After the room with the animated armor, I went through three more rooms. The first of which had a treasure chest like the kind in the locker. When I opened it up I found an ugly looking jacket with heavy padding.

I took one look at it and placed it back in the chest and kept going.

After that there was another cocoon room. I set the emblem aside from the beginning this time and went to activate the cocoon. Instead of an animated armor, I instead got a pair of small child-like winged figures with bows.

Cupids basically, except they wore that same four colored emblem on their face like a mask. I would have felt bad about burning them and cutting them to pieces if they hadn't started shooting arrows at me first.

In other news I now had two small arrows sticking out of my shoulder. I tried not to think about how I was going to explain that to mom and dad. At least they had left behind small bits of cash and two strings that looked like they were made of silver.

After that one, I decided to back out if I saw any more cocoons. Fortunately for me, the next room was another chest room. I almost decided to skip it after what had been in the last one, but the curiosity got the better of me.

I threw the chest open to see a bottle of juice inside. It was one of those fruit blends that was supposed to be good for your health or something.

Despite the balmy temperature of the castle and the chest, it was cool to the touch like it had just come out of the fridge.

I looked the bottle over as realized that I was a little thirsty. Was I really about to drink a strange bottle that I found in a treasure chest?

I peered at the top of the bottle and found the seal intact.

"You know what… good enough," I justified it to myself as I broke the seal and chugged the drink down. Despite the situation I appreciated the cool drink going down my throat.

I let out a satisfied sigh as I felt something odd on my shoulder. I glanced down at myself and watched as the arrows pushed themselves out of my clothes. I made a quick check of my stats and say the green circle just a bit bigger than it had been after I had gotten shot.

I looked down at the now empty health potion in my hands and made a mental note to always drink these whenever I found them.

Item hoarding? What was that? Sounded like something you did if dying only meant going back to a checkpoint or menu.

I was about to keep going when I realized that I needed a place to throw the bottle away. Just because I was going through a strange castle and fighting the monster inside for money didn't mean that I was about to start littering.

I wasn't a monster after all.

In the end I decided to just leave the bottle where I found it inside the chest. Who knew, maybe doing so would refill it after a while. I was in a magic castle floating in the sky that I had accessed from a magic mirror in a train station. Magically refilling fruit drinks would not be the weirdest part of my day.

I kept going and went through the door which brought us to now.

I had finally reached a room that looked really different from the rest. Don't get me wrong, the room still had red carpet and walls of weapons lining the wall, but the layout was pretty different.

Instead of having one door leading out and one leading in, there were four doors in the room, each one on a different wall. Above every door was one fourth of the emblem that all the monsters in this castle wore. The red section was right above the door that I had just come out of.

In the very center was a grand staircase that led upwards. It looked pretty opulent, with railing that was made of polished wood and steps draped in a red carpet with white lining that looked much brighter and better kept then the carpet in the rest of the castle so far. If I had to guess, I would say that it probably led to that one room sticking up out of the roof.

I climbed up the stairs slowly, keeping my hand on the rail and keeping ready for any movement that might signal a trap.

Fortunately, no such trap came and I made it to the top of the stairs without a hitch. I let out a breath that I hadn't even noticed that I had been keeping in as I went through the wide double doors.

In the very center of the room was a raised platform surrounded by a wooden railing. In the center of it was a table with a hollowed out portion. On the walls were four stone statues of animals. There was a tiger, a Chinese dragon, a turtle and a familiar jerk of a bird.

"Well at least it's not a hard puzzle," I told myself as I walked up onto the platform and placed the red section of the emblem. After placing it in, it slid around a bit before slotting into place. I glanced over and saw that the red section was now pointing straight at the bird.

I glanced back down at the red emblem that I had just placed down. If the emblems on the monsters were accurate, then I was missing green, yellow and white pieces. The firebird gave me the red emblem so should I expect the other animal to each give me another plate?

The answer was obviously yes, but which animal held which. Last thing I needed was to run into the ice animal and get frozen solid. No I had to think this through.

Turtles live in water, but there wasn't a blue section so maybe it was ice? And I would have guessed that the dragon was fire but the bird already took that spot. Yellow was probably electricity which could have been either the tiger or the dragon… unless it was earth in which case it might be the turtle or tiger. And I had no clue what green could have been. Either nature or wind if I had to guess.

…This was getting too much for me. After these last few fights, I was already pretty tired. With any luck, the monsters wouldn't respawn or anything. I turned back around and headed down the stairs and through the castle again.

I followed my steps out and while the fruit drink/ health potion didn't come back, the monsters didn't either. I passed by the other chest and stopped for a second. The jacket inside, while hideous to the eye, a mish-mash of neon green stripes and beige patterns, had pretty tough padding.

In the end it was just too ugly to take with me. I made sure to remind myself to bring a backpack with me next time though. Just in case I found something that didn't want to make me want to carve my own eyes out.

I left the castle and went home with no trouble. I made sure of it too, making sure to keep my eyes out for any minor changes that might signify that I was in some sort of altered version of reality, but none showed up.

When I woke up the next morning, I checked my stats. I had never taken that much damage and used so much magic before, so I wondered if sleeping would have topped me off like in a game.

