Grandma Tacha had made a full circle by following the walls after getting bored of combing through the floor blindly. Counting from the stairs the number of times she changed direction, she realized that the room was an octagon, instead of the rectagle shape she had imagined.

While she was examining the wall, there was something that had stood out in particular to her. Two corners and one wall of the basement had some elaborate structures at her head’s height. All three of them were similar to each other: they all had an eptagonal shape and a tree engraving at the bottom.

However the similarities stopped there. The one on the wall, closer to the stairs, had some gears and toy windmills. Going clockwise, the second one had a bunch of knobs and sliding pieces; meanwhile the last one had a lot of pushing buttons here and there.

At thid point it was pretty obvious what they were: puzzles!

Tacha didn’t mind some puzzles, but right now it was problematic since she was in a rush. Plus solving them in the dark… she wasn’t confident in solving them all quickly.

But she wasn’t alone at all! She had one useful little helper trapped here with her.

“Hey! Uhmm… kid?” Tacha realized that she didn’t know the other player’s name yet “I’m not a kid!” an annoyed cry resounded from not too far away “Yeah, sure. I found some puzzles on the walls, I think a passage is going to open if we solve them” “In this dark?” Tacha glanced in his general direction “...Do you have a light?” she could hear him fidgeting, then he exhaled a long sigh “Haaa… Fine. And the name’s Frӧst; don’t call me a kid again!” “Oh. I’m Tacha” she wanted to tease him some more, but she feared that if she did so, he wouldn’t cooperate at all.

She couldn’t have an useful pair of hands stay still.

Tacha went towards the puzzle on the wall. After touching carefully the mechanism to understand where each piece was, she was still unsure on how she was supposed to solve it. So, she just started spinning one of the toy windmills while her brain was churning for a solution.

After a while she heard a weak clink coming from the wall. A moment later she stopped toying with the little windmill and rotated it back until she heard the same noise again. ‘A combination?’ Could it be that she had to rotate all of them to their right place?

To confirm her suspicions she rotated another toy windmill. This one too made a little clink after a few spins. Excited, she did the exact same thing with all of the other contraptions.

When the last of them was in position, soft mechanical sounds, almost well hidden from behind the wall, could be heard. Then, a weak breeze puffed in her face and a notification appeared not long after.

The ‘Emblem of Wind’ is now active.

The mechanical array is now in motion.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Some components are still missing, two more emblems must be activated for the basic functions to work.

Stepping aside before the wind messes up her hair too much, Tacha looked through the notifications. As expected, all three of the puzzles need to be solved. If the other two could be solved as smoothly as this one, then they were going to have an easy time.

Following along the wall, she reached the next puzzle; the one with the knobs.

She tried rotating, pushing and pulling the knobs. Some could only do one thing, others could do two and only two could do all three.

However, unlike before, there was no audible clue on which was the right position for each piece. She tried touching around for some more clues, and she found some sculpted cavings, as if it was a path for something to follow. With her hand, she traced it all. The path branched multiple times, and some of the walls could be moved around like tassels.

After some more touching, she was able to find the start and the end of the path. The start was at the top, with a hole as big as two of her fingers. Meanwhile the end was at the bottom, under the tree engraving, where a small basin was located.

Probably, the way to solve this puzzle was to make an item coming out from the top fall down to the bottom basin. Tacha tried to put weight on the basin. If the contraption worked with a weight system, then she was definetly going to try and exploit it.

Unfortunately there was no response at all. Granny Tacha sighed. She had some hope, but of course it wasn’t going to work. Not after she had no way to keep the sword that used to keep the secret passage open.

She was now seriously thinking on how to solve the puzzle, but before she could start working on it, another notification appeared in her field of vision.

The ‘Emblem of Ice’ is now active.

The mechanical array is beginning to adjust.

Some components are still missing, one more emblem must be activated for the basic functions to work.

She had not solved this one yet, so the other guy, Frӧst, had solved the other puzzle.

“Ack! A-Achoo!” Tacha heard a sneeze; apparently the contraption must’ve done the same trick as the wind one. Just that it was done with ice instead of some puffs of air.

Her mind went back to the puzzle in front of her. First of all, she moved all of the tassels so that they made a clear path to the basin. Then, she started messing with the knobs.

The topmost one would only move halfway. Thinking that it was blocked by something else, Tacha started turning the lower ones.

After some tests and trials, the granny could pull the highest knob. She could hear a little spherical object coming out and rolling down until, with a thud, it stopped. Tacha touched the path she made and felt no obstacle. The sphere was stuck there, defying gravity.

Just for curiosity, she tried to take the sphere, but it was firmly stuck in place. An idea popping into her mind, Tacha turned the nearest know a few times. Like magic, the sphere started falling again, before getting stuck again in the same manner.

Finally having completely understood the trick behind it, granny Tacha turned as many knobs as necessary to bring the sphere to the basin. Once there, she heard some metallic tumbling and a bunch of gear noises coming from behind the wall.

Not waiting for the notifications to appear, Tacha quickly stepped aside. Ptui! Clink clank clank. The metallic noises soon stopped and the notifications made their appearance.

The ‘Emblem of Metal’ is now active.

The mechanical array is running.

Basic functions have been restored.

A core component is missing.

The Gatekeeping Array could not be completely restored.

With a whirring noise, multiple of patterns on the walls shined with a soft, comforting light. Even though the light itself was weak, it was enough to blind both players, whom had long been accustomed to the dark.

A couple of minutes later, when they could actually see something, both of them looked around at the unfamiliar place. It was an octagonal room, the stairs adjacent to one of the corners. The ceiling, shaped like a dome, had a weird cylindrical chandelier at the center that looked more like a telescope than anything.

As for the rest of the room, it was more intact than expected for having been the stage of a fight. The boss remains were between the ice and the metal emblem, the puddle remaining there, as if threatening to move once again.

On the ground a web of lines and symbols covered almost the whole floor, with a blank space left at the center, surrounded by more patterns. The center however looked different; cracks ran through it, but when Tacha tried to step on them, it felt just like a normal floor. It was as if the cracks were just some kind of illusion.

Three more contraptions were inlaid on the floor, each positioned between two of the solved puzzles. If one were to connect the puzzles together, they would form two triangles, with the bigger one being the ones from the wall.

They had found no exit yet, but at least they could see enough to find something useful. It was a big step forward.