Chapter 104: Puzzle

FieryKathy

It takes us well over three hours to get to the other side of the mountain. Mostly because we were being extra careful. Noone wanted to take a plunge from the side of the mountain. 

When we finally get to a ledge on the other side, our group looks around to see if we can spot the ruins. 

“I don’t see anything.” Hilda says as she uses her binoculars. 

“Hmm. Let me launch the bird again.” Ruva gives the same directions to the little birdbot as she did last time. It immediately flies off but weirdly enough also returns ridiculously fast. 

It points behind us, back to the mountain. 

“What?” Lise looks around. “Are you sure the thing isn’t broken.” 

“Find the shiny looking knight.” Ruva commands the little bird, it immediately points at my sister. “No, it works just fine.” 

Sam takes a look at the mountain behind us, putting her hands against the dark gray stone. She keeps touching it as she moves along the wall and then suddenly she disappears from sight. 

“S-Sam!?” I call out to her immediately as panic strikes my heart.

“I’m here, I’m here.” she replies as she shuffles back into my sight and she motions me over. 

I immediately fly in to give her a big hug. 

“What the fuck.” Nikki joins us and touches the wall, doing the same thing Sam did. She also disappears. “This is just crazy, I was standing right next to it.” 

“Is this some kind of optical illusion?” Hilda, my sister and Ruva also join in and follow Nikki. “Ami, can you check the wall for magic for me?” Hilda asks. 

“Uh, I can try.” I open up my senses and indeed I do sense a faint trace of magic against the side of the mountain. “It’s definitely magical.” 

“So, does that mean your little bot can see through magical illusions?” Lise asks Ruva. 

It’s a bit weird to hear them hold a conversation right next to me without seeing them. 

“I used magical stones to make its eyes, so maybe? As I said, it’s a bit of a prototype.” 

Sam takes me by the hand and tilts her head. “Want to follow them in?”

I nod. 

She then continues to drag me into the mountain wall. We enter into some kind of carved out entrance, just as we do so, Hilda lights up a torch so my sister can see as well.  The light does help us to see the room in more detail. 

“A lot of these markings are very similar to what was written about in the notebooks.” Ruva says as she inspects the carvings. 

From what I can tell a lot of these markings show people worshipping a distinctly male figure who holds some kind of box above his head.

In the meantime, Hilda and Sam move on further into the mountain, so I decide to follow them. The next room is a lot bigger and holds four statues in different orientations. A mage, a ranger, a spearman and a horseman. But there does not appear to be a door anywhere. Just a lot more markings and drawings carved beautifully into the wall. 

“This is a puzzle room, isn’t it?” Sam looks around. 

“Probably.” Hilda nods.

My sister suddenly peaks her head into the room. “Did I hear puzzles?” and then she walks in together with Ruva and Nikki. “Oh! It’s one of those directional puzzles! I saw that in a g-” My sister suddenly stops talking and looks at Ruva who’s looking at her with much interest. 

“G-?” Ruva tilts her head. 

“Ah, uh…” 

“A grand encyclopedia of dungeoneering and treasure hunting.” Nikki says with a ton of confidence. 

“Ooh, is this something readily available on the other continent?” 

“It’s a book a friend of hers wrote but it only has one copy sadly enough.” Nikki continues her bluff but it definitely seemed like it was working.

“Awh, that’s sad, I’d have loved to read it.” Ruva shrugs and starts looking around the room. 

“So we practically just need to point these four statues in the right direction?” Sam asks. 

“Yes, I think so.” Lise replies. “But what direction?” 

“Maybe it’s a bit like a class counter thing.” Hilda replies.

“Can you explain?” Nikki heads to the statue of the mage. 

“It’s practically a balance theory, right. Spearman beats horseman, horseman beats ranger, ranger beats mage and mage beats spearman.” 

“We can try that.” My sister, Sam and Nikki get to work turning all the statues around so they all face the role they are supposed to counter. When they finally complete it… nothing happens. 