No dice, my health and magic were fuller than they had been before bed, but they weren't full.

If I had to guess, it would take me at least three days to get everything back. And all that to get one-fourth of a shield, which I probably needed as a key, to get past one floor of the castle. A castle that probably led up to the first crosswalk on the pillar.

It was going to take me years to get to the top of that pillar.

Ugh.

I made it to school the next Monday to find everyone a bit on edge. I wasn't sure what was up, but I figured that if it was a big deal then I'd hear the details by the end of the day.

I sat in my usual place and listened in on the conversations around me.

From the gathers whispers I could hear, it sounded like there had been some sort of incident on Saturday while I had been in the Alice room. Apparently someone had stolen from a charity that a lot of the people in school had fundraised for in the past. One of the guys running it had run off with all the cash that the kids had raised at the end of the last school year.

I had never really done any of the fundraisers back in elementary school, but I knew a lot of kids did. And the one that got robbed was the one for the community center in the center of town…

Wait a second.

Why did a city-run and city-funded community center in one of the richest parts of town need a bunch of eight-year-old to raise money for it?

It made sense back when I was a kid, but in hindsight, the whole thing felt sketchy. Did they really expect a bunch of children to fund a community center one chocolate bar at a time?

You know what, not my problem. I'd never even been to that community center in the first place.

I spent the rest of the day in relative peace as the anger around me slowly grew.

I saw some of the boys grinding their teeth and punching walls and lockers. Some of the girls spoke to each other in angry whispers that freaked me out a little.

I somehow made it to lunch without any trouble.

I was about to head over to my usual place to watch Zach paint when a vending machine caught my eye. Suddenly the money I got from destroying those monsters felt warm in my pocket.

I pulled out my wallet and looked at the bills in question. After getting home on Saturday, I had placed the scrap metal and silver wire in the chest and had then combed over the bills. As far as I could tell, they were totally normal in every way.

Well, this was it. I could either spend this money or choose not to. I pulled out a single dollar bill from my wallet, making sure that it was one of the ones that I got from the castle. I pushed it in, a small part of me hoping that the machine would just reject it outright.

Of course that didn't happen, instead the machine read that a dollar had been inserted and now all I had to was pick something from…

"All of these cost more than a dollar," I grumbled before fishing out a few coins that I needed to make up the difference. I wasn't even sure if they were the coins I had gotten from the castle.

I walked away trying not to think about it, instead focusing on opening the pack of fruit gummies in my hand.

All I had to do was place one hand here, one hand there and… Wait a second. If a fruit drink healed me up in the Alice room, what could these gummies do? The fruit drink was a totally normal drink that I had seen in stores all the time. The only weird thing about it had been where I found it.

Maybe it was the Alice room itself that changed the drink? In that case what else could the Alice room change?

Better to save them and bring them in with me when I went back into the Alice room in three days. If they did change they could come in handy in my attempt to…

What exactly was my ultimate goal for the Alice room? Clear it and hope it vanishes? Maybe I should rethink that. Maybe it would be better to just get rid of the room? The only way in was an object well known for being easy to shatter.

I could just break the mirror and be done with it.

With that idea put away for the day, I made it to the art room and saw Zach already hard at work.

"Your dad is going to get mad at you," I commented as I took my usual spot.

"Not really, I talked to Robby last Sunday and apparently, he wants this one," He paused to glare at the canvas a bit before nodding his head. "So my dad doesn't have to worry about his walls for this one,"

"I'm sure he's ecstatic," I joked before glancing at the painting and a certain through crossed my mind. "Hey can I ask you something without you getting mad because I know some creative people have issues with it?"

"Sure?" He raised his eyebrow at me and set down his brush.

"Why don't you ever try to sell your paintings?"

He didn't say anything at first, and for a second I was worried that I had set him off or something. Instead, he kind of just sat there in silence for a while before glancing back at the canvas.

"Oh my god," He gripped both sides of the canvas as his eyes darted from side to side. "I could just sell my paintings. Why have I ever thought of this before?"

"You've never even thought about selling your paintings before?" I repeated as he let go of the painting and set his brush down. He almost jumped out of the chair and rushed over to me and placed me in a tight hug.

"Thank," He said in a stunned whisper. "Thank you so much. I'm going to have space for so many more paintings,"

I was about to ask him to let me go when he suddenly pushed me out to arm's length. He looked at me with slightly crazed eyes, his smile witching on his face.

"If you'll excuse me, I need to go call my dad and ask him why he never thought about this before,"

He ran out of the room without saying a word, leaving me in the dust.

"Just what have I unleashed?"

Well, best not to worry about it too much.

I finished off the rest of the day and headed home to find a package waiting for me. Looked like I was no longer between books.

"Maybe I shouldn't wait until finishing my current book to order the next one online," I figured to myself as I opened up the package. Inside was a copy of Rising Zephyr, a fantasy novel about a guy who finds an ancient airship and decides to use it to resist the oppressive empire that's taken over his homeland.

I set the book aside and got ready to do my homework, wanting to get the day over with.

Tomorrow I would be good to head back into the Alice room.