“This isn’t funny guys,” Dante Exum called out to the empty hallway. A group of his teammates had told him about the “secret media room” where there was “tons of free food” available before games. But Dante had somehow gotten separated from them in the unfamiliar corridors of the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, and now he was by himself in an arena whose layout was still mostly unfamiliar to him. Even worse, his phone wasn’t getting any reception, so deep was he in layers of cement walls. None of his texts to teammates were getting sent.
Dante walked for a little bit, sure that he would run into an arena employee eventually. However, after five minutes of aimless walking, he hadn’t run into anybody. There was a game happening in two hours, so he expected the place to be bustling with activity, but the part of the arena he was in seemed totally deserted. He wondered if the cornucopic “secret media room” existed at all or if it had all been a trick played on the team’s newest acquisition, but then decided it didn’t matter if he was so lost that he couldn’t even get back to the locker room.
There was a door to his left that was slightly ajar, a change from closed, and presumably locked, doors along all the corridors. Dante pulled it open and peered inside, but there was no light on, so he couldn’t see very far in. His phone was still useful as a flashlight, so he got it out to help him navigate the darkened space. Ahead of him was another hallway that sloped slightly downward, and it was along this hallway that he walked.
“You guys down here?” Dante called out, hoping to hear the responding voices of Collin, Darius, and Cedi, but hearing only his own voice echoing back at him. Still, he continued until he got to a set of stairs that led downwards. Unlike the sturdy construction of the stairs in the public parts of the building, these were made of wood and seemed rickety. What pushed him forward were visions of a top-secret room of edible delights and camaraderie with teammates.
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he found himself in a tunnel of some sort. It stretched in both directions. Having lost any and all sense of where he was in relation to the arena, he turned right at random and started walking, thinking that he could always turn around if he wanted to try the other direction. Now he could hear rushing water above him and to his sides, even though the tunnel he was in was completely dry.
The light of his flashlight caught something colorful on the ground. Pausing, Dante studied it. It seemed to be the scraps of an old-school #2 Cavaliers jersey. Then, Dante realized that the jersey was actually being worn by a decrepit skeleton, its bones somewhat scattered but mostly intact. Feeling creeped out, Dante hurried along the tunnel, and when more tunnels began to branch off the main one, he ignored the new paths.
However, one of the branching tunnels seemed to have light emanating from it. Thinking that he had stumbled upon a homeless encampment or something of the sort, Dante approached cautiously but eagerly, thinking that if he met somebody, they could help navigate him to the secret media room.
Turning down this new passageway revealed no signs of humanity, however. Instead, the concrete walls of the tube-shaped tunnel slowly became more ornate with wooden decorations until he found himself in a wooden chamber lit by torches. Woven tapestries hung from the walls, decorated with arcane symbols. It almost had the feeling of a sacred place, a place of ritual.
There was another corpse here, a more recent one. It, too, had been wearing a Cavaliers jersey at the time of its death. Dante wiped away the mold and dirt to see that it was #15, but that number held no meaning for him. While he was stooped down, however, he noticed a small bottle filled with a mysterious blue liquid. It was stoppered by a cork, and it lay on its side next to the skeletal hand of the corpse.
When Dante picked it up, he noticed a folded piece of parchment also next to the dead body’s hand. This, he picked up as well, and he used the nearby light of a torch to read it:
“A potion to enhance skills in the field of sport. Only effective for prominent underperformers. If it is found, that means the finder is also worthy of being the imbiber.”
Dante didn’t quite understand what the note meant, but a potion to increase his skills in sport? It was worth a try, anyway. He ripped out the cork and chugged the small bottle in one gulp. It was a chilly liquid, but otherwise didn’t make him feel any different. However, as soon as he had swallowed, all the torches in the chamber were snuffed by a gust of wind.
“I’d better get back,” Dante said to himself. His teammates had probably eaten all the food already, but he had found something way cooler.