[Solo] The Temptation Called Curiosity VI

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She could no longer hear the clock as it chimed but she was certain time was continuing to pass her by. Artemisia entered the fifth hall, and sixth area of the mansion, and stopped in tracks. Inside this hall was perhaps her worst enemy: a chess board. April had never, ever, won a game of chess in her entire life. She wasn't even sure if she had ever played one before. Swallowing hard, Artemisia made her way over to find out the rules of this particular puzzle.

As she passed by, she couldn't help but be impressed with the towering chess pieces. They, given her short stature, were taller than she was. Once she reached the other side of the hall, she could see written above the door, in clear, large letters was the requirement to move on. She read it over and sighed again. So, it wasn't exactly chess… but having played the game probably would have been useful to solving it. Artemisia reached up and scratched her furry ear, debating how to even start with this one.

Slowly, her mind lost in thought, she walked over to the giant chess board and looked at it. It was huge. She walked across the entire thing one way, then down, then back up, and then diagonally back to the far corner. She was imagining all the different movements a single Queen could make on the board. Focused, she chewed mindlessly on her bottom lip, mulling over the various scenarios. “Well, let’s give it a shot then…” She furrowed her eyebrows as she realized there was one problem… how was she to move these giant chess pieces? Surely she wasn't expected to carry them across the board.

Perplexed, she locked her green eyes on the nearest Queen to her and attempted to bring up an information menu. Nothing displayed, leaving her even more puzzled on how to solve this problem. “Hey, give me a hint he…” Her voice trailed off as she finally realized that, for the first time since entering the lobby, she was completely and entirely alone. There was not even a single Mini Jack in sight. There were no eyes watching her. It was just her and these statues. She couldn't help but feel a little lonely, her field of vision drooping down to the ground.

“What’s that…?” She noticed some writing on the base of one of the Queens, now that she was looking down at it. There, engraved in the base of the chess piece was a number. Upon further inspection, she noticed that each of the eight Queens were numbered, one through eight. In addition to that, each square on the chess board had a letter and a number marker on it. She was beginning to understand how this worked…

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Artemisia sat down on the ground a few feet from the chess board, her chin resting in her hand, which was held up by her elbow balancing on her knee. She stared at the board, twitching her nose back and forth as she thought about it. “Okay… here goes…” There didn't seem to be a penalty for wrong attempts, unlike some of the previous riddles but she still didn’t want to waste too much time here. Artemisia cleared her throat and pointed at the Queen closest to her.

“Q1 to A1,” She stated clearly and, just as she expected, the oversized chess piece came to life and moved to the spot on the board she had called out. “Q2 to…” She navigated the Queens all around the board until all eight were placed. Artemisia stood up and walked over to the board. She paced back and forth, mentally moving the pieces in her head to see if the pieces were clear. “Aw…” Two of them intersected. “Okay, clear the board…” She sighed as all of the queens returned to their original positions.

She reached up and ran her fingers through her long, blonde hair. This was going to take some trial and error before she made any progress. “I wish I had something sweet to eat, at least…” She grumbled, twisting a chunk of her hair around her finger repeatedly. There was certain to be some obvious little secret she was missing. So far she had been blessed by Lady Luck so she was hoping this pattern would continue, helping her solve this one as well.

As she stood there, a new pattern came to her mind and she immediately set about calling out the queens and spaces. It was, unfortunately, yet another failure. She cleared the board again. Even though there was no obvious penalty for multiple attempts, she still felt she wasn't going to be permitted to guess endlessly. Besides, there had to be thousands, if not more, possible combinations that could be made. Once more, she arranged the board and once more it was a complete failure. She kept getting 6 or 7 of the Queens on the board and running out of space to fit the last few.


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Nearly twenty different attempts later and Artemisia was beginning to feel her irritation level rising drastically. This was the first puzzle to truly get on her nerves. The concept of it was so annoyingly simple yet each and every combination she attempted was wrong. It was becoming increasingly more and more tempting to simply light everything in the room on fire and see if that would solve her problem. She didn't even care if she was a low level, attempting to burn down the mansion was still sounding like a good idea. “No… that won't help…” She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and slowly exhaled.

Part of what was so massively irritating to her was she was certain that if this had not been the world of Elder Tale, but the real world she had left behind, she could probably simply look the answer on the Internet and move on. It was maybe the first time she had longed for the convenience of technology and definitely the first time in quite some time that she wished she wasn't even in this game. The thought took her by surprise… other than the initial shock of realizing she could not log out she hadn't felt much despair over not being able to return to her life as April. In nearly every case, she preferred being Artemisia. The sheer fact that this puzzle made her feel this way spoke to how much it was pushing her buttons.

Despite this, she continued to attempt various arrangements on the board. They were all wrong. Artemisia laid down on the ground beside the board and stared up at the ceiling for a moment before closing her eyes, trying to refocus herself. If she kept attempting this blindly out of frustration, she would be here for the rest of her … well, she wasn't sure how her life span worked here, but it would be a really long time. She sighed deeply and repeatedly, hoping to release the built up stress she was feeling.

“Argh, I just don't know…!” She rolled over onto her stomach and growled at the ground. She muttered several not so nice things about the mansion to no one in particular. While she lay there, pouting, an idea crawled into her mind. It was one more potential solution to the puzzle. It, like so many of the ideas before it, seemed like it would work. She had nothing to lose at this point by being wrong. If there was a punishment for too many wrong answers, maybe it would simply be to just kick her out. That wouldn't be so bad at this point. With that in mind, Artemisia began calling out the queens and spaces, her voice muffled against the floor.

She knew how this went, seven pieces would fit on the board and then the eighth would ruin everything. Knowing this, she still called out the places for Q7 and Q8. She heard the sound of the last piece sliding into place but she didn’t bother to look up. For a moment there was complete silence and then, just barely audible, was the soft click of a door unlocking. Artemisia jumped to her feet and stared at the board. Her eyes traced the path of each queen and no matter how many times she looked none of them intersected with the other. “It… it was right…?”

Her vision glossed over and her green eyes filled with tears of relief. She blinked and quickly brushed the liquid away before it could spill over, down her cheeks. Artemisia made her way over to the door and twisted the knob. The door opened easily, as if she hadn't spent all that time agonizing over this terrible mind game.
Eager to put this area behind her, the fox tail girl moved on.

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