The saying ‘two heads are better than one’ may be true most of the time, but it didn’t apply when both heads were equally clueless. Nonetheless, having another person with me was better for sharing liability for failure. It was like telling Mum it was fine that I failed a test in school because other kids also had low scores. However, it didn’t follow that I was settling for failure.
I, Herald Stone, will solve this puzzle with my hardness on the line!
We were also wasting time if we only twiddled our thumbs until Nitana arrived.
Megan and I scrutinized a row of six metal levers that could be pushed or pulled in the middle of the room. The levers were of different sizes and designs. Clearly, we had to figure out the correct arrangement of the levers for something to happen. If we succeeded, I surmised that the rectangular stone slab at the other end of the room, opposite the door, would move aside to reveal a [Vilumen Crystal]. The slab ran up to the ceiling and was slightly wider than my shoulders. It had a magical circle carved in its center and ancient letters inscribed along its borders—very suspicious.
Our only clue was a frayed parchment on a dusty table by the door. It didn’t contain a riddle as expected but appeared to be messages hastily scribbled by two different persons based on the handwriting. They were talking to each other by leaving notes on this parchment.
“Kindly make sure that both the first and the longest levers are down,” I read the first line.
“Wrong!” Megan read the angrily scratched second sentence. “The first lever and the spiky lever should be up!” She amusingly put emotion into it, right to the exclamation mark.
Scanning through the parchment, I saw that it had similar messages. The ending was written in bold letters: Always keep it in sight when taking it out. I’d hazard a guess that ‘it’ was the [Vilumen Crystal].
“This is a logic puzzle,” I said. “Decipher the correct levers to push and pull from snippets of clues. To solve this, we should arrange the information in a table and match them with what’s stated. For example, there’s a line about a spiky lever, a different sentence for a medium-length lever, and yet another mention of a middle lever—all of those refer to the same lever.”
“You know how to do this?” Megan’s eyes sparkled with amazement. “So cool! I was anxious we’ll end up with nothing, and Nitana’s gonna laugh at us.”
We’ll probably end up with nothing. Even though I discerned how to solve this, it’d take me about fifteen minutes to come up with an answer that may or may not be correct. Likely the latter. That was if the logic puzzle didn’t have another layer of difficulty.
“We may have a problem,” I said. “This isn’t a basic logic puzzle. The people who wrote this sometimes argue about details.” I pointed at the first and second sentences. “Other times, they agree, like in the next couple of sentences. This makes it more difficult to solve because we’ll have to work backward from the information settled as a fact to root out the lies. Only then can we solve the entire thing.”
“Uh-oh. Sounds like a problem. Why couldn’t these two just agree on everything?”
“I may be wrong, but they might be the two personalities of Bawu talking to each other.” I left the parchment on the table and walked over to the levers. It was time for the boundless intellect of Herald Stone to unravel the puzzle at hand. I pulled all the levers down.
“Did you already solve it?” Megan asked. “That’s super quick!”
“I haven’t.” I pushed the first lever up, then back down. Next, I pushed the second lever up and moved the first lever up and down again. “It’d take too much time to figure it out. Much better to brute force the possible combinations.” I set the third lever up and repeated what I had done so far, starting with the first.
“How do you calculate that again? Permutations, combinations, something… forgot those stuff. Ms. Grundle will turn in her grave because I forget her math lessons. Six levers. Six factorial, I think? That’s so frigging many combinations!”
“Not that many,” I said, continuing my task.
“Like you’re going to multiply all the numbers. Six times five times—I need a calculator.”
I moved to the fourth lever and pushed it up. Same thing here—I redid the entire process from pulling the first lever up and down, the second lever up, back to the first, then the third, second, and so on. I didn’t pay Megan any mind as she punched numbers on the holographic calculator floating in front of her.
Megan gasped. “Seven hundred twenty combinations? You’re going to try all of that?” She hastily smoothened the parchment on the table and reread its contents. “No way you’ll make it in time. I’ll try to figure this out.”
“It’s only sixty-four combinations.” Hiding the truth would make it seem like I did an impressive feat once I hit the right arrangement, but Nitana and Kezo might figure out my lie if Megan shared it with them. “We’re not rearranging their places, so it won’t be six factorial. Each lever has only two possible states—up or down. To calculate all combinations, multiply two six times. That’s two times two times two, up to six twos. The product is sixty-four.”
“I didn’t know you’re good at math,” Megan said.
Herald Stone, Grade School Math Expert. “Not really,” I said, trying to be modest to better my image. “I’m just simplifying the task by bypassing the actual challenge.”
