The giant boat's horns jolted me awake. I felt really hungry and drowsy. My eyes panned around the room, and found out that Flora was packing her luggage.

"Oh good, you're awake," she said. "Sounds like we're here, so you better hurry up and pack your stuff too!"

I grunted while wiping the sleep from my eyes. "We're here already? Good grief. And here I was expecting a nice few day cruise. When's breakfast? I'm starving."

She giggled a little. "Breakfast ended about two hours ago. You slept right through it!"

I couldn't believe it. Did I just miss the opportunity for one of the best breakfasts of my life?! "Why didn't you wake me up?!"

"I tried, but you were to zonked out in the comfy bed of yours. I didn't think that I could wake you up without hurting you because of how out of it you were."

I almost wish that she tried using pain to wake me up. Such the opportunity wasted! I sighed, then pushed myself out of bed. Well, hopefully lunch will be good.

Flora shoved the latch on her second suitcase shut, but not without some effort, and wheeled it out of the room. She was completely wrapped up in jackets, scarves, and the like, and looked more like a marshmallow than a human. When she opened the door, a wave of frigid air burst in, and it took all of my might to fight my primal urges to hop back in the warm covers of the bed. "I'll meet you outside. Hurry up and get ready before they have to force you off the boat!"

I don't even get to shower first do I?... Oh well, I guess that's my own fault. I put on my heaviest clothes that I had. I wonder if this'll be enough. Maybe she was actually smart in bringing all of that clothing... Na, there's no way that was reasonable.

I gathered my stuff and in a few minutes found Flora outside. "Come on, people are already leaving the boat!"

"All right, all right, I hear you." We made our way down the gangplank and found the usual two bickering again.

"No! I say snow is more like land," argued Maxie.

"No way! Snow is just frozen water, which still makes it water," returned Archie.

Those two can really get at each other's throats on anything, can't they?

Brandon found them and separated them. I think I was starting to see a theme here. "You fools," he said. "Snow is like both water and land from a survival standpoint! You can eat it for your supply of fresh water, or you can build shelter with it!"

There really was snow everywhere though. Sometimes it was thin, sometimes it looked like it could swallow a person up. It was on the trees, the ground, even the ice chunks floating on the ocean. It was a blindingly white winter wonderland.

Flora picked up some snow as soon as we hit land and formed it into a snowball. I expected for her to throw it at me, but instead she threw it at Maxie as soon as his back was turned.

Just as would be expected, he immediately saw Archie as the culprit. "Why you!" He formed a snowball of his own then pelted it at him.

"What was that for?!" Archie and Maxie commenced a miniature snowball war. Brandon laughed at the two fools, but was then caught in the crossfire.

I stood watching the battle, awestruck at how playful and childish these grown men were behaving. That's when I felt the back of my neck get cold.

"You left skin exposed," jested Flora.

"Better than being consumed by a mass of fabric!" Now the five of us were throwing snowballs everywhere, and got a few of the normal human being workers involved as well. It was all fun and games until the boss shut us down.

Tottering off the boat, he reached dry land. "Good riddance," he appeared to say under his breath, regaining his land legs. "What are all of you doing?! We have work to do!!!" A little bit frightened by his aggressiveness, we all stopped and headed towards the direction of the temple.

It was quite a bit of walking to get there, but those of us trainers could handle the workout. A few of the weaker ones of us hopped on the equipment transport trucks and got there before us, but they had to help set up camp, which I didn't particularly feel like doing. When we finally arrived at camp it was a little past noon and base camp was almost completely set up.

We had really taken over the temple it seemed. It was like a small city of tents. There were many a makeshift building as well, mainly constructed with poles, tarps, and ropes to keep them suspended upright. Some people were staring at screens and graphs, apparently keeping watch over the situation and area to keep us safe. Some were huddled under one of the tarps, and some were coming out from under said tarp with paper bags in hand.

"Looks like it's time for lunch! I can't wait to see what they're giving us!"

