Her hands reach out, slipping as Venus grasps for a handhold in the dark tunnel she is sliding through. A violent twist sends her tumbling into a ball before tipping downwards in the dark and shooting her onward faster. She screams as the slide dips and she goes airborne in a split second. Venus' heart drums wildly in her chest as she continues on in the dark with no control.

And then, without warning, just as before, the slide beneath her abruptly disappears.

She's falling again, downwards toward a soft, golden light. Venus closes her eyes tight, fear forming her into a ball as she approaches the ground. She lands, dipping into the flexible material before bouncing back up. Venus opens her eyes in shock, unfolding herself as she bounces on the trampoline beneath her. She can't help the terrified giggle that slips from her lips as she flops on to her back to take a deep breath.

Looking up at the ceiling, Venus' eyes glare into the darkness for the opening of the tunnel she had flown through moments before, or for the camera that has to be watching her. She can't see a thing, until a screaming shadow appears, falling at an alarming speed.

Jasper is falling face forward, screaming, bound to faceplant again, except this time he's scared because he has to be about fifty feet in the air. He groans as he hits the rubbery material, gasping as he twists in midair and bounces softly on his back.

"What the hell?"

Jasper sits up staring at the huge trampoline around him before his eyes land on the girl his age a few feet away from him.

"I know right?"

Another hesitant giggle slips from her lips, "that was terrifying."

Her eyes turn away from the boy across from her and to the golden light she had seen when she first entered this room. Jasper follows her gaze and his brow furrows.

"I have a feeling that they want us to follow that, right?"

"As far as I can see, it's the only way to go. And we have to go somewhere."

The pair stands and make their way off of the trampoline. There are a few odd piles of sand spread throughout the room and the only way out of the room has torches on either side of it. Venus peers into the hallways, spotting more torches lighting the way.

Jasper mutters beside her, "I can't see out the other end."

"Me either, but I think that this is our only choice."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it though."

"So do you want to go first or–"

"Hold up."

He grabs Venus by the arm as she moves to enter the hallway. Jasper goes over to one of the torches beside the arch and yanks it out of its place on the wall.

"I might be overthinking this, but have you ever seen any of those old movies where the adventurer goes into a temple-like place like this?"

"Maybe? What does that have to do with this?"

Jasper leans through the arch, tiptoeing onto the first few stone tiles beneath them. He waves the torch in front of him, all the way up and down. He takes another slow step and Venus cautiously steps after him.

"Dude, there's nothing here. I don't think that this is part of it yet–''

Several darts shoot out of the wall to her right as Venus pushes past the boy in grey and steps onto a wire just above an untouched stone tile.

"Shit!"

Jasper grabs the girl by the waist, pulling her back swiftly. Venus practically screams, grabbing at the boy's arms around her middle as she stares wide-eyed at the arrows that almost went through her.

"Thank you," she whispers, heart beating like crazy as her head spins. "You can um, keep going first and doing whatever you're doing. Please."

"Yeah," Jasper nods, staring at the arrows, their heads completely embedded in the wall to his left. "Are you good, Green?"

"Hmm? Oh, um, yep, I'm great."

Neither of the two move for a minute. Frozen by the realization that this is very real. That they literally could have just died. That if they had just wandered in here without thinking, they would be dead.

Jasper leans down, picking up his torch again.

"I'm Jasper by the way."

"Venus."

"No, no, no–"

James yelps as he tumbles down the pitch-black slide. He hates heights. He hates falling. He hates having no control. He hates that he's here. His hands find the sides, burning as the force taking him forward doesn't relent, and he pleads to his gods that this stops.

And then he's spinning, twisting, and turning, and he feels like he's been thrown upside down within the tunnel. He closes his eyes tight, yelping again as he hits a wall before being flung into another curve. Then he's being shot from the slide and landing heavily on a mattress-like thing embedded in the floor.

James sits up cautiously, looking out and his jaw drops. He's in a huge cavernous room, there's a smooth concrete floor around him that ends as it meets an array of stone tiles.

"Ahhh!"

James whips his head to his left to find another ending of a slide and a small pile of pink on the mattress beneath its opening.

Athena is sure that she screamed the entire time she was on the slide of doom. They lay facedown on the semi-comfortable mattress and just breathe for a minute. Her brain works overtime as she runs through a list that helps her come to terms with her new reality. Just as they convince themself that they're alone and probably will be for the rest of the Puzzler, a voice scares Athena out of her head.

"Hello? Are you alright?"

Athena lifts her head to meet a boy in blue's eyes. He's definitely older than her and her eyes widen just a little as she realizes that she doesn't have to be alone now.

