***** Wiki’s POV, 7:45 AM *****

“This next room introduces the first of my alternate colors: Orange.

“Orange means that I’m going to show you where you need to go to clear the next section of the room, but I’m taking a path that would be hazardous to your health, sometimes even downright fatal.”

“So, orange means we need to get to where you are, but we need to find our own path,” said Anderson.

“Affirmative. As you can see, this next room is full of very large Tesla coils,” I explained. “The yellow and black marked sections of floor are the danger zones for the coils. If you step into those areas, or even stick your weapon into them, you will get a massive jolt of electricity.”

“What’s electricity?” asked Ragnar.

“Electricity is to lightning as water is to a raging river at flood tide. While lightning can be very unpredictable and very dangerous, electricity can be used as a tool if used in much smaller quantities.”

“I’m never going to use electricity for anything in my life,” grumbled Toejam.

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Electricity is one of the five fundamental forces that govern our world. Those forces are gravity, which you saw in the previous room, electricity, which you’ll see all over this dungeon, the strong and weak nuclear forces, which I’m not going to explain here, and finally magic.”

“How can it be a fundamental force if I’ve never seen it before?”

“Oh, but you have seen it before. When you shuffle your feet across a carpeted floor and then get shocked when you touch something metal, that is electricity.”

“So I’ll just avoid that then.”

“You’re really going to be stubborn about this aren’t you?”

“You bet I am! I demand that you treat me with more respect!”

I shook my head and sighed. “Electricity is a vital part of any living being. It is a large part of what allows your brain to communicate with the rest of your body, it is what makes your muscles extend and contract, it is what makes your heart beat on time. Even ignoring all of that, electricity is a large part of what is holding everything together, and is the reason you can touch anything at all rather than simply passing through it. Admittedly there is far more going on in all of those situations, but electricity is one of the most important pieces of all of those.

“By the way, respect has to be earned, and so far you’ve done nothing to earn it.”

Toejam started muttering to himself, but none of it made it through my internal profanity filter. Realizing that he was done having a productive conversation for now, I turned back to the rest of the party. “Does anyone have any questions before I leave you to navigate this simple maze on your own? No?”

At this point I turned orange and my voice got a bit rougher. “Ok then, I’ll see you at the other end of the room. Be careful and good luck!”

Without further ado, I turned around and walked through the center of the room, ignoring the discharges from the Tesla coils as they played across my exterior. Without a lightning mage who knew what they were doing guiding the electricity, there was no way they could hurt me. Even then, they’d have to understand how my internal defenses worked to have a hope of doing anything to me.

When I reached the other end of the room, I stopped and waited for them to catch up to me. Walking along the zigzagging path between the coils was proof enough that they understood they weren’t supposed to follow me.

When they caught up with me and the second key had added itself to Anderson’s arm, I led the now slightly confused group of adventurers further into the dungeon.

“Now, this next room is the last of the Courage and Trust Rooms, and it will introduce you to the final two colors. First off is Green, which means you’re about to face a puzzle of some kind. To solve this puzzle, you have to instruct me to take certain actions on your behalf. These tasks could be anything from standing in a certain spot to take advantage of my weight and immovability, or going somewhere you cannot to pull a lever, or in some cases acting as an extra pair of hands. Your party is big enough that you probably won’t need me for that last, but you never know. What you can ask me to do depends upon the puzzle at hand. Often times the available actions for a given puzzle will be made clear to you at the beginning of the puzzle or anytime you ask, but sometimes you will have to figure things out on your own.”

“Is not puzzle if you tell us answer,” said Ton.

“Exactly! Now, the second color introduced in this next room is red, and it means I will be actively acting against you in some fashion. This does NOT mean that I will be attacking you, though I might if you attack me first. Typically, this means that I’ll either be commanding the opposing side in some sort of competition between you and the dungeon monsters, or undoing whatever it is you’re doing to clear the room, or just making a nuisance of myself in a certain way.

“And here we are! Your first task is to figure out how to access the other areas of this room. By the way, I cannot teleport for this puzzle.” I said before turning green. “Now what would you have me to do?”

They didn’t say anything for a moment, looking around at the tiny room that I had led them to. It was a cube six meters on a side, with plenty of lights, the doorway we’d entered through, and a slightly raised square with two green footprints on it in the center of the room. That was it.

“Wiki, would you please stand on the green footprints?” asked Anderson.

“Certainly!” I said doing exactly that, which caused three of the walls to sink into the floor. The fourth one didn’t move because it had the door we’d entered through, while the ceiling lifted up an additional six meters.

The room was now twelve meters on a side, and the newly revealed area contained six squares identical to the one I was standing on, except they had black footprints instead of green, and one of them had a set of hoofprints instead of footprints. The other difference was they were all facing towards me.

“Um, ok. Now what?” asked Anderson.

“Wiki, no move please,” asked Ton. “We match new footprints.”

“Oh. Well duh,” said Anderson, smacking himself in the forehead.

Sure enough, when all of them were standing on the square with their footprints, there was a chunk! noise from the floor and the square I was standing on faded away. The room once again expanded by six meters per side, except this time the wall fell into the floor with a bang!

At the same time, the six of them were drenched in a vibrant green goo, the door we came in through slammed shut, and I turned red.

They started panicking for a moment until they realized that the goo wasn’t doing anything other than sticking to them and being disgustingly green. It was actively avoiding their faces and ears, allowing them to fill the room with their dismayed shouts.

“Nana-nana-boo-boo! You can’t goo me!” I said, sticking my left thumb where my nose would be and wiggling my other fingers in the time-honored schoolyard chant.

Surprisingly, it was Toejam who figured out what they were supposed to do first.

“Let’s hug the annoying little **************!” he yelled, the last part of his sentence once again lost to my internal profanity filter. “Let’s see how they like being covered in goo!”

Then the room degenerated into a madhouse as they tried to hug me and I did everything in my power to avoid them without hurting them. I’m not sure whether it was Ton, Ragnar, or Anderson who first realized that they could scrape the goo off of themselves and throw it at me, but at that point I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them managed to hit me or they forced me to touch some of the goo that was sticking to everything they touched.

Annoyingly, it was Toejam who finally managed to catch me with a flying tackle by leaping off of Ton’s shoulders while I was already in the air jumping from one corner of the room to the other over Ton’s head.

As soon as he touched me, all of the goo in the room let go of whatever it was stuck to and flung itself at me. Unfortunately, Toejam saw which way the wind was blowing and let go of me before I got covered in enough goo to smother him due to his proximity.

Once I was on the ground again and all of the goo had surrounded me, it all disappeared leaving the room completely goo free and revealing my black and blue color scheme once again.

“What. The. Heck. Was. That.” demanded Anderson now that there was no chance of getting goo in his mouth.

“I warned you I might be making a nuisance of myself and actively opposing you in some fashion.”

“That you did. I just wasn’t expecting you to be quite that literal when you said nuisance.”

“It’s a dungeon! There’s always going to be some surprises. Besides, this room was intended to teach you that I won’t always be your friend. After this, I don’t think any of you are going to forget anytime soon.”

“Truth,” snorted Ton.

“Yeah, you’re right,” conceded Anderson. “Now just give me the key and let’s get moving.”