--- Rania ---

Her friends kind of freaked out a little after she mentioned her idea.

It turned out that traveling through the feywild was a really big deal to them. Both because it was difficult to do, and because it was very dangerous.

Luckily she had talked to the Coros often enough by now that she understood what her friends really meant: They had a poor understanding of the cultural norms and values of the fey, and they were worried about offending the fey by accident.

She assured them that it would be fine. Barging into the feywild unannounced could be seen as very rude, but she was sure that their epic adventure was a good enough reason that the fey would not be too angry about it.

They also had entirely the wrong idea about how difficult it was to enter the feywild. She had learned that from the Coros, too. They normally used a lot of mages working together in order to open a gate by force. They were really happy when she told them about easier ways to do it, which were less disruptive and more polite as well.

After they were all done freaking out about her suggestion, they got everything done surprisingly quickly.

Mr. Smith rode back to Northpass under some excuse that the Surprise Bad Guys bought without question.

Dov sabotaged the carriages in her disguise, using some magic items that Balron had with him for just such an occasion. Norsh helped her, too. He wasn't able to shapeshift or disguise himself like she could, but he could still help because he was really sneaky. She was glad to see that one of her Sidekicks was already learning from her friends. If they kept this up, they might become really cool Main Characters in their own right in no time at all.

Her other two Sidekicks followed her into the woods, where she got to work on building a fairy gate. Adam also joined them, and took notes just like the Coros usually did.

She was happy to see that their bard was already writing down what they were doing, but she found it a bit weird that he was focussed on her boring shamanic rituals. It would have been much cooler if he wrote about Dov and Norsh. Sabotaging the enemy was much more exciting than arranging some flowers just right and asking the spirits for permission to enter the feywild.

On the other hand, it was useful to have him there. After all, she had to convince the spirits that it was really important for them to cross into the feywild. She had to give good reasons for doing such a rude thing. So she told the spirits all about the cool adventure they were going to have, and the amazing Villain they were fighting. It helped that she could ask Adam to corroborate her story. He was a professional bard, so when he said that he picked the most interesting people to follow and it was them, the spirits got excited and believed her just a little more.

In no time at all, they were all done with their preparations and ready to enter the feywild.

As the carriage set out and they crossed the fairy gate, the others all looked very nervous.

They were probably already thinking ahead to the fight they were going to get into after all of the boring routine travel was over.

---

This part of the feywild was very straightforward. It was just a lonely road, in the middle of the forest.

The Compass of Legends kept working even here, and it just told them to keep going straight ahead.

Pretty soon, they came upon a fork in the road.

Two guards blocked the path, one to either side of them.

Rania stopped the carriage in front of them.

The left one spoke up: "One of us always lies. One of us always tells the truth. One of these roads is the path you seek, the other leads to your doom. You may ask one question. Choose wisely."

Rania looked at the Compass of Legends. It was pointing left.

"Hi guys! I see you are practicing a classic. I really like the clothes you are wearing, they are very historically accurate." She said.

"Thank you!" The left one said. "I appreciate the compliment! We spent a lot of time practicing, and this is our first try."

"Well, I don't appreciate the compliment." The right one said. "And also I think you are mean and I hope you get lost."

She gave him a thumbs up. It was great to see that he stayed in character like this.

"Unfortunately we already know where we need to go. The compass says left." She said. "So we can't really play the riddle with you now. It wouldn't work, because we already know the answer."

"Aw shucks." The left one said and his face fell. "And we put so much effort into this."

"Don't worry! Just keep trying, and I'm sure it will go better next time!" She told him.

And then they moved on.

---

"Rania, do you know why we just encountered these guards?" Atrog asked.

"That's the feywild letting us know that we are not supposed to be here, but it's fine if we prove our worth." She responded. "Those were pretty inexperienced Mystical Gate Guards though, so this is really more like a formality. I think the spirits that run the feywild agree that we have really good reasons for being here, because our adventure is cool, so they are letting us off easy."

---

They encountered a small path to the side of the road, which led to a cottage.

"Oh, I recognize that cottage! That's where Martha lives! Is it ok with you all if we stop briefly? I want to deliver a package." She said.

"Really? This is the first building we have seen since we got here, and you recognize it? What are the odds of that?" Galanys asked.

