The twelve teens headed outside, using the map to guide them. Each of them were able to recognize a few landmarks here and there on the map--old house, memorials, trees, parks, streets, and so on. It took only fifteen minutes to find where the map's route ended: somewhere in the heart of Mythical Park. It was an old amusement park, centered around several mythological creatures. It had not operated for years, and many of the old rides and statues were falling apart.
"What now?" asked Gabriel.
"Is there anything else on that map?" Michael asked.
"I see some drawings in the margin here," Peter replied. "I wonder what they're for."
"Wait," Kyle said. "Take a closer look."
Kyle was pointing to the drawing of a merman. There was a statue of a merman only twenty feet away, and it looked exactly like the drawing. The group went towards it, and saw a snake-person nearby that looked like the map's next drawing. When Justin noticed that the merman's tail was pointing towards the snake-person, Diana realized the significance of the drawings: the drawings are the statues that must be followed like a trail, and they point to the next one on the trail. The group went to each statue recorded: a cerberus, a hydra, a chimera, a sea serpent, and so on. After about fifteen statues, they reached the last one. It was a dragon, slender and long, just like the kind that Kyle and Diana's father had told them about in the old bedtime story. The statue was at a far corner of the park, and did not seem to be pointing to anything. But Ethan remembered the merman's tail, and Scott noticed the dragon's tail was pointing as well--to a group of stones nearby. Moving to the stones, the gang began digging. After a while, Kyle caught something, and while trying to pull it out he realized that he was pulling a lever. A trap door opened next to the dragon statue's pedestal, dumping the dirt and rocks that covered it down a tunnel.
Moving to the door, Dustin found a ladder leading down into the ground. It wasn't like one of the metal ladders in the park, but a natural one carved and dug into the wall of the tunnel. The twelve climbed down the ladder, moving deeper and deeper from the light at the surface. Reaching the bottom, they saw another tunnel leading off from the ladder, and saw a faint glow coming from the far end. They ran down the tunnel, following the glow as though they were searching for a diamond in the rough. Incredibly, they did find something like that, but even rarer. The tunnel led them to a vast round room, with shafts in the ceiling and walls for air and light from the surface and the sides the small nearby cliffs. There were a few other tunnels around the room, and in the middle was an ornate pedestal, surrounded by some artwork on the cave floor. The pedestal held a large jewel, exactly like the one in the story, and the artwork on the floor was five dragons--also matching the story--intertwined with each other and projecting some rays and beams towards the pedestal and the jewel.
Suddenly, Tyler heard a noise. The twelve teens began to worry and look around the room--they were not alone in the cave.