The five headed south and reached the desert, traveling for a day until they reached the middle, stopping only to eat, and during midday to hide away from the sweltering heat in a rock cave Riselus figured out how to make. They started again when night fell. was the fire rock. It showed no sign of moving, only wisps of heat and steam in the air. The air smelled dangerous. The five inspected the rock.
"So where's the gem supposed to be?" Aavern asked, looking at Qassot.
"Under this rock?" Cyil suggested.
Riselus's gem glowed dimly as the sand nearby reached up like claws, lifting the rock and moving it aside, leaving behind a deep indent in the sand, cold unlike the still-warm sand heated by the desert sun.
"Uhh…" Cyil said, staring at the indent. "Is that supposed to be a gem or something?"
"Maybe the rock got moved at some point," Aavern offered.
"So we're just going to have to search this entire desert now?"
"Riselus and Dracoa should be able to clear away the sand," Qassot said thoughtfully.
"I'm not doing that," Dracoa grumbled. Riselus grunted his agreement.
Qassot let out a long sigh. "Maybe this is the wrong rock or something."
"Good point," Aavern said. "Let's look somewhere else."
"I hate sand. It's too sandy," Cyil grumbled, wandering off in a random direction, followed closely by Aavern.
Qassot sighed and went to follow them, but her back foot slipped into the indent. The sand gave way and she fell through with a surprised yelp and a scrape of scales against rock, landing awkwardly in a dark stone passage. She shook some sand off and looked up. The indent was a concealed entrance. It led into a dark cave, now gently illuminated by the clear night sky.
Dracoa's head appeared, framed by stars and a few wisps of clouds in the hole leading down.
"Guess this was the right place," she mumbled.
"Yay! No more sand!" Cyil said excitedly from somewhere to the left. With a rumble and a trickle of sand, Cyil and Aavern jumped in one after the other with no regard for safety, hopping in and dropping to the floor in a disorderly lump.
Dracoa slithered down easily after the two and looked up at Rieslus. Qassot picked up a gently glowing rock from the floor, one of many that were lying scattered around the half-collapsed tunnel. The walls seemed to me made out of some sort of glowing reddish rock that gave off an unnatural light that cast no shadow. She could see the tunnel curving away further along. Riselus landed with an earth-shaking crash, causing some rocks to fall out of the ceiling. Everyone jumped.
"Can you not do that?" Cyil hissed.
Riselus ignored him and glanced around, noticing something on the floor. He shifted the rocks covering the ground to the side and found a symbol. A curved tongue of flame, drawn with elegant strokes.
Qassot peered at the symbol on the wall. The wall shimmered with iridescence when the light hit it. The walls were heated, nearly boiling the air. The tunnel ended, reaching a wide cavern. It was empty. The track led around the walls of the cavern, then into a wall at the opposite end. Strange symbols lined the walls.
"Now, this is strange. What is this?" Aavern asked.
Cyil tilted his head, looking at the symbols, then the tracks, and murmured something to himself. He put a leg on the wall, oblivious to the searing heat. He traced a path around the wall. He ended at a wall where the track went. He put a superheated leg on the indent on the wall. The wall slid into the floor.
"Ow," he said, rapidly shaking his now-burning foot. Aavern gave him a leaf from Riselus's back.
"How'd you do that?" Dracoa asked.
"I guessed," Cyil said proudly.
Qassot looked at the symbols. It was an arrow that went around in a circle, ending at a dot.
"Even a toddler would have been able to figure that out," Dracoa commented, looking at the symbol.
"Hey," Cyil pouted. "Just let me be proud of myself."
"This place is so confusing," Aavern called from the next room, his voice echoing faintly through the stone tunnels. He had gotten bored and moved on without them. The others quickly followed, moving through a downwards-sloping tunnel and emerging into another massive dome-shaped room. The room was lined with dozens of black stone pedestals about half the height of Riselus arranged in a ring, each with a symbol on them that glowed blue. On the floor in the middle of the room was the same graceful flame symbol that they saw in the entrance passage.
"What's this supposed to be?" Dracoa wondered.
Cyil wandered up to a pedestal and touched it. The symbol turned red briefly, then back to blue.
"Hey! These things change colors!" he called.
"Maybe we need to touch the right one," Aavern suggested.
Qassot joined the two small creatures in tapping each of the pedestals and watching their color change, working slowly around the room.
"Hey, this one turned green," Cyil said suddenly. "And it's staying green."
"Maybe that's the right one?" Aavern said, turning.
As if on cue, Qassot bumped a pedestal with her tail. It flashed from red to blue, but at the same time, the green pedestal flashed red and turned back to blue.
