In front of us was an enormous hourglass. There was a ceiling and not a sky but... a multitude of monsters were walking on the ceiling as if it were normal.
The hourglass was close to running empty.
“Please tell me that the hourglass doesn’t turn around and flips the whole area...”
I was almost certain that would be the case. Muqu was looking around in awe but I wanted nothing to do with this place.
The hourglass had wooding buildings, walkways and staircases around it. Surely this would become trivial with flight...
I shot a [Waterball] into the sky and it got kidnapped by an appearing portal which opened up near the ground where the water streamed to the ground.
It warps and deconstructs magic...wonderful.
“It doesn’t seem that the ancients like having their puzzles get trivialized by flight...”
“How about your teleports?”
I weighed my chances. Teleports should work but the creators must know how quirky this element is so I would prefer to avoid overusing it.
“Azu, come! The hourglass will tip any moment! We will get a free ride to the top!”
Muqu pulled me along as we ran toward the hourglass.
It can’t be that simple, will it? What would I do when designing this floor? This would be the first issue I would address. Maybe close off access a certain time before the hourglass flips. What about sending participants to the bottom? Or throw them out.
We made it to the base of the enormous hourglass and finding the entrance was a challenge.
“This way!”
The base of the hourglass seemed to be made out of a dark type of wood. The wooden patterns and windows had been carved out of it as if it were one large building.
Pillars and statues had been carved out of wood and decorated the whole base. It was an impressive feat of artistry but it fell a bit off.
Wood in a space related to spatiotemporal magic? It’s neither resistant to spatial magic nor temporal magic makes it decay.
We rushed into a large entrance as the last bits of sand were about to fall to the lower side of the hourglass.
“We made it!”
Our eyes darted around the wood carved hall. It smelled fresh as if it had been created days ago. The hall was symmetrical as everything on the ceiling matched the ground.
The hourglass rumbled as the hall tilted and tilted.
We tried to reach for a pillar to prevent getting tossed around but this didn’t happen. We felt ourselves turn upside down but gravity pretended as if nothing happened and kept us on the floor which was turning into the ceiling.
“Huh? But what’s the point of making the ceiling identical?”
The hourglass settled and quieted down.
“Hey, Azu let’s find a staircase that goes up! I mean down.”
I nodded as I followed Muqu.
It can’t be this easy right?
We went from hall to hall. Passed by many wooden pillars and statues. Some had small indoor gardens with some sort of timelapse bubble around them, allowing us to observe them grow, bloom, die, and regrow again.
We couldn’t find a single staircase going up...down.
“How are we supposed to reach the top now?!”
We sat on a wooden bench and rested. The layout of the place was quite simple. Every room had a doorway in each of its 4 walls. Getting lost was unlikely, the only progress we could make was taking these straicases up...down...
This is so confusing.
I let a water droplet drip from my finger for a gravity test. It fell to my feet. I reproduced the test with different sizes and all behaved the same.
I flicked some water droplets away and they made an arch toward our ground to then head for our ceiling after it had left a certain distance from us.
“Hmm so we have some sort of aura around us.”
I shot [Fireballs] and they behaved normally until they flew a certain distance.
“Azu! Are you trying to burn the place down?!”
“Oh! Oops!”
Luckily, Nothing had caught fire, but it was clear that we were the ones acting strangely, not this structure. Something placed some tort of magic on us.
“Lets go Muqu this place intends us to go up, even if it’s down...”
I kept an eye out on the statues. Maybe they would come to life and attack us! But nothing.
The staircase had short steps at a dangerous angle. Are they trying to kill us by having us fall down the stairs?
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We flew low over the stairs, expecting something to shoot us down when we flew higher.
The next floor had near identical halls so we continued ascending.
The rooms became brighter and brighter as more windows allowed for more light to enter and the 5th floor had a glass window.
We peered inside of the hourglass and marvelled at the enormous sandstream flowing down.
The bottom of the hourglass hadn’t been covered yet and a pile of sand was slowly growing as its base expanded.
“This isn’t something I ever expected to see. It was fascinating from a distance and it’s fascinating up close.”
Most of the materials used seemed unfamiliar. The sand didn’t look like anything had ever seen before as it had a subtle dark purple glitter to it. The glass seemed to be normal glass. Nothing I had ever seen contained this much glass.
“How do we beat this...” were the words that escaped my mouth.
Muqu faced me as she had her hands on the glass. “What do you mean?”
“If the ancients could build this, what realistic reason do we have to beat this challenge? They create crazy things like this and the spires. What if this was just a side project?”
“But doesn’t that mean that if they wanted us dead, we’d already be dead?”
“I suppose...”
We decided to continue as we had a long way to go. I kept thinking about the sand. It was beautiful but something didn’t match up.
That wasn’t new as it’s one of the spatiotemporal quirks. It challenges and often breaks your understanding of reality.
We reached a hall that had a pillar sticking out from the ceiling. It didn’t reach toward us but it seemed to have some importance. The smell of fresh wood and the soft sound of rushing sound in the distance had a relative calming effect so while this would normally stress me out, I was feeling quite good! I took some energy drinks just in case.
I sent a clone to fly up to find out what it was about when it got sucked up in a portal and disappeared.
“I get it, I get it! No cheating, fine! Muqu do you have any ideas?”
Our necks started to hurt from looking up but we didn’t get any wiser.
