As they phantom at the marvelous uniqueness of the cave room and the statues, Nicholas walked up to the altar in the middle of the room that the little ray of sun light touches and light up the room on it he saw a book with just nine pages,
"Come look at what I found." He called them
"What did you find a treasure map?" Keji said as she ran to him at the altar, others went to the altar except Joe and Liya who was trying to get every details of the statues, Joe looked closely to the elf statue for it looked so familiar although it might be his imagination, as he walked on to the other statues the elf eyes shifted to look at him,
"The book says; the guardian?" Nicholas said as he read and Keji was excited for the book and the folk tale she heard had the same name,
"But it is written in ancient text how you are able to read it?" Keji asked feverously,
"I only saw it in the village earlier, so I asked from one of the locals." He answered truthfully,
"Here in the first page shows a text I cannot read it is and ancient text, but the sketch of this twelve year old boy statue is on this page and it is the same for the rest," he said flipping the pages
"I don't know what this mean." He added
"why is that?" john asked as they all looked at Nicholas touched some ancient text he gasped and looked at them
"run." He said and everyone wondered why he said that
"what do you mean by run?" John asked pulling him,
"this is a trap." He answered and the wolf statue stood up from it's laid position and howl Liya who was right in front of it was overwhelmed by the massive aura that came from it, she was fear stricken she couldn't move when others tried to run out the room, Joe who noticed she wasn't with them stopped just before he got out the room.
"Guys, Liya is behind." Joe said as she stopped at the entrance to the room
"Go on guys let me go get her will meet on the outside." He said turning back to run towards Liya. The wolf statute wanted to crush her with the wave of his hands,
"is this the end for me?" she thought to herself as she closed her eyes and wait for the hit, just before the hand could get to her Joe used his speed technique to get her out of the way and he took the hit instead as he was thrown into the wall of the other side of the room, it was a massive death blow,
"no!!!" Liya shouted with tears in her eyes, as his body fell from the wall to the empty throne, he stood up with his right arm broken and his head cover in blood from his injury, thanks to his Eldrath powers he was able to create an impact before landing into the wall to reduce the damage by forty percent,
"normally that should have killed anyone but I am different, not until I finish my goal,"
"I can't die here." He said as he run and launch from the empty throne towards the wolf statue in the air as he descended he fabricated a hammer of light with his Eldrath power from the small light pointing directly to the altar, the wolf statue ran towards him and he landed a blow with his full might on the wolf with the hammer,
"Yes" he said smirking and the wolf growled and there was no damage on it
"Wait… No damage?" he asked himself as his eyes lost all hope,
"That was all my might," he said as he fell the wolf raised its paw to strike him to the floor on the altar,
"everyone run." John said as they exited the cave, meeting Fred and Elizabeth at the entrance
"hey… hey."
"What is going on?" Fred asked John who look traumatized
"The cave statues were moving."
"Joe and Liya are still in there." He answered
"Those ancient text says 'the unworthy shall die'." Nicholas said as he knelt down hopelessly, the mountain shook and a wave of dust came pouring out of the cave entrance, Elizabeth dropped frosty and tried running into the cave before Fred's bulky arm pulled her back
"Fred what are you doing?"
"let go of me this instant." She commanded as she kicked the air trying to free herself from his grasp,
"Liya is still in there…"
"I have to save her." She insisted as she continued struggling and tears rolled down her cheeks
"she is not alone, we have to trust Joe." John said as Elizabeth continued struggling and tried using her powers to attack Fred, he knocked her out before she would injure herself and others.
"I'm sorry we will have to trust Joe and we can't risk to lose more." Fred said as he placed her john's back as they all stepped back from the cave entrance
"it is all my fault, I should have let us go to the hot spring, this would not have happened." Keji said blaming herself as she rumple her hair
"we have to save them." She added and Fred pulled her back and pulled her in a hug
"It was not your fault, we all agreed to this,"
"And besides no one would come here knowing this would happen." He said comforting her and she started crying as she hit Fred in his chest
"I should have listened to Elizabeth" She said as she wept
"Everyone look." Nicholas said calling their attention pointing to the cave entrance they saw Liya dragging her foot as she used the walls for support to get out of the cave,
"Guys… save Joe." She said before dropping to the floor, Fred ran too go pick her up from the entrance and brought her to a safe place where the others were,
"is she alright?" Keji asked as she crawled to Liya.
