With careful sweeps of my heat beam, I dismantle the iron box I was in previously for protection, the iron slabs clanging to the floor as the seams melt away. Luckily enough, I didn’t need it. Looking around, I’m assuaged by the fact that my items still exist. It would have been unfortunate if my grimoire or my basic creation supplies were consumed by the dungeon.

Gathering up my things, I stuff them back into the bag and kick the trash into the corner, not minding the strange black ink smudged onto my foot from the still leaking corpses. I take a breath, compose myself, and walk out of the room.

Soon enough I step out through the exit, and as I walk through the corridor, I eventually step out into an uninspired concrete block. But this one at least has something that isn’t a murder attempt.

I walk to the other end, and I see a bricked-up doorway with a small note nailed to the wall. It says, “What happens when a wastelander and a rosie walk into a -drinking establishment-?”

I stare at what seems to be some sort of riddle, and as I do so, a storm of flickering memories overtakes my mind.

All of them involving a riddle, and me absolutely failing to solve it.

For if there is one thing I know, it is that I am absolutely terrible at riddles. I didn’t and still don’t know what has a tail and a head but no body.

I’ve always hated them with a burning passion; there are just no rules to them. There is no step 1, step 2, step 3 done. You’re just supposed to intuit the correct answer somehow with no innate foundation as to how or why riddles are constructed.

Puzzles, the far superior cousin to riddles, have the decency of consistent, clear rules and constraints built into the puzzle itself, instead of the rules being artificially slapped on. For example, it's clear that you aren't supposed to cut up the edges of puzzle pieces until they fit together, but riddles are a whole nother level of utter stupidity.

The most famous riddle in all of existence: the 4 legs in the morning, 2 legs in the day, and 3 legs at night makes absolutely no sense! Why would it make any sense that the morning is equivalent to early life! The entire time someone asked me that, I was flipping through my memories for some type of insect with a rapid cocooning process.

The worst part about them is that there is always a specific answer, even if there is something else that fits the criteria. No matter how creative or applicable your answer is, they always want a specific answer that you have to stumble onto through pure luck.

Worst of all, riddles are highly dependent on culture and language structure, and while my large reserves of language do mean that I can understand the words it’s not like I can get a quick crash course into the cultural landscape of a foreign world. What even is a rosie? Does that even refer to roses, or is it just a highly valued flower that got forcibly translated?

As all of these thoughts rage from my brain, I suddenly stop, breathe in, breathe out, and empty my mind, and with my mind completely empty, I scream “FUCK” at the top of my lungs.

And with that the door slides open.

Beyond it I see another corridor practically identical to the one I just came through.

I dumbfoundedly blink at the open corridor. What the fuck? How was the answer to that riddle ‘FUCK’ and why could I even answer it? I doubt that wherever this dungeon is from has English. I remember in the beginning, before it trapped me, the dungeon had some signage, but they were all in foreign tongues.

Wait a second, was Rosie, and Wastelander like a race, or class thing. Was this riddle a niche racist joke? While such things aren’t common in the present day, after all, it would be ridiculously hypocritical to condemn mixing nowadays. Jokes that certain races lusted over their ugh “betters” were a common way to delegitimize interracial love back then in the before times.

How would any reasonable person know that the riddle is actually a racist joke about two specific groups? Gosh darn it, I bet this cruel dungeon was trying to screw me over again. Even someone who was good at riddles might not know the specific groups involved and the implications when both of them head into a bar.

Anyways, I should keep moving forward; I don’t have any wounds to heal here since this encounter was so brief. So there's no real need to delay.

Still confused and baffled, I shoulder on, passing through another boring corridor before I open a door to find myself in a strange room filled with pipes.

On the ground there’s a series of large square tiles, in the center of every four-tile group, there are three pipes that reach the ceiling before pointing down at one of the four tiles, with one tile not having any pipes pointing at it. Each pipe has a different colored tip, either red, green, or blue. Maybe it’s a color-coding thing, but what could it be coding for, and for whom?

Whatever the ceiling is strangely low, my armored frame almost scraping against the concrete of the dungeon walls.

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I stare at this, wondering if this is some kind of puzzle, grateful that at the very least the dungeon was merciful enough not to force me to try to solve another riddle.

As I do so, I hear a strange thunk-thunk noise, as all in unison the pipes turn and each spit out something. Blue spits out a misty fog, red spits out a gout of fire, and green spits out some type of liquid, my guess being poison or acid, with only one tile of the group being free of effects.

Hmm, I doubt anything in those pipes is good, so maybe it’s a hands-on puzzle where I have to figure out the pattern to get to the end of the room on those blank tiles?

However, as I muse on that, a door at the end of the room slides open, and three strangely muscular lizards walk out, one red, one green, and one blue.

Hells, they look weird; their bodies look like someone took a lion and covered it in armored scales, and their face is bizarre, a long narrow beak with a bunch of teeth popping out from the sides and what looks like yak horns pointing backwards on the back of their skull.

They look less like any ordinary animal and more like some strange, wingless dragon straight from a book. Hmm, muscular lizards is a bit of a mouthful, so let’s call them drakes, since they look quite like the ones I’ve read about.

The three drakes prowl towards me, each clearly a deadly predator, a hungry look shining in their eyes. As I get ready, I see that the drakes carefully wind through the tiles and their various effects, but the red one walked straight through a gout of fire, not looking the slightest bit bothered.

