The Fright Knight stared at the many runes.
It had been a thousand years, maybe more, since anyone had seen this puzzle, let alone solved it.
It was, after all, designed to be unsolvable.
But when you'd been around as long as the Fright Knight had, you knew: nothing was unsolvable.
Everything, no matter how random or illogical it seemed, had a reason for existence.
Even nonsensical verses with made up words had meaning if you took the time to analyze them.
Every single subatomic particle had its own individual imprint, which would often cause chaotic things to happen if matched with certain other imprints, something the humans had yet to discover.
Even non sequiters had meaning in life and conversations, no matter how much of a jump in logic they seemed, and often were.
And, no, forty-two was not the answer to life the universe, and everything. The answer was much more complex and long, although "For" was the beginning of the initial sentence. "For time," was actually the beginning, and if you used the old spelling, (For tyme) than you did match up the two beginnings. (Fortyme) Of course, that had nothing to do with the runes. The Fright Knight checked.
He even tried the humans' joking answer of forty-two. Nothing.
Though forty-two was related to the puzzle set an ancient language before him. Before you could figure out the question, you had to know the answer. Just like the legendary forty-two.
That's what made this puzzle unsolvable.
Supposedly.
"Aha!" said the Fright Knight suddenly. He grabbed a rune tile and set it in the first of a few hundred spaces. The ruin, which had two meanings, one for the sun, and the other for metal, lit up.
The Fright Knight would have smiled if he had had a mouth. -Well, that makes sense...- he thought, before sending his mind on another brainstorming session, hoping to figure out the third tile. There was no way he was going to figure out the second tile without figuring out the third first.
Puzzles always had solutions, even if there seemed to be no logical way to get to that solution. Sometimes it was simply a matter of thinking like the person who made the puzzle in the first place. Sometimes it was all about thinking in much simpler terms. For example, the solution to the old puzzle "How many chucks could a woodchuck chuck..." was not a specific number, but rather "All the wood he could chuck," although that was a really old example that everyone, even the humans, knew by now. Sometimes it was a little more complex than you thought, requiring metaphors, imaginary situations, and a large amount of seemingly useless trivia in order to complete.
This puzzle was none of the above.
-Oh, of course!- thought the Fright Knight to himself as he moved the twenty-third tile two spaces down and one to the right. -No wonder I couldn't get the third rune...- And he got back to thinking about the puzzle.
The puzzle and the reward were synonymous. If you could figure out the puzzle, you would unlock one of the major secrets of the Universe, sealed away after the Banishment. It certainly wouldn't grant you ultimate power, but it would grant you a lot of power. A whole lot of power.
It had been rumored that Pariah Dark had unraveled the mystery, and that was how he got all his incredible power. The Fright Knight knew this rumor to be false. Pariah Dark had ordered him to let off the rumor in the first place, in order to spread fear among his enemies. Pariah had never even found the ruins.
But Vlad Plasmius had.
Vlad couldn't solve the puzzle. He didn't have the knowledge the Fright Knight possessed. Pariah Dark didn't, either. Almost no ghost did. The Fright Knight could only think of two ghosts who were more knowledgeable about the Universe than he was, and those were Clockwork and...
The Fright Knight snapped his fingers, having stumbled onto one of the answers completely by accident. He put the rune for Death in the forty-third space and went back to thinking.
He and Vlad had an agreement. The Fright Knight would solve the puzzle after Vlad had freed him from the service of Pariah Dark, and they would share in the incredible power of the answer before destroying the puzzle entirely...or at least sealing it off again. The Fright Knight was beginning to doubt that the puzzle could be destroyed. After all, with an answer like that, the solution had to be filled with nigh-on unbelievable power.
The Fright Knight had already figured out the answer to the puzzle's question a long time ago. It was a one-rune and one-word answer, and it was the last thing he would've expected to go there. That's the reason why it was so easy to solve, he started with the last rune he would've put there (after forty-two), so therefore, likely the first rune whoever made this puzzle would've put there, in order to make this puzzle "unsolvable".
The Fright Knight truly had no idea who made the puzzle. It was older than almost every ghost in the ghost zone, and the only ghosts he could think of who were older than the puzzle were the same two who were more knowledgeable about the Universe than him. And they weren't telling.
It was no coincidence that the oldest ghosts were the most knowledgeable. The Fright Knight, being the spirit of fear and of Halloween, was pretty old himself. And, with hundreds of years of life (so to speak) came hundreds of years of experience, and with hundreds of years of experience came hundreds of years of wisdom.
-Wisdom,- he thought, -That's it...- and he placed the rune for wisdom in the third space. Now to work on the second.
It would take years to solve the puzzle. But that was okay. The Fright Knight had plenty of time. He could finish the puzzle. He knew it. He was pretty sure, anyway. After all, that was a pretty difficult answer. It was like the ultimate game of Jeopardy! With 'Secrets of the Universe' as the only category, it had to be. And it was the most difficult question the Fright Knight had ever come across.
The ultimate question to the ultimate answer.
Millions of wrong questions to answer said right answer.
The answer to the puzzle was the one word the Fright Knight never though he'd have to deal with.
Love.
This is the answer you either definitely knew was coming, or had no idea was coming. No middle ground. a
And before anyone asks, no, I don't know the question.
Review, please!