"The odds are really high. It's not like we are traveling along physical dimensions here. We are traveling along associations between events, people, and concepts. Most of the things I see here, I have seen before. Like that mountain over there, I have seen it before too, even though we are really nowhere close to where I last saw it."

The others looked confused by her explanation, but they had no objections. So she left the carriage to walk down the path towards the cottage.

She wanted to deliver a book about ethics. Most of those books were really dry and boring and she only read them because her friends said they were important, but this one had actually been a lot of fun. It had lots of cool hypothetical scenarios in it and asked questions of the reader. It made you think for yourself instead of just telling you what to do.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

From the first time they talked, Rania got the impression that Silent Martha didn't really get ethics very well. But she had done her best, and had stopped eating babies, and that was commendable. So she had written a short letter congratulating her on that, and explained that this ethics book was really cool. She hoped that Silent Martha would have fun reading it to learn more about humanoid cultural norms.

There was just one problem: The cottage did not have a mailbox.

This presented a problem, because Rania knew from experience that Silent Martha had put rather a lot of curses on her cottage.

Also, getting into the cottage to deliver her gift would be an invasion of privacy, which was rude.

But then again, she was pretty sure that Silent Martha and her were friends, even if they hadn't spoken since they first met. And friends wouldn't get mad at each other for delivering a gift. Therefore, it should be totally fine if she just entered to deliver her gift, and then left again.

So she started talking to the spirits to convince them of this, so that they would turn off the curses for her.

At first that didn't work. There were really quite a lot of curses, the spirits said. It was pretty clear that Silent Martha valued her privacy very much.

But Rania insisted that they were friends, and therefore it would be fine. Then she started talking about the book she wanted to deliver and how awesome it was, and how she wanted to help Silent Martha be a better Magical Girl by teaching her all of these cool things about ethics, which humanoids cared a lot about.

The spirits agreed that Silent Martha had recently begun caring very much about everything that had to do with Magical Girls. And Magical Girls were humanoids, so giving her such a gift did sound reasonable.

Eventually, Rania managed to convince them, and the spirits turned off the curses for her.

Rania went inside, placed the book on the table along with the note, and left again. Then the spirits turned the curses back on.

It was as if she had never been there.

When she got back to the carriage, she had to help calm Balron down. Apparently he had freaked out a little when he ran a diagnostic spell, and he saw all the curses. She had to reassure him that everything was fine. None of the curses had been triggered.

Silent Martha would be unable to tell that Rania had even been there until she found her surprise present on the table.

Pebble asked the other spirits not to tell Silent Martha that they let Rania in, because it would be funnier that way. He said he wished he could see the hag's face when she suddenly finds a book on ethics in her cottage with no explanation of how it got there.

Rania agreed. A present was always nicer when it was a surprise, after all.

---

As they continued traveling through the forest, they soon came upon the two guards again.

Rania was glad to see them trying again. They looked like pretty young and inexperienced fey to her, and she was happy to see that they did not allow their first failure to discourage them.

This time, there was no split in the road, so the Compass of Legends would not help them here. Instead, there was a large iron gate behind the guards, blocking the path.

There was a blue rune and a red rune on the gate. Balron warned them that he had seen these sort of runes before and they could shoot powerful magic at trespassers.

One of the guards announced: "One of us always lies. One of us always tells the truth. Press the correct rune to pass the trial. Press the wrong one and suffer the consequences."

Rania thought that the guard sounded a bit too dramatic as he said this. He was overdoing it a little, which sounded more funny than serious to her. But she was sure that he was going to become a great Mystical Gate Guard in the future if he kept practicing.

Galanys spoke up: "Either the one who said that is the one who always tells the truth, or else the sentence is meaningless. I mean, if the one who always lies tells us that one of them always says the truth, then that in itself could be a lie. So we kind of have to assume that the one who just said this is the honest one."

The others nodded in agreement.

The face of the guard fell.

"Which of the runes is the correct one?" Galanys asked the guard.

"It's the red one." He said, then stood aside with a disappointed look on his face.

Rania walked up to the gate and pressed the red rune. The gate opened.

"Sorry about this." She whispered to the guards as she passed then.

"This is stupid." Said the one who always says the truth.

"I thought that was fine, because it's not like I spent days practicing this." Said the one who always lies. He looked like he was close to crying.

---

"Rania, why did we just encounter them a second time? I thought you said the feywild was not trying too hard to stop us." Atrog asked.

