An incredible revelation came to yours truly with immediacy – I needed to get out of here. I needed to do that without suffocating and imploding in outer space. That said, I wasn’t sure how exactly we were even breathing in the first place.
Shutting the door with the same haste that I had opened it, I pushed my back against the wood and looked at the others with wide eyes. Bella and Trev seemed mostly confused, while Poltrick had his mouth open in shock. Divided by a million different reasons, we were united in our absolute shock and confusion over what we had just witnessed.
“The…” The dwarf gulped, moving back until he tumbled and fell down on the floor, “The ground is gone!”
“No, you numbskull! We’re in space!”
Poltrick did not reply, as he was still busy mumbling something about the grass and the dirt. Bella, however, subtly shook her head with her hand covering her mouth. All that came out of it was a whisper.
“Where is that?”
“Oh…”
Oh.
These guys did not even have a semblance of an idea of where they were. Bella had claimed that this world knew about people coming from other universes, but maybe they hadn’t actually gone beyond the boundaries of their own sky.
Actually, who am I kidding? Of course, they hadn’t done that. Even if they had the coolest magic and the grandest inns in all of existence, it did not mean they had astronomy. And even if they did have astronomy, it did not mean that they had advanced that far yet. Point being…I was all alone in my shock.
By the time that set in, and I sat down right there, with my back still hugging the main door, the others dispersed. Trev led a shaken Bella up the stairs. Poltrick did the same, refusing to even look at me as he hobbled up to his room. All the while, every single one of them tried to compute this discovery on their own terms.
I, however, perhaps, maybe, was the only person who truly understood the gravity of the situation.
And it took me right about half an hour to finally get on my feet and get moving. There was no time to sit and wonder about what was going on. If I had made it into this place while it was floating in space, then it also meant that there had to be a way out. Some kind of teleportation or transportation device that had summoned me here. All I needed to do was find it.
I just needed to go through the entire place and figure out what was going on. Find out why I had been brought here. One by one, room by room, I just needed to scout it all. Bella and the guys had only been searching for a key, so maybe they had missed other clues. Heading back to the Innkeeper’s Room, I started to think.
First, I would need some paper. I could get that from one of the notebooks on the main shelf. The Secret Room was now permanently open as well, which meant that I could also look there for more information. They had files about the guests of the inn, so maybe they had more than that as well.
Grabbing a random note from the shelves in the Innkeeper’s Room, I headed to the kitchen. I did not have pens, so I would have to improvise. Without writing and making notes, I was nothing. If there was one thing internet sleuthing had taught me, it was that you always made notes.
The order of business started with cocoa beans. Or at least something that looked like them. Taking my time to grind them with a mortar and pestle, I prepared some makeshift coffee grounds. For a proper beverage, it might not have been the best possible choice. But they were fine for what I needed. So, I grabbed some water and put them up to boil. (There was quite a bit of fresh water in a set of five large barrels, if you’re wondering.)
While that was boiling, I moved on. Cinnamon was my pen of choice. Using one of the kitchen’s extremely sharp knives to cut a stick at an angle, I prepared it to look exactly like a fountain pen. Then, I made three more. Better safe than sorry, after all. Once all of that was done, so was the pseudo-coffee.
Some sugar to thicken the mixture up, and a little bit more boiling until the kitchen smelled like my personal heaven.
Cinnamon Pen and Coffee Ink.
Classic.
With those, and my trusty newfound notebook, began my great mapping project. So, if you will please allow me to indulge my pattern-finding and organization-obsessed brain, here’s the only rundown you’ll hopefully ever need.
_____________
The Ground Floor.
We begin with the Innkeeper’s Room. You know everything there is to know about that place by now, however, so let’s move on. We’ll also be skipping the secret room behind it, since there is hardly any reason to describe it over and over again. The same also goes for the washrooms connecting those to the Bar and Restaurant of the Northflame Inn, since they did not really have anything interesting.
The Bar and Restaurant, however, did contain that one small room that I had spied earlier. Making it a point to check it out this time around, I crossed that off my ‘to check’ list. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really anything interesting. Just a storage room with extra cutlery for the tables, and barrels of wine for the bar.
Getting out of there, you’ve also already seen the Kitchen and Lobby, so we’ll be glossing over them as well. Instead, I moved straight to the room from which the monster had appeared earlier. Brave, I know, but there came a point where you stopped caring. I was in outer space, for god’s sake. There was no time to be scared about some cheap zombie substitute.