At first I guess that the drakes are immune to fire, but I see the other two carefully avoiding the fire, so I conclude that instead each is immune to their own color.

I don't know for sure, but considering the circumstances, I’ll figure it out soon anyway. I get into a low stance as the red drake bursts through a tower of fire and lunges toward me in my empty tile.

I step to the side, its vicious claws barely missing me as it slides into my space. Its claws dig into the tile as it narrowly avoids diving into a gout of sparkling mist.

Seeing a golden opportunity, I run up to it and drive the tip of my armored boot into its chest, pushing it into the mist.

My strong blow causes it to stumble and slip onto its side in the mist, where it promptly roars with pain as a rush of blue and white frost spreads over its scales.

I look back at where the rest of the drakes were and see them moving at the edge, blocked off from reaching me by a lucky turn of the pipes, forced to take the long way around through a narrow series of safe tiles.

As I see them merrily diving through their respective safe colors, I realize something: there’s no way these pipes aren’t magic. Even if you’re really well insulated or something, that doesn’t mean that frost wouldn’t spread as a cold mist touched you. Someone in a flame-retardant suit still gets heated up by the surrounding hot air; for these drakes to so casually walk through these hazards, these can’t be actual physical things; these have to be the same sort of thing as the conceptual fire I can create, the idea of an element rather than. the element itself.

Which means, with a wicked smile, I stick my hand into the still raging inferno, and it stays inside perfectly fine, as I feel a flood of healing energy pulse through my armor as it absorbs the magical flame.

Turning back to the red drake scrambling on the frost-covered floor of the tile they’re on, I smile as I take my fist and slam it into the back of their struggling head. I feel a satisfying crack as one of their horns breaks apart.

But my glee doesn’t stay for long as the drake snaps at my fist and manages to sink its teeth into my armored hand. I panic and step backwards, and as I do, the drake stands up and headbutts me, sending me sprawling to the floor.

With a quick flick, I activate my cold beam and try to aim it at the drake to slow it down, but it cleanly avoids my flailing arms and shoves me with its head into the spout of flame.

My feet no longer cleanly on the ground flail around in the air, and the soles of my feet, unprotected by iron armor since my feet need to touch the ground for my modified skin to work, burn in the heat.

I wince in pain, but I disregard it lest my reaction lead only to more danger. I grab the armored face that pushed me into the flames and slam it against the tiles.

I feel some of its strange protruding teeth crack as they fall to the tile below, blood soon following the fragments of fangs. Taking advantage of its strange and strained position, I kick at the strong foreleg holding it up, and the red drake tumbles to the floor with me.

I continue to mash its face against the tile, but its strong legs raised to the sky due to me taking it down to the floor, latch onto my armored chest and begin to desperately claw at me.

Hearing the horrid screeching of iron getting gouges torn out of it by brutal claws, I take my armored hand gripped against its skull and use it to turn the entire immense beast wholesale so that its ridged back presses against my chest.

Panicking I hold onto its head, trying to stop its vicious bites from latching onto my helmet and tearing something off when I hear a clunk-clunk as the fire above moves away, replaced by a gout of icy fog.

The red drake squirms in my grip as its scales begin to frost over, and icicles begin to grow in the cracks of its body.

The red drake slows down its squirming, and I let out a sigh of relief. The switching from fire to ice is a welcome addition. The cool touch of the mist soothes my burning soles, freeing them from the torturous cycle of burning, healing, and then burning again.

Now I know at the very least, fire goes to ice; if I can figure out the rest of the pattern, I’ll gain an advantage from knowing when and how to turn the tables on the individual drakes. Speaking of, the red drake seems to be getting into worse and worse condition. I should exacerbate that.

I take the hand with the cold beam and take it away from the drakes throat and instead aim it at the drake’s legs, quickly coating them in mystical ice.

From that point I cover more and more of the drake in ice, still holding onto its throat in one hand. Its eyes, filled with defiance and malice, stare deep into mine own, unwilling to back down even as more and more of its body gets encapsulated in ice.

I look at it with pity, yet I- suddenly its maw opens up, trailing with fire, as in between every scale a burst of light arises, and a conflagration of flame and pure concussive force washes over me. The flame is absorbed, but I find myself being blasted away from the drake, crashing and sliding into the previously empty spot behind me, now a hellscape of flame.

I place my unprotected soles firmly on the floor, knowing better than before to leave them to be burned like the last time. Then look at the red drake; it stands on an empty tile, scales askew and teeth missing but alive even if not well.

Recognizing its relative weakness, considering its injuries, I point my cold beam at it, but it agiley dodges in between my sweeps of ice and moves away, placing itself behind many tiles of fire, until I can barely see its red scales amid the flames.

Regretfully I let it get away as I look at what the other two drakes are doing, and with a shock I realize that the blue drake is quickly racing towards me from the right, flowing gracefully between many blue tiles and empty tiles to approach me from an angle I previously didn’t consider.

I quickly turn to face it, taking care to not lift my feet in the gout of fire I stand in. As I do so, the blue drake skids to a stop and opens its maw to spew out a gout of blue icy particles.

I smirk, predicting quite handily that the icy breath would do naught but increase my reserves of healing power. But soon that smirk is knocked off my face, as the green drake I almost entirely forgot about bursts through the cover of the green tile to my left and tackles me to the ground in a burst of fury and claws.