“Hmm, noone heard a click or something, right?” 

I shake my head. “I didn’t hear anything.” 

“And me neither.” My girlfriend shakes hers too. 

“The horseman can counter the mage too, the mage can counter the ranger and the ranger the spearman.” Hilda rubs her chin. “It’s a bit less logical I guess but it can still work.” 

Again, we start to arrange the statues but in the end, still nothing happens.

After our second failure we decide it might be for the best to just try out different combinations and see if any of those work. After more than an hour of trying different things and constantly arranging statues, most of us are quite frustrated with the lack of progress. 

The only one in our party who apparently isn’t, is Ruva. 

“Hmm.” Ruva closes the notebook she’d been reading while we were trying to solve the puzzle. “What if the statues don’t matter?” 

“What do you mean?” Lise says, frustration clear in her voice as she’s turning one of the statues one again. 

“None of these figures ever came up in the other temples. It’s almost as if they don’t belong here. The pictograms on the wall however…” 

“Wait, are you saying the statues are a red herring?” Hilda asks.

“A red herring?” 

“Right, it’s basically something that is placed to mislead and divert attention from what is actually important.” 

“Ah! Yes, in that case I do think it is.” Ruva then moves towards the wall. “From what I can tell from the notes is that reverence was the most important.” She presses the priest pictogram on the wall. “After that comes loyalty.” She presses the kneeling person. “And after that, most importantly, the will of God.” Ruva presses the man holding the relic, after which a big clicking sound rings through the room. I can hear the sound of cogs and wheels turning as a portion of the wall Ruva is standing before pops in and starts moving to the side, revealing another passage. 

“You gotta be kidding me.” Élise sighs and lets herself drop to the floor against one of the statues, looking completely defeated. 

“Come sis, maybe there’s another puzzle inside.” I walk over to her and try to help her up. Sam comes with me because plate armour is heavy.

“There better be.” My sis takes both mine and Sam’s hands and gets herself up. Seemingly with renewed confidence. 

When the three of us enter the new room, Ruva, Hilda and Nikki are already looking around. There are dozens of artifacts in the rooms together with piles of gold. 

“Wow. That’s a lot of gold.” Lise immediately runs over to a pile of coins and literally faceplants herself in it. “Oof, I think I just fell on a sword…” She gets up again and pulls a decorative sword out of the pile. It was clearly not meant to do combat with, as it was made almost completely out of gold. “Luckily this is pretty good armour.”

“Do you think that’s the relic?” 

“No, it doesn't appear to be magical at all… doesn’t mean I won’t take it with me though.” 

“And what if it’s cursed?” Sam poses to which Lise’s laugh suddenly disappears as she looks at her partner.

“I don’t sense any curses in this room.” Nikki shrugs.  

“Phew…”

“Maybe you should ask that before picking up random stuff, Lise.” Hilda laughs. 

Our entire group looks around for half an hour.

“I don’t see anything that looks like the relic here.” Ruva stands up after filling up a leather bag’s worth of objects. 

I decide to walk around the perimeter of the room to see if maybe we’ve missed something. That’s when I sense a strong presence when I walk next to the wall on the right of the door. 

“I think there’s something behind this wall…” I put my hand against it. The presence I feel isn’t really magical but it just feels… divine. 

“I don’t even see a puzzle nearby.” My sis walks up to me and looks at the wall, before giving it a knock or two. “It sounds hollow.” I see her open her inventory window before a full-sized sledgehammer drops down in front of her. 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I ask her with quite a bit of scepticism. 

“It’s already getting pretty late so I kinda don’t want to waste any more time.” She picks the sledgehammer up and looks at the others. 

Ruva gives her an affirmative nod. “If it doesn’t work we can always try something else.” 

“It’s hammer time.” My sister smirks and with a big swing she starts bashing down the wall. 

FieryKathy