Enter the Labyrinth Part II: Frightening Force Puzzle Challenge! A Mind-boggling Welcome
Bertha steeled herself and entered the labyrinth, the mana crystal above the entrance helping her restore more of her mana as she passed under it.
After walking for a ways down the tunnel, she found herself in a large cavern that looked kind of like an entrance hall, although it was rather plain.
There was a ladder leading up through a hole in the ceiling, as well as two tunnels: one to the left and one to the right. On the far wall there was a blue curtain with malevolent laughter echoing out of it, which unnerved Bertha.
Then again, she did not know who was laughing or why. Wasn’t it rather judgmental to label someone’s laughter as malevolent?
She approached the curtain, and as she did so, the laughter got louder and even more maniacal. Startled, Bertha stopped. Reminding herself that there was nothing to be reasonably afraid of here, she took another step forward.
Almost instantly the laughter got louder.
Bertha thought for a moment. How curious…
She took another step forward, and the laughter got even louder. She stopped, and the laughter continued at the same volume. She slowly took another step forward.
This process continued for a minute until she was only a few feet away from the curtain.
“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I will suck your blood and feast on your flesh!”
“If that’s the case, then why are you hiding behind a curtain?”
The voice behind the curtain loudly cursed—not a magical curse, though, just foul language.
“I’ve been found out. Wanda is going to kill me…”
“Who?” asked Bertha.
“Wanda. She told me to hide behind this curtain and laugh like a maniac to frighten freshmages into making a quick decision of which way they’d go from here. But I suppose you’re made of tougher stuff than most freshmages, Miss—”
“My name is Bertha,” said Bertha. “And I’m not THAT tough. I’d already figured out that I’m being hazed, and I figured that you were stationed here to provide a hint to freshmages like me.”
“Hmm, that’s actually a good idea. It never occurred to me. Or Wanda for that matter, and she’s the one who designed the very first annual Frightening Force-Puzzle Challenge!”
“The what?” asked Bertha. Then she remembered the words inscribed above the entrance to this place:
The Entrance Exam pales in comparison to the Trial before you. Enter the Labyrinth if you dare.
“Nevermind, I get it,” Bertha said. “That challenge thing is what I’m doing now. I think I arrived here a little late, and I haven’t had breakfast today. Are you allowed to give me a hint?”
“Well, I suppose it couldn’t hurt…most of the other volunteers have riddles and stuff. Then again, most of them are mind mages, and I’m not.” The voice behind the curtain was quiet for a moment, and then…
“If you wish to, um, restore your lost strength and, uh fulfill yourself, you must make it to the, err, the Hall of….of…of Gninid. That’s where the, the ceremony of the Psych will take, um, will happen. Yeah.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” asked Bertha. “Like how much time I have until the ceremony starts?”
There was a pause.
“You have about half an hour. I think. But in order to get there, you will need to enter the Airs of the Mind and….and take the pretty wooden stick from its center.”
Bertha thanked him, and started to walk back over to the ladder. As she began to climb the rungs, she said, “It would have sounded better if you had said that I need to enter the storm of the mind and take the force from its mind’s eye.”
As her head neared the ceiling, she added as an afterthought, “Also, how do you spell, Gninid? It wouldn’t happen to be D-I-N-I-N-G would it?”
“Wanda is so going to kill me,” the voice behind the curtain muttered to himself as Bertha pulled herself up through the ceiling and into another tunnel.
Here she saw another inscription lit up by a mana crystal on the ground in front of her:
Is the way of the wands to truth or to lies? Conclusions reveal illusions in your mind.
In front of the inscription was an arrow.
Suddenly there was a loud rumbling sound behind Bertha. She whipped around and saw a HUGE boulder barreling towards her from farther down the tunnel. Startled, she ran in the opposite direction, the way the arrow had pointed. But then she reached a fork in the cavern. She went left, and the boulder FOLLOWED her. She kept running. She stepped on tile button of some kind that had been hidden in the stone floor, and suddenly she got a burst of speed. She reached another fork in the cavern, and chose the right tunnel this time. As she neared the next fork, a WALL OF FIRE sprung up in front of all three paths. At least one of them had to be an illusion, if not all of them, but Bertha could not see who was casting it. After a while of running, Bertha began to question what was going on.