"what about Joe where is he?" she asked as she shakes Liya up
"Keji I need you to calm down." Fred said as he touched her shoulders, the mountain shake again and boulders of rock fell at the entrance John used his Eldrath earth – barrier to stop the movement of the rock which was coming their way,
"we have no choice but to go." Nicholas said
"Fred!" John called and Fred looked at the cave entrance once more and looked away immediately,
"I'm sorry Joe, I really wish I could save you."
"but doing that rashly will endanger the rest of the lives save by your sacrifice." Fred thought
"DO IT!!!" Fred shouted and Nicholas used a spell path of the wind to take all of them away from the mountain down to the village,
"No…" Keji said with her mind blanked
"We cannot leave him there…" she added as tear rolled down her cheeks and she stretched her hands as the cave entrance collapsed…
When they arrived at the village they told their story to the peace control organization and tried looking for help, for their friend that was stuck in the cave
Later that evening the locals announced for a search, they rustle all the mountains and could not find the entrance nor the cave the children talked about. The locals concluded it was hallucination from the agems in the caves they visited in the mountain made them hallucinate the whole event and had made them hurt themselves in the process,
They were all taken to the hospital for the healer to check them out, and they put all of them to rest for two days, after the second day when they woke up one after the other, they all sat at the open lounge as they took fresh air in and were all silent,
"I am sorry." Keji said as she got on her kneels to apologize to everyone, Fred ran to her as he lift her up from the floor
"it was my fault this happened, if we hadn't gone to the mountain."
"Probably, if we had gone to the hot spring none of this would have happened." She said as tears roll down her cheek, everyone was silent for some minuets as they looked far off in the distance and the silence became more intense.
"It was nobody's fault but we will have to take the responsibility to make our own search." Elizabeth said as she stood up and walked over to the edge of the culvert she leaned on the rail and sighed
"tomorrow we will search for Joe."
"is there any update on his search." Elizabeth asked
"Nope nothing yet the only thing I heard was the cave was either made up from hypnosis or we were lying."
"they have records for all the cave on the mountains and they claimed to have used the spot where the cave entrance was as a rendezvous pint for miners every Friday." Fred explained as he was the first to wake from the rest treatment, he followed up all he need to know about the search.
"but I was sure that cave exist," Fred added banging his hand on the table in front of him,
"we will start from the foot of the mountain to the peak we will split up into duo's and I will move with a friend of mine I made when I woke up." Fred said as the female young nurse who was appointed to them walked out of their room to the open lounge,
"good evening to you all, my name is Sonia Lowell but you can call me Sonny."
"I have heard about your friend you aid went missing after you entered a cave and the cave could not be found."
"let me be of help to you." Sonia said as she lowered her head in respect to them,
"thank you Sonny we would need all the help we can get." Elizabeth said
"the rescue team have covered the mountain twice and they could not find anything relating to what you said." Sonia said
"According to my source their search deadline ends today." She finished
"So we will be able to search freely as we want." Elizabeth said snapping her fingers that would be great
"Here are copies of the map of the mountains cave and area." Sonia said as she pulled out three series of maps from her jacket and hand them over to Fred as he passed them across everyone and they all saw the detailed map and could pin point where they entered the mysterious cave.
"so the plan is we start from the said entrance to the cave, then we search downwards to the area." Elizabeth said.
"So I go with Liya, John you go with Keji, Nicholas you go with Fred and Sonny. We will use a flare as signals if we find anything then we will use the wrap gates to get to the signal." Elizabeth said as she gave them flare guns one for danger, another for goal and sets of in and out wrap gate for each person.
"LET THE SEARCH FOR OUR DEAR FRIEND JOE BEGIN!" she said lifting her right hand up, giving the others hope .