The room right next to the Kitchen, as you might see above, was the Pantry. A lot of ingredients, a lot of utensils, and a lot of boxes that I could have spent hours trying to open and check. It was only further complicated by the fact that all of them had these weird symbols all over them, that had nothing to do with their contents. So, maintaining control, I quietly moved on to the door that was inside the Pantry. And this door was where the mystery of the mold monster became clearer.
It was the Cold Storage, which I could make out via the, uh…waves of cold air blasting outwards. The only issue with entering and looking further, however, was that the door was stuck. It was open, since it was letting the cold air out, but it was still blocked by the mold. Tendrils of it had grown between the door and its frame, allowing a small glimpse into the goo-filled horror on the inside. And despite looking thin, they were strong enough to stop me from opening it.
Defeated for now, I withdrew and moved on.
The last room on the Ground Floor was locked. I could not open it, no matter how hard I tried. So, for now, that is also to be left alone. But trust me when I say that it did not remain that way for long. The Laura Mason was not going to let some stupid door stop her, after all.
But before we get there, we move up.
_____________
The First Floor was a mess.
“Innkeeper! Don’t you shun off your duties!” Poltrick complained the moment I reached the top of the stairs. Pacing in front of the garden, he locked on to me like a homing missile in a split second. “Especially in times like these, people need their food. Do you understand that? If we all do not get the perfect lunch and dinner, we’ll all lose our minds. That poor elf girl has been shaken to her core!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Shut up, Gregson.”
I walked past him and to the left side of the floor first. There were two doors there, with one of them being locked. The other was also inaccessible, but for different reasons. Because the moment I got close to it, the dwarf started to lose his mind. Quickly hopping over to stand between me and the door, he groaned.
“What do you think you’re doing, innkeeper?! You won’t be entering my room, got that? Room 101 has been legally provided to me for a week, and I intend to treat it like my personal space for that time. Do you get that?”
“Oh…” I sighed, walking past and deeper into the corridor, “Sure.”
“T-that’s it? What about lunch?”
Deeper into the same corridor was another room. This one did not have a proper segregation, but only a doorway to signal that you were entering a separate space. With the dwarf in tow, I noted the ugliness of the weirdly shaped room and stepped away. It looked like someone had torched the entire place and then tried to make pretty patterns out of it. There were some chairs all around it, but nothing special other than that.
Heading to the other side of the corridor, I was questioned by Poltrick over and over. He wanted to know where I was going, and why I was doing it, and if I was going to be doing something about the missing ground. Ignoring him, I walked straight to the first door there and got ready to knock.
“That’s Old Man Dom’s place! Room 102. That’s his. Are you gonna be troubling him too, innkeeper?”
The moment the dwarf interrupted me, another old voice boomed from the inside. Old, gravelly, and barely understandable. But I could still hear exactly what this Old Man Dom wanted to say.
“Huh? Is lunch ready?”
“For fuck’s sake…”
I rolled my eyes, marked this room as blocked as well, and moved on to the next one.
This one, Room 103, was the final one on the first floor. And since I had already found out that this was Bella’s, I decided not to pay attention to Poltrick this time around. Without letting him stop me, I clicked open the door and stepped inside.
And it was grand.
The Innkeeper’s Room looked like a sorry excuse in front of this. It had a door inside the room, and then a door within that (as I later found out while exploring). There were two beds, on different sides of the main hall, and Bella lay asleep in one of them. Until we entered, at least.
Sitting up at the sight of me, she cutely rubbed her eyes and pushed her messy hair away from her face. Yawning, the elf girl tilted her head with a complete lack of understanding and finally looked me in the eye.
“Are you…feeling better?” I asked, hoping that she hadn’t been affected too badly by the situation.
“Yeah…” She nodded, still half-asleep. “Thank you, innkeeper. Uh…when’s lunch?”
The Cinnamon Pen in my hand snapped. As pieces of the spice flew over the room, I cursed myself and immediately got to cleaning them. Leaving such small splinters in someone else’s living space wasn’t very nice. But once that was done, I refused to look at her and left.
I needed to get out of here. I needed to leave this place. I did not have time to cook for these people!
_____________
The Second Floor could be reached through the slightly less moldy Garden. At that point, I assumed that was because it had been cleansed by that white light.
Reaching the top of the stairs with the dwarf still in tow, I made it to what looked like much narrower corridors. It had been difficult to note that last time, given the situation we were in. This time, however, I could take as long as I needed to ensure I knew every corner of this place.
The first thing of note in here was a hole. That’s right. Just a hole. Tucked away in one corner of the ‘lobby’ of the Second Floor was a rectangular shaft that led up to the third floor, but did not have anything in it. No rope, no ladder, no nothing. The floor of the shaft was also broken, littered with pieces of wood all over. Some were fine, others looked burned. And unfortunately, the upper area of the shaft was crawling with the mold tendrils.