"Hey!" Cyil said.
"Nobody touch anything, 'kay?" Aavern said. "Back away from the stone thingies."
Cyil wandered over to Riselus, who seemed to be asleep, and Dracoa, who was staring around at the pedestals with narrowed eyes, as if trying to make something out about the symbols.
Aavern tapped the pedestal again. It turned green. Aavern nodded and waited for a moment. Nothing happened. He frowned slightly and moved to the one next to it, tapping it. It turned red. The first pedestal turned red as well.
"I think we need to tap them in the right order," Aavern said.
"How do we know the order?" Cyil asked in complaint. "There's fifty of these things!"
"We can just try them all," Aavern said. "We'll start with this one next to the green one and work our way around the room."
Qassot sighed in resignation. She was already tired of this. Nonetheless, she joined in the two fuzzballs as they gradually worked their way around the room.
"Okay, that didn't work. Tap the first one again."
"Hey! This one turned green too! Let's remember this."
"Mark it with a stone or something."
"Oh great, they all turned back. Do we need to restart every time?"
"That's annoying."
"I wish I could fall asleep as easily as Riselus."
"Don't do that, nobody else is going to solve these puzzles for us."
When the trio had painstakingly made it to around ten green pedestals, failing again and watching them all turn green, Cyil sat down in frustration, knocking one of the rocks they used to mark the correct pedestals away. They had been continuously getting the order wrong as the number of pedestals increased, making Qassot feel like they needed to use a better system than just putting a rock. With the very thin layer of sand coating the ground, in which tracks were left behind easily, Qassot wondered if she should have payed attention when the Krie Clan was teaching everyone how to count and keep a tally.
"Get out of the way," Dracoa said suddenly. "This is getting annoying."
She slithered up in frustration, brushing Cyil and Aavern out of the way.
"Hey! Don't mess with the rocks!" Cyil said.
"Do you have a better idea than what we're doing or something?" Aavern asked.
"Yes," Dracoa said. "It's called reading."
Dracoa slithered up to a pedestal and read the symbol aloud. "This one says, 'one'."
She moved to the next one. "This one says, 'two'."
She kept moving around the room, counting up one by one as each pedestal turned green and stayed green. By the time she reached the thirties, Qassot had a look of confusion on her face. She hadn't learned to count that high. Even Cyil and Aavern, who were the smarter ones of the bunch, were having trouble keeping up, having to keep tallying in the sand and verifying with each other that each symbol read what Dracoa said it read.
"And fifty," Dracoa said with smug satisfaction. The last pedestal turned green. Every pedestal suddenly flashed at once, turning yellow, and with a deep rumble, the symbol in the center of the room sunk into the ground, revealing a hole.
"We really should've paid more attention during math class," Aavern commented.
"How was I supposed to know we were going to need math for something like this?" Cyil said in frustration, kicking a rock at a pedestal.
The pedestal flashed red. Every pedestal turned red, then back to blue.
The hole disappeared.
Everyone turned to glare at Cyil, even Riselus, who had woken up to watch Dracoa's progress.
"Oops," Cyil said sheepishly.
"You do it this time," Dracoa said, coiling up and resting her head as if to sleep.
Cyil looked at Aavern.
"Help?"
Aavern shook his head. "Nope."
"Qassot?"
"I can't count," Qassot said.
"You're all so mean," Cyil grumbled.
It took Cyil just under a dozen tries to get the pedestals correct.
They moved onto the next room.
The group dropped down the hole and continued down a tunnel until they reached another large room.
This room also had a ring of pedestals, as well as a series of symbols on the wall.
"That says, 'count by twos'. What does that mean?" Aavern wondered.
"Not this again," Cyil grumbled. "Your turn, Aavern."
Aavern went around the pedestals and read all the symbols.
"Two, six, eighteen, twelve…"
Aavern returned to the start and sat down in confusion. "There's no one."
"Maybe start with two?" Cyil offered.
Aavern clicked the pedestal with the symbol for two. It lit up green. He smiled in satisfaction and went around the pedestals again.
"There's no three."
"Try four?"
Four worked.
"There's no five."
"Try six?"
Six worked.
This pattern continued onwards until all the pedestals glowed green.
They moved on to the next room.
This time, the wall said "count by prime numbers".
"There's no one."
"Try two."
Two worked, then three. Four didn't work.
The two fuzzballs fell back into confusion.
"Maybe the wall symbols have something to do with it?"
"It says 'count by prime numbers'. Do you know what that means?"
"Nope."
"Dracoa?"
"I have no idea," Dracoa said.
They didn't even bother asking Qassot or Riselus.
"Well, let's try two, three, and five instead."
