worth the small time set back that that would cause. Finally he agreed with another nod of the head. Jaden quickly pulled off his pack and unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor for Andrew to rest on. Andrew thanked him, laying down and closing his eyes.
Jaden and Takle went back to work, silently this time. After a while Takyle pulled the pad of paper with her translation on it back in front of her.
"This has to be right," she muttered to herself. "It says there's a passageway."
"Maybe it's not even talking about this room, Takyle," Jaden whispered across the table. "Maybe it's not even for this task. It could be anywhere."
"I suppose so, but races in previous years never really required strategy that was that far reaching or obtuse." She shook her head. "I just don't know."
"Uh, hey guys," called Andrew from the floor. Jaden turned around to look at him. He had rolled over and was now lying on his back and gazing at the ceiling. He pointed one finger upwards silently. Jaden's eyes followed his direction to immediately above the second table. There in the ceiling was a trap door. Jaden laughed.
"Oh hello. I think Andrew found it after all." ~
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