Elias shrugged. “They know we're here.”
“Quickly then,” I said. I tested the door handle but found it locked. I stepped back and he kicked it off its hinges.
We spilled out into the same holy room we'd entered before. The stairs had taken us in a big circle. “There's got to be another way out of this room. The upstairs won't be all of it.”
“Spread out, but buddy up. Don't be more than a foot from your buddy at any time,” Anthony said.
“Elias, stay with Anthony. You two are already used to fighting together and are more effective. Plus, if Axo or I burst into flames you can't get close.”
Neither one of them looked happy about it, but they did as I asked, crossing the room with two witches to search the walls.
I turned to the walls on the right side of the room where we'd exited and pointed to an enormous tapestry on the wall. “It makes sense that the most likely place in the entire room is behind there.”
Nobody responded, so I strode forward and jerked the tapestry away from the wall, Axoular on my heels. Nothing was behind it but stones.
I turned in a circle, studying the walls. Several spots held shelves and cases full of religious artifacts. I moved to study one, maybe there was some sort of lever that could be pulled to make the wall move.
One of the witches near me, I was pretty sure her name was Circe, huffed in consternation. “You know, this temple isn't anything like the other temples here. I've stayed in Bali many times. It's a favorite vacation spot for my family.”
“Okay,” I said. “What's different about this one?”
“Most of them are open air. Some have springs that you can get into to be blessed. A couple are underground. But I don't know of any other structured like this. This is too... too...” She looked around, trying to think of the right word. “It's western. Like something that would be built for a Christian church or something.”
I turned in a circle, trying to figure out what we were missing. The outer structure was large. There was definitely a way out of this room besides the way we came in.
“Underground?” I asked Circe.
“Yeah, if this was more like one of the cave temples, there would be a cave entrance up there at the end of the room, and this structure could've been built around it to protect the entrance, but it wouldn't have been considered the temple, it's too modern, even though it's made out of stone.”
I walked toward the area she indicated. The wall looked normal. Like a stone wall with no breaks. There were tables running along the wall and gold plating in the middle, almost like a picture frame. It was beautiful, especially with the artifacts on the tables. I didn't spare them much energy though, as they were too far away from the wall to help or be a hidden lever.
You're thinking like a human. Think like a magical being.
“Is there a spell of revealing that you could do?”
“I'm not strong enough.” She turned around, looking for Cindy, who had made her way over to search the opposite walls with my guys. “Cindy!” she called in a whisper-yell.
Cindy didn't hear her, but Anthony did with his supernatural hearing. He turned and spoke a few words and Cindy and her buddy came jogging over to us.
“Let's try a revealing spell, we think there might be a door to a cave temple on this wall.”
“Sure,” Cindy said brightly. “Those are fun.”
Leo walked over to see what we were up to, and Cindy explained.
He pulled out his weird fat pencil. “I brought this.”
Cindy's eyes lit up. “Good thinking!”
He walked over to the middle of the wall, in the center of the gold plating, and drew a rune that was like a complicated V. Cindy, Circe, and Leo placed their hands on the wall around the symbol and closed their eyes. Leo muttered and Circe mouthed what seemed to be the same words, but Cindy said nothing.
Interesting. I wonder if they don't have to say the spells out loud as they get more powerful.
Stepping back, they focused intently on their symbol. It didn't disappear like the one on my hand did. It did, however, begin to glow.
“Ha!” Circe said. “I knew it!”
The glow intensified, and everyone but Axoular and I looked away. We weren't bothered by bright lights. The light blinked out with a pop, and the wall changed.