Flora and I shoved our ways through the crowd and managed to get a hold of one of the bagged meals. We sat down in a spot under a tree that we cleared away with our feet and opened up our bags.

"Just sandwiches and fruit?!" I cried. "Why must we go from excellent meals to this?!" I accepted my food with a little bit of sadness.

"They probably can't make the fancy stuff with the equipment that they brought; quit complaining. Want me to heat it up with a fire attack or something?"

I scolded her with my glare and a headshake. "You didn't learn from last time that you tried forcefully heating up a cold environment did you? And we're even under a snow covered tree right now!"

She laughed awkwardly. "Oh yeah... Oops."

-----

"Alright team," said Daron. "I have officially been granted access to the temple. Not even the guardian of the temple could give me any more detailed knowledge than she thinks that it extends several floors downwards, which we were already able to figure out thanks to seismic probing and such."

It looked like a majority of the group that came with us was actually staying at base camp, keeping watch over the ever present floor of data from all of their antennas and strange machines. There were several people I didn't know on the expedition team, but there was also Brandon and the two bickering knuckleheads.

"Our scans predict five floors, so our goal today is to make it past the first one, if there are traps, puzzles or the like. Else we'll just head straight to the bottom. Everyone ready?!"

There were several excited cheers from the more adventurous of us, then we were on our way in. The temple itself was made of dark gray stone, and had several columns at the entrance. We cautiously took our first steps inside, which supposedly no one had been allowed to do in centuries. Inside was the same dark gray stone, on the walls, ceiling, floor, everywhere. Parts of the structure were failing the test of time and were falling apart, but it appeared to be quite structurally sound still.

In the center of the floor there was a hexagon shape on the ground with crystals to five sides. On the sixth side was a stone tablet. Daron gave the order for the minions to scatter and investigate the floor, leaving the rest of us to check out the suspicious middle.

"It appears to be in Braille," said Daron, motioning towards a message on the tablet. "Can you read it for me Elron?"

"Yeah, one sec." I pulled off my gloves, exposing them to the freezing air, and thumbed through my notebook. I wanted to get this done as fast as possible, as to get my hands warm again, but I struggled with the interpretation. Instead of bumps on it, there were indentations, which I took as the placeholder for the bumps. Apparently I was wrong. "I'm just getting garbage. There must some trick to reading this."

We all looked carefully at it. "Could it be a mold for an actual message?" Someone suggested.

"Yeah," said another, "maybe those divots are meant to form bumps if you use it as a mold."

"One second. That should be the same as looking at it in the mirror, so let me try reading it a few ways with that sort of logic." I tried and tried, but I was getting garbage messages every time. "It's no use."

"Hm... That's strange," thought Daron allowed. "Normally the raised portions were what you are supposed to read, but that doesn't appear to be the case here."

I stared at it some more, thought over what everyone had said, then surprisingly came to an answer. "That's it! The raised portions do tell you the message." I scribbled down the message as I transcribed it this time. "Hey, I'm getting actual words this time! We just had to reverse our thinking, and have the holes represent nothing and the flat parts the bumps! Ah, here it is!" I felt very confident in my puzzle solving skills at that moment. Daron gave a smile at seeing my progress.

AT THE MIDDLE OF THE MONTH, THE FLOWER'S OPENING WILL SHOW THE WAY.

"Very nice, Elron!" congratulated Daron. "Now, what could this mean? And has anyone found anything that could lead downwards?"

Shouldn't you have checked for stairs before trying to solve the puzzle?

"No sir! The floor is completely isolated from the others!"

"Figures. Well, now that we're stuck at a riddle, everyone look for clues!"

The group scattered over the floor, and didn't leave a stone unturned. I personally wanted to check out the hexagon on the floor, as well as the five crystals. There didn't seem to be anything unusual about the spot, but I stood in the middle of the shape on the ground and looked around. I checked every angle, and eventually looked straight up. When I did, I saw a very peculiar feature of the roof. "Hey guys, come look! If you stand over here, it looks the roof can open up!"