“It has a button, I think!” Muqu pointed at a flat stone that seemed to stick out of the side of the pillar. “Do we press it with magic?”
We flung magic skills to the pillar but nothing happened.
Waiting till the hourglass flips won’t help as it won’t take us to the ceiling.
Muqu kept staring as I investigated the hall. We might have made a mistake by not investigating every hall we came through as it might have had some clues.
The next hall had an indoor garden on the ceiling. Another adjacent hall had... a shelf with hourglasses?
I ran back and waved at Muqu. “Come! I’ve found something!”
Muqu joined me in front of the shelf which held 8 identical cup sized hourglasses.
“This...is suspicious. Surely. They're not souvenirs right?” I picked one up and turned it around.
My feet left the ground and the sound of rushing sand intensified as I saw Muqu move away from me. Or was this what was happening? Muqu was still attached to the floor, I was falling!
I crashed into the ground which didn’t hurt. This didn’t matter. This hourglass is a part of this puzzle!
The wooden room though... seemed as it had aged a bit and the smell of fresh wood had changed slightly.
“We’re...we’re not going to end up rotting this nice place do we...”
Muqu also took an hourglass and turned it around. She used her wings to float down. The sound of rushing sand intensified and the room seemed to age a bit more.
We returned to the room with the pillar and pressed the button. The pillar shook and launched itself into the ceiling, revealing a staircase.
“Muqu, be careful, I think falling will become a problem now that gravity acts normal.”
We descended and left the base of the hourglass. We could see more of this technological wonder.
This was when I realized what was off earlier. The sand was steraming against gravity. We were at the top of the hourglass, trying to go down but the sand was flowing upward.
“What a strange place...my head hurts, can they stop breaking reality?”
The stairs descended with the outside world on one side and glass on the other. Falling would probably be lethal as flying gets punished.
We reached a wall, a very tall wall. The ceiling however seemed to have a path that went over the wall. Are we supposed to flip our hourglasses here? Fall damage will become an issue if we continue doing this...
We flipped our hourglasses and our feet left the ground as we were falling toward the ceiling.
The sand in the hourglass sped up coniderabl once we did this which was worrisome.
Muqu made a graceful landing and I crashed gracefully.
“Not because this doesn’t hurt for me doesn’t mean this is ok!”
I yelled but there was nobody to yell at.
The wood had darkened considerably. Is there a way to reverse this? Or is the goal to complete this challenge with as few hourglass turns as possible?
The path lead us into a large wooden structure. It was one big hall and it had a withered indoor garden.
There was no time lapse, just the withered garden.
There was no exit just the entrance.
Muqu started watering the plants while I inspected the place.
Did we do this? Did we age these plants?
We didn’t find anything but the plants were slowly recovering.
“Your watering worked!”
We crouched and watched the plants recover.
“Azu...I think time is reversing, look at the fallen leaves.” Muqu pointed at a dried leaf that floated from the ground and took 10 minutes to reach the plant and attach to it.
“I see. So does this mean we have to be patient?”
Time was indeed reversing. We waited for 2 hours which was how long it took for the garden to recover. It revealed a backdoor which let us progress.
So waiting or inaction causes time to reverse. I would have expected some sort of time limit but this might make this challenge quite annoying. 2 hours is fine, what if we need to wait 2 days?!
We made it halfway the hourglass by solving encounters that required us to flip ourselfs upside down, had to wait or speed up time by using our hourglasses. The midpoint had large building without a roof. Or floor, depending on our orientation.
We entered it ensuring it would be a building without a roof. From an outside perspective, we would be upside down.
All we found was a large clock on the floor.
“An hourglass and a clock? Isn’t that redundant?”
It was similar to 12-hour clocks Kaledon uses but the symbols on it were unfamiliar. Would it be safe to assume these were the numbers 1-12? The clock had 4 arms though.
Hours minutes and seconds? What’s the last one for?
We just observed as this might be another test of patience.
The 4th arm stuck to the 5 position and occasionally moved slightly toward the 6 position but remained on the 5 position.
The clock had many other symbols on it which might be a clue to its mechanism.
Why the 5 position though? And why was there a line going from the 12 position to the 6 position?
The arm indicating seconds was accurate, and those the minute arm too. I assumed the hour arm would be accurate as well.
Muqu poked me and pointed at the reverse flow of the hourglass. “So we determined that time was flowing backward right? Why is this clock working normally?”
The arms moved clockwise. Did the ancients use clocks and had the arms go counterclockwise and this clock is running in reverse?
We were at the halfway point so this must be an important mechanic. It must be that 4th arm. What if we help it move? Maybe it just tells us we’re in the 5th day of the cycle. I walked over and kicked the 4th arm over to the 7 position.
The sound of streaming sand intensified and the flow in the large hourglass reversed.
The clock didn’t change its direction or speed. I kicked the 4th arm to the 11 position and only the streaming sand in the large hourglass changed speed.
“Azu, what are you doing?”
“I’m just testing something. The large hourglass suggests that time reversed and is flowing fast but this clock doesn’t reflect the change.”
I wasn’t allowed to kick the 4th arm over the 12 mark so I kicked it to the 1 position going counter clockwise.
The sand in the hourglass reversed and flowed at the same rate as it did before.
“I think I know what’s going on. This might cut down on the amount of time we need to wait.”