Chapter 7
All Riddles lead to Atlantis
So a dwarf, and elf, and two humans boarded Mulch's uncle's old transport shuttle with only one question by Holly on the air, "Can this thing hold pressure under water?"
"Let's find out!" said Mulch, not encouraging much confidence in the old craft.
Everyone buckled in, except Artemis who sat on the floor with the riddle in front of him. He was formulating a plan!
Almost. Holly's voice rent the air, "Mud boy! You gonna tell us why we're going to Atlantis? That's at least 10 hours away at full speed and no mishaps."
Artemis opened one eyelid, "Very well, it seems the briefing cannot wait. I say to go to Atlantis because that's where the riddle says to. Check out the lettering. All the first letter of the words of the riddle are in lower case until lines 5 through 12 which say
A way to enter this confine.
Together you must bind.
Lose but one
And you will fail
Now come together mud and fairy
To the place where your friend napped
Is your next clue to wait
So fly fools fly, you dipper of fools
Now the words themselves are not the important part of this riddle. It is the capitalization of the words. These capital letters spell out 'A-T-L-A-N-T-I-S!' Therefore, it is only logical to surmise that the next clue would be in Atlantis, the city lost to the sea, or so the human legends go. But to fairies, this place is real. On the bottom of the deepest trench in the Atlantic is where we'll find Foaly. The only question that remains is 'Is Atlantis all underwater?' because none of us can breathe under water if it is."
Holly answered this question, "No, there are lots of ponds, lakes, and beaches, but it's a hot vacation spot. I went there with my father when I was young. Beautiful it was. Almost as beautiful as living above the surface. We can take the Haven underwater harbor to get to Atlantis. This time of year, it shouldn't be too crowded. But there's something I need to be brought to your attention Artemis. This whole riddle business is awfully familiar. The rock sprites who stole that painting did the exact same thing. They called it their calling card. Could it be that they've escaped and come to get payback on us all? Could we be walking into a trap?"
"A trap? Certainly. But the rock sprites being behind it? I think not. No, this time it's different. I have an idea of what is really going on, but I shall save my brilliant deductions until I'm sure of the facts. I have been wrong before, therefore I shall wait for more information. Now, Holly, you take the controls for the first five hours, Mulch the second five, and Butler and Mulch get to sleep now, and Holly, you may rest after your five hours of driving."
Holly looked taken aback. Since when has Artemis stopped himself from voicing his even earliest conclusions? There was something big going on here, Holly was sure of it. She controlled the urge to punch it out of Artemis and instead asked, "What are you going to do, mud boy?"
"I need to think."
With that Artemis stuck earplugs in his ears and closed his eyes, still sitting on the floor with the riddle in front of him as though he could read what it said through his eyelids. From time to time, he would whisper something or the other, but other than that he was completely silent.
"What a strange mud boy," said Holly taking her seat in the shuttle control chair and putting them on their way. Luckily, they were taking all main passages to the Haven harbor and the ride was fairly smooth.
After five hours, they were a good ways underwater and the shuttle was still holding pressure. Mulch came to relieve Holly of the controls so that she could get some sleep. Artemis was still sitting in his meditative stance when she went to the back. There was a cot in the back, but Mulch had just slept in it and Holly had no intention of following suit. Instead, Holly got a compressed sleeping bag from her supplies. The sleeping bag could fit in her hand when compressed, but when she pulled the cord extended from the top, it folded itself out into a full, fairy-sized sleeping bag. She spread it out on the floor behind Artemis. Butler was taking up the rest of the floor room. He was sleeping against the shuttle wall. Soon, Holly had fallen to sleep.
Her first snore woke Artemis from his quiet contemplation. He stood up, stretched, and dusted off his clothes. Looking around, he saw that everyone in the back was asleep and Mulch was in the front driving. Artemis lay down on the floor. Time for a bit of sleep. The next two days will certainly be interesting, especially if Artemis' conclusions proved accurate, and they usually did.
A little over five hours later, Mulch woke them all up and Holly took control of the shuttle again. Atlantis was finally in site and it was a good thing too. The joints and rivets in the old shuttle groaned dangerously with the increasing water pressure. Artemis went over the schematic he had made up.
"Here is our target in Atlantis."
A map was projected into the air of the city.
"House number 128 on 14th Street is where the next clue will be."
The corresponding address lit up.
"Excuse me," said Mulch raising his hand, "How do we know this?"
Artemis raised a slender eyebrow, "Did none of you understand any of the riddle?"
"Thinking is your job, mud boy," retorted Holly.
"Yes, I suppose it is," said Artemis coldly while polishing his fingernails on his jacket. "Well, sorry for asking you to use a little deduction and logic. I'll translate the riddle into plain English, or Gnommish, whichever you prefer."
"English will be fine," Holly said short-temperedly.
"Fine then. The first four lines are pretty straight forward." Artemis quoted the lines from memory, "
to find one lost
you must come seek
below the surface, water, and rock.
sixteen hours had you to find.
Basically, to find Foaly, we must search under the surface or fairy land. It also foretells what Foaly's virus will do to the Haven. That's the 16 hours part. This reveals that Foaly's capturer knew Foaly's system and what would happen if Foaly went absent. This is a dangerous opponent if he knows this much. He even gives the password to Foaly's system. Skipping ahead to the last three lines:
all this shall continue till the end of 48,
and now at the end of sixteen,
play it backwards to unwind.
I've already explained how I derived the password, but the abductor shows once more how dangerous he is. He predicts what will happen after the first password is accepted - an extension of 48 hours on the time deadline. Knowing this, our captor has no doubt placed himself and Foaly just within range of this deadline. He has given us a chance that shall prove ill for him," finished Artemis with a excited look in his eye. It had been a long time since he last plotted, and , frankly, he missed it.
