The Hunt for Black Void: Flubberhorn's Riddles
The Black Void - Episode 775
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"Come on! Are you coming?"
No. Of course you're not coming. You're going to just stand there and face whatever it is that's scared the princess half to death, on your own, without a serviceable weapon. You may be a ninja, but you're also a coward at heart. You grasp her wrist and led her lead. "I'm right behind you." She leads you down a rickety wooden staircase that seems to be going in circles, but always downward, like a spiral, you guess. There were two other paths that forked right before the wooden staircase; one looked to be made of stone, the other seemed to be lined with gold. You wanted to go down the gold-lined staircase, but Princess Annabelline obviously knows this place a lot better than you, and you followed her lead. You can see the bottom now; maybe it's best to ask the princess about this secret passage before you got any further. "I thought you said you were locked in the tower." "I am locked in!" You shy away, not wanting to incur the wrath of the princess. "Look!" She points to what obviously has to be a stone door. There is no handle, nor a key hole, nor any other conventional way of opening the door. You look more closely at the door, knowing that it's the only other way out besides going back up the staircase, or one of the other staircases, but Princess Annabelline is adamant that those staircases lead only to death. Wait a minute. Death? The door looks to be made solidly out of one slab of stone; you'd never be able to guess what type. The arch you presume to be the doorway has pictographs of various animals. Up at the top appears to be some sort of bird, probably an eagle, those are popular. You're pretty sure the pictograph at eye level on the left is that of a dragon, since you can't think of anything else that might look like a snake with wings. On the bottom left appears to be a mice, or maybe a rat. The bottom right picture is almost definitely that of a scorpion. Finally, the pictograph at eye level on the right looks like a three-legged cat. Was that intentional, or did the pictures set before someone could draw the fourth leg? All of the pictures seem to be looking at the door, except for the mouse picture, which is facing the other way. "So, how do we open this thing?" "Do you think that I'd still be here if I knew how? I've been searching for five years and all I've gotten is a cryptic message out of one of the books my father let me borrow from the castle library." "Well?" "It was a book on unsolved mysteries of the castle. The great wizard Martin Flubberhorn supposedly sealed his greatest discovery away somewhere deep in the bowels of the castle, because it was too dangerous to let fall into the wrong hands. He ensured that only those who could complete his series of challenges could find it." Instinctively, you know that this Martin Flubberhorn is the wizard responsible for the Black Void, and you have an eerie feeling you're the person who's going to help open it from this side. Princess Annabelline continues. "I figured out the first challenge five years ago. Two walls of mine are brown and green Another blue, when it is seen Though those that weep I call mine own, Their skeletons are far from bone When, in the tow'r, you seek the grail Speak but my name, and follow my trail. The answer was the Kingsward Forest, of course! The brown walls are the tree trunks, the green is the moss on the floor. The blue wall is the ceiling of the sky, which sometimes can't be seen because the tree cover is so heavy. The things that weep are the special willow trees that always look like they're sad about something. And its trail is the wooden staircase leading out of the passage behind the closet. I just can't get past the next challenge." "Well, do you know what it is?" "No, but I presume it's getting past this door. I memorized all the riddles, in case I ever actually got past the first one. Here's the next one in the sequence, hopefully it's the right one for this door: The predator never sees his prey To know it's there is all he needs The seeker will be on his way If know he how the key recedes. Just those four lines. Any ideas?" "The predator never sees his prey...well, cats eat mice, and eagles eat mice, and I'm not sure what dragons eat, but they might eat mice and they might eat scorpions. And the eagle's looking straight down, so it sees all four of the pictures below it. But the three-legged cat is surely looking right at the mice picture." "That's not mice." "What's not nice?" "That's not mice, it's singular, mouse. And I've always thought it's too big a picture to be a mouse. I think it's a rat." "So it's a rat. What's the difference? I think it's pretty obvious we have to press the pictures in some kind of order to get through the door. Either that, or find the cat's leg, and I don't see anything that might serve as a cat's leg." "The predator never sees his prey, that's it! We can't press the eagle, then the rat, because the eagle would see the rat. It's that kind of process of elimination. But still, that leaves a whole bunch of combinations, and I don't want to know what happens if we mess up." "If know he how the key recedes..." you think. What was the point of using that word? To make it rhyme with needs? Surely such a great wizard could have composed better rhymes. There must be a reason for that word there...ah, there it is. "Stand back, Annabelline, I think I have the answer." In quick succession, you bend down to touch the rat, then jump to touch the eagle, then over to your right to touch the cat, then - what was that rumbling? "You're wrong! You don't have the answer, and now we're going to die for it!" Annabelline is genuinely scared, and jumps into your arms. Luckily, because the ground that used to be underneath her feet gives way, along with a good chunk of the rest of the ground between you and the staircase. You're stranded on a small outgrowth of land, just enough to stand on while you slowly go insane trying infinitely many sequences of pictographs before you pass out from lack of food or water. No, you tell yourself. No one's going insane today. You're almost positive you did it right; maybe you missed something, no, you pressed the right buttons. But...? "I think the cat needs his leg," you tell Annabelline. But where to get it? Hold on, that's it. The rest of the rat is scratched into the doorway, but the tail seems to protrude outward! That's the cat's leg. "The predator never sees his prey/To know it's there is all he needs," you think. How simple! The rat stole the cat's leg and used it as its tail. The cat's confused; since the rat is facing the other way, the cat sees only its leg. You break the tail off the rat, showing a perfectly etched tail under it, rotate it ninety degrees, and place it where the cat's fourth leg should be. Is your mind playing tricks, or did that 'leg' just dissolve into the picture? Evidently Annabelline saw it too, since she gets her feet back on the ground and hugs you. She still looks a little scared, and a hint of confusion creeps over her beautiful face. She doesn't understand why the door hasn't opened, but you do: you need to both find the cat's leg and press the right sequence. You start the sequence over - rat, eagle, cat. Nothing happens, so you keep going. Jump to touch the eagle again, over to the left for the dragon - so far, so good. Up to the eagle one last time. "Princess, I don't want to accidentally knock you over, so could you please bend down and touch the scorpion figure?" As you asked, she tentatively gets down and touches the scorpion. Almost immediately, the door opens, and you and the princess bound through it. "That was amazing! How did you know what to do?" "I thought there might be a clue within a clue in that last line. Making the key recede doesn't make any sense on its own. There's no keyhole, so the key must be the sequence of pictures. Then, I simply had to press the pictures of the animals whose first letters spelled the word 'recedes' - rat, eagle, cat, eagle, dragon, eagle, scorpion. I just didn't figure out the cat needed its tail until almost too late." "That's all right." The princess gives you a hug and a peck on the cheek. You can't believe it. "We're still both alive, and in one piece." You're nearly exhausted, but the princess has given you newfound strength. Are your trials on this side of the Black Void over?
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unknown adventurer
12/13/2005 1:34:59 AM
Extending Enabled
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