James is squatting next to the small bundle of pink's mattress, trying to smile. He's got a mini collection of sweat on his brow from the stress of being forced to face one of his fears.

But she's obviously younger than him, and that causes a part of his heart to twinge. She doesn't deserve to be stuck in here. Especially with him, someone who has the horrible knowledge of knowing that for some reason he's here on purpose. Neither of them deserves this though. No one deserves this.

"Are you good?"

"Oh! Yes, sorry, I was just trying to come to terms with all of this."

Athena gestures to the space around them and their jaw drops as her eyes land on the giant room for the first time. James stands, his smile feeling a little more real as he offers a hand down to the kid. They take it, allowing him to pull them up.

Athena immediately moves to get a closer look. Her eyes trail over the multitude of symbols and words of who knows how many languages spread across all of the stones. Their gaze shifts and Athena gasps, turning back to the boy in blue to make sure that he sees what she does.

"Look! There's an exit over there!"

And sure enough, with a little squinting, James can see a wooden door across the cavern. Athena has moved on, now looking at a few of the tiles along the edge of the concrete. They go to take a step forward onto a tile with a symbol on it that looks like a crude drawing of a giraffe.

Except her foot plunges through the step, Athena screams. James lunges for her, grabbing her arm as she tips forward and yanking her back. Athena quickly grabs on, getting out of the new hole and wrapping their arms around the boy. James pants, staring at the gaping hole in the ground, one hand tight around the girl.

"Crap. So, no just walking across."

"No shit, Sherlock."

James looks down at the kid still shaking in his arms.

"Language, Pink."

They shoot him a mock glare.

"It's Athena, actually."

"I'm James."

Athena looks back out at the sea of tiles and symbols, fear trying to force itself to the forefront of her mind.

"What do we do?"

His eyes wander around the room, confusion and frustration growing in him because he doesn't know. How are they supposed to know what's safe and what isn't? The only rules that they got for the Puzzler was their time limit, that they could work together, and that anything goes. And James, James knows even more so now, that rule three is for everyone who is a part of the Puzzler.

"James?"

"Found it!"

He grins, quickly standing up and pulling Athena up after him, pointing out the pattern once they're on even ground.

"Look at the walls, there are symbols there too but they repeat after so many. It's a pattern! And I bet that the pattern on the wall is the same pattern we need to follow to get across."

Athena grins, looking up to meet James' eyes.

"Let's get out of this hell hole."

Ronnie sits in the darkness stunned. She had fallen for almost a minute before landing on a trampoline in the dark. A heavy bounce to her left had alerted her to the presence of another person who she soon learned was a guy named Elijah, the guy in yellow she'd been almost across from in the circle.

Elijah holds Ronnie's hand in the dark. She had introduced herself after they had fallen. He could kind of picture the girl in purple, but all he could do now is hold her hand as they sit in the dark.

"How long do you think we'll be here f–"

The pair scream as the trampoline swiftly drops open, dumping them to fall again. Light floods Ronnie's vision as she falls. The pair hit the ground beneath them hard. Elijah groans and rolls to lay on his back panting.

"They need to stop freaking doing that!"

"Literally."

Ronnie breathes in deeply as she looks Elijah over.

"Look at you, Yellow. Perfect image of sunshine."

"Shut up, Purple."

He smiles over at Ronnie and sighs. Only, Elijah's eyes widen and he sits up fast. Ronnie flinches, turning to look over her shoulder, and her mouth gapes as she fully takes in her surroundings.

The pair are sitting in a pile of sand in the middle of a room full of a whole ton of Ancient Egyptian stuff. Tall vases and creepy statues are all around them, some of the images even carved into the walls. Hieroglyphics and pictures cover all spare surfaces, and there are small piles of dusty scrolls and glittering treasures. One wall is made up entirely of a half-wooden, half-stone bookcase filled with more scrolls and other scrap items.

"What the–"

Ronnie stands up, spinning around the room, and panic quickly shows on her face.

"There's no way out!"

"What?"

Elijah pushes himself up off the floor and spins around the room the same way that Ronnie did. His breath catches in his throat, sure enough, there's no door in sight.

Ronnie steps over to a table covered with jars of all sizes and a balance scale. Elijah glances over a different table with shreds of papers all over it with hieroglyphs written across them. He spots an hourglass on the corner of the table, but the sand is stuck in place at the top of the hourglass. Elijah goes to grab it and lift it, but the hourglass itself and the sand inside it doesn't budge.

"Hey, Sunshine?"

Elijah groans, "Sticking with that, are you? What is it, Ronnie?"

She meets his eyes, her own wide with a sudden realization.

"Did you ever do escape rooms for a subject in school?"

The same realization hits him at her words.

"Shit."