Was the boulder an illusion? Bertha didn’t know and did not want to take her chances. She was obviously expected to run anyway. But the ground wasn’t sloping. The boulder should not have been following her past the first fork. None of the fires could be real. If they were than this school wasn’t a remotely safe place to learn.
Bertha gulped. She told herself there was nothing to worry about. She knew that it was unlikely that she would be burned to death in the process of being hazed. But still she was indecisive. Those walls looked really hot. Even if they were illusions that didn’t mean they couldn’t cause her illusory pain, right?
Bertha steeled herself for what she was about to do, but she didn’t get the chance. The boulder crashed into her from behind and knocked her over. It hurt a lot, but it was nowhere near as much pain as she expected. When she got back up, she saw that two of the tunnels had disappeared. There was a thoughtspore floating in the air a few yards ahead of Bertha, one that was right behind her, dazed on the ground after the crash, and there was one bobbing up and down right next to her.
Bertha sighed and continued jogging down the tunnel. The thoughtspores did not go with her this time.
She reached a tall set of double metal doors. She opened them and found herself in a planetarium with circles of seats sloping downwards to the center of the large room. At the very bottom there was a locked chest sitting on a pedestal. Bertha jogged down past the many rings of seats to reach it. There was no one here. Was she supposed to search under all the seats to find a key? She turned around…
“Boo.”
Bertha yelped loudly and jumped back, her hand over her heart as she tried to calm her breathing for a few moments. The elderly person who had snuck up behind Bertha was of medium height, had straight gray hair that hung just below their ears and mild wrinkles in their cheeks. The elderly person laughed. Their voice was not really soft but not very loud either, not that high and not that low. Bertha could not tell if the person was a man or a woman. She could at least tell the elderly person’s species: human, like she was.
The elderly person wiped a tear from their eye.
“Ah, that never gets old. Gets them every time.”
“Um…who are you?” Bertha asked.
“I am OLDFART!” the elderly person said. “Keeper of Keys and Maintainer of Minds! I listen to the strings that bind to heal the wounds of troubled minds, but if you trouble other minds, then trouble you will find.”
Oldfart (if that was really their name) suddenly pulled a wand out from behind their back.
“If this is a wand…”
Oldfart pulled another wand out from behind their back.
“And this is a wand…”
They crossed the wands together.
“Then are these wands?”
Bertha looked confused.
“Um, they look like wands to me, but this is probably a trick question, so I’ll have to say…no.”
“Very good,” said Oldfart, putting the wands back behind their back, then bringing wands back out from behind their back, and repeating the process.
“If this is a wand and this is a wand, then are these wands?”
Bertha noticed that they were crossed the other way now. This time the left one was on top of the right, where before the right one had been on top.
“Yes,” she answered. “They are wands.”
“No they’re not!” Oldfart chuckled as the wands poofed out of existence. They brought out another pair of wands from behind their back.
“Listen. If this is a wand and this is a wand, then are these wands?”
There had to be a rule to this, but Bertha had no idea what it was. Perhaps it would be apparent after a few guesses?
“Um…no.”
“Hehehe, they actually are wands.”
Oldfart returned the wands behind their back and pulled two wands out from behind them again.
“Let’s try this again. If this is a wand, and this is a wand, then are these wands?”
This time Bertha noticed the wands were slightly tilted.
“No, they’re not wands.”
“They are too wands!” said Oldfart in mock-indignance, putting the wands back behind them and bringing out a pair of wands from behind them. Was it the same pair of wands each time, or different ones? Bertha wasn’t sure.
“Hey, listen!”
“Oh, sorry,” said Bertha, who had gotten lost in thought. Focus, she told herself.
“If this is a wand, and this is a wand, then are these wands?”
“Yes?”
“That’s right! But if this is a wand and this is a wand, then are these wands?”
“Yes again,” said Bertha without confidence.
“Wrong again,” said Oldfart.
Bertha started looking around at the seats and the domed ceiling above her.
“You’re not going to find any hints from looking up there. Listen.”