A skill I had honed when I played RPGs years ago—a bad habit, to be more precise. Whenever there wasn’t an available guide for a puzzle quest, I’d brute force it instead of sitting down and trying to find the solution. And it usually worked. I employed the same strategy navigating conversations with important NPCs—try and try until I found the correct dialogue options.
“It’s not going to take long.” I was already trying combinations with the fifth lever up and the sixth lever down. After this, I’d push the sixth lever up and repeat the process. As I pushed the fourth lever down, it had a satisfying snap like a lock clicking in place. “That’s it? I haven’t even gotten past half of the possible combinations.”
“You did it!” Megan shot off celebratory sparks. “I’m so proud you solved the puzzle!”
“Let’s check the Vilumen Crystal,” I said, not bothering to correct her that I didn’t actually solve anything.
As expected, something happened to the stone slab on the wall after I set the levers in their correct positions. The magical circle and letters on its face smoldered like charcoal as it moved right without the help of rollers or tracks, gliding across the rough floor to reveal what was hidden behind it.
“A mirror?” I waved my hand. My reflection waved back at the same time.
Megan sidled up to my left. “Do we, like, break it or something?” Her wand crackled with purple flames.
“Don’t destroy it.” I examined its surface. My confused face stared at me. It was just a mirror. The next puzzle must be on the stone slab. I scooted right and ran my fingers over the etchings. If this was some sort of deciphering puzzle, these symbols corresponding to English letters and hiding a message, then we were so screwed because there was no brute forcing that.
“There’s the crystal!” Megan exclaimed.
“Where?”
“There!” She pointed at the mirror.
“I don’t see—”
Megan pulled me aside. “You’re covering it,” she said. “Get over here.”
I stood where she pointed and finally saw a blue hexagon crystal on the table behind us. I couldn’t see it earlier because I blocked the view of the table with my body. Megan and I looked at the actual table, not the reflection, and saw nothing. Only the paper with Bawu’s writing was on it.
“I guess we have to get it from inside the mirror?” Megan touched the reflective surface with her hand. It didn’t go through.
“Your reflection is blocking you,” I observed.
“Oh, you’re right.” She ran in and out of view of the mirror as if she could leave behind her reflection. “Move out of the way, mirror Megan!”
While she tried different things with the mirror, I returned to the table. It was simply made, one piece of thin wood over a metal frame. No drawers. I doubted if there were any hidden compartments. I picked up the parchment, read the first sentence, got bored, and checked what Megan was doing. She was backing up against the mirror.
She sheepishly grinned when she noticed me looking. “Maybe my reflection would be gone if I couldn’t see it? Then I can get through.”
“Worth a try,” I said. Very unboxlike—I approve. Though it wasn’t working.
“My butt’s just bumping against it,” Megan said. “What if we turned off all the lights? Total darkness means no reflections. No spells with light and… what do we do with this glowing slab?” She tried covering the magical slab with her body.
“I don’t think that’s the way,” I said, looking down at the parchment. “Remember the last line Bawu wrote. Always keep it in sight when taking it out. I assume that refers to—blazing meatballs!” With Megan moving aside, I again had an unimpeded view of the mirror.
“Blazing meatballs?”
“No, I meant the crystal. Stay in your spot and look in the mirror. I’m holding it right now.”
“It’s that paper thingy?”
I nodded. I was holding Bawu’s parchment, but in the mirror, my reflection was the [Vilumen Crystal]. Slowly approaching the mirror, I held it in front of me, keeping it in sight as per the instructions. The parchment touched the mirror’s surface.
“What now?” Megan whispered.
I pushed the parchment into the mirror… and it went in! The surface of the mirror rippled like water, the expanding circles radiating from the point of contact. My reflection copied my actions, pushing the [Vilumen Crystal] out on the real-world side.
“We got it!” Megan exclaimed.
“We really did. Imagine that…” I was rarely proud of myself because anything extraordinary I accomplished was expected. But this time, even if we didn’t do the puzzle right, I was fucking proud of myself. Herald Stone, the Unraveler of Mysteries, the All-Knowing Mind, the Puzzle Decoder of Eternity. Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself here.
As if on cue, Nitana messaged us.
[Nitana2003: I’m by the door with a crystal. What about you guys?”
[Megantress: We got a crystal too!!!!!]
[Nitana2003: Relax on the exclamation marks.]
[Kezodilla: Just got my assigned crystal. Heading to the door now.]
[Herald Stone: Let’s open the door and see what’s inside.]
Temple
How do you like the puzzle quest here and how they solved it? I’m not confident about it because I’m not good with puzzles (like Herald), but in the end, I think it turned out well.
