Jesse stared down at the overwhelming multitude of screaming bright tiles on the floor.
"Oh, and you get half an hour," Magnus added helpfully a few moments later, which made Jesse nearly jump out of their skin. "Strategy and all that, y'know?"
Strategy. An odd thing for the King of Boom Town to suggest. Out of place- at least, for this demon.
Jesse looked back at the floor, looking at it closely. The bright tiles made their eyes practically cross from how mind-bogglingly dizzying it was; they could barely see it from where they were standing.
"Er... can I bend down and look at the tiles closer?" Jesse asked, after a long moment.
Magnus grinned in reply. "Only rule of the Death Bowl, kid, is no eye poking."
... that really was the only rule, wasn't it.
"So yeah, go for it. You've got twenty-nine minutes."
Jesse stooped down on their safe-space of floor and peered at the tiles carefully. They were still bright, but Jesse could at least see the lines of the tiles and how they fit together, in a funny criss-crossing pattern.
For a moment, Jesse had no idea why it felt funny.
And then it clicked.
Square.
He said square.
But none of these are square, they're rectangles.
Jesse stared at the floor, remembering something their math teacher had taught them in geometry, chanting it over and over until it had been bored into their skull and probably when they were nothing but bones it would be literally drilled into their bones.
All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
It couldn't be that simple, could it? The floor was covered in them. Surely he'd rigged them... or maybe not.
This was a challenge of something... could it be creativity?
Or was it being a good listener? Listening for details? Paying attention?
Something someone who was handling negative energy would have to do?
"... can I ask you what the person before me did?" Jesse asked, after a length of time had passed. "Since eye-poking's the only thing that seems to be against the rules."
Magnus grinned broadly at their remark. "He did some parkour, basically- ran along the walls and some fancy handsprings and shit."
"And that resulted in him 'losing'," Jesse clarified.
Magnus shrugged with a grin.
They supposed he wasn't about to give them a straight answer about this...
Jesse crossed their arms and stared. They'd have thought they'd encounter this sort of thing in Redstonia, with lines of redstone and cogs and gears and thinking, not in a town where griefers blew people to smithereens.
The griefer had been as creative as he could be, considering the situation. And yet he had failed.
It was odd. Out of place, for a more logical thought to come into Magnus's head, and yet considering what he wanted them to do, it made sense.
They sneezed again, repressing a scowl as they wiped their raw nose a little bit. Next time they went to a shop, they were going to buy tissues.
If demons even had tissues...
"Twenty-five minutes left," Magnus announced, making them jump.
Jesse frowned at him and glanced around the room. No, surely it couldn't be as simple as walking across the floor, he'd had that thing which triggered the bombs... surely it wasn't that simple.
And that's when they saw it.
The clock.
It was a very simple clock, same as the analog ones at Jesse's home, except it looked a bit modern in the fact that it only had 15-minute-intervals. It was oddly sleek in the multicolored mess of a room, set up neatly on the wall behind Magnus, above the door out of the room.
... why was there a clock?
Jesse glanced from Magnus to the clock.
Magnus was keeping track of time, so why did they need a clock as a timer? Maybe he was using it to keep track of the time himself?
No. No, that couldn't be it, because the clock was behind Magnus. He hadn't turned around to look at it once.
The long hand was halfway between the 12 and 3 now.
In that case, why was there a clock, in a room constructed to either be blown half-to-smithereens (if Magnus was being truthful about the bombs) or at the very least, not a permanent building? Surely a detail like that would just be wasted? Unless it was a clue...
"Twenty minutes left," Magnus announced, but Jesse was so deep in thought they barely heard it.
This had to mean something. A clock on the wall... with fifteen-minute intervals.
The last contestant...
Jesse looked back at Magnus. "How long did the last contestant take in here?"
If Jesse was on the right trail for anything, he didn't show it- he just grinned at them. "Let's see... he took about 20 minutes to get a strategy going, and less than a minute to get here... we'll say 21 minutes."
Jesse glanced up at the clock. Clocks usually went in five minute intervals (analog ones, at least), with the 12, 3, 6, and 9 marks bolded or having numbers. This one didn't even have the five-minute marks to indicate where it was.
The long hand was getting close to the fifteen-minute mark.
"Did anything blow up?" Jesse asked, after a moment.
Magnus nodded. "Yep; he dropped something onto a tile right before he got going, just to see if it was fine, and it blew up."
Fifteen-minute intervals... a clock in a room for a game, possibly with bombs... rectangles instead of squares...
Finally, Jesse shrugged- if it came to it they could run- and strode forward onto the floor, walking straight across the tiled floor without any hesitation, holding their chin high.
Nothing blew up, and when they came to a stop in front of Magnus, they looked up at him boldly.
Magnus hummed, clicking the thing he'd pressed to prime the bombs. Jesse caught a glimpse of the time.
15:02.
They looked back up at him, waiting for him to lead them through a door- or even just chuck something at the floor.
Instead, his grin broadened.
"Congratulations. You passed."
Jesse sagged in relief. "Oh..."
"Actually, Tiny, since we've got... another fifteen minutes until you've gotta show your face..." He grinned. "How did you figure it out? Ellie helped me a lot with the puzzle."
Ellie... Ellegaard?
"Well, at her insistence anyway. Said she didn't want any random empty-headed numpty trying to help me."
Jesse blinked back to attention. "Well... you said squares. But none of the tiles on the floor were squares, they were rectangles..."
Magnus's grin somehow widened. He shifted Jesse to point at the floor.
On the floor... the rectangles had shifted, slowly, to reveal extra tiles.
They were all, indeed, now all squares.
Jesse's head snapped up and they looked around him.
"The floor is actually tilted very slightly in one direction. Every tile has a weighted one kind of in this slot-" Magnus pointed at it; it was so thin Jesse could barely even see it with how bright the floor was. "So the gravity leads them to slowly, over the course of around 15 minutes, slide over. Once they fit in place... they trigger a switch, and the bombs get primed after a few seconds."
"So the click was for..." Jesse said slowly, a bit of the puzzle snapping into place.
"The tiles to start sliding into place. They move so slowly, and the room is so brightly colored, it's really hard to tell that they're shifting." Magnus gave them a lopsided grin. "How'd you figure out the time limit?"
Jesse shifted. "The clock seemed funny... since you were keeping time, and the time intervals were weird."
His grin widened again. "Good job, tiny."
Jesse blushed a little shyly; he clapped them on the back and began to lead them up to the platform. "Let's get you up onto the platform."
A short pause.
"It'll make you taller, at the very least."
A/N: This puzzle was a mix of something from the Webtoon Tower of God and from the first book in the Mysterious Benedict Society series; Ellegaard and Magnus do collaborate.
Reluctantly.
Very, very reluctantly.
Numpty is my new favorite insult. It's so fun to say.
I switched to a new style of living; total isolation. I'm Xboxed in here at my play station. I keep playing Animal Crossing, though, I'm too invested in this game, boy.
I am very sorry fjdk;a
Responses to new reviews!
472115: Thank you for reading! I'm glad you were happy to see the notif :D
silentrachel: It makes sense; now we're both motivated to update haha
LemonsandMelons: sorry for the late reply! but yes. hopefully he doesn't get his head ripped off.
x.X. A.L. X.x