And with that, the sand in the hourglass begins to fall.

Laverna sits cross-legged on the ground staring at a small jumble of mixed-up wooden pieces of different shapes and sizes. She picks a pair up and tries to put them together, failing immediately. She doesn't understand what she's supposed to do with this mess, but she knows that the needs to figure it out fast.

A scream echoes from the exit of the blacked-out slide that Laverna had been spit out of a few minutes ago. Her brow scrunches and she walks over to the tunnel. As Laverna sticks her head into the tunnel, trying to see through the darkness, a body hurtles from the shadows directly into her.

Adella has tears streaming down her cheeks and she sobs as she finally stops and is surrounded by a warm light.

"Ouch."

"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry!"

Adella wipes at her face with her sleeve and scurries off of the girl under her. Laverna takes one look at the mess of a girl in white and blinks in surprise.

"Are you okay?"

There's a hint of judgment in her tone as Laverna glances over the gasping girl who still hasn't fully stopped her "meltdown". However, it flies over Adella's head as she's consumed by her own emotions.

"Maybe? I'm just extremely scared of the dark, as stupid as it sounds, and that was absolutely terrifying."

"Oh," the girl in green says, her hand going to her chin as though deep in thought. "Well, it's not that stupid of a fear, my brother can't sleep without the lights on in his room. He won the Puzzler a couple years ago."

"Huh," Adella sniffles, rubbing at her nose with her sleeve again.

"Hey, do you know anything about puzzles? Or woodwork?"

"What?"

Laverna stands up and Adella follows her over to the small piles of wooden pieces jumbled up. They lay in nine different sections, divided by different colored wood, and the bowl-like shapes molded into the sand.

"They were all mixed up when I got here so I put them together by types of wood. I just can't get any of the pieces to fit together."

Laverna watches the girl in white pick up the same pair of pieces she had held earlier. Her mind spins, observing how the girl lays down one piece and grabs another before fitting them together easily. A grin makes its way to Laverna's lips.

"How did you do that?"

"They're all types of Egyptian puzzles. The little wooden ones where you make circle or square shapes from weirdly carved pieces. You just have to follow the pattern within the wood pieces."

Laverna kneels next to the puzzle next to her, grabbing a piece and looking at all of the other pieces before picking a second. She grins wider, trying to hide her surprise, as the pieces fit together perfectly.

"Like this then?"

"Yeah, that's it!"

Adella smiles back, reaching for a third piece to her puzzle.

"I'm Laverna, by the way."

"I'm Adella!"

Laverna makes a mental note as she watches Adella fit two more pieces of her puzzle together, her grin growing ever wider and her plans changing by the second.

'No, you're perfect.'

Margaux feels like she might be sick. A younger girl in black watches her press her forehead against the wall between the slides they came through with a brow raised in confusion. She can fucking hear them. Hundreds upon thousands of bugs crawl about in the huge pit of the room the pair are in.

"Are you okay?"

A hand touches her shoulder and Margaux flinches, turning her head toward the touch to find the younger girl leaning sideways to make eye contact with an awkward smile on her lips.

"Not really," Margaux confesses. "It could have been anything, like snakes or piranhas and I would have been fine! But not bugs, I can not do bugs!"

Hye-jin squats under Margaux, looking up at the older girl with an understanding look on her face. Margaux notices that she looks better than when the pair entered the room. She had flown in, screaming, and landed in an awkward tangle of limbs. After that, the younger girl had taken a couple of minutes to just breathe before she even said a word.

"It's going to be okay."

Hye-jin tries smiling again, she knows what Margaux is capable of. Of course, she hadn't expected this, but Hye-jin knows that they can get past it.

"Why is it that the little kids in this game are calming down faster than me?"

"Well for one, I'm not that "little". And two, I want to look cool to impress people."

It's blatant honesty and Margaux can't help chuckling under her breath as she looks down into the kid's eyes. This twisted game is being live streamed somehow, even if that does sound like a silly reason. She can practically see the shine in them that screams admiration as the girl in black looks up at her with a smile.

"Okay. Let's do this, yeah?"

"Let's go!"

Hye-jin puts a hand up and Margaux smiles as she takes the girl's hand and pulls her off the ground. The pair turn and stare out at the wide pit. There's an obstacle course spread out across the ceiling. Most of it is complicated with only a handful of "rest pads" in the mess of it.

"So, are you any good at this kind of stuff?"

"I'm pretty good. You?"

"I'm great."

Margaux smiles down at Hye-jin. And she can't help thinking back to what her father had said when this girl's profile had first popped up.

"Strong smarts, good athlete. The only thing is that she's young. I want you to make your own decisions–"

"Dad!" Margaux had looked at the little girl and seen just that, a child.

