Chapter 419: More Riddles, More Aejaz, More Punishments

"Still bothering you?"

"Hmmm..." Ares was still pontificating over his conundrum to no avail and Aejaz asking him about it wasn't helping! He really couldn't think of any easy way out of the stepper mutant situation and he'd already arrived at the Riddlemyd entrance so he needed to focus on this now instead. There were rumours of scavengers patrolling the dessert more often nowadays, and one infamous group in particular, but Ares hadn't come across them so it was a peaceful trip in which he spent most of his time stuck in his own head up until Aejaz just now snapped him out of it.

BANG

Ares headbutt the side of an inn, that had done him no wrong and was minding its own business, before turning to Aejaz and giving him a thumbs up. "All better now!" Surprisingly, Ares actually did look considerably better and Aejaz was wondering if his brother had just given himself amnesia... If nothing else he'd given the inn a dent in the wall and it looked like the innkeeper was coming outside to see what all the commotion was about. Ares and Aejaz had already scarpered but they could hear the guy cursing at everyone else around and trying to find out who was the culprit of this thuggish property damage!

As Ares and Aejaz entered the Riddlemyd, Ares took a deep breath and sighed as he reassured Aejaz he was fine. "There's still a lot to consider but none of that matters today, at least, so I'll stop thinking about it and direct all my attention to the Riddlemyd instead. The last thing I want to do is sleepwalk through the Riddlemyd headfirst into a trap. This place is dangerous as well and I can't be careless during our dungeon spelunking sessions so don't worry about me, I'll be fine from here on out. Rather, worry about yourself you riddle flunky! You're the biggest threat to me of all! Whenever you yell out an incorrect answer its you that comes closest to killing me!"

"I don't care!" Aejaz was defiant when it came to riddles and his mind was thoroughly made up in that regard. "I will get one right eventually and then all will bow before my riddle prowess! I shall become the riddle God of Xasca, mark my words!" Aejaz seemed oddly confident in this but Ares couldn't be bothered to burst his bubble. Such a thing would definitely never happen and he was high on his own supply if he thought as such!

"And who the hell would bestow you with the title 'riddle God' just for getting one poxy riddle right anyway!? This isn't a fantasy world in one of your books! Better yer, why don't you worry about the whole 'getting one right' part first! I think Loris Lax could run a marathon in high heels long before you ever get a riddle right!"

"That's too far!"

"Heh, for you maybe. Not for Loris though!"

Hmph

Aejaz crossed his arms and turned his nose up at Ares. "Alright then, let me show you who's boss around here!" With determined steps, Aejaz stomped through the portal to the next unexplored floor from the hub room. This was the first time he'd ever willing walked through a portal before Ares... Where was this confidence at literally any other point in time!? Why was he only capable of showing fierce passion and unyielding intent when it came to riddles?! He wasn't even good at them! This guy... Ares could do nothing but shake his head and follow after him... Though following in Aejaz' footsteps for once was certainly a novel feeling. Not having to trailblaze a path for him, and getting to kick back and let someone else scout the way first, was a nice change of pace! Maybe Ares should do this more often and dangle riddles in front of Aejaz like a carrot on a stick... if it got him moving, Ares would damn well become a riddle master himself! Speaking of riddle masters, Ares appeared in a riddle room, which was convenient given Aejaz' current mood, and it seemed like Tom Tom was already firing on all cylinders and had begun speaking right as Ares entered.

"A man overhears his wife talking to one of their children. He thinks nothing of it but eventually decides he was curious to know what the conversation was about. He finds his three daughters all playing around in the back garden of their house and asks them who was talking with their mother. Daughter A says it definitely wasn't her. Daughter B says it definitely wasn't her either. And, sure enough, daughter C says it also wasn't her. To make matters worse, they can all attest as witnesses to each others statements, complicating the matter even further. The father, however, now has the answer he was looking for and knows exactly who the mother was talking to. There is only one possible answer. I have two questions for you. Answering the first will allow you to proceed, answering the second one as well will allow you to skip a room. You can choose not to answer the second question but, if you do and get it wrong, you will be punished as though you failed this room before being made to leave. You do not get more than one attempt at the second question. Without further ado, first of all, 'how many of the daughters were telling the truth'? The second question, once your done contemplating the first, is, 'who was the mother talking to exactly'?" Tom Tom sunk back into the wall and started fiddling around with its tongue, using it to clean some food from his teeth as he was probably in the middle of eating breakfast before dumb and dumber had arrived.

