We’d been going downhill for what felt like forever, when the floor finally levelled out. Looking ahead, a plain rock wall stretched the entire way across the passage.

‘Are you kidding me??’

‘Solde, calm down. We saw light coming from down here, so it can’t block the entire way.’ Dad’s voice did nothing at all to calm me down, but then I realised that the passage behind was so narrow that he probably couldn’t see the whole wall. The path widened just before the wall, so I stepped forwards to let Cal, Lupin, and dad come forwards. As I stepped forwards, a glint of light caught my eye. But it wasn’t coming from the edges of the wall, it was coming from.. the floor? Paying attention to the floor for the first time as the others filtered in, I could see that there was a whole row of engraved tiles along the bottom of the wall. Each tile seemed to have a different creature engraved into it, and bordered with gold, which is what was catching the light. I touched the nearest one, a tile showing the image of some sort of canine, and as soon as my hoof touched it, the tile itself let out a chime as though I’d struck a glass. Cal immediately spooked and spun around at the noise, shoving me accidentally so that in order to keep my balance all four of my hooves were on the tiles.

The sounds of four different chimes rang out, each one a different tone.

Dad stepped towards me, carefully not touching the tiles. ‘Solde, do not move.’

I rolled my eyes but said nothing in reply. Now that the chimes had stopped, we all cocked our heads, listening to a weird rumbling sound.

‘Earthquake?’ I looked up to check the ceiling, but no dirt seemed to be shifting or falling.

‘No’ said Lupin, who easily had the best hearing out of all of us. ‘I think it’s.. machinery??’

‘Hmmm.’ Said Cal, cautiously stepping a little nearer while managing to stay firmly behind Tiber. ‘Could be that we need to press certain tiles in order to lift the wall?’

‘Only one way to know’, said Lupin, before he leaped right onto a set of tiles.

‘NO’ shouted Cal and dad simultaneously, but it was too late – the rumbling and chimes started again, louder than before.