"I do! But if you'll let me tell you just one thing to do. Just one – try to get close to this kid. It'll be worth it, sweetheart."

She doesn't know what her dad means exactly, but as Margaux looks into Hye-jin's eyes, her smile grows. A part of her actually agrees with her dad (although she'll never tell him that).

"Oh, yeah, I'm–"

"Margaux. I know."

Hye-jin grins at the older girl, a swell of relief washing away the sick feeling flooding her gut. Margaux's eyes widen, but her smile remains.

"Okay Hye-jin," she offers a hand out to the younger girl, "let's do this."

Hye-jin takes her hand and squeezes it fast. With that, the pair jump off of the ledge, over the bugs that had paralyzed Margaux moments before and above the heights that would usually send Hye-jin running to her father, and start attacking the obstacle course.

Beckett feels personally slighted once again as he is shot through the darkened slide. His slide seems to twist and turn every other second, flinging him into the wall every single time.

He curses as he hits another wall and slips down a new curve directly down to the point where he is almost free falling down the tunnel. And as he falls he forces his eyes open and the only words that come to mind are more curses as the tunnel opens up beneath him into a bright light.

"Woohoo!"

Colt screams, slipping along his slide as though a child. He seems to take each turn with grace and when his tunnel opens up he merely falls onto a wide trampoline that gently bounces him to a stop.

Colt stands, smiling and looking around, bouncing slightly on his heels on the trampoline, at what he assumes is his first challenge in the Puzzler. He moves forward, seeing a path in front of him only to bump into a glass wall, hard. Further investigation proves that he's been trapped in a glass box with just a view of the path he thinks that he's supposed to take.

And then Colt hears screaming.

"Aaghhh!"

To his left, and from the ceiling for some reason, falls a cursing lump of blue.

"Dude, are you okay? That did not look fun for you."

Beckett pops up, throwing his head back ready to scream and curse and fight whoever owns the voice that sounds like it's mocking him. He whips his head to his right to see a guy in red pressed up against a wall of glass peering at him with worry.

Beckett only groans, from both the new bruises and the slightest disappointment of already being separated from yet another person.

"I'll be fine. Where the hell are we?"

"Currently? A couple of glass boxes. I found that out the hard way," Colt keeps explaining while walking over to the wall he had run into to point out the path... except he keeps walking and passes the point where the wall was.

"What the hell?"

Colt spins around, arms spread out searching for the glass wall. Beckett stares at the guy in red and pushes himself off the ground. He makes his way over to where the so-called "wall" was and walks "through" it just as easily.

"I swear there was a wall here before you got here."

"Maybe you just hit your head on the slide and didn't notice–"

Beckett's face meets a glass wall with a hard slap. Colt winces in sympathy, a small "oof" leaving his lips as the guy in blue groans, again. Colt makes his way to where the wall would be on his side of the glass still between them only to find no wall there again.

"Why!?"

Beckett yells at the glass wall, thoroughly frustrated now.

Colt carefully makes his way past the invisible wall and farther along the path before him. Looking to his left he can still see an almost identical path on Blue's side, except for a lever that definitely isn't on his end.

Beckett watches Red keep going and goes to hit the glass at the same time Colt finds a large button on his path. He pushes it, cocking his head curiously as nothing happens. Nothing except for Beckett almost face planting as his glass wall rises up to the ceiling.

"What did you do?"

Beckett runs along the path to be equal to Red again, pressing his face against the wall dividing them to see. Colt stares at Blue, now neck and neck with him.

"I just pressed this button."

"Wait, so if the things on your side do things on my side, then maybe..."

Beckett turns around and pulls the lever attached to the wall downwards.

"Try going further!"

Colt listens, taking a few cautious steps forward, arms outstretched to keep from running into any new walls. Beckett abandons the lever to follow, meeting another wall after a minute of walking. At the same time that Beckett is blocked, Colt finds a lever on his side and quickly lifts it up.

The wall blocking Beckett disappears in an instant and both boys grin at each other. They take off running, working at an equal pace to make it through side by side.

surprise loves <33

i've honestly had this bit of this chapter written for literally forever, but i was so stuck on writing the other "half" of these scenes. but then looking at the word count (and hoping that publishing gets me out of my slump) i realized that just this half of the chapter is huge, so why not break it up?

this part is so fun because you're finally inside of the puzzler, seeing the characters do what they do best, see some of their fears, initiate relationships, maybe some schemes, and get a taste of just what this place really is.

please give me some good encouragements, cause i am ready to just dive into this book again and not stop💕💕

[ 05.28.24 ]
forgive me 🫶🏼💕
[ 3,879 words ]