Ares took on a thinker pose as he begun to work through the possibilities... But that was the problem, there really weren't any! Usually, with setups like this, each individual witness would say something different! All of the daughters said the exact same line! Plus the first question Tom Tom was asking was usually the information given, not the riddle itself! Knowing how many people were lying and how many were telling the truth was a key element to solving a puzzle like this under normal circumstances... Tom Tom had reinvented the type of riddle this was to come up with something devious and so the entire structure of this riddle was a bait! Ares could tell that much at least... Which was a stark contrast to Aejaz who was asking Tom Tom to repeat the daughter's statements one by one... No! Ares shook his head! He couldn't let himself get distracted by Aejaz' nonsense! He had ot come up with the correct answer himself as he was basically all alone in the riddle rooms! Hmm... Is it really so simple? Ares had an answer for the first question but, annoyingly, coming up with one only left him stumped as to the second half now! Whatever answer he came up with for the first half needed to lead into the answer for the second half as well, so you would realise pretty quickly if your first assumption was wrong, and all of Ares' guesses were hitting the brick wall that was the second question... It had to be solvable using all the information you had after answering the first question and that could be found in the riddle's contents... Ares was going over every single word Tom Tom had spoken but, annoyingly, it looked like Aejaz was coming over to raise some kind of complain with him about this riddle... Ares didn't wanna hear it right now! he was busy actually thinking! Unfortunately he had no choice in the matter and Aejaz called out to him regardless of his wishes...

"Brother! I think this cat is lying to us! It's not possible to solve this riddle!"

SIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"Aejaz... Go take a nap... Wait... Pffft... I think you just gave me the answer." Ares chuckled to himself and started walking over to Tom Tom. "Maybe if you used your head properly for a few minutes you could have come up with the answer as well... Whatever... And no! Tom Tom may be working for Sevorus but he's not going to give us an unsolvable riddle! I recognise him as a fellow prideful individual and his ego would not allow him to do such a thing! Have at least some faith in him would you?! Besides, if he pulls such a stunt you can bet your ass I'll be the first person to blow up on him! literally!" Ares waved aside Aejaz;' concerns and spoke to Tom Tom. "I wanna answer both questions."

"Go ahead." With a nod from Tom Tom, Ares gave his answers and his reasoning.

"So first up, how many sisters were telling the truth? All of them! There's nothing about the riddle that suggests otherwise and the real tricky part was ignoring the entire setup and just taking their word at face value. People's familiarity with this type of riddle means everyone expects at least one sister to be lying but this is the way it has to be because you specifically stated that the father knew who talked to the mother after the exact same responses were given to him by all three of them. What I mean by this is that the answer to question two is that none of them spoke to the mother. The riddle states she spoke to her CHILD, not one of her DAUGHTERS. The mother spoke to a son and all the daughters were telling the truth! I realised it when Aejaz called me 'brother' that it was a potential answer, one not explicitly stated by the riddle as it was trying to lure you away from that possibility. If it couldn't be a daughter because their alibis all checked out, and was definitely a child that talked with the mother, and the father knew for sure, then it must have been a son. And only one at that otherwise the father would then have to go ask multiple sons to get the answer he was looking for. Not bad Tom Tom, I like that one. it gives you all the information without actually telling you. I give you a golden star and an S+ for your work!"

"Correct... And I don't want no stinkin' star! Get away from me damnit!" Tom Tom ducked and shook his head to avoid the annihilation star Ares just moulded out of mana and was trying to stick to Tom Tom's forehead. It would probably blow up as well so Tom Tom wanted nothing to do with this reward! Ares could keep it!

"Wait a minute!"

"Oh boy, here we go again..." Ares slapped his own forehead as Aejaz came sauntering into the conversation, as per usual, and was about to quarrel with Tom Tom over some random and insignificant detail regarding the riddle being imperfect yet again... Also, Ares jsut realised that in slapping his own forehead he'd accidentally stuck the explosive star to himself instead of Tom Tom's head... Whoops...

Boom

While Ares was busy dusting himself off from the mini explosion he blew himself up with, Aejaz faced Tom Tom and complained! "What if the child was a shade! I know Ares calls Appa his daughter but shades are technically neither sons or daughters!"

"Tom Tom..." Ares cleared his throat of lingering dust and golden mana before continuing. "I give you permission to eat him."

"Eugh..." Tom Tom looked repulsed at this suggestion. "I would rather not... I have a feeling he'd taste like Tofu."

Aejaz was taken aback. "What the hell is that oddly specific comment supposed to mean and why do I feel incredibly insulted right now?"

"Who cares! Just get lost already! Both of you!" Tom Tom shooed the bandit brothers towards the hall way and tuned to stone so as not to deal with them anymore. It was bad enough he'd have to see them again in the next room so if he could at least finish dealing with them in this room then that was for the best. For all their annoying traits they did at least get into the rooms, and start them, quickly... Although really that was because Tom Tom was on the ball when it came to throwing challenges at them. Could he be blamed, though? If he let Aejaz talk his ears off before he started then Tom Tom would lose his damn mind!