Butler interrupted his thrill of the plot by asking another question, "but what do lines five through 16 mean?"
Artemis groaned, "Didn't I already explain most of those?
A way to enter this confine.
Together you must bind.
Lose but one
And you will fail
Now come together mud and fairy
To the place where your friend napped
Is your next clue to wait
So fly fools fly, you dipper of fools
The capital letters tell us to go to Atlantis. Ah, here's the part that you're probably confused about:
So fly fools fly, you dipper of fools
and regain one you sorely miss.
The options you'll have are described
on a street of sums of levels
and a house of breaking glass.
The line that makes the "S" for Atlantis also starts the final clue given. It states that once we reach a certain house in Atlantis, we'll be given a new clue. Here's the scary part of this clue: the captor knows Holly has a Dipper gun, and that Foaly's glass in the control center could be broken by it. That's a lot more than I want my enemy knowing. His knowledge of the gun is frightening as well.
on a street of sums of levels
and a house of breaking glass.
There are 257 different levels of power on the Dipper. the sum of 2, 5, and 7 is 14. Therfore, we must go to 14th Street and to house number 128, for 128 was the setting on the Dipper that broke the glass. Any more questions, or can we go save Foaly?"
Artemis peered around the room, his cold blue eyes darting from face to face. Butler and Mulch were nodding, showing that they had no idea what the riddle meant, even in simple English, but they had understood the rescuing part. Holly looked as if she had followed most of the briefing, and her concern for their plot was evident in her voice.
She asked, "How can we hope to defeat someone who knows so much about us? They are obviously just dragging us behind for fun. I don't like this Artemis."
Artemis forehead creased in contemplation of his answer. He placed a comforting hand on Holly's shoulder, "We do not know who are what we are facing. We know who we are, though, and we will use our talents to improvise in danger and save our friend. We have no choice but to follow these clues if we want to save Foaly. They are the only thing we have to go on. We can't just give up on him." Artemis was already regretting saying such mushy, stupid, and corny stuff, but he endured the regret after seeing the hope it put into Holly's eyes.
The dwarf's spirit was never dampened for long and he just sighed and said, "Where is that centaur when you need him?"
That centaur was leaning back in a modified centaur chair in 128 Fourteenth Street, Atlantis. He had just woken up from a pleasant nap. He yelled for the Rock Sprites to bring him some carrots and water, to which they happily obliged. Sticking the carrots up his nose and dumping the water on his head.
Foaly snorted the carrots out of his nose. Cheeky little blighters. They're lucky they're not expendable at this moment. If anyone else had tried a stunt like that they'd be trampled under all four hooves. But you couldn't blame them. Rock pixies were mischievous by their very nature, the M-gene again.
Foaly brought up the Atlantis surveillance pictures and found Mulch's vessel making its way to the Atlantis port entrance. Foaly allowed himself a little smile. Everything was going according to plan.
Trying to bring as little attention as possible to the archaic transport shuttle, the group entered the Atlantis confine. Holly had understated its beauty. There were flowers, bushes, trees, ponds, lakes, and golden water fountains everywhere. The fake sun was turned up to mimic a perfectly sunny day on the coast of a Caribbean Island. At the far end, they could just glimpse the sparkle of waves. This was a scientific miracle in itself, for some fairy at some point had learned how to recreate an entire ocean inside a relatively small area. The entire city of Atlantis was in a bubble on the seafloor of the Atlantic. It was amazing to behold.
Holly found a shuttle harbor and took an empty parking place. The four found fresh energy and resolve by just being in this fairy vacation city.
Butler thought it odd that the city was not crowded at all. Only a few passing gnomes and elves littered the streets. He voiced his concerns to Holly.
"Crowded? Well, for one, this is not vacation season for fairies. Another reason is that we're so far away from the beach. Most fairies that come get ocean front beach houses. But the main reason is that this area is only a small out lying portion of the city."
"What do you mean?" asked Butler.
"She means," explained Artemis, "That the rest of the city is under that fake ocean."
"Correct!" agreed Holly. "All the water sprites, and well, all manner of water dwelling fairies live under those waters. All of the crowds you're looking for, Butler, are under the water."
Artemis got over his awe quickly and pulled out his C Cube. He found out exactly where they were and started off toward 128 Fourteenth Street. The others hurried after him. The strange group received stares from the Atlanteans they passed on their way. No human had ever entered Atlantis before, and today, two had just strolled in and seemed to know exactly where they were heading. What drew more stares was that a dwarf, a man, and an elf were following a mud boy who seemed to be leading them. Strange even for humans for an adult to be led by a mere child.
No one challenged their presence, however. For one, if they had made it this far into fairy domain and were still alive and unscathed, they must have some hidden talents. Another reason for the lack of restraint was, the Mud man was huge! They had heard rumors of a mountain of a man taking down a whole unit of Retrieval. No one seemed to be keen to find out if it had been this mud man.
Finally, they reached the house in question. It was an average city house made out of some unknownstone with a shell garden in front. It had two floors, and all it's windows were polarized. The front door, however, seemed to nonexistent.
Artemis sighed, "It's just what I thought. Our friend Foaly is just having his own bit of fun."
This caused two reactions.
Holly starting scolding Artemis once more about how Foaly could not be behind this. But her agruments were cut short by the second reaction.
The second reaction had been Foaly saying, "Smart Mud Whelp!" and then pushing a button to open a hidden door with a pneumatic hiss.