And then Bertha understood. She closed her eyes as Oldfart continued.
“If this is a wand, and this is a wand, then are these wands?”
“Yes,” Bertha replied.
“Correct. But if this is a wand and this is a wand, then are these wands?”
Bertha answered differently this time. “No, they’re not.”
“And if this is a wand and this is a wand, then are these wands?”
“No.”
“Are you listening? If THIS is a wand and THIS is a wand, then are these wands?”
“Yes,” said Bertha. The very moment she said it, a Mage Wand was thrust into her hands and she opened her eyes.
“Congratulations, you’ve passed the test. This wand will help clear obstacles and unlock the path to the final challenge, if you can find it. Now hurry!”
“How did you know that I had figured out the rule and wasn’t just guessing?”
Oldfart poked Bertha on the forehead.
“Because I listened. Ahahahaha!”
A rope ladder dropped down from the top of the planetarium.
Then Bertha noticed that the chest was still closed and locked.
“Wait a minute. Wasn’t that where you gave me this wand from? Why is it still closed and locked?”
“Um…” Oldfart fidgeted.
Suddenly suspicious, Bertha darted behind Oldfart and saw that they had no bag of Mage Wands hidden behind their back. She quickly sent a force push towards the space behind Oldfart next to the locked chest on the pedestal. There was an “oomph” as someone hidden with illusion was pushed backwards into one of the planetarium seats. A piece of parchment was dropped to the ground in front of the seat.
Oldfart turned around a clapped their hands together.
“You have discovered a secret of the labyrinth! Well done!”
Bertha picked up the piece of parchment. It was a map of the labyrinth she was in, the Labyrinth of the Mind, home of the Maegis University Mind School. She pocketed it and began to climb the rope ladder.
With the help of the Mage Wand with Force Push spellbound to it and the map of the Labyrinth, Bertha made it past several floors of obstacles, finding several shortcuts, and making her way through each of the key rooms in the maze until she reached a large stone archway near the ground floor.
“There’s only about a couple minutes left, I think we’ve gotten all the stragglers,” said one of the volunteer riddle guardians, a senior with long blonde hair and freckles.
“Yep, I guess it’s time to go to dinner then,” said the other volunteer riddle guardian, who would have looked almost exactly like he was the twin of the first one if it weren’t for his lack of freckles.
“WAIT!” Bertha shouted as she ran into the room.
“Well, looks like we got a dropout. I’m sorry but you’re out of time, so—“
“No I’m not,” said Bertha. “You said that there was a couple minutes left. I heard you.”
The guardian who had fibbed, let’s call him Freckles, shifted his eyes nervously. The one without freckles, let’s call him Freckless said, “Fine, let’s get this over with.”
Freckless pointed to the set of two closed doors behind him.
“One of these doors leads to fulfillment. The other leads to silence. One of us guardians always lies—“
“And the other one tells only the truth,” said Freckles.
“You may ask us one question.”
“Well,” said Bertha. “I’ve already figured out that you both lie. So I’ll just ask: which door is the door to fulfillment?”
The guardians looked at each other, then each pointed at a different door.
“Oh come on! That’s cheating!” said Bertha. She pointed at the one with freckles.
“You lied when you said that there was no time left, so you must be the one who always lies. But then you said that one of you only tells the truth, which can’t be true if you’re the one who always lies.”
“That’s right, our riddle has no answer,” said the one without freckles, folding his arms.
“And now there are only ten seconds left until the Ceremony of the Psych begins,” said the one with freckles, glancing at a clock illusion that only he could see.
Bertha had left her home in Salenia and traveled for nearly half a year to reach Maegis University. She would not just give up and go home, but what could she do?
And then a bright idea struck her. She remembered a simple bit of advice her mother had once given her.
“When all the paths are blocked, forge your own.”
Both doors were made out of wood. Bertha rushed towards the door on the right and pulled it open manually. However, at the same time she cast a Force Pull onto the left door, causing it to swing open at the exact same moment. Seeing that the door before her led to the dormitories (according to the inscription on the wall of the tunnel beyond it), she leapt sideways to the left, and entered the Dining Hall.
