91: An Ill-Fated Solution To The Puzzle

“We’re not exactly known for our intelligence are we?” Nyssa sat down on a rock in the back beside Celeste. “I mean this entire academy lets us use the artificial intelligence teaching systems after all for our general education. It’s the same system I used growing up while homeschooled.”

“I mean, I’m not surprised about that aspect, your father runs the entire academy, so why not use the same system?” Celeste wrapped an arm around Nyssa’s waist. “And they’re fairly decent are they not? Only the super elite academic institutions still use in person teaching.”

“I guess...” Nyssa leaned against Celeste’s shoulder. “But knowing how bad I am at math, I don’t know if puzzles can be our speciality. Like I know how horrendously... horrible I am at trigonometry.”

“It’s okay, we can cover for each other’s weaknesses,” Celeste laughed, smoothing out Nyssa’s hair. “And everyone here’s fairly successful academically. In fact, I’m pretty sure Electra was debating between an academic and power-based career. The incidents with her powers definitely swayed her towards coming here, but it was mostly what she described ‘a constant snobbiness emanating off of some of her future classmates.’”

A pause settled between them as Nyssa’s mouth fell open. Her hand, with a slow raise, one about as fast as a snail, covered her mouth as she resisted the urge to laugh. “Oh... wow.”

Their efforts to decipher the door, in the meantime, hadn’t progressed. Ice scaffolding covered the door as Conrad had sleuthed every corner with his system. Electra and Titus stood off to the side with their arms crossed and gazes lost in space while Ryker and Albion stood right by the door itself, moving their arms like ghosts to try and brute force the lock built from energy lines.

After spending a couple minutes staring at it with Nyssa by her side though, Celeste cupped her hands around her mouth. “I have an idea! What if we all put our hands on those... circles? And channel our energy into it. I know some of them are a lot higher up, but Albion has the scaffolding!”

A few murmurs broke out as the others discussed the idea, and Ryker shrugged. “Worth a shot at least, we have five circles here, who wants to do it? Electra and I can do the two at the top.”

Snapping out of her thoughts, Electra nodded and scaled the scaffolding with a few quick jumps. She swayed for a second at the top, shouting a “thank you” downward as Albion reinforced the ice. Once she pressed her hand against the circle, her body crackled with electricity as purple snake-like arcs streamed through her hair.

With Ryker, only his hair started smoking once he put his hand against the circle. In both cases though, the circles lit up as light traveled along the empty lines and lit up sections of the wall. As for the other three circles, Celeste, Titus, and Conrad pressed their hands against them as Nyssa stood beside Albion at the bottom.

“Huh,” Titus looked around as nothing happened. A few more seconds passed and everyone took their hands off the circles as the wall returned to its previous dim self. “Ok, I just want to say, unlike when Ryker and Electra put their hands on the wall, Celeste and I had larger circles. For mine, it didn’t fill up all the way. Did you run into the same issue, Celeste?”

“Yeah, well.... The others are different sizes too. Mine is slightly smaller than yours and I could fill it up about three fourths of the way. Some others seemed to fill up faster, so I can’t tell if it's everyone that can fill it up a different amount, or if it's everyone that is constant...” Celeste leapt down from the scaffolding and tapped her chin.

Before she could think for too long though, Albion patted her on the shoulder. “Let’s just mix and match then. We have two more people anyway. Who cares?”

“Yeah, and we’re making more progress than we were in the past, so let’s just keep going down this path,” Electra called out from the top. “How about everyone just move around to fill in then move up so people don’t have to climb as much scaffolding.”

A bit of reorganization later, Titus stood next to Albion, Conrad stood next to Celeste, and Nyssa stood alone at the bottom of the wall.

“Ready?”

“No.” “Not yet.” “ALWAYS WITH MY SUPPORTING FEMALE LEA”

“Shut up.”

Another minute later as people adjusted their positions on the wall.

“Ready?”

A chorus of people saying “yes” filled the room already full of rubble. Everyone pressed their hands against the wall, and, in a moment of beauty, the circles first began to fill with a warm cream color. Once they filled, the light raced across the wall to fill the rest of the lines criss crossing across the entire surface.

“LET’S GO!” “Hell, yeah.” “Good job, Celeste, good job.” “GET IN THERE! Splendid work.”

While they caught their breaths though, with their hands pressed against the wall, nothing happened. No giant opening, no confetti, no treasure chest appeared... nothing. The room filled with light, and they saw... rubble. Smooth rocks, jagged rocks, dirty rocks, the whole gamut.

“So... uh... there’s a message from my circle...?” Nyssa called out in a timid voice. “It’s flashing red... I mean it has a button I can click, but it's all in a different language.”

“Click it!” Conrad cheered from the upper level. “I’m sure it’s just some antiquated warning sign asking if we’re sure we want to open the vault!”

“Should we wait for Angelica? She’s still behind us taking pictures...” Albion posed, resting one hand on his hip as he kept his other pressed against the wall. “She might be more familiar with this mysterious language?”

“Take a picture of it for sure,” Ryker called out from the top. “I think we should just hit it though. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“We all die?” Electra countered, raising her eyebrow as she turned to look at Ryker. “That’s... still a very real possibility. Maybe you don’t die because you have the best regeneration factor in the world. But we all still can.”

Nyssa stretched her arm out, grabbing a camera from the ground and used it to snap a picture of the message before returning it to its previous spot. “So do I hit it or not? Did we vote or something?”

“No, but I also think it’d be worth talking about it a little more, Electra’s right, a little more prudence would be good. Is anything changing on the message Nyssa?” Ryker asked from the top.

“I don’t think s-”

Just as Nyssa opened her mouth, the entire wall dyed red. An alarm from somewhere began to blare. The entire rubble-filled room shook as a couple more pieces of rock fell from the ceiling. Anchoring bindings appeared as each hole opened up, sucking each group in.