To make up for my lack of updating, I'm posting two chapters today. This is the last chapter with the original puzzles and art.
Ib belongs to Kouri.
Unexpected Alliance: Chapter 9
"So HM, are you going to open the door?" Lady reminded him.
"Oh, yeah." HM sheepishly opened the door, chuckling lightly.
Lady rolled her eyes before scuttling through the open door. Sarah followed hesitantly with HM behind them. The room they had entered had quilts hanging from the ceiling in front of the walls. There was a note on the wall next to the door.
"'Peacock Pattern study. Which is the copy?'" Lady read aloud. "I guess we look for the one that's different."
The trio walked around the room, inspecting the similar quilts to find the different one. After a while, Lady got impatient. "This is impossible. They are all the same." She said, tapping her fingers on the floor.
"Actually, this one's got brighter colors." Sarah called from a couple quilts over.
HM and Lady approached the quilt she was pointing to. "It must be the copy since it looks more recent." he agreed. Together they pulled the quilt down and found a secret passage hidden behind it.
Inside the secret passage was a glass eye on the ground. Sarah picked it up. "I wonder where this goes." She said as she showed her friends.
"I'm not too sure." Lady answered. "Maybe it belongs to someone here."
Sarah shrugged and tried to pocket the glass eye. She frowned, taking a black key out of her pocket. "I almost forgot about this." she said. "I'm holding too many things."
"Do you need to bring the doll?" Lady pointed out.
"I guess not." Sarah replied sadly. She set the blue doll down. "Goodbye llama."
Lady turned to HM with an eyebrow raised questioningly. 'Llama?' she mouthed to him.
HM shrugged before Sarah led them out of the secret passage. The quilt was still crumpled on the ground where they left it.
Back in the black hallway, they turned around a corner and found a sculpture of a glass pyramid.
Lady crawled to the plaque. "'Fairy Tale'" she read aloud.
"It's a glass hill!" Sarah said excitedly. "Mommy told me a story about a farmer who married a princess by climbing a hill made of glass."
"Aren't there morals to fairy tales? What would be the moral of that story?" Lady wondered.
"Maybe the moral is to believe in the impossible." HM suggested.
"If everyone believes that then the world must be full of disappointed people." Lady argued.
"Look! A door!" Sarah had already started skipping over to the door.
She tested the knob when they came following behind. "Locked." she confirmed.
Lady pointed to the small holes on both sides of the door. "It looks like something can be inserted there."
Sarah inserted the glass eye in one of the holes. The wall seemed to form around the eye to make an eyelid. The eye blinked and stared at them. "There should be another eye around here somewhere." HM said. Lady and Sarah nodded in agreement.
They continued down the hall until they got to another door. Beside the door was a word written in white paint. "'Freezer'" Lady read aloud.
The three entered a room that was really cold. There was snow and ice covering everything. On the other side of the room was an ice sculpture of a hand clenching a glass eye in a fist. HM stepped forward only to end up flinching as a brown petal froze and broke off the stalk.
Lady grabbed his wrist and yanked him back to the door, causing another petal to fall. "We have to get out of this room." she ordered, shoving HM out after Sarah opened the door.
They tumbled out in a shivering heap. Sarah brought out her inhaler from her pocket and breathed deeply. Lady shook out her fingers gently. "How many petals does everyone have?" she asked.
Everyone produced his or her rose. Sarah's had 4 petals, Lady's had 6, and HM's had 3. "Okay." Lady nodded after the roses were safely returned to their places. "Maybe I should do this one myself. Unless we find a vase, it would be too dangerous."
"I guess you're right." HM said with an uncertain look on his face. "Wait right here." He turned and ran back the way they came, leaving Sarah and Lady confused.
He returned with the quilt from before in his arms. He wrapped it around Lady and her rose. "That should keep you from freezing quickly."
"Thanks." Lady waited for HM to open the door again before crawling in the freezer. The icy chill of the room bit at Lady's fingers and frame, but she crawled to the glass eye. The petals of her rose froze and fell, but not as quickly as HM's did.
Lady reached up and grasped the glass eye, yanking it out of its place. She turned and crawled away, leaving a trail of frozen petals. She pounded on the door. After it opened, she collapsed on the hallway floor. 1 petal remained on the stalk in her hair.
"Lady! Lady, are you okay?" HM asked worriedly, bending close to her.
Lady didn't move or say anything. She seemed to be in too much pain. HM scooped her up in his arms and walked with Sarah beside him. "Is she gonna be okay?" Sarah asked, staring at Lady with wide eyes.
"She'll be fine once we find a vase. Aha! Found one." HM carried Lady to a table that was against the wall with a vase of water. He untangled the rose from her hair and placed it in the vase. The rose grew to 7 petals once again.
Lady stirred in HM's arms before she spoke. "Um, you can set me down now." Lady said from HM's arms.
HM's cheeks went red. "R-right." he stammered, placing Lady back on the floor. After a moment, he remembered to return her rose to her hair.
Sarah giggled at how silly HM was acting and wrapped her arms around Lady's shoulders. "We were so worried about you." she said.
Lady squirmed out of her grip. "Well I'm okay now. And I got the eye." She handed the glass eye to Sarah.
Sarah took the eye. "Let's go and open the door." She turned, skipping to the door. She inserted the eye in the hole when her friends followed her. The wall extended over the eye like it was blinking. Both eyes looked at the door before closing. A click was heard.
HM opened the door, letting the girls in before going in himself. The room they walked into was very cramped and small. An unmoving headless statue stood in front of a door. "I got this." HM said.
He pushed the heavy statue aside and tested the black door. "Locked." he told them.
"Let's try this." Sarah stepped forward with the heavy black key. It unlocked the door with a click. She opened the door and paused when she saw something blocking the door.
Lady approached the thing and pushed it. It clattered to the floor where they could properly see what it was. It was a canvas that had fallen and landed on its front.
They entered the room, being careful not to step on the canvas. The room was colored brown. A headless statue stood beside a set of pink stairs going down.
"Should we head down?" Lady asked.
"Only if arms don't pop out of the walls." HM answered nervously. Lady glanced at him curiously, but didn't say anything about it.
"Let's go!" Sarah said with enthusiasm as she started down the stairs.
"Er… I can't. I'll trip and land on my face." Lady wrung her hands a bit nervously at the thought of falling head over frame down the stairs.
HM's answer to this was to scoop her up in his arms again. "Don't worry, Lady. I won't let you fall."
Lady flailed at the unexpected move. "I told you to warn me." She scolded him as he started down the steps after Sarah.
"Sorry." They caught up to the girl and traveled down the stairs. The walls around them changed from brown to black again with crayon drawn stars all over.
At the bottom of the stairs, a pink path drawn in crayon showed a way into the darkness. HM set Lady down and they followed the path to a small town made of crayon. "Well isn't this odd." Lady commented dryly.
"But we can make it. Come on!" HM led the way down the path.
