Athalia awoke to chaotic darkness.
She had no idea where she was. The last thing she could remember was diving into the minecart. She turned and saw the tracks behind her, but the minecart wasn't there. She looked at the waving beams of the building foundation with confusion and fright.
And then, she quickly calmed herself down and started considering the situation.
What is an Explorer if not someone who faces the unexpected?
I got accidentally knocked out during the ride, which messed with my short-term memory…? That would explain why my body hurts, but then why don't I feel concussed? My thoughts aren't jumbled at all.
Also, if I got knocked out during the ride, I should still be inside the minecart upon waking up; it's strange that I'm all the way over here. Oh, and where did the minecart go, exactly?
Athalia assumed that she was currently still on the third stratum, inside a deeper area of the mine. She still remembered all the details of the game. It was really only that last portion of her memory which was gone.
Her mind quickly returned to the stakes of her task, and to the unknown Instrument that she could claim as her prize if she won this race. From the clue Azarias had given, it seemed to Athalia that this Instrument would be related to Sariel. In other words, this was of utmost importance. Whatever had happened to make her lose her short-term memory in this area, she couldn't let it slow her down or make her lose confidence.
As she was pondering what to do next, a clump of black leaves on the ground beside her caught her eye. As soon as she saw the leaves, she felt a strange lightheaded feeling and faintly grasped at a memory. There was a voice telling her to set them alight and breathe in during her time of great need. She wasn't sure why, but she believed in this voice and took the words as truth. She couldn't remember what they were for yet, but she put the leaves in her pocket since she knew they were important.
Just then, she did a double take. There were three people sitting on the floor, all wearing white. Even though they were so obviously there, Athalia hadn't noticed them because of how still they were sitting.
They all had bruises covering their bodies, which Athalia also had.
She scrambled to her feet and took multiple steps backward. She thought, "People I don't know? Those must be Hymyläns; I need to be careful."
When she had seen these three earlier, she had first assumed they were humans. That's why she said "We aren't allowed to torture people" to Kismet. This thought clearly seems delusional, since it was not normal to see random humans on the Mountain. However, in that moment, she had assumed they were humans because they displayed something so fundamentally opposed to Hymyläns—fear.
Coincidentally, at that exact moment Athalia had stood up and scrambled away, a Hymylän had been murdered in a courthouse far above.
Not even in his final moment was that man scared.
He felt pain, that's for sure, but not fear. He certainly showed fear on the outside, but that was just to facilitate a good performance.
Truthfully, there's an exception to this fear rule, an exception which caused the situation earlier. That exception is a man who makes the Hymyläns feel fear just by being around them: Kismet Applewhite.
…Anyway…
Athalia realized that although the strange men were extremely still, they were awake. All three of them looked shaken up and were emanating sadness, but their expressions looked slightly relieved, as if a massive source of stress had just gone away moments ago. None of them were talking to Athalia, but they kept giving her odd looks.
Now that she looked at them closer, she found that their clothing was strange. At first, their clothes looked like any other white garments, but they were actually made of overlapping bandages. Back before Kismet had knocked her out, she hadn't even noticed this detail, since there were bigger surprises at that moment (like Kismet's sudden appearance itself)
Are they an obstacle in the race? I guess I'll try talking to them; I need to figure out my objective down here.
"You all are part of this game, right? Where is this? Why aren't you doing anything?"
The three of them looked at her in confusion. They were thinking, "We just explained all of that."
One of them said to Athalia, "Can't you just let us grieve?"
About what?
She asked a few more questions, but the responses didn't make any sense. Feeling pressed for time because of Sariel, she decided to give up talking and focus on exploring the area.
The chaotic and colorful waving support beams obscured whatever was in the center of the building's foundation. It was only possible to walk along the outside. Athalia spent a while walking the entire perimeter, suffering no harm while doing so. Along the way, she saw a small pit filled with colorful plastic balls. There was a vertical shaft above it, with a ladder extending into the darkness. She also saw a large fireplace—no, it was more like a furnace. It was empty, but there was a layer of ash inside, like it had been used recently.
She made it all the way around the area and back to her original location. Other than where the minecart came from, the only other potential exit seemed to be the vertical shaft. However, when she tried to reach a hand up, she was hit by a numbing feeling after reaching a certain point.
She tried to talk to the Hymyläns again, but still got confusing responses. At this point, the three of them had figured out that something unusual was going on with her, and were starting to intentionally confuse her.
Feeling frustrated, and with no way to explore further or gain more information, Athalia realized she had to head back the way she came. She thought that this must have been a 'wrong way', a distraction placed to slow her down.
However, she was nervous at the thought that she might not be able to get back. She found the lever for the minecart and pulled it, hoping it would return from the upper station.
She lost track of how long she waited, but the minecart did arrive, much to her relief. She used the same diving method she had used on her first ride to enter, since she assumed the numbing effect would occur again. The three Hymyläns watched her leave as the minecart twisted and raced up the tracks.
Athalia watched the flashing scenes go by again. Eventually, she was spat out in the tunnel that branched off from the room with the weird doors.
As she regained all the feeling in her body, she doubled over in pain, which was accompanied by the extreme cold in the tunnel. Taking the minecart once was painful enough, but a round trip was a different story. Luckily, Alavieskans were especially durable, so although it hurt, she could keep moving.
She also realized she still had the four-colored carpet wrapped around her. She took it off and carefully slid it back into its original spot: under the fort in the center of the classroom.