Fifteen advanced chapters on Patreon. Thanks to all patrons, especially Cidule tier Teeneet (aka Whale)
Read my other story: REND - a psychological novel with an atypical protagonist
Join our Discord
The saying ‘two heads are better than one’ may be true most of the time, but it didn’t apply when both heads were equally clueless. Nonetheless, having another person with me was better for sharing liability for failure. It was like telling Mum it was fine that I failed a test in school because other kids also had low scores. However, it didn’t follow that I was settling for failure.
I, Herald Stone, will solve this puzzle with my hardness on the line!
We were also wasting time if we only twiddled our thumbs until Nitana arrived.
Megan and I scrutinized a row of six metal levers that could be pushed or pulled in the middle of the room. The levers were of different sizes and designs. Clearly, we had to figure out the correct arrangement of the levers for something to happen. If we succeeded, I surmised that the rectangular stone slab at the other end of the room, opposite the door, would move aside to reveal a [Vilumen Crystal]. The slab ran up to the ceiling and was slightly wider than my shoulders. It had a magical circle carved in its center and ancient letters inscribed along its borders—very suspicious.
Our only clue was a frayed parchment on a dusty table by the door. It didn’t contain a riddle as expected but appeared to be messages hastily scribbled by two different persons based on the handwriting. They were talking to each other by leaving notes on this parchment.
“Kindly make sure that both the first and the longest levers are down,” I read the first line.
“Wrong!” Megan read the angrily scratched second sentence. “The first lever and the spiky lever should be up!” She amusingly put emotion into it, right to the exclamation mark.
Scanning through the parchment, I saw that it had similar messages. The ending was written in bold letters: Always keep it in sight when taking it out. I’d hazard a guess that ‘it’ was the [Vilumen Crystal].
“This is a logic puzzle,” I said. “Decipher the correct levers to push and pull from snippets of clues. To solve this, we should arrange the information in a table and match them with what’s stated. For example, there’s a line about a spiky lever, a different sentence for a medium-length lever, and yet another mention of a middle lever—all of those refer to the same lever.”
“You know how to do this?” Megan’s eyes sparkled with amazement. “So cool! I was anxious we’ll end up with nothing, and Nitana’s gonna laugh at us.”
We’ll probably end up with nothing. Even though I discerned how to solve this, it’d take me about fifteen minutes to come up with an answer that may or may not be correct. Likely the latter. That was if the logic puzzle didn’t have another layer of difficulty.
“We may have a problem,” I said. “This isn’t a basic logic puzzle. The people who wrote this sometimes argue about details.” I pointed at the first and second sentences. “Other times, they agree, like in the next couple of sentences. This makes it more difficult to solve because we’ll have to work backward from the information settled as a fact to root out the lies. Only then can we solve the entire thing.”
“Uh-oh. Sounds like a problem. Why couldn’t these two just agree on everything?”
“I may be wrong, but they might be the two personalities of Bawu talking to each other.” I left the parchment on the table and walked over to the levers. It was time for the boundless intellect of Herald Stone to unravel the puzzle at hand. I pulled all the levers down.
“Did you already solve it?” Megan asked. “That’s super quick!”
“I haven’t.” I pushed the first lever up, then back down. Next, I pushed the second lever up and moved the first lever up and down again. “It’d take too much time to figure it out. Much better to brute force the possible combinations.” I set the third lever up and repeated what I had done so far, starting with the first.
“How do you calculate that again? Permutations, combinations, something… forgot those stuff. Ms. Grundle will turn in her grave because I forget her math lessons. Six levers. Six factorial, I think? That’s so frigging many combinations!”
“Not that many,” I said, continuing my task.
“Like you’re going to multiply all the numbers. Six times five times—I need a calculator.”
I moved to the fourth lever and pushed it up. Same thing here—I redid the entire process from pulling the first lever up and down, the second lever up, back to the first, then the third, second, and so on. I didn’t pay Megan any mind as she punched numbers on the holographic calculator floating in front of her.
Megan gasped. “Seven hundred twenty combinations? You’re going to try all of that?” She hastily smoothened the parchment on the table and reread its contents. “No way you’ll make it in time. I’ll try to figure this out.”
“It’s only sixty-four combinations.” Hiding the truth would make it seem like I did an impressive feat once I hit the right arrangement, but Nitana and Kezo might figure out my lie if Megan shared it with them. “We’re not rearranging their places, so it won’t be six factorial. Each lever has only two possible states—up or down. To calculate all combinations, multiply two six times. That’s two times two times two, up to six twos. The product is sixty-four.”
“I didn’t know you’re good at math,” Megan said.
Herald Stone, Grade School Math Expert. “Not really,” I said, trying to be modest to better my image. “I’m just simplifying the task by bypassing the actual challenge.”
