UnderLove

6: Corridors of Puzzles

The halls contained more monsters, Meggie-Ts, a chubby yellow thing that said things like, "Size doesn't matter." "I hate my ex, he cheated." and then "I love myself soo much!" and some Entroop Noors saying, "I have the solution for everything." and "Trust me, I'm cool." There were also some loud Sneekz saying, "I'm so quiet." smugly and big Firefly things called Thunder Butts.

The next corridor you walked down didn't have any monsters to battle against. The end of the hall had a wall. Next to it was two pillars with one stone plate each behind them. Must be a puzzle. You stepped on the nearest one, *Nothing happened. You stepped on the next one, *You heard a click. The wall didn't reveal any passageway, but a wall where the continuing hall would not obviously be, there was a steel door, it opened. This room was black unlike the rest of the other rooms.

"This room is my favorite out of all the super-old amazement down in the, said to be, abandoned Amethyst district cuz' of the...." A little ghost said this, a ghost wearing a black eye patch and a little white fedora on top his translucent head. He held a black camera with a red blinking light. Oh, it was recording.

The ghost was looking at you, its mouth opened with the camera facing the same direction as he. "Dude! A human! I've only seen pictures but never a real- this should be one, - I mean," He floated his hollow form to you. "WOA! It's a real human!" His voice sounded like he was a hippy eleven-year-old. He circled around you slowly, still in awe. When he circled you twice, the light on his camera stopped blinking, he delightedly looked at his camera, "Dude! I'm gonna get super famous for this! I gotta upload this. NOW. Meet me in the sapphire district, we're gonna Live stream!" The little ghost quickly floated away towards the dark half of the room.

You could see why the ghost was very fond of this place, the walls had a beautiful tapestry on the walls and what seemed like gold and silver embedded into them. The ceiling had the night sky, more of just the moon and familiar constellations you could name. You saw in the darker part of the room, the painted stars lit up, making the illusion of the night sky so real.

You continued your journey down this dark room, you bumped into something, a monster. Your glass box fell around you and your vertical menu popped up. *Mæsy bumped into you! This monstrosity of a mouse was large and had a long snout sticking out from its face. It was wearing a red shirt and striped shorts. This thing pulled from a children's book had a horrible sense of fashion.

You checked its status, *MÆSY- 7HP/2ATTK. This was worse than the other monsters, very disappointing. You checked PURSUE, *Insult, *Gibberish, and *Wave. You chose to speak gibberish with the overgrown mouse. "Wuuhwuh mwamwu wu." The mouse spoke back. Its attacks were also like from a child's storybook. Giant books with no titles, poorly drawn red... daisies..?

*Mæsy does a bad job at keeping a job. Mæsy must have too many interests or some bad hobby. The name appeared green, you spared the Mæsy mouse. You continued on with your journey, you came to a room that dropped into a pool.

The bridge in the middle of the room had something that seemed to be mud. No taking chances. You checked your inventory for anything pointless. Nothing. A few dull pebbles lay at your feet, you knocked the largest one into the pool of water, it sank. You waited... *You heard a very faint clank. Must be pretty deep, saying the pause. You knocked another pebble into the brown muck on the bridge, it sat there and hissed. it got smaller until you couldn't see anything else of it. You chose to swim.

You plopped into the water, it's cold. Very cold. You tried your best to swim fast enough to the other side. Despite your decent swimming lessons, the cold slowed you down. Your vision blurred intensely, everything swirled together until all you saw was black.

Can't move... can't see... hear something... "..ld! Dear child!" It's Shima, holding you. Still cold and wet, your head felt warm. "Your dark eyes still glitter, that is good." You gathered the strength to lift your head from her lap, but she still cradled your head in her palm. "I'm sorry. The water weakens the human muscle, I didn't know what it was until now."

She picked you up and put you gently on your feet. "If you can walk, I can take you to my home and help you more." She led you by the hand at your weakened pace down the next hall floored with quilts and blankets. The walls had more illustrations of flowers that didn't exist, children's drawings, to be exact.

The hall came to an end, there were two large huts. The one on the right was bigger than the brighter colored one to the left. Shima led you to the larger hut.