Considering that she hadn't found the Instrument yet, or really anything related to the clue Azarias had given her, Athalia figured her next step was to go through one of the two doors. But how was she supposed to do that? The door with the mural didn't have a handle, so it couldn't be opened from this side. She could perhaps brute force her way through, but the memory of the traps that tried to burn her alive after she tried the 'M-4 Caretaker' door earlier made her think twice. As for the grand 'M-5' door with the elaborate carvings, she had only been able to move it a centimeter with all her strength—and that was before she was injured. Now that she was covered with bruises, how could she ever dream of moving it?
She looked at the minecart. There was a large red arrow on the ground pointing towards it. Seeing this again made her angry.
Back then, I had actually considered that it might have been a red herring; an obvious trap. But then I thought, 'That's what Azarias would want me to think; surely it's reverse psychology!' and decided to go inside anyway. But that act was taken under the influence of yet another layer of reverse psychology! It was the wrong way all along.
Even though it didn't kill me, if the correct path is through the heavy door, taking the wrong way might have made it impossible to win due to the injuries I received.
But can I accept that? Can I let Sariel down?
Can I lose to Enza?
Athalia thought back to being inside Enza's mind, in the confessional booth.
She thought of the surreal argument they had in the dream version of Alavieska; inside Sariel's house.
Even though that technically didn't happen, Athalia was still frustrated by how Enza was acting during that exchange of words; it was hard to get it off her mind. Even though she wasn't here for a competitive reason, she was starting to feel a slight competitive spark being added to her motivation.
It was less about herself coming in first and more about Enza coming in second. She wanted to see Enza lose.
And at that moment, she had an idea about how to open the door.
She walked over to the fort of sticks and pulled out a large stick, doing her best not to let the whole fort collapse. She felt wrong about disturbing this setup again, but didn't see anything else that would have a chance of working.
To test its durability, Athalia smacked the stick on the ground. It seemed very strong, stronger than normal wood.
She walked over to the elaborate door and shoved the stick in between the handle and the doorframe. Then, she took out the Measuring Anchor and attached the anchor to the stick. As she walked away from the door, the measuring tape extended, and the leverage increased. The door with 'M-5' prominently engraved began to open slowly, and without Athalia's muscles suffering much in the process. She was proud of herself.
On the other side of the door, there was a small and dusty library. Books lined the shelves floor to ceiling. She looked at their bindings, but they were all in a language she couldn't read.
There was a door tucked between the bookshelves that read 'M-6'. But it was only halfway formed. It was in an ethereal state where Athalia couldn't tell what material or design she was looking at. As Athalia watched, the door was magically growing. It would be too slow to notice, if not for her improved eyesight. Beyond the unformed half of the door was pure black, the blackest black of the deepest and most pure darkness, darker than even the Chasm. Athalia felt that rather than looking at an empty space, she was looking at the absence of space.
Her eyes were eventually drawn away from this, where they landed on a table by the final shelf. There was a closed book sitting there.
Unlike the other books, it was in English. The cover read:
The Kalevala
Translated into English by John Martin Crawford
Originally collected from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore by Elias Lönnrot
There were four bookmarks inside, each one a different color—Green, blue, yellow, and red.
Athalia flipped the book open to the green bookmark.
Rune I, birth of Wainamoinen
"In primeval times, a maiden,
Beauteous Daughter of the Ether,
Passed for ages her existence
In the great expanse of heaven,
O'er the prairies yet enfolded.
Wearisome the maiden growing,
Her existence sad and hopeless,
Thus alone to live for ages
In the infinite expanses
Of the air above the sea-foam,
In the far outstretching spaces,
In a solitude of ether,
She descended to the ocean,
Waves her coach, and waves her pillow.
Thereupon the rising storm-wind
Flying from the East in fierceness,
Whips the ocean into surges,
Strikes the stars with sprays of ocean
Till the waves are white with fervor.
To and fro they toss the maiden,
Storm-encircled, hapless maiden;
With her sport the rolling billows,
With her play the storm-wind forces,
On the blue back of the waters;
On the white-wreathed waves of ocean,
Play the forces of the salt-sea,
With the lone and helpless maiden;
Till at last in full conception,
Union now of force and beauty,
Sink the storm-winds into slumber;
Overburdened now the maiden
Cannot rise above the surface;
Seven hundred years she wandered,
Ages nine of man's existence,
Swam the ocean hither, thither,
Could not rise above the waters,
Conscious only of her travail;
Seven hundred years she labored
Ere her first-born was delivered.
The moment Athalia read the last word, there was a clicking sound from the table. A compartment swung open, revealing a giant magnet that was larger than Athalia's head. It was just like the stereotypical drawings of magnets in cartoons, with the colors red and blue used to represent the poles.
What was really quite strange was that the magnet had a starter cord dangling out of it like a chainsaw…
Athalia immediately could tell it was the Instrument.
She wanted to scream with delight, but she was first confused.
I won?
Azarias's clue said I had to 'immerse myself in raw minerals and dig out their secrets.'
I'm immersed in raw minerals right now; I'm deep in a mine.
But secrets?
I don't understand a thing…
Athalia reached out and touched the magnet.
There wasn't a sensation, but Athalia felt that her victory became official at that moment.
She wanted to look at the other three bookmarks, since this room had given her a lot more questions than answers, but it was time to get out of here now that she had the Instrument.
Athalia walked out of M-5, her bruised arms throbbing as she carried the heavy magnet. She had forgotten the pain completely; she was smiling happily and felt hopeful.
And at the same time, she had stolen hope from someone else.
Enza's Instrument had self-destructed.
Athalia couldn't help but look forward to seeing the loser's expression.