A skill I had honed when I played RPGs years ago—a bad habit, to be more precise. Whenever there wasn’t an available guide for a puzzle quest, I’d brute force it instead of sitting down and trying to find the solution. And it usually worked. I employed the same strategy navigating conversations with important NPCs—try and try until I found the correct dialogue options.
“It’s not going to take long.” I was already trying combinations with the fifth lever up and the sixth lever down. After this, I’d push the sixth lever up and repeat the process. As I pushed the fourth lever down, it had a satisfying snap like a lock clicking in place. “That’s it? I haven’t even gotten past half of the possible combinations.”
“You did it!” Megan shot off celebratory sparks. “I’m so proud you solved the puzzle!”
“Let’s check the Vilumen Crystal,” I said, not bothering to correct her that I didn’t actually solve anything.
As expected, something happened to the stone slab on the wall after I set the levers in their correct positions. The magical circle and letters on its face smoldered like charcoal as it moved right without the help of rollers or tracks, gliding across the rough floor to reveal what was hidden behind it.
“A mirror?” I waved my hand. My reflection waved back at the same time.
Megan sidled up to my left. “Do we, like, break it or something?” Her wand crackled with purple flames.
“Don’t destroy it.” I examined its surface. My confused face stared at me. It was just a mirror. The next puzzle must be on the stone slab. I scooted right and ran my fingers over the etchings. If this was some sort of deciphering puzzle, these symbols corresponding to English letters and hiding a message, then we were so screwed because there was no brute forcing that.
“There’s the crystal!” Megan exclaimed.
“Where?”
“There!” She pointed at the mirror.
“I don’t see—”
Megan pulled me aside. “You’re covering it,” she said. “Get over here.”
I stood where she pointed and finally saw a blue hexagon crystal on the table behind us. I couldn’t see it earlier because I blocked the view of the table with my body. Megan and I looked at the actual table, not the reflection, and saw nothing. Only the paper with Bawu’s writing was on it.
“I guess we have to get it from inside the mirror?” Megan touched the reflective surface with her hand. It didn’t go through.
“Your reflection is blocking you,” I observed.
“Oh, you’re right.” She ran in and out of view of the mirror as if she could leave behind her reflection. “Move out of the way, mirror Megan!”
While she tried different things with the mirror, I returned to the table. It was simply made, one piece of thin wood over a metal frame. No drawers. I doubted if there were any hidden compartments. I picked up the parchment, read the first sentence, got bored, and checked what Megan was doing. She was backing up against the mirror.
She sheepishly grinned when she noticed me looking. “Maybe my reflection would be gone if I couldn’t see it? Then I can get through.”
“Worth a try,” I said. Very unboxlike—I approve. Though it wasn’t working.
“My butt’s just bumping against it,” Megan said. “What if we turned off all the lights? Total darkness means no reflections. No spells with light and… what do we do with this glowing slab?” She tried covering the magical slab with her body.
“I don’t think that’s the way,” I said, looking down at the parchment. “Remember the last line Bawu wrote. Always keep it in sight when taking it out. I assume that refers to—blazing meatballs!” With Megan moving aside, I again had an unimpeded view of the mirror.
“Blazing meatballs?”
“No, I meant the crystal. Stay in your spot and look in the mirror. I’m holding it right now.”
“It’s that paper thingy?”
I nodded. I was holding Bawu’s parchment, but in the mirror, my reflection was the [Vilumen Crystal]. Slowly approaching the mirror, I held it in front of me, keeping it in sight as per the instructions. The parchment touched the mirror’s surface.
“What now?” Megan whispered.
I pushed the parchment into the mirror… and it went in! The surface of the mirror rippled like water, the expanding circles radiating from the point of contact. My reflection copied my actions, pushing the [Vilumen Crystal] out on the real-world side.
“We got it!” Megan exclaimed.
“We really did. Imagine that…” I was rarely proud of myself because anything extraordinary I accomplished was expected. But this time, even if we didn’t do the puzzle right, I was fucking proud of myself. Herald Stone, the Unraveler of Mysteries, the All-Knowing Mind, the Puzzle Decoder of Eternity. Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself here.
As if on cue, Nitana messaged us.
[Nitana2003: I’m by the door with a crystal. What about you guys?”
[Megantress: We got a crystal too!!!!!]
[Nitana2003: Relax on the exclamation marks.]
[Kezodilla: Just got my assigned crystal. Heading to the door now.]
[Herald Stone: Let’s open the door and see what’s inside.]
Temple
How do you like the puzzle quest here and how they solved it? I’m not confident about it because I’m not good with puzzles (like Herald), but in the end, I think it turned out well.
Fifteen advanced chapters on Patreon. Thanks to all patrons, especially Cidule tier Teeneet (aka Whale)
Read my other story: REND - a psychological novel with an atypical protagonist
Join our Discord
