Out of the ground, in the middle of the cage Loki was trapped in, grew a single rose. It was as if a few months’ worth of time passed by in mere seconds, with how fast it grew. After it was done blooming, Loki could see one of the petals starting to wilt. Between how fast it was decaying and how many petals the rose had, he estimated he had around 15 minutes.
Loki spun around fast, looking for a sign that any part of the vines that made his cage were different. He spun so many times, that he almost passed out from how dizzy he was getting.
“Think, Loki. The spirit said it was a riddle, and riddles must have clues. What clues are there?”
He whipped out his notepad and flipped through the pages with lightning speed, glancing at the flower on occasion. When he got to the part pertaining to this current mission, he stopped, only realizing now that this was the first flower he had seen since entering this section of the forest. He quickly jotted that down and continued searching for more clues.
“There are no other flowers in this section of forest. There are also no monsters around, either. The trees all seemed to have vines with elongated leaves, likely due to influence from the spirit. What else is there?”
Loki glanced at the flower and saw the second petal had already fallen. He did a quick count of the petals and saw there were 28 left. A thought came to him.
“Numbers. Might that be a clue? How many vines are there?”
“81 vines, plus 9 trees surrounding us,” the leaser of the Axe-a-lot-els offered. It was probably the first time that Loki found them to be useful.
“Good, good. 9 squared gives us 81, both are odd numbers. Maybe we need to hit every ninth vine to escape?” Loki thought out loud a lot. It came with the unfortunate consequence of people acting before he was ready.
One of the party members he was with ran up to and swung at a vine. A clang was heard, as if the axe struck metal, and thorns popped out of the vine, like it was a spring-loaded trap. The man fell back in shock. Thankfully, he hadn’t been pierced by the thorns, as he didn’t know if they were poisonous or not.
Loki could only shake his head. He had yet to decide which vine would be the first vine they struck.
He looked around again and found the vine that was in the most direct direction from which they came from. If he had to guess, this would be the first vine.
“Here. Strike this one,” he called to the leader. “Be sure to strike from a distance. If this is the wrong vine, there might be a trap waiting to go off, similar or worse than the thorns.”
The leader looked skeptical, but he approached the one Loki pointed out. If they weren’t likely in a life-or-death situation, he doubted the man would ever trust him, but these situations give very little room for doubt.
The man walked up the vine and took a very loose stance and a long grip on his weapon. He swung the axe and immediately jumped back.
*CLANG*
The axe was held there, embedded an inch into the vine. After a moment of bated breathes, the vine flexed and almost spat out the axe. The groove it cut was quickly healed, and numerous thorns were sprouted, though these felt more symbolic of a failure than actually meant to cause harm.
Rather than succumb to frustration, Loki only look notes. Another quick count showed that there were 93 thorns on this vine. Yet again, the number was odd, but this time, it wasn’t a multiple of 9.
“Was I wrong about 9? Or was I wrong about which direction we came from? Or should I start from the northern most vine? Or should I count the trees at all? What about starting from the direction of the road, instead of the diagonal line we’ve made so far?”
Loki kept muttering to himself, before finally choosing the vine closest to the road.
“Again, same as last time.”
The leader didn’t even question it. He walked up to the designated vine and swung, though not as hard this time.
*CLANG*
The axe bounced off of the vine this time, and instead of thorns, out came a set of 6 gray flowers. They were the same color as the bark of the trees around them.
“Success!” Loki jumped before recalling his situation. He still had 89 more vines to go before they were free, assuming the flowers were meat as the opposite of the thorns.
“Third try’s the charm! What next?” the leader clapped his shoulder and motioned for him to continue taking the lead.
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Loki looked around and saw the two thorny vines had retracted their weapons. Confident in his success, he strode over to the ninth vine and ordered it to be cut.
*CLANG*
The axe was stuck in the vine again, given the leader had some confidence with this one. Unfortunately, it was ill placed, and his shoulder was scratched by a thorn.
“Damn it, Loki! I thought you said you had this!”
“I thought I did too! How was I supposed to know! Everything pointed to the ninth vine being the next one!” he yelled back, scanning his notes.
“Not everything,” said one of the Axe-a-lot-els. “The rose timer thing only has 30 petals. Being the party’s accountant, I know for a fact that 9 doesn’t go into 30 cleanly.”
“Of course! The timer! How could I forget! That, and the first success had 6 flowers on it, not 9! You were right! Third time is the charm, as is the third vine. It needs to be every third vine! Not every ninth! You, cut the first vine again!”
The accountant of the group ran up to their first success and struck the vine again.
*CLANG*
Again, there was a clang, and again, 6 flowers bloomed. This time, he ran up to the fourth vine and struck that one as well.