As for Ares and Aejaz, they walked into the passageway but were dragged into a portal that appeared before them instead of having to trudge down a hallway. They were skipping a room thanks to their hard work, after all, so a quick teleport was in order... And, judging by the room layout where they ended up after being spat out by the spatial magic, it was time for... Another riddle... There really were a lot of riddle rooms in this place but, then again, that was its namesake so it wasn't really that surprising and Ares couldn't complain. He knew what he was getting himself into and this was what he'd signed up for!

"Shade without light, darkest night. Light without shade, far too bright. What am I?" Tom Tom took the floor, handed it over in one fell swoop, and now it was up to Ares... And, depending on how you looked at it, Aejaz, to come up with a solution... Though you'd have to look at this from the perspective of a drunk idiot to include Aejaz in the list of contenders for this challenge really. He'd long since proven himself to be... Unreliable, at best, in this sort of situation...

"The sun and the moon!"

...

Point in case... Ares already knew this answer Aejaz just blurted out was wrong, because Ares had already come to the correct conclusion just a split second ago, and so he took up a combat stance and prepared for the worst because a punishment was incoming in one form or another...

"Incorrect!" Tom Tom seemed to take great joy in dunking on Aejaz' smiley face and, honestly, Ares couldn't blame him for it... If anything, at this point, Ares wished he could be the one to shut Aejaz up too! As for the punishment...

CLUNK

A strange rattling noise came from underneath the floor and Ares' first gut instinct told him this wasn't going to be a combat punishment... Rather, it sounded like gears were moving and the entire room was changing to facilitate whatever came next... No, that wasn't exactly correct either. The room itself wasn't changing, its position in the Riddlemyd was. Everything outside the room was moving around it but that just raised Ares' alertness even more because Tom Tom was altering the environment before dumping him and Aejaz into new surroundings without any mercy. Was there going to be frigid winds released into this room in a bid to freeze them to death? A poison cloud that chased the brothers around, trying to infest their lungs perhaps? A bunch of spiked walls, like what Ares dealt with in Dominus' mansion in Baja forest, closing in form either side maybe? Any number of possibilities could all wind up being the real deal so Ares activated Omniscience and kept his eyes trained firmly on the walls to see what they would unleash at him... Only for the issue to wind up being something else entirely! Ares was looking sideways at the walls but, really, he should have been looking down at the floor where he heard the original noise!

Whoosh

With no prior warning, save for the gear turning noise earlier that could have clued Ares in, the floor split in half like a set of trap doors and both Aejaz and Ares were dropped down towards a pit of lava beneath them! There were small protrusions on the wall that could be grabbed but in this flaming pit they would likely not be much better than putting your hand on a scorching hot stove and they might as well have been bits of fiery charcoal straight from the pits of hell for all the difference it made. Ares didn't wanna grab that! Thankfully he didn't need to though as he could just "Voidwalk" out!... "Voidwalk" out!... "Voidwalk?"... Or not... Ares tried activating his arts but there was an anti-magic rune setup somewhere in this pit that prevented it... This was the second time Tom Tom had used anti-magic in conjunction with a room with lava! This time was far more dangerous and devious though because there weren't any platforms to stand on and so flight, or something equivalent, would have been way more useful. It looked like the wall was really the only way to go so Ares chucked Aejaz the Deep Blue, so the fool that got them into this situation could keep his hands moist and cool without the need for mana and grab the wall without suffering major burns, wrapped his Zephyr around his own hands, and angled himself to fall towards the wall. Ares managed to grab hold of a protrusion a few inches above the lava, saving himself right before he sunk into the stuff, and the same was true of Aejaz... Although he had singed his buttocks a little and was scampering up the wall at lightening speed with a burning fire on his rear in need of extinguishing... Ares couldn't tell if this idiot was the worst assassin he'd ever seen or the best... Under normal circumstances that choice was easy but, for some unknowable reason, as soon as riddles entered the equation, Aejaz became utterly inept!