"Really?! Let me see!" Flora came rushing over and stepped on the shape as well. When she did, I felt a slight sinking in the ground below us.

"Shoot! Don't move Flora!"

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at us.

It looks like our combined weight triggered a trap! A sweat broke out over my body. I took a deep breath to try and remain calm. An old pressure plate usually meant one thing: a bomb.

"It's okay," said Brandon, rushing over to the scene. "I've dealt with these types of things before. We'll get you out of here safely! Get some rocks to take their places!"

Some grunts hauled a few large rocks over and placed them down on the hexagon. After the second rock though, we only sunk deeper. A little bit of dust fell from the ceiling and landed around us.

Now what?! I looked straight up, only to find that there was a tiny bit of light escaping through the roof. The ceiling was opening up! I sighed. "I'm going to take a little bit of a gamble and say that we're safe. We should be able to step off of this thing without getting hurt."

"Are you sure?" questioned Brandon. "I've seen what these types of trap can do if you're wrong."

I turned to Flora. "Do you trust me?"

There was no fear in her eyes. "Yes."

"I am sure."

"Very well. Get as many people out as possible. There may or may not be an explosion!"

People quickly piled out of the temple. Even Daron, Archie, and Maxie made an exit, fearing for the worst. Brandon was the only one to bravely stick with us.

"Alright, carefully take one rock off," directed Brandon.

We took one stone off. The button of a floor rose a little bit, but nothing happened. The second stone came off without a problem.

"On three, you two jump off and run as fast as you can! One... Two... Three!!!"

We took off running. After running a little ways, I stopped and looked at the ceiling. Without fail, no more slivers of light were filtering through the top. There was also no explosion. Brandon called it safe and everyone flooded back into the temple.

I think I understand now. "Hey Daron, can you put one of the Regis on that spot?"

"If you think it will help. So are you sure it's not a trap?"

"Yep. I think it's more of a scale than anything."

He gave me a strange look then pulled out a pokeball. "Come on out Registeel."

The pokemon landed on the pad and its weight pushed down on it. This triggered a system within the temple to open up the roof completely, and flood the floor with natural light.

"Well I'll be..." Daron and the crew looked up at the new hole.

"That's the second half of the riddle at least. Now we just have to figure out what 'at the middle of the month' means."

"Could it mean that you have to literally wait until the middle of the month?" asked Flora.

"What about it being a word puzzle, and the answer is 'n'?" asked Brandon.

"No, I don't think either of those would be the answer, though I guess it could be a literal middle of the month thing." Think! What does the middle of the month have to do with anything?

Daron now piped in and offered his thoughts. "What about a full moon then? Don't those mark the middle of the month?"

"That's it!"

"But the problem is it's closer the start of the month, and we really can't afford to wait that long," stated Daron.

"I have an idea! How fast can you get a large lens?"

He smiled. "If it doesn't need to be particularly precise, tonight."

-----

It was now close to midnight, and we all were huddled in the temple one again.

"Easy does it! Be careful now!" Some of the grunts of the operation were using a rope and pulley system to hoist the lens up into the air. Eventually we gave the "close enough" signal, and we continued on with the operation.

"Regice!" Daron released his captive legendary onto the six sided pad.

The weight of the pokemon triggered the system and made the top of the building open up. Moonlight poured in through the opening and condensed in the lens, my idea of simulating the light of a full moon, and shone on Regice. Its crystalline body split the light into six rays that came back out, five of which hit the crystals. The crystals glowed an ice blue in the light, and there was a sudden shaking of the ruins.

"A staircase just opened up!"

There was much cheering and celebration. We had cleared the first floor's challenge.

***

A/N: So I really like puzzles, but I'm normally a solver of them, not a creator of them. It was quite interesting and a little bit of a challenge to come up with this one, but it was fun! :D