"That's true. But Pebble says that some of the spirits thought our first meeting with them was funny. So now they are trying to turn this into a running gag." She answered.

---

As they continued to travel through the feywild, the forest around them started to become a lot more lively.

There were a lot of spirits around, and they were hard at work.

Some of them commented on how pretty Pebble looked. She held him up to show off his cool paint, and the other spirits oohed and aahed at him. Pebble sounded really happy, and that made her happy, too.

Then she started noticing weird things in the forest around her. Flowers that were prettier than they were supposed to be. Trees that did not quite look like they had grown naturally. A stag with the most magnificent antlers she had ever seen.

She resolved to stare straight ahead, and not pay too much attention to it. It would be impolite.

Pretty soon she noticed to her distress that the others had much less discipline and kept staring at things.

They were acting like tourists.

But Rania held her tongue and said nothing.

"*Look at that! That mountain over there is flying!*" Galanys suddenly said.

"*Don't be rude!*" Rania snapped at her. That comment had been a step too far.

"*You can't just say that! At least you only said it telepathically and not out loud, but it was still impolite!*"

She felt confusion through the telepathic link. "*I don't understand. What did I do wrong?*"

"*You can't just point out that the laws of physics are not working right! That's very rude to say to someone. Yes, that mountain is flying, and yes, mountains are not supposed to be flying. But I'm sure they are trying their best! Wouldn't you be offended too, if you gave a stage performance and someone in the audience loudly pointed out a mistake?*"

The feelings of confusion did not dissipate, but only grew stronger.

"*They are 'trying their best'? What do you mean? Trying their best doing what?*"

"*Making reality make sense, of course. Mountains are not supposed to be flying, but this one does, and they are probably hard at work trying to fix that. It's not easy to remind a mountain of gravity once it has forgotten it once, you know? So please stop staring at the mountain, or at the other things around here that don't quite look real.*"

"*This is the first time I hear of such a thing. You are saying that all the strangeness around here is not deliberate? The fey are trying to restore reality, instead of twisting it on purpose?*" Balron asked.

"*Yes, they are. Well, mostly it's the spirits doing that, and not the fey. But the line gets a bit blurry. They call it a 'debugging area'. It's for playtesting reality and making things more real.*"

She suddenly felt a spike of intense worry from Adam, which was weird because he was normally pretty good at hiding his emotions, even in the telepathic link. She was glad to see that he was taking her rebuke about politeness so seriously.

"You called it a 'debugging area'. What do you mean by that?" He asked.

"*I don't know what it means, either. I think the spirits are removing some trans-dimensional insects that are eating the mountain? But I'm not sure. I never got a straight answer to that question when I asked it.*"

---

As they left the strange parts of the feywild behind them, they soon came upon the two guards again.

The gate looked the same as before, but this time there was a signpost planted in between the two guards.

It read: "One of them always lies. One of them always tells the truth. Press the correct rune to pass the trial. Press the wrong one and encounter your doom."

"Well, I have had a lot of time thinking about this puzzle by now." Galanys said. "It's about asking one of the guards what the other one would say. That way you will get the same answer no matter which one you ask. Suppose that we ask one of them 'what would the other one say which of the runes is the correct one?' Then we go with the opposite of the answer to that."

"There might be a trap though. I can only see two runes, but that doesn't mean that those are the only options. Maybe there is a hidden third one? Also, 'one always lies' does not mean the same as always saying the opposite. A guard could technically lie by saying the same words that the other guard would say but pronouncing them differently. We should make a list of other ways they could be trying to mislead us before we do anything."

One of the guards sighed in frustration and said "You are overthinking this, but you got us there. Asking one of us what the other would say was supposed to be the right way to solve the riddle. But if that answer doesn't work then I don't actually know if the riddle is solvable. I wouldn't want to ask an impossible riddle, and thinking about this sounds like too much effort. So fine, you win. You can go ahead."

With that, he pressed the blue rune, and the gate swung open.

The other guard started crying.

Rania walked up to the crying guard and gave him a hug.

"I'm sorry about my friends, they really don't get the spirit of these things. We are kind of in a hurry, so they don't want to spend the time appreciating any cool riddles."

"It's ok." The first guard replied.

"It's not ok, and I hate you for hugging me." Said the second guard as he cried into her arms.

She liked that he didn't break character even now. If he kept at it, he might have a great future as a Mystical Gate Guard ahead of him as well. Both of them just needed more practice and encouragement.