“Looks easy enough, doesn’t it?” Edward said. “This is the challenge of bravery. What’s to be afraid of? I’ve seen you hop from branch to branch above crocodile infested waters, my dear Dr. Swan, this must be simple by comparison?”
“Yes. Dangerously so.”
“What are you worried about? None of the other challenges have been that hard, once you take a step back and look at them.”
Billie looked carefully at the simple maze of totem poles they would have to navigate to across. “I don’t like it. Every other challenge has first appeared difficult, only to become simple. Now this one appears simple. There must be something wrong.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Edward said. “This time I’ll go first.”
She watched as Edward carefully took the lead and stepped from one precipice to the next with a certain level of agility that surprised her. His confidence rose the further into the maze he stretched. By the time he was halfway through, he was merely skipping from one stone to the next until he reached the fourteenth stone.
Then, as he landed on it, the stone sunk. Not by much, perhaps four or five inches at most. But then, so did the next one and the one after that until, the final few stone steps had lowered so much that it would be impossible to jump from the last one onto the level ground on the other side of the chasm.
He smiled, patiently. “Okay, I guess I see the problem.”
“Yeah. All right, Edward. See if you can come back here and we’ll see if there’s another way through. Maybe there’s a secret path or something that could let us through?”
“What did you find for this challenge in the original Atlantis?”
“An almost identical room. Filled with similar totem pole-like structures.”
Edward jumped over the remaining stones and landed back on the same side of the chasm as Billie. Reassured to be back on the ground, he said, “And how did you beat it?”
“Funny you should mention that.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because when I beat this challenge last time I took a fairly lateral approach to the problem, which we might have trouble reproducing.”
Edward curled his eyebrow. “Are you going to tell me what that is, or shall I keep trying alternative routes through the secret labyrinth?”
“I had dynamite with me. And I knocked over the final three totem poles, so that they lay diagonally along the final wall. Then I jumped from one to the other.”
“You cheated?”
“No one said how we were supposed to get through the challenge. Only that failure would result in death.”
“Christ! And you didn’t think to mention this before you came in here — without any dynamite?”
“No. That’s why I brought you along. I figured that maybe you and I would be better equipped, mentally, to solve the puzzle.”
Edward laughed as he thought about it. All that rested on their ability to pass this simple puzzle. 20 stepping stones. Six that dropped lower and lower the closer you got to them. If they’d brought some sort of makeshift ladder it would have been easy. “Okay, so let’s work the problem.”
Billie drew a series of vertical and horizontal rows with her finger in the sand to make a grid similar to what they were looking at. Then slowly filled in the squares with crosses for where the stone steps appeared.
From above, there was no obvious pattern.
Billie stared at it for a few minutes and then said, “Okay, there’s only so many options. Let’s try skipping ever second step. Then every third step. We’ll keep breaking it up until we come up with a solution.”
“It seems like as good an idea as any.”
“I’ll go first.”
Billie skipped every second stone until she reached the final 6 steps. The second she reached the sixth step, the remaining five dropped to where they had been when Edward had attempted to cross them. Like last time, they had become impossible to cross.
She quickly returned and repeated the process by choosing a new pathway. This time starting from the right hand side of the secret maze. Somehow, she was certain the perfect path was hidden in plain sight.
Billie tried another twenty-two pathways before she noticed it. To the right were another two stepping stones, which she’d dismissed out of hand originally because they took her further into the chasm, instead of across it.
“What about this?”
Edward look to where she was pointing.
“It’s something we haven’t tried yet. May as well give it a go.”
She carefully made the larger jumps toward the two stones. Instantly, when she landed on the final stone, each of the six stones at the end raised in height until they were level with the opposite end of the chasm.
“That’s it Dr. Swan! You’ve done it.”
She turned to see the final six stones had somehow returned to their original height again. Billie focused on the next closest stone, preparing to jump.
Whoosh!
Billie heard the sound before she saw the giant axe swing toward her. A split second before it collided with her, she landed on the first stone.
Behind her the stone axe, nearly twice her size, continued to swing like a pendulum behind her and directly above the stone’s she’d just jumped off.
“That was close.” She smiled, her infectious confidence returning. “All right. I’d say it’s time to complete this challenge and find that code to Atlantis.”
Edward started stepping over the stones. “Sounds good to me.”
She reached the sixth stone, and carefully stood on it. This time, nothing moved. Then she stepped onto the fifth stone. And again, the remaining stones dropped — several feet this time.
Edward swore. “We were so close!”
The both looked back at the swinging pendulum. After she’d stepped on the fifth stone, the axe returned to its waiting position high above the furthest stone into the chasm.
“It appears, someone has to remain standing on the stone,” Billie said. “If someone could stay there for more than a couple seconds, it might just be long enough for the other person to cross the stepping stones and make it to the other side. Once there, the reset lever could be pulled, and whoever remains could make it through the chasm.”
“That’s fine, but you jumped with less than a second to spare. Whoever stands on that stepping stone long enough for the other person to make it across, would need to be more than just brave — they would need to be suicidal.”
Billie’s large brown eyes widened with understanding, but she said nothing.
“What now?”
“I was worried about this when I read the three challenges.”
Edward spoke them out loud. “Strength, Intellect and Bravery?”
“Yes, it was the word bravery that I was worried about.”
“Why?”
“Because in the ancient Atlantean text, the word ‘Bravery’ reads very similarly to another word — SACRIFICE.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
“All right. Then it’s decided. I’ll sacrifice myself.”
Billie stared at Edward’s face. He appeared certain and confident about his decision.
“What do you mean? No, you can’t do that!”
“Of course I can. I’m the natural choice.”
“What do you mean? We’re both entitled to the choice of living.”
“Are we really?” The crest of his eyebrow raised up in a sign that she’d learned meant that he was right and he was about to explain why to her. “The way I see it, if we don’t solve this soon, we’re both going to die, and that’s for certain. But already, we know that’s not going to happen. One of us can survive this challenge. The question is who that’s going to be.”