The Sketch Survivors: The Secret of Lint Corp

Pick Your Poison

Soal stumbled awake. Well, he wasn't exactly awake. But he was definitely exhausted... already. All that had happened was that Cheshire had teleported him somewhere. Somewhere. Not away from Lint Corp. But away from Cheshire. At least he could get away from that cell.

A Soal wiped the perspiration from his forehead, a new wave of fear crawled inside him. Don't touch the water, he remembered. Or something absolutely horrible will happen.

He looked to his feet, and realized he was standing upon a wooden table, bobbing in a vast expanse of water, a thick black fog surrounding him. This was the first of the three trials: Harten. Beside him, chairs floated in the deep blue water. And he needed to... get to the other side, it seemed. This table stretched for what seemed like forever. But Soal knew it was an illusion, because when Lint Corp made challenges, they were usually tricky. But tricky is a relative term. They can be tricky to a fault. A fault which brings up a pattern.

Soal knew what the pattern was. Surges flowed in the water, sending the table swaying in the current. It was drenched with puddles and water.

"Get to the finish... across the table," a voice said from afar. At first, Soal was alarmed, his eyes darting around to see the source of the sound. It sounded just like Cheshire. Soal sighed. He was still close by. Anything could happen now that he and his teleporting remote were here.

Soal smiled defiantly as he turned his back, away from the long side of the table. Now the edge was just before him. There was the door- the end of the challenge. "Ha!" Soal taunted as he turned toward where the voice came from. Then he hopped across three suspended platforms and onto one large one. The water had suddenly stopped right where he had turned around, and the table remained perfectly still. Cheshire didn't say anything as Soal gasped- the walls were closing in! Wherever they were, of course. Soal stared at the door in front of him. It led nowhere, with no wall behind it (unbeknownst to him, another boy called Marsh had seen one just like it in the grand Map Room of the Facility). But Soal opened the door anyway; there was nowhere else to go. In he went, and the door slammed shut. Into another mystical room. That door must have been infused with the same powers as Cheshire's remote.

Now he was in the second trial: Jughit. He was now directly in the center of what appeared to be an old circus tent. Once he closed the door, it vanished into a puff of smoke behind him.

Quickly approaching him were six terrifying clowns equipped with bottles of some black liquid resembling Articulus's gloppy matter. Soal was startled to the bottom of his mind from these-but in no time he recognized his goal. Simply to evade these clowns, with the courage he had to slay Articulus, and pass on to Optidrex, the final challenge. Of course, it wouldn't be easy. Perhaps he should just stay right there.

The clowns walked briskly until they were crazily leaping about; tongues flying and ears flapping like a dog on a field. This especially disturbed Soal further, but he would much rather see this than the horrors of war again.

So he just stood there; and as soon as they were a foot from him, the challenge was already over. The clowns vanished into nothingness, and Soal thought, that was ridiculously easy. There had to be some catch to this. In the same red tent, there was a wooden pole across the stony flooring, to it attached a makeshift, stone sword. I may need that, Soal surmised as he carefully stepped over the puddles of what appeared to be Articulate matter that the clowns had dropped from their bottles upon disappearing.

He swiftly yanked the sword off of the pole, shoving it inside its sheath which was also there and wrapping that around his back. He was still wearing the black-and-yellow prison garb, but with this sword he felt like he was decked out in Moth's old armor again.

Before he knew it, he had been teleported into the final challenge: Optidrex. This time, he was in a compact square room with designs of blue skies and white fences of long ago. Green grass covered the floor. At the edge, there was a small table, with two identical, foggy bottles on them. There was a short, sleek humanoid robot standing behind it, seemingly prepared to do something with the bottles.

Soal approached it, sword still in sheath. He couldn't trust it, but he seemed to have no choice.

The robot automatically lifted its arms and placed a deep black blindfold on Soal, faster than imaginable. There was no way he could take it off, no matter how much effort he put in his pull. This was a weird blindfold. Soal could still see through it perfectly fine, but he couldn't see the bottles. They were now entirely invisible with this blindfold on.

The robot gave out directions. Cheshire's recurring voice echoed from its speakers. "After I change these, choose a bottle," it said. "Either one. One of these is poisoned, and one will take you to this Facility's exit. Now wait." The machine shifted the invisible bottles back and forth, blurring Soal's vision with its speed. Then it stopped with a jolt. "Go ahead. Choose."

Soal, after realizing he could take off his blindfold now and doing so, studied the bottles closely, and the robot did nothing further. Then he came to a conclusion, smiling like a maniac.

"These are both poisoned," he said calmly as equipped his sword. With one great swipe, the robot's head was sent sailing towards the wall.

The machine sank to its metallic knees, lifting its hands in the air, behind the table. Steam drifted from the gash in its top as Soal's blindfold loosened somehow and fell off.

Soal held the sword to the the robot's shivering neck. "Show me the way out of here," he demanded fiercely, "or I'll tear apart the rest of you as well."