--- Kat ---
Kat had encountered a problem. She never thought that having succubus skin would be an issue but it turns out having magically smooth skin that repels all dirt and gri includes lubricants. You see, whenever Kat tried to apply the gunk to her arms, it instead ended up falling to the ground. You’d think it would at least stick to the tal the box was made out of... but apparently not. When your skin was magic it cared little for the laws of physics and logic. *Fuck. Do I need to fail at lockpicking then?*
--- Lily ---
While Kat was having issues with her first test, Lily and Hedera were learning about what was in store for them. There was a similar box in the middle of a room, and a table nearby. They expected the sa test. They were wrong. "Welco to your first puzzle. I think. It should be your first. Anyway, in this puzzle you need to figure out how to remove the hidden orb inside of the box there without destroying the box. Good luck."
Lily glanced up at the ceiling, waiting for the extra boxes of helpful tools to drop down. And she waited... and waited... and Hedera was moving over to the box while taking off her gloves. Lily hopped off Hedera and transford. "Wait so there’s nothing else to help us here?"
"Apparently not," said Hedera with a shrug as she started to carefully run her hand along the box. It had a fancy design on it with a lot of circles. They were embossed onto the box, leaving them obviously raised up from the rest of it. Though Hedera wasn’t sure that’s where you were intended to start. Light pushes of the various bits sticking out didn’t seem to be moving. "I’m guessing it’s a puzzle box. I’m not too familiar with them but my dad is into them."
As Hedera revealed that bit of information, her fingernail managed to catch on a hidden seem. Pressing gently on it, a cube at the corner of the box simple popped off. Hedera ignored it dropping to the floor and focused on the bit she’d just opened up. While Hedera was looking that over, Lily used a shadow to pick up the dropped piece and place it over on the table.
With the cube missing, Hedera could now see a small circular hole that you needed to insert a rod of so kind into. Lily, leaning over Hedera’s shoulder could see the sa thing. "Should I poke that with my shadows?"
"Best not to considering Trapmaster left a way to detect cheating," countered Hedera.
"Soooo... what do we do then? I’ve seen like, puzzle not key things where you have to unhook two bits of tal but I don’t think I’ve ever done a real puzzle box," queried Lily.
"Presumably there’s one or two other bits that you can interact with here that will eventually give us a tal stick. These sort of fancy boxes like to have the end at the beginning, so I imagine we’ll go through a long series of puzzles before finding a tal rod and then need to rember this spot. Might need to put the cube back actually, because sotis other bits don’t open if you’ve got other sections open..."
Lily used her shadow to grab the cube back and handed it to Hedera. The elf turned it around a few tis, looking for anything that might indicate it was more than just a cube. Shrugging she started to run it around the box instead of placing it back? "Um what are you doing?" asked Lily.
"Sotis you have little bits like this have a magnet inside or so sort of enchanted key that will let you open up sothing else... though not this ti it seems. Hmm... think I’ve covered just about everything..." mumbled Hedera.
"Can you lift it up?" asked Lily.
Hedera paused in her exploration and considered the question. The cube SEED to be stuck to the platform. There wasn’t exactly much space, just a small indent where it rested... but Lily had brought up a good question. The box hadn’t moved at all when she’d been poking at it but maybe... hmm. Hedera placed the cube back in the corner and then gripped the sides and pulled upwards. There was a slight hitching where it felt like the box was going to remain in place before the whole thing lifted up.
Where the cube had once there was a bunch of designs that lined up with matching indents in the bottom of the box, causing Hedera to frown. "That’s going to be annoying later on." Sighing and handing the box to Lily, who moved it to the table, Hedera started to look at the protrusions in the base of the pillar to see if they had anything for her... but answers seed to point to no. Or at least, nothing just yet.
While Hedera was looking that over, Lily lifted the box up above her head using shadows and looked at what was on the bottom. A few pokes and Lily was able to find a loose bit that you could move. Lily glanced over at Hedera and decided to poke the elf with shadows to get her attention. Once Hedera was clearly watching, Lily pulled out the wobbly bit.
She ended up with... card? It looked a bit like a card. Had a fancy flower design on it but nothing stuck out this ti. Hedera imdiately had an idea. "Pass that over here, I want to try sothing,"
Lily handed it over and Hedera slotted it into the base. When she did so, she got a notable click and a small stick with a crystal ball on the end popped out. While small, it was notably too large for the first secret she found. Still, it seed useful. Plucking it out, Hedera ran it over the base just in case there was sothing else there... but nothing reacted.
Taking the rod over to Lily, as soon as it touched the box it lit up. Hedera was excited, tapping it against the wood a few tis... and nothing happened. Frowning, Hedera poked it a few more tis before getting confused and trying a different side. It was still lit up, except, instead of the blue of the first side this one was red. Hedera soon held the orb near every side and found that it went in this order. Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, with both the top and the bottom not lighting up at all.
Hedera scratched at her chin a few tis. "Hmm... any idea what that’s about? Any idea as to what it might unlock?"
"Um... the base doesn’t light up either right?" asked Lily.
"Nope," confird Hedera.
"Well... maybe it does sothing if the box is back on the platform?" offered Lily.
"We can try," said Hedera, who first removed the card from the platform and then gestured for Lily to put the box down. Notably though, it didn’t click back into place. A gesture to raise it again had Hedera placing the card back in the box where this ti Lily sat it down it did click into place.
Waving the wand around again saw the sa colours show up... but the top was not white. Frowning, Hedera tapped the blue side, and then moved it back to the top. Now, the top shone a light blue. "Alright there’s sothing here... what colour do we need to make?" mumbled Hedera.
Lily shrugged and Hedera got to work. It was quickly apparent that incorrect combination would end up glowing brown for a few monts before blinking and swapping back to white. It was nice to know you’d gotten it wrong... but annoying in that the only way to reset things was to complete a rotation. Worse, you needed FIVE colours all added up together, so one of the sides was repeated twice... possibly.
See, the only ’rule’ was that you couldn’t choose the sa side twice in a row. So ’blue blue’ wasn’t an option but ’blue, green, blue’ was. "Is there any way to do this better?" asked Lily. "I an... we can keep trying to brute force it but that feels wrong."
Hedera shrugged. "It’s possible there’s a clue sowhere that will tell us the answer but I’ve covered the box pretty carefully and I don’t know how long I’d want to waste on looking for a hint we might not find."
Lily sighed but didn’t disagree. She wasn’t sure what they were going to do... but in her exasperation she turned her head to the ceiling and noticed sothing. Whenever Hedera picked a colour, it would change. Not to the colour she’d just picked... but sothing else. "Wait!" called Lily as she pointed upwards. "That, I think that’s the answer."
Hedera nodded, and quickly claid another wrong answer before looking up. Nothing. "Do we have to guess the first one?" asked Hedera.
"I guess? Or maybe they all open different things and there’s actually four correct answers depending on where you start?" offered Lily.
"Better get started then..." grumbled Hedera.
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