Thea

“-her… fucking shit, not again.”

I was standing alone in the middle of a pretty fancy looking office. There was a desk on the far side of the room, and two large windows. One to my right and one behind me. The other two walls were taken up entirely by tall bookshelves filled with brightly colored books.

The summoning circle was painted with pink paint on wooden floor boards surrounding me, but there was no binding circle. Which meant whoever had summoned me was either a complete idiot or powerful enough that they didn’t need to worry about an angry devil.

At first glance, everything looked pretty normal, but the more I looked around, the more everything felt just plain wrong. A lack of a ceiling was the first problem I noticed. The walls and shelves just kept going until they disappeared into the distance. The next thing was that there was no door. Oh, and there was a massive boulder sitting on top of the desk.

“Hello? Is anybody there?” I shouted the question into the apparently empty office. Nobody responded. This was definitely the strangest kidnapping I’d ever been a part of. Usually, there was somebody around to make sure you didn’t escape or break anything.

Well, if whoever summoned me wasn’t going to stick around long enough to stop me from breaking things, then gods dammit, I was going to break things.

The windows were the obvious first choice. Break a window, leave the building. That was breaking and entering 101. Okay, I was breaking and exiting, but there was probably a lot of overlap between the two.

I punched the window. And nothing happened. The window didn’t break; it didn’t crack, and it didn’t even make a satisfying noise. Or any noise at all. It just completely absorbed the impact.

I tried punching the window a few more times, and nothing happened. I tried punching the other window, and again, nothing happened.

The windows probably weren’t an escape option, but there were still two other walls that I hadn’t tried. They were covered in strangely colorful books. I walked over to the nearest shelf and tried to pull a book off, but it only partly came free before there was a click and the shelf opened.

Honestly, I had been expecting a secret bookshelf door. But there was literally an infinite number of books on these walls. I figured there was no way in all the hells I’d actually be able to find the secret door book.

Just to be sure, I pulled a couple of other books off the shelf, and they came free without any resistance. I had seriously just gotten it on the first try.

I shrugged and waved goodbye to the suspicious desk boulder before leaving through the newly un-hidden door.

The room I stepped into was completely bare as far as decorations go. It had completely blank white walls, ceiling and floor. But it was much less bare in the strange puzzle-y bullshit category.

There was a set of three levers in the center with a single door on the far side, and even a strange-looking frog sitting on a pedestal beside it. The frog was pretty big, about the size of a bowling ball, and covered in green-yellow warts. And apparently, it could talk.

“Greetings, Devil Salinthea, daughter of Inim, and servant to Lilith,” the frog said.

I gingerly waved towards it. “Hi. How do you know my name?”

It didn’t seem like the frog had been the one to summon me, because I didn’t think he could have created the summoning circle. He didn’t even have thumbs.

“I am Frog, the all knowing. That is my job. I know all... that exists inside this room,” Frog said.

“You only know about things that exist in this room?” I asked.

Frog nodded. “That is correct.”

“But you know everything about the things that exist in this room?”

“Also correct.”

“I’m in this room. Do you know who summoned me?” I asked.

“Were you summoned into this room?” Frog asked, and I shook my head. “Then I do not.”

“But that doesn’t…” I started to complain, but Frog interrupted me.

“THEN I DO NOT.”

“Okay, fine. Do you know who owns this room?” I asked.

“The room is not inside the room, so I do not,” Frog answered. I wasn’t totally sold on that, but okay, I could probably work with this. I walked up to the lever and pointed at it.

“Who owns this?”

“That is a puzzle lever. It is one of three and exists for the sole purpose of making it more difficult for people to traverse this room,” Frog explained. “One of the levers will open the door, the other two will kill everybody in the room.”

That didn’t answer my question, and I was already like 99% sure that’s how the room worked.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I complained. “I asked who owns the lever. Not what the lever is.”

Frog nodded. “Pulling the wrong lever kills everybody in the room. While the correct lever opens the door.”