*CLANG*
The axe bounced off the prison bar, and out bloomed more flowers. On and on the man went, chopping at every third vine. When he was done with 30 of them, the question became What was next, as he had done a full loop. 27 of the vines had bloomed, and 3 of the trees had their bark etched into the picture of 6 flowers.
“Continue on. Hit the next vine,” Loki directed.
*CLANG*
A wave of relief washed over Loki as the vine bloomed. The end was in sight! They had only used half their time, too!
*CLANG*
A feeling of dread washed over Loki as every flower that had bloomed fell to the ground.
“What the hells happened? How’d you hit the wrong vine? Can’t you count?!” he berated the man with the axe for a brief moment before remembering the time limit. They were down to approximately 7 minutes left.
Loki looked at the vine in question and saw it was, in fact, theoretically the correct vine. Yet it still triggered a thorn trap!
“Shut yer mouth! I’m no child, to be scolded so! Figure out what went wrong while I get us back to where we were.”
Loki begrudgingly nodded as the man got to work chopping the third vines again. They figured out at the third correct vine that if they didn’t swing hard enough, that the trap wouldn’t trigger, but neither would the flowers. They had to fully commit, which lead to a higher chance of injury from the thorny trap. It was frankly pure luck that the an didn’t get pricked by them on the last one.
When the last correct vine was chopped yet again, Loki had come up with an idea.
“Switch from every third vine to now every sixth vine. I feel like the flowers are an indicator of a change in the rules.”
The man looked skeptical, but as he had yet to come up with a better idea, he went for it. He stood with a loose stance and swung at the vine.
*CLANG*
Loki’s heart skipped a beat as all the flowers fell yet again. He watched as they quickly sank into the earth, thinking of ways to get out of this mess alive.
They were down to 3 minutes remaining by the time he was ready to get to the next attempt at getting out of here. This would be his last attempt, since they wouldn’t have enough time to set the cage back up after another failure.
“No pressure, Little Loki,” the deep voice of the nature spirit taunted. This was the first time it had spoken since issuing the challenge to him.
“Why are you doing this? Have we insulted you in some way?” Loki cried out. He was typically good under pressure, but he also typically had his magic with him.
“Offended me? Perhaps not. But you have so willingly entered my Domain. How can I avoid messing with you?” The disembodied voice began laughing most ominously. The volume gradually faded, adding to the effect. It had to be using Sound Magic as its main method of communication. And the way it said “Domain” made him think it was using another skill, possibly also magic in nature.
“Magic!” he thought to himself. “If I can’t figure out this spirit’s trick, I still have my wand Overcharged Fireball to fall back on! I can blast my way through the vines and make a run for it!”
Having a backup plan calmed Loki’s nerve, if only slightly. He took a deep breath and got ready to issue his latest plan.
“Keep striking every third vine, this time discount the vines we have already bloomed. There will be wider gaps between strikes, but more of you can work together this way as well.”
The Axe-a-lot-els all got into position. The fifth vine was struck.
*CLANG*
And it bloomed.
The eleventh vine was struck.
*CLANG*
And it bloomed.
On and on the party went, until finally, only one vine was left. Loki looked to the rose timer, and saw they were on their last petal. It had taken more time than he expected to get it right.
The leader of the party he was traveling with was the one to strike the final blow, and as he did, the entire plant cage rattled.
“Congratulations! You have beaten my puzzle! What would you like as a reward?”
The deep voice came back again. It seemed pleased to see they escaped, but only barely.
Loki was about to speak, though he wasn’t sure what he was going to say; probably to ask for forgiveness of their transgressions and some other flowery words of appeasement. The leader beat him to it, though.
“We want safe passage out of your… Domain. We were only sent here to find the source of this mysterious fog, and now that we have, we have no other business here. I promise no harm will come to you from us.”
Loki cringed at the directness of the man’s words, but could do nothing about it but wait and see.
“Very well. Passage you will have. Try not to fall off, though, as that wouldn’t be very safe.”
Loki had only a moment to wonder what the spirit was talking about before the ground began to shake. It sunk a full foot down, transforming from loose dirt to a much more solid and compact form. Then the trees began to fall.
More accurately, they began to rise.
Once the group could only see the very tops of the trees, the platform they were standing on began to move. It felt like they were being carried by a giant, as each step the… something under them took, caused a deep rumble. Loki saw a few birds fly away, though they roosted in a giant tree.
A GIANT tree.
A good distance away stood the tallest tree that Loki had ever seen. He had heard stories of the elves’ Verdant Grove, with towering trees as thick as houses. That was all he could think of as the thundered away.
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