Stepping through the open door, Reece and Tress entered the temple proper. The first thing Reece noticed was that the place was a lot cleaner than basically every other ruin he’d been in. Heck, his apartment building had a janitor (in theory) and it was often in more disarray. The walls looked freshly painted, lacking any cracks or chips. The furniture seemed free from decay, the torches were lit, even the air tasted clean. There was a wonder to be beheld here, and yet of all possible emotions Reece felt dread. Had this place been refurbished or something? The worry that this place wouldn't be the enlightening look into the past he wanted dug into his brain. He attempted to take solace that, at least as far as he could tell, any restorations were faithful to the style at the time. He’d certainly want to take the time and look over everything here regardless. Just as soon as there’s no longer a disembodied voice yelling for my attention.
“First test of friendship!” the disembodied voice of Roc yelled out, “A test of your ability to work together, solve puzzles, communicate, and more! Several puzzles have been hidden throughout this room and upon solving each puzzle you will find a hint needed to solve the final puzzle on the back wall there. Upon completion of which will mark the end of this stage of the test. You two wonderful friends will need to work together to search the place and solve the puzzles…”
Roc continued to drone on, explaining the thematic elements of the escape room, and giving out suggestions, hints, and so on, with Reece listening intently. Reece had done a few escape rooms before at Muse’s invitation
[1]
He was mostly just invited so Muse and his boyfriend could do escape rooms meant for more than two people without relying on strangers, but he still had fun with it., so he knew what to expect, but he diligently listened for any kind of special rules. And assuming this wasn’t a recent addition, there was something exciting about learning that escape rooms were an ancient pastime and not a recent invention, even acknowledging they might’ve served a different cultural niche.
Tress, on the other hand, fully tuned Roc out and walked straight to the “final puzzle” to take a closer look at it. It seemed to be a fairly standard, if oversized, combination lock built into the wall. The lock used letters instead of numbers and had room for a 10-letter word. There aren’t that many 10-letter words, are there? …Wait, hang on… After a moment spent counting letters to make sure, Tress began twisting the dials.
“…and of course, if you ever are stuck on a puzzle, I would happily – er, what are you doing?” Roc asked, apparently having noticed Tress chipping away at the final puzzle, “I do respect your gumption, but that’s supposed to be the last puzzle! I doubt you could solve it without any clues! You should look for a different puzzle to start with. If you just try and brute force it, there are several trillion possible combinations, and–”
“Aaand, there we go,” Tress said happily, as she set the final input to “P,” completing the word
FRIENDSHIP
Moments later, the walls softly rumbled, and the exit from the room slowly opened up. Tress shot Reece a proud and confident smile, but she dropped it when she noticed he wasn’t looking. Instead, his eyes were fixed at nothing in particular, clearly stuck in some train of thought, but what she could not tell.
Roc began mumbling significantly more audibly than probably intended “wow. I knew that was cliche, but I didn’t think – but was that enough – okay, no, this is good, I can work with this.” After a quiet cough, Roc’s voice boomed once more “Ah, what a wonderful result you two! It is clear that your thoughts of friendship are quite overpowering, letting you see right through my test’s tricks into what truly matters! Such a wonderful display of what friends can do when they… Uh… anyway, come now! To the next trial!”
Tress took a few steps towards the exit, but Reece didn’t move to follow right away, still seemingly off in his own world. Tress wondered what could be distracting him so much, so she tried a shot in the dark. “Look, okay, I didn’t KNOW that would work. But if I didn’t try it and it would’ve worked, I’d have been mad.” Reece snapped out of his train of thought and blinked all of his eyes at her, clearly not fully following this new conversation.
“O-oh, sorry, what?” he asked
“…Were not wondering how I solved that puzzle?”
“Huh? Oh no, I understood that, it made sense enough.”
“Well, what was it then? You’ve clearly got something on your mind.”
“It’s nothing, really.” Reece had regained composure and walked past Tress to the door. “Come on, let’s just continue on.”
Ugh, stuck with my head in the clouds again. It's a shame we're skipping this one, but that doesn't matter right now. I can plan an escape room trip later, no need to burden Tress with such silly stuff. She’s focused on getting this done, so I should be focused too, not daydreaming for no reason.
Watching Reece pass by without a word of what was on his mind, Tress could do nothing but shrug and follow him into the next chamber.