Deciding not to mess with that right now, I looked away and continued my survey.
On one side of the corridor was a single door, which was weird. The floors did not line up with each other, as you might see in the drawings that I’ve left for you. There was a whole room’s worth of space on this floor that was…blocked. That’s it. It was inaccessible. And as for the one door that was there?
I went up to knock on it, but the resident inside flung it open before I could. My hand, meanwhile, went straight for the nose of the woman now in front of me. Smacking her hard, I yelped at the same time she did. And out of the area of impact came a thin line of translucent white liquid, flowing down her lips and chin.
“Owch!”
The woman I had inadvertently punched had woody skin. And I don’t mean the color. Well, the color, too. But her skin was quite literally woody in its look. With the lines you see on well-aged tree trunks and bark lining every inch of her skin. It also didn’t help that the yellow dress she had worn on top did not contrast with the wood in a good way.
“Fera!” A man’s voice came from within the room, though I did not see him. “What happened?”
“N…nothing.” The woman barely managed to croak out the words before giving me a reluctant smile. Then, she started closing the door with a nod. But not before delivering a final line – “Innkeeper, right? We’ll be down for lunch in an hour.”
As the door was shut in my face, I felt an indescribable sense of hurt flowing through my body. The dwarf laughed behind me, reminding the innkeeper that she had to do her duties, no matter what. There was no running away from the fact that she was their caretaker.
But since I really, really wasn’t, I turned to the other side of the corridor. Ignoring the Banquet Hall since I did not want to relive past memories, I kept walking.
And this time around, I just skipped Room 202. If that wood girl and the man had been in Room 201, I did not want to imagine what kind of people resided in 202. Walking straight past it, without any further complaints from Poltrick Gregson, I turned the corner where the mold monster had arrived from the last time.
Instead of finding any mold, though, I just found more rooms. And I mean more rooms. Five of them, all cramped into a single corner. They were small, awkwardly placed, and occupied the same area as the Bar and Restaurant on the Ground Floor. While one of the rooms was larger and slightly away from the rest, four of them had their doors arranged in close proximity.
Unsurprisingly, they were also connected to each other by a set of symbols etched into their wood. One of them had a flame, the second had some waves, the third had the generic sign for wind, while the last one had a boulder. Pretty standard Elemental Rooms. But…why? The moment I even considered them standard, I had to lightly punch Poltrick in the head out of frustration.
There was nothing normal about having rooms like these in an inn! Also, needless to say, they were all locked.
“I’m not touching that…”
A familiar voice came from behind us. I turned and headed down the final bit of the corridor, leading deeper into the Second Floor to trace it.
There, I found the twins. Both of them, with their hands on their hips, were looking at the only staircase that led up to the Third Floor. Well, there was the strange shaft, but it was facing the same problem as these stairs.
Covered in mold, and access completely blocked.
One of the twins looked at me and pointed at it, “What are we going to do about that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I mean…we need to remove it. I guess we could get Bel-”
I stopped myself from letting those words out. It would not be fair to drag her in right now. Back in the Secret Room, I had made a mistake and learnt from it. There was no need to bring the elf’s name up when it wasn’t warranted.
The gooey tendrils covered every bit of the staircase, almost forming a wall-like structure to block us from moving forward. That, combined with the shaft, meant that reaching the Third Floor was impossible. My survey would come to an end right here.
But that did not mean it was all over. I still had all of those inaccessible rooms to check out and find more about. There had to be more clues around this place. I just needed to dedicate all the time in the world to get-
“Anyway, innkeeper.” One of the twins yawned and stretched, “When’s lunch?”
I slammed the notebook shut and turned, going back down the corridor. For some reason, the dwarf and the twins followed. Poltrick kept his usual nonsense up by forcing me to cook food. Except this time, he had Trev and the other brother supporting him, too.
“Lunch?”
“Food?”
“Hungry!”
The words echoed in my mind louder than they should have. How could I pay attention to the puzzles laid out in front of me if I was busy hearing this chorus?
As the voices got louder and I walked down the spiral staircase, I noticed Bella standing on the First Floor. Looking down at the Lobby, she seemed to be in a slightly better mood. That put a smile on my face. I walked up to her, only for the elf to turn and yawn.
“Is it lunch time now?”
That made me pause. It made me stop. Reconsider my choices.
There was no time to survey the inn after all. I didn’t need to do that. Not right now. For now…I needed to get these people off my back and find them a proper cook.