“Now, now, that wasn’t very nice,” he scolded “that is exactly why I wouldn’t just wait here on my own for someone to show up. It would ruin the fun.”

“Maybe only your fun.”

“Well, the fun of an immortal always seems so life altering from the perspective of a mortal, but I shall forgive you. After all, just making it to this room doesn’t mark the end of the fun. I have one final puzzle for you.”

There was a rumbling and the walls of the oddly shaped room disappeared. It revealed three new rooms each with a different pattern of lights on the wall.

“There are three places to create the patterns, they can only be made on a specific place. Finish this and the drought will be over.”

I sighed and walked right through him heading into one of the rooms.

The pattern was relatively simple, and I saw buttons on the floor in front of it. To test what it would to I pressed on one and the circular tile glowed purple. The pattern above was a red light, so I went back and checked but none of the lights were purple. I went into the next room, the button on the floor lit up green and had yellow lights on the wall. The last room had blue lights on the wall with orange lights on the floor.

All three patterns were simple but each of the button setups had way too many to be used.

Did I have to mix them, but what was the right mix?

If I understood colors maybe I’d know but I’d never met a painter before. I mean with paintings having so many colors there was probably a way to mix them to get different ones. Otherwise, they’d need a paint for every color they wanted to make, and that seemed too annoying for anyone to want to paint in the first place.

I had three colors, and there needed to be three mixes. They each probably mixed with each other at least once to make one newer color.

Orange is probably the most obvious cause I see orange in fire all the time. Fire’s also got red and yellow and then in between there’s orange, so those two should be the correct mix.

I looked around on the floor to see if there was a spot that marked the orientation of the pattern. I mean with the blocks and holes they needed to be in the right orientation.

I looked on the wall since I could see all of it without having to walk around. In the top right corner of the wall there was a faint engraving of a diamond like shape, but the sides were kind of rounded.

I went over to the red room and saw that same shape in the bottom left corner. In the yellow room it was in the top left.

In the orange room it was in the far left corner.

Looking back at the red room I tilted my head to figure out the orientation and then stepped on the right ones. Did the same in the yellow but then the floor reset.

Shukhahzh, that first button.

I trudged back to the red room to check the pattern and did it all over again. Once I finished the small shape in the corner of the room glowed.

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I made sure not to step on any of the other buttons before going to the entrance of the room.

Alright one down two to go.

Let’s try green, I guess.

What reminded me of green… oh wait, I think I heard Awkyo telling me that plants used the sun to get their energy. The sun is yellow, so green is mixed with yellow and blue since I already mixed yellow with red.

After another head tilting to get the orientation, and all I just had one puzzle left. With two done, there wasn’t any guessing for me to do when it came to the color mix. So, after the orientation check and pressing all the buttons the child from before came back in the center of the first room.

“Congratulations, and thanks for playing my game.”

“Phash’ya”

There was a resounding ding, and I was teleported back to the rest house.

We all arrived at about the same time, with me ending up closest to Dot.

“So how was your little adventure? Did you get to fight something?” Dot asked.

“No and the only person I could punch was just a like light image thing, my fist went right through it. The whole floor was just a bunch of stupid puzzles. Let’s go Quartz!”

I turned to look for him, but he was sitting with his leg missing.

“What on earth did you guys do?”

“His leg got stuck in an animal trap.”

I laughed what an idiot.

Lefty was holding it out and I felt Phuaphua push off of me and jump for the food.

That energetic side of him was a stark contrast from the sleepy state he had been in for the whole floor.

Brick waved and signed “we can fight, I want to try out my new mana.”

I grinned and signed back “let’s go!”

We went downstairs and I took off my extra gear before climbing onto the matts.

“Was it just puzzles?”

I nodded, “puzzles and a maze and I couldn’t just break my way through the doors and stuff.”

He grinned, “Yophkazh always said you could use your head for something other than hitting.” He laughed.

“Yeah, but Yozhya said using it for hitting would probably come up more anything if you were around.” I grinned.

I missed her. She made the time spent at that shukhaersh bearable.

“Did anything else happen? Did you get anything?”

"Shukhahzh! Tskham!” I yelled.

“I forgot to even think about that. And since a chest didn’t show up that means I didn’t get a single reward for all that wasted time”

“Phashk!” I yelled.

“Come on let’s fight I need to forget that place.”

He didn’t ask anything else, and we started to spar. He still seemed a bit restricted in his fighting merely using the lava as an extra layer of skin, a lot like my aura could do for shielding. Sure, it was great since he could last longer and take more full force hits of mine, but there was probably a better style of fighting for him to use now.

“You should talk to Dot, lava is kinda like molten rocks, right? Her earth manipulation is probably similar.”

“Kahzhaw and Dot said they’d help but

I laughed, he was right, there were scorch marks on the floor and some on the ceiling from some thrown droplets.

Kahzhaw came down eventually and told us to clean up for dinner.

Dinner was quiet, but Awkyo couldn’t stop glancing at Quartz. I looked over also and he seemed more distracted than normal, like he was forcing himself to look at his food.

“Ask him if you’re curious” I signed.

“He’ll tell us if he needs too.”

I shrugged, I wasn’t too bothered, but Awkyo usually didn’t pay that much attention to someone. It wasn’t the same way that Kahzhaw paid attention to any of us, and it wasn’t the way that he paid attention to Awkyo specifically. It seemed more like the way that Shymgyen would pay attention to Quartz now and then.

There must’ve been something bothering him then.

“What’s up though?”

“I’m not sure, but if on the next floor, its all of us together except like Lefty and Fluffy for example, I’ll explain.”

Now that he said it, it had been two floors where one of us was alone with Phuaphua and not the others. I guess he doesn’t feel like it happening twice is enough to say something.

The next day I couldn’t help but grin when I found out what our floor was.

A warrior betting game, and we got to do the games. Which usually meant a lot of fighting.

“Phash’ya! Quartz,” I turned to him beaming “Let’s have fun.”

He grinned too.

But over his shoulder I saw Dot’s face tense up as she looked around us frantically.

I looked around, Lefty wasn’t here and neither was Phuaphua. I looked over at Brick, but he was already exchanging a look with Kahzhaw. Something was definitely up.