Working With Phantoms

Battle in the Rain

June 7th

Madran's group arrived back in the Velvet Room, with Madran seeing that Marie was now present.

"Oh, hi, Marie, what's up?"

"Nothing much. I'm just coming over every once and a while to say hi."

"Cool. Well, once everyone gets here, we're heading back into the palace."

"Yeah, Philemon told me all about that stuff. Like, it's kinda like the TV world, in the sense that some people's inner selfs arise there."

"True, true."

Madran then waited for everyone else to arrive, with the group then heading back out to the Metaverse. Madran then saw that Philemon had established a new entrance next to the elevators, which finally took them out of the storage room and into a much nicer starting point.

"Ok, are we ready?"

"Yep. Up next should be the third circle of hell, or where people guilty of Gluttony go. Uh, all I remember is that souls in that place were subject to a constant, icy rain."

"Gotcha, Plague, Well, let's go!"

Madran's group then went down the lift to the newly-unlocked third floor, where they ran into Hariti standing in the central area.

"Welcome, children of man, to the third floor of this lovely basement. Here, you can expect many of my happily-designed puzzles, as well as plenty of rain and shadows. I'll see you soon, if you still live..."

Hariti made a dark chuckle and faded away. Madran then looked around the area to see several windows lined up around it which had rainwater flowing down them. Then, some lightning sounded and the windows flashed.

"Oh, dear, that's going to get weird. Let's get going."

Madran then scanned the area to see a wrap-around platform with several switches and channels below ahead of them. Then, once Madran left the main room, she found that, and looked around more.

"Goodness, this is dreary."

Madran observed that the platforms were well-shaded by scaffolding, with heavy rain sliding off of it and into a set of channels. Then, Madran located several switches and ran over to them.

"Ok, well, here we are."

Madran looked around before locating a massive screen above the channels. Then, right as she saw it, it flickered to life, showing Mother Harlot, Hariti, and Shadow Fourete.

"You seem confused, yes? Well, allow me to explain."

Hariti gave a cold smile towards Madran and continued.

"The switch in front of you controls the entire channel. You can swap between various channels, but the goal remains the same: get the water to the yellow tube at the end. Good luck."

Then, the screen turned off and Madran looked at the switch.

"Uh... hey, what does this mean?"

"Fwoosh, were you paying attention?"

"Uh, not really."

Philemon walked up to the controls and tapped a few of the arrows on it, which rotated one of the channels around.

"Ok. The arrows appear to move the channels around. Then, we can switch between channels with the circle key, and start a flow of water with the droplet button."

"Um... ok."

Madran looked over the edge of the platform to see a small, red tube below them.

"Is that where the water comes from?"