escape room simulator (team verdane)
Colla leads them to a cave hidden at the base of a mountain. He lights a torch as they enter and speaks in a hushed voice to the rest of the party.
"We must not be seen," he warns, and glances toward Ephidel and Farina. "You will lead us. Clear a path to the general, or whoever it is that commands this army." His eyes shift to Frederick next: "They will not suspect you at first. That will buy you some safety, if we are discovered." To Byleth: "Keep your blade ready nonetheless." And to Hilda: "If you wish to remain innocent, now is your chance to stay behind."
She has to say, staying behind seems really tempting right about now. Her gaze flitters over their surroundings, including the mouth of the cave which reveals little of what awaits them inside. Her shoulders are sagging under the weight of her exhaustion -- how long had they been walking? -- and even the rocky terrain surrounding the cave looks inviting for a nap. But then she pictures herself left alone, in the middle of... where? It seems worse, somehow.
"I'm going with you, if the rest of the group is," she says firmly. "But, um... are you sure this is the right... cave?" It looks unremarkable in every sense, and she struggles to reconcile this with the fortress entrance they'd been promised.
“We don’t have many options,” Byleth whispers to her. “We gotta keep going. It’ll be okay now.”
She nods, although she does not quite believe him.
The group moves as one, single-file, for what feels to be a long time. The silence is almost deafening and punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps. Everyone appears too exhausted to talk, caught up with the events that had happened since... when? When had their ship set sail? Hilda doesn't remember any more. She shakes this disturbing thought away.
Her eyes are downcast as they trudge onwards, and it is perhaps because of this that she notices the glint of a metal hinge close to the floor. Her gaze follows it upwards to confirm the existence of its partner, just above head height. "What is that?" she asks, stopping in her tracks.
Attention directed by Hilda's voice, Colla approaches what she's found. "Here it is," he says with a fair degree of confidence. The hidden entrance to the fortress. The door is locked, however, and won't budge. He glances toward Farina and Ephidel. "Your skills are required."
Farina tries to bash the door down. "The hell am I supposed to do with this? You've got a key or anything?"
The door hardly seems to budge, but it makes a loud noise regardless. Colla looks horrified. "I thought you knew how to pick locks!?"
“Do I look like a thief to you?”
He tilts his head to the side. "Yes."
Byleth ushers Farina to the side and spends a few moments jamming the tip of his lance into the lock at various angles. Miraculously, they hear a click.
The door opens to a medium sized room. It looks more or less like the rest of the tunnel they had just come from: dirt floor, natural walls, damp feel. There’s a pile of very old bones in the center of the room. At the far end, carved out of the wall, three monstrous faces. They look like gargoyles, mouths open to an abyss framed by fangs, their ruby eyes glint ominously in the torchlight.
Byleth takes a few steps into the room. A massive spike falls from the ceiling, but Byleth's reflexes save his life. He manages to move out of the way at the last second, and it crashes into the pile of bones instead, pulverizing them.
Frederick turns to Colla, voice shaking with unconcealed anger. “Did you know this was a possibility?”
He seems unfazed by the trap. Whether it's because he knew it was there, or because he's simply seen too much is unclear though. He looks at Frederick with deadly seriousness. "This means we are in the right place. There would not be traps guarding nothing, now would there? Be cautious."
Following the near-death of Byleth, Hilda's face is, if possible, even paler than before. Colla's laissez-faire attitude is doing nothing to calm her nerves. She keeps as close to the others as possible -- she's not using them as human shields, it's just for comfort, alright? -- as the group moves forward to look at the first gargoyle.
It seems to be carved straight out of the cave wall and has lost its shape a little over the years. Nevertheless, it's still a frightening face up close, its mouth a deep, dark hole, its expression one of feral anger. Its eyes seem to be made of some sort of crystal or marble.
“Creepy,” she mutters. “Are the others the same?”
Her question prompts them to move towards the middle gargoyle to investigate further. It looks the same, as far as she can tell.
Hilda holds her breath as Byleth reaches out to touch the gargoyle... But nothing happens. Although expecting more of the same, she goes with the group to look at the third gargoyle. She directs a comment at Colla: "Do you know anything about these?"
He looks at each gargoyle carefully. "They are here to frighten trespassers, perhaps," he answers tentatively. "And-- that one." He points at the third, the one they stand in front of now. "Seems to be stained with blood along its mouth."
They move towards the third gargoyle to find that Colla is correct. Byleth reaches inside its bloodied mouth and makes a face. The room rumbles, and a segment of wall slides open to a long, dark corridor that disappears into shadow. The torch Colla carries doesn't quite reach the end.
Resigned to their fate by this point, they file silently one-by-one into the hallway. Eventually, they reach another locked door at the other end. This time, Ephidel makes quick work of the lock, and the door opens.
The floor is stone masonry. There's a wooden table in the center, cleared of anything that might be useful, and a simple shelf drilled into the wall at the far side with a handful of papers gathered on it.
The professor looks over the papers and picks up an unremarkable piece with a strange scribbled drawing. "There's this drawing of...probably this table." He looked between the napkin and the table itself. "There's an arrow pointing under the table. Maybe there's something down there or with its legs?"
Hilda keeps back, still hesitant. She examines the scribbled note from a distance. "What does the X mean?" she asks warily. "The arrow is pointing to the underside of the table leg. Do we need to lift it?" She looks pointedly at each of the other group members in turn, as if to say, “And if we do, I won't be the one doing it.” But just in case, she peers under the table to see if there is anything out of the ordinary.
The table looks pretty normal on its underside. There are some faint scuff marks on the stone floor.
Hilda points out the scuff marks. "Somebody has been moving the table, anyway."
With that contribution, she steps back and allows the others to do the heavy lifting. They discover a seal on the underside of one of the table legs. Byleth hammers his fist into it — perhaps slightly harder than necessary — revealing a trap in front of the door they hadn’t entered from.
“That hurt,” Byleth comments. “Well, there’s a trap now. That door must be important.”
Fortunately, Frederick is tall enough to reach across the pitfall to release the door handle. With a slightly terrifying leap, they all make it into the next hallway.
After what feels like an age in the tunnels -- although more likely a matter of minutes -- a door finally emerges from the gloom. It matches the description of what Hilda would expect a fortress entrance to look like much more. The handle doesn't seem to turn; that would be too easy.
"How do we get the door open?" Hilda asks Colla, whilst examining it for any further clues to its operation.
Holding the torchlight up to better examine the door, Colla tries searching around the handle, then the hinges that bolt it to the wall. "I do not know..."
There appears to be a series of holes in the base of the wheel, though.
Ephidel and Frederick reach out to touch them.
And everything flickers around them.