Ares sighed and, bit by bit, hoisted himself up through the pit. He was sweating by the time he made it out but, to be fair, it had been really damn hot in there! Ares walked over to Aejaz and snatched the Deep Blue he was staring at away from him. Much like the Nyxian Prowler, as it turned out, the Deep Blue did passively do something, it just wasn't the most useful thing ever. It could summon tiny amounts of water and keep the wearer feeling somewhat cool and refreshed, neither of which required mana. That was it. It wasn't a weapon, it couldn't be used to attack people, it was just a small quality of life tool that was actually rather handy in the desert. Aejaz had been using his acrimony to keep cool but now Ares had the Deep Blue's effect and he was sitting pretty too. As for climbing up that wall with it, all Aejaz had to do was make a small layer of water over his palm and, while it would still be hot, he could scamper up the wall long before it started to really become a problem and burn him. This effect of the Deep Blue really wasn't anything special but that was fine because the Pelagic Prison made up for that a thousand times over and Ares couldn't complain. Ares would have let Aejaz hold onto it but he was already holding onto the Nyxian Prowler more often than Ares was and he didn't deserve the either enabler right now! "You! What did we say about not throwing answers out without discussing it with one another! It's been one day since the last time this happened! Shmuck!" Ares bemoaned as he put Aejaz in a headlock and rubbed his knuckles against the fool's head to give him a noogie. He left Aejaz near the corner of the room to squat down and rub his burning head while he gave Tom Tom the answer he was actually looking for.

"Shade without light, darkest night. Light without shade, far too bright. You are a lamp. A lamp with a shade, but no bulb, is too dark and a lamp with a bulb, but no shade, is too bright. I won't even bother asking my idiot brother what he was harping on about with the sun and the moon thing so let's not get into that!"

"Correct... Tsk, you still haven't' gotten a single one wrong!" Tom Tom complained with a pouty face. "Come on already! Stop sitting around and waiting for the correct answer to come to you. Be more bold, more free! More impulsive and more fearless! guess the first thing that comes into your brain and be like everyone else every now and then damn it!"

Ares actually had been doing a lot better than he expected. He figured he would get at least one wrong by now but, in a weird way, having Aejaz around was helping?... Somewhat? Having a clear example of what not to do, and what line of thinking to not follow, was inadvertently benefitting Ares. Plus, Aejaz' occasional outbursts had helped Ares solve some of the riddles so two brains was better than one... Even if one of them wasn't ever actively contributing to the thinking part... Ares planned on keeping this correct streak alive as long as he could not because he wanted to set some kind of record, or because he wanted to get through the Riddlemyd perfectly, it was jsut because it saved time and he wanted to find his DNA before it was gift wrapped and sent to Sevorus! Aejaz seemed to have forgotten entirely about that little sub plot and was wasting Ares' time with his nonsensical guesses again! Then again, it seemed like Tom Tom had also forgotten about the DNA thing as he was more concerned with making the person who'd done nothing but succeed so far fail. He'd created a challenging dungeon, the joy of which came from struggling to overcome adversity, and yet here was Ares who remained undaunted by everything thrown at him so far. The Anubis had been looking good for a hot minute before the tide shifted so drastically. Tom Tom was going to have to work harder to satisfy his competitive streak's disappointment!

There was no extra bonus riddle this time around, and Aejaz was still too busy recovering from his head burn trauma to raise complaints about the riddle, so the brothers were free to head off into the passageway and start walking towards the next room. Ares had taken Tom Tom's pleas earlier to heart and wasn't blitzing through the hallways at Mach ten so the sphinx could ready the next room properly. Ares wasn't in any rush as he felt confident he could reach the DNA quickly enough even if he was playing fair. Plus if he didn't then there was a non-zero chance Tom Tom jsut said 'screw it' and made the rooms borderline impossible to spite Ares. He would play fair as long as Ares did so risking making every room take five times as long just for the sake of getting to them in half the time wasn't worth it! Patience was a virtue and the corridors in the lower floors weren't actually anything tricky anyway. It was only in the deeper floors that hallways would take upwards of an hour to navigate and fight through with traps and opponents littering them constantly. As such, Ares and Aejaz made their way through another peaceful corridor in under a minute and were already staring down the next room... If it could even be called such a thing... It was actually still just a corridor but there were two paths and so it was more of a junction leading to two different rooms right now. Tom Tom was above the split path and had just come to life to explain the rules of whatever this was.

"The next room you enter will be one of two different options that you are free to pick from based on the hint I give you about what they entail. Choose wisely and have no regrets, puny human!... Well you aren't exactly a human but that's what it says in the script... I should really change it to be more broadly applicable... Whatever! here are your options! Ahem... A maze without gravity or an illusion of depravity! Physical or mental anguish, left or right, make your wish! After the decision you reveal, the other path I will seal!"

"Hmm.. Choices choices..." The options sounded interesting but Ares figured the better option was going left. He had his own reasons for picking it but he figured he would check in with Aejaz and see what he thought about the matter too before picking. He was here as well and his thoughts, on anything other than riddles, were equally valid and worth considering! Thankfully there was no timer to hurry up the decision making process so the brothers were free to sit around and discuss before making their move. Contrary to what Ares expected, Aejaz seemed to want to go to the right... This discussion was going to take a while...