Prompt: You come upon a giant face in the wall. Its eyes glow red hot and its mouth gapes in an eternal shout of rage. You realize that this mouth is actually a door, and it appears to be your only way forward. What do you do?

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Paladin and Majesty quickly realized that their current path was guiding them right up to a wall. They were still fairly new to exploring the smokey and hot landscape of the Earthen Furnace and only felt better about exploring without a guide due to the fact they knew Paladin’s mole companion could sniff out the exit if they needed Quartz’s assistance.

As they reached the wall, passing through the haze of smoke. They realized the little red lights they had seen were actually the glowing eyes of a stone face.

“Whoa!” Paladin exclaimed.

Majesty looked it up and down, fascinated but not totally impressed.

The face had angry angled eyebrows causing the forehead to scrunch up. Eyes glowed red, but they were not gems or stones, just light, making the mare of the duo uneasy. Its mouth was open in an eternal shout. They could not quite place what the creature was, they only recognized it was a face.

“Well, it looks like a door!” Paladin chimed.

“It does. We should definitely test for…”

“It’s fine!” Paladin interrupted Majesty.

“I wouldn’t be so certain about that,” Majesty replied.

The mare shook her head and just stayed where she was as the stallion trotted forward without a care in the world. The mole wasn’t as certain as the stallion was about the door and lept from the courser’s back. Majesty was luckily quick enough to catch Quartz on her nose. The mole crawled up her face and sat on top of her head, turning around to watch the stallion through blurred vision.

“It’s just a door! See!”

Just as Paladin stood in the doorway a spike shot out from the left side and slammed into the opposite side of the stone frame. It went right over his back. Paladin froze and slowly looked over at the wall the spike came from. It appeared there were three openings but the bottom two were broken, leaving only the top one.

“Oh look, you survived,” Majesty chimed sarcastically.

“I COULD HAVE DIED!”

“I told you we should test for traps. So thanks for doing that!”

“Do you really care that little?”

“You weren’t hurt and luckily Quartz was with me, so he’s fine too. All is well.”

Majesty trotted up to join him, ducking under the spike and heading into the tunnel beyond, excited to see what was on the other side, though not without kicking stones ahead of them to also test the tunnel that luckily turned out to be safe. Quartz was frozen the whole time, realizing how easily that spike could have killed him had he stuck with the stallion.