I sighed. Frog was purposefully avoiding my question. He obviously wanted me to deal with the puzzle.

“Okay, fine, I get it. Is this the correct lever to open the door and not kill me?” I asked.

“One of the three levers is the correct one, while the other two will kill everybody in this room.” Frog nodded.

I growled and pointed to another lever. “Is this the correct lever to open the door?”

“One of the three levers is the correct one, while the other two will kill everybody in this room.” Frog nodded again.

“Fucking fine! Can you at least tell me how the bad levers will kill everybody?” I asked.

Frog nodded. “Pulling the incorrect lever will fill the room with flames, killing everybody inside.”

“Flames? Like fire?” My ears perked up at that.

Frog nodded again. “That is correct.”

I pulled a random lever, and the door opened.

“Bwah! You could have killed us both!” Frog said. “Why did you do that?”

“This is why.” I pulled another lever, and the room filled with flames for a full minute. My pants were a bit scorched, but otherwise, my outfit was okay. Thankfully, I wasn’t wearing the jacket Bryce had given me. Otherwise, I would have had to be more careful.

Frog was barbecued, but that was fine. All of this puzzle solving had made me kind of hungry, so I grabbed him on my way through the door. He was heavier than I expected, but tasted okay. Could have used some salt, and definitely a lot of butter.

The next room was equally bare in decorations and didn’t even have any levers. But, it made up for that with twice as many doors and twice as many frogs.

“Greetings, Devil Salinthea daughter of Inim and servant of Lilith,” Both of the frogs spoke in unison. “We are the guardians of the two doors. We will answer any question, but one of us must always answer with a lie and the other can only speak the truth. You must discover which door will allow you to progress and which will lead to your death.”

I sighed and pointed to the left door. “Is that the good door?” I asked the left frog.

“You will die if you open that door,” it lied.

I shook my head and went through that door. This was just getting silly.

The next room was less a room, and more a cavern with a 10 meter wide river flowing through it. There was a tiny boat on the near bank along with a sack of grain, a chicken, and a fox. I even found a piece of paper on the ground near it that said that the fox would eat the chicken and the chicken would eat the grain, but for some reason they were shy about it or something? So they would only eat each other if they were left alone.

This definitely seemed like the sort of puzzle that would have me rowing back and forth on this massive river for way too long and I wasn’t about that.

Instead, I picked up the sack and threw it across the river where it landed with a thunk. Then I picked up the chicken under one arm and the fox under the other, before ignoring the boat entirely, and leaping across the river.

The door opened after I set the two animals down near the sack of grain. I strutted into the next room.

This one was set up with three pedestals. Two of them had dozens of differently colored weights and the third one in the middle had a golden balancing scale on it.

The scale was tilted heavily to the right. I lifted the right edge up until it was balanced and the door opened, but the moment I let go of the scale the door closed again.

The puzzle obviously wanted me to use the weights to balance the scale and keep the door open. I thought about moving the scale to the balanced position, then just melting the middle piece to keep it in place. But I had a theory I wanted to test.

I grabbed two differently colored weights at random and put them on either side of the scale. The two sides balanced perfectly, and the door opened.

In every single room so far, I had solved the puzzles on the first try. The room with the lying frog could be explained, there were only 2 doors and guessing the right one wasn’t too unlikely. The room with the levers was only 1 in 3, less likely but still not crazy.

The room with the river was just stupid and didn’t count, but the weight puzzle had hundreds of different possibilities, maybe more, and that’s to say nothing of the book room.

If I ignored the whole window fiasco, then I got that one on the first try too. Now, I’m not a math nerd, but the likelihood of that happening was… well not very likely. Again, not a math nerd, but I knew something was off and I was going to test it in the next room.

Or I was going to test it in the next room until I walked in and saw the massive copper form of an ancient dragon.

It was easily 3 or 4 times bigger than Teolix had been, and was sleeping right in front of the door. There was no way to sneak around without waking it, and if I did, then that would mean only one thing.

This was a puzzle that I was going to enjoy solving.