It worked.
"Hey! That's interesting!"
Six didn't work.
"What?"
They tried going by every other number. That got them up to seven. They tried going in order of how many strokes it took to write the symbol. That didn't work at all. They tried going in how many strokes it took to write the symbol, but in reverse. That didn't work either.
It was around then that Qassot started to tune out the bickering pair. The warm air had cooled the further down they went, to the point where it had reached a comfortable coolness. If not for the stuffy atmosphere and sandy ground, Qassot would've like to sleep there.
As the constant travelling of the past few days caught up to her, she gradually began to close her eyes. She took a deep breath and tried to sink into sleep, in hopes that she would not only be able to rest but also not have to listen to the confused Cyil and Aavern wondering what prime numbers were.
As she closed her eyes and tuned out her surroundings, a strange sensation seemed to settle down on her. A tingly sensation that reminded her of when her supernatural sense shouted at her, notifying her of a powerful magical presence nearby. Like a second layer of vision, small strands of light, in a color she could not describe, seen through some sort of sense that Qassot could not quite put her finger on, appeared before her, tracing their paths down what seemed to be the pedestals towards the center of the room. A number of those strands were glowing brighter than the others.
Qassot's eyes shot open, and she began to look around for the pedestals that were glowing.
The pedestals that were lit up green had the strands that glowed brighter.
All but one.
Qassot got up, ignoring the bickering Cyil and Aavern, and walked over to the pedestal.
"Hey! Don't touch that!"
Qassot tapped it with her claw.
It lit up green.
As if on cue, another strand of magic lit up to Qassot's right. She turned and followed it, tapping the pedestal it was linked to.
It also lit up green.
Qassot's eyes widened as she looked back at Cyil and Aavern.
"Wow…" Cyil said. "So you can actually count?"
Aavern smacked Cyil with a wing.
"What?"
"Couldn't you have done that sooner?" Aavern asked.
"I didn't know I could do this," Qassot said. "Well, actually, I did, I just didn't know that I could use this for this specifically-"
"It's her supernatural sense thing," Dracoa called from where she was sleeping next to Riselus. "These pedestals are magic."
"Why couldn't you have done this sooner?" Cyil asked, repeating Aavern's words.
"Well…" Qassot started.
"Just get on with it," Dracoa said. "I'm getting bored over here."
Qassot refocused as the room around her fell into silence, following the paths of magic to each pedestal, eventually lighting them all up. A hole in the middle of the room appeared.
They continued to the next room, where everyone sat back and let Qassot do her thing. Cyil decided to read aloud what the words on the wall said.
This room was labeled "count by perfect squares".
Nobody had any idea what that meant.
Qassot only had to click seven pedestals before the path opened.
The next room was labeled "count, excluding numbers divisible by three or five, except those divisible by both three and five"
Cyil gave up reading halfway through and Aavern had to take over.
By the time they had gone through four more rooms, Qassot was tired and her vision was beginning to blur. Having to navigate the puzzles, continuously switching between looking at the strands of magic and looking at the pedestals, was beginning to hurt her head, but she felt pleased with the fact that whatever sense which allowed her to detect magic was getting stronger and stronger.
"Is it okay to leave the paths open as we go?" Cyil asked.
"We'll probably need to go out the way we came," Aavern replied.
"Good point."
Qassot finished the tenth room's puzzle, which had a series of instructions so long that Cyil, Aavern, and Dracoa's combined efforts couldn't read it before Qassot opened the exit.
"Whoever designed this needs to not do that," Aavern commented.
"I don't like this place," Cyil agreed. "Even more than sand."
"I'm hungry."
"Me too."
Qasso stumbled down the tenth passageway, so mentally exhausted that she could barely walk without stumbling.
"Please don't tell me there's another room," she grumbled.
"You seem tired. Wanna take a break?" Dracoa asked.
"You think?" Qassot mumbled.
The rock passage they were traveling along suddenly widened and began to slope upwards. The rock walls seemed to glow even more than before, so much so that Qassot had to squint her eyes against the brightness. The heat in the tunnel began to grow, becoming sweltering and dry to an uncomfortable degree.
"Why'd they have to make this place so bright?" Cyil asked.
"And hot," Aavern agreed.
"I think we might be near the fire gem," Dracoa said.
Qassot let out a sigh of relief. No more puzzles. She didn't want to look at another numbered pedestal for the rest of her life.
The slope gradually evened out as the path widened enough for three Riselus to walk side by side with room to spare. The path stretched on a bit more before ending at a tall stone gate, carved beautifully with the same elegantly painted tongue of flame as was on the floor of every puzzle room, only much larger.