The String and The Labyrinth

Aayla slowly walked down the cobblestone pathway. If she didn't know any better, Aayla would have thought that she was in a regular garden. The hedges stretching up to the sky would have been a bit different, though.

With her right hand on the wall, her left hand held the spool of string. The string slowly unwound as Aayla travelled further into the maze. Sometimes she would have to rewind sections of string if she walked out of a dead end. At each junction, she marked her original entrance and the turns that she already explored, just in case her string failed.

Every step was cautiously planned. Every stone and leafy hedge was checked for traps. Aayla hardly dared to breath in case she missed the snap of a twig or roar of a monster. The maze was eerily silent aside from her footsteps. Not even a breeze rattling the leaves was heard.

She jumped in fear whenever she rounded a corner. Her previous experience in the maze was slowly bubbling to the surface of Aayla's mind. She repeatedly patted her cheeks or pinched herself to stop those memories from re-emerging.

"Come on, Aayla! Now's not the time for a freak out."

After a few twists and turns, intersections with sign boards appeared. The characters looked like Ancient Celes, but Aayla could hardly read them with her basic skills. It was like a modern person trying to read Old English. One part was obviously a question, and then answers appeared underneath. Each answer had an arrow that would point to one of the pathways.

Unable to understand the signs, she simply took out the orb, waved it around the signs a couple of times then continued on her way. That should be good enough for those researchers waiting outside. Aayla really hoped that the trial wouldn't count that against her.

Keeping her hand on the wall, Aayla continued deeper into the maze without any resistance. Her guard went higher and higher as nothing stood in her way.

'Could it really be this easy? No traps, no monsters, no dangerous situations,' she silently questioned.

Only the signs seemed to repeat themselves every so often. If Aayla didn't have the research artifact, then she would have thought that she was going crazy. She reviewed each and every sign that she ever recorded. Many of them popped up again and again with minor differences. The order of the answers had changed.

After walking for over an hour, the string dwindled on the spool. Only a few wraps were left, yet the exit wasn't in sight. Eventually, nothing was left on the spool. Aayla jerked and pulled on it, but couldn't get any extra leeway. She sighed. It was time to go back anyways. Hopefully the data that she did gather was useful.

She turned and started to walk back, wrapping up the string as she walked. A few twists later, a suspicious feeling crept into her mind. The pathway seemed a bit different than she remembered. The last sign should have been nearby.

When she rounded the last corner, Aayla's stomach dropped. The string continued forward right into a hedge. Aayla would have remembered walking through a hedge. She carefully tugged on the string and checked where it came out of the hedge. It was like a really buggy video game where objects got stuck in each other's space.

Careful consideration of the facts led her to one frightening conclusion. The walls move. This was not good for Aayla. Her plans went up in smoke. Neither the string or the hand-on-wall methods worked anymore.

She gritted her teeth and pulled on the string. Eventually, Aayla got only less than a third of it string back before it broke. With nowhere else to go, she put her hand back on the wall and continued forward. Within a few minutes, Aayla found a sign.

Aayla thoroughly scanned the ground. Her mark was not there. Was it cleaned up or did she simply not mark this part of the maze yet? Aayla grabbed the research artifact and pulled up the sign images again. This new sign was again a repeat of an old one. She sat down on the ground and looked at each picture. There had to be some sort of pattern. As a test for students, this trial shouldn't be completely unsolvable.

She carefully wrote her findings on the ground with her marker. Overall, there were twenty-five unique signs. Answer options ranged from two to four. Only five signs were unique. Assuming that this was like a quiz, then she should have correctly answered those questions.

Since she always went to the first pathway on her right, then the answer corresponding to those pathways should be the correct answers. Conversely, the answers corresponding to those pathways should be wrong on the remaining ones.

As Aayla went through the signs again, she noted which answers changed places and which were wrong. Aayla pieced together the correct answers via the process of elimination. There were a few questions with five answer choices, but she improved her odds from twenty percent to sixty percent.

Hehe, she was a multiple-choice queen back on Terra. This much was nothing~. With a smug look on her face, Aayla proudly wrote down her findings on her arms so that she wouldn't lose them. Now that she had this trial all figured out, it was time to finish it and get out. The constant worry about sneak attacks was driving her crazy.

One question, two questions, three questions. Each was answered with ease. For the sake of continuity, Aayla kept her right hand along the wall aside from when she chose the next pathway. Before she left, she recorded each sign just in case. By Aayla's count, only a few questions were left.

When Aayla approached the next sign, she confidently looked up her answer. Before she selected her answer, something seemed off to her. Puzzled, Aayla checked the previous signs. She gritted her teeth as she realized that the rules had changed once again.

This question had six answer choices. In the previous encounters it only had three. Not only that, but the wording was very different in the final line of the question and in the answers. It might as well be a completely different answer. Thus, her blooming confidence was crushed.

How was she supposed to answer this? Aayla had little idea of what the text actually said, yet she couldn't just keep randomly guessing. The trial could increase the difficulty on the remaining questions, add more new ones or do both. She would starve to death if questions and answers kept getting added infinitely.

A frown formed on her lips. Aayla scanned the newest sign with the research artifact then sat down to think again. She wrote out all that she knew on the ground. Her hand fiddled with the tips of her hair. Those idiots outside better not have increased the difficulty.

Aayla gritted her teeth. She would just have to tough this one out and hope for the best. While Aayla still had energy she should try to eliminate as many answers as possible. The sign seemed to smirk at her previous arrogance.

Almost another hour later, she finally whittled down the questions to the last one. No more new ones had been added, though the remaining ones had extensive wording changes. Aayla took an educated guess to finish the last question up early.

Fortunately, her guess paid off. After nearly four hours inside the maze, she arrived at large plaza. It was about the size of the rear courtyard. A tall stone stele stood in the center of the plaza. Before she could enter, Aayla ran headfirst into something.

"What on Earth was that for?!"

She stumbled back while rubbing her nose then nearly tripped over some missing tiles. An invisible barrier was blocking the otherwise wide-open doorway to the plaza. The end was just in sight but she still couldn't reach it.

Touching it again just repeated the earlier experience. Her hand was bounced back like the barrier was made of rubber. She scratched her head and looked around. The walls seemed the same. There were no statues or signs. Nothing was hanging overhead. Wait, why would such a well-kept place have missing floor tiles?

Aayla carefully looked over the floor. The tiles just in front of the exit were very strange. They came in multiple colors and sizes. A few appeared to be missing. A tiny plaque was embedded into the ground next to the strange tiles. She caught several words that were repeated on the signs.

Could this be some sort of test based on the previous questions? Well, then Aayla was really in trouble now because she solved the previous questions by the process of elimination. She started wiggling the tiles to see if she could make them do anything at all.

Frustrated, Aayla decided to try various magic spells to see if they did anything. Otherwise, she would be stuck. The results were as one would expect.