Thing Definitely Aren't as They Seem

“Welcome… welcome… welcome…” Prince Link’s chief maid Vivian was stood at the entrance, greeting every arriving guest. “Please enter the great hall. The prince will be with you shortly,” she said.

Erin was suiting up in her chambers. Three palace maids were dressing her up. Right now, two of them were fitting her into a corset. They fawned over her beauty, as they helped her into a navy blue and gold ball gown. The golden tiara with its sizeable, green gem inside it made her look like a real princess.

“Excuse us, my lady, but we need to fetch something,” one of the maids apologised.

“We do?” another asked. She was promptly elbowed in the ribs. “Oh, that’s right!” she winced.

The maids exited the fitting room. However, they didn’t go anywhere. Instead, they huddled together conspiratorially.

“Why is the prince dressing her up like this?” the first maid whispered.

“Right? He barely knows her, yet you’d think her a princess,” a second replied.

“I heard that the king has been urging the prince to marry and give him grandchildren. He is already twenty-four, after all,” a third whispered back.

“I wish I could marry the prince,” the first maid responded, longingly. “My life would be set.”

“Do we even know if she wants to marry him?”

“Let’s find out!”

They re-entered the room. “We’re back!” they announced.

“Oh? What did you guys get?” Erin asked.

The maids looked at each other nervously.

“Oh, uh, it was for Miss Vivian,” one of them replied. “By the way, miss Erin, are you interested in marrying the prince?” she asked. The other two maids jumped in their skin.

Erin was unbothered by the maid’s forwardness. “I suppose I’m open to it,” she smiled. The maids were too busy giggling to notice the complete lack of sincerity and emotion behind that smile…

***

“This is a Sator square,” I said, pointing to the 5x5 square I’d drawn on my notebook. It looked like this:

SATOR

AREPO

TENET

OPERA

ROTAS

“These words are all palindromes. When written like this, you can read them from every which way, except diagonally,” I explained.

“How does that help us find the right door?” Taul asked. The others murmured in agreement.

“Don’t worry, I know what to do,” I said. I was half lying. In truth, I no longer felt like intellectualising anything. There was something happening here that was far bigger than a competition. I figured I’d give it a quick shot. I glanced around. The doors were all labelled with seemingly random letters: Oh. “It’s that one,” I said, pointing to a door on our left. Everyone turned to look. It was labelled N. “The doors are labelled with the eight letters used in a Sator square. Since the square focuses on palindromes, it’s reasonable to assume that the anchor that brings it together is the right answer. And that anchor would be the letter N. It’s right in the middle of the square,” I reasoned. It wasn’t the best deduction, but it was the most reasonable one given what we had to work with. The others were unsure, but they silently conceded to my logic. “Alright,” I said, standing up. “Let’s go.”

We all ventured through the N door.

***

Prince Link uses every opportunity to show Erin off to his guests. He didn’t make any mention of his romantic interest in her, since he didn’t want to humiliate himself, should Erin refuse his proposal. In the meantime, he was delighted by their sincere fawning over how beautiful she was.

“Vivian suspects Erin to be blind, but I haven’t seen anything that would tell me as much. I’ll test her,” Prince Link decided, as he and Erin were speaking to a lord and his lady. The lord’s brown hair was slicked back, and he wore an elegant tuxedo. His woman sported a stunning, green party dress, that was perhaps a little too modern for a woman of her age. Her dirty blonde hair was tied in a neat bun, and she wore many rings and bracelets.

“I have to introduce Erin to everyone else, but I’ll be back,” the prince promised.

He took Erin aside. “So, what did you think of Lady Vasilia’s outfit?” he whispered, referring to the lord’s lady.

“I thought it was very nice,” Erin replied.

“Wasn’t it? And how about that necklace of hers? Some fine craftsmanship.”

“Indeed, I was almost jealous.”

“She wasn’t wearing a necklace…” the prince thought.

***

We were now at the top of the clock tower and thus could see the giant clock from behind. The room was small, with pipes, ropes and gears surrounding us. I counted five treasure chests on the floor, against every wall except the one with the clock. Curiously, there were no doors this time.

“Where are the doors?” Guam asked. “Shouldn’t there be sixteen of them?”

I looked around. Sure enough, he was right. There were no doors in this room.

“Damnit. Did we pick the wrong door and enter the wrong room?” Taul demanded.

No one responded.

“Let’s open the chests, then,” Kelani shrugged. She opened one up. “A dagger,” she announced.

“Hey, I got a battle axe!” Guam gleefully exclaimed, holding up the large weapon. I was troubled by the effortlessness and expertise with which he wielded it.

“I have a sword,” Taul said.

“I have a sword, too,” said Kiru.

I opened up the remaining one. "A sword," I observed.

"Hey, there's something written on the table," Kelani announced. "Get rid of the impostor to finish the second trial," she read.

We all froze.

Erin ate a lavish dinner with the prince and his guests. There was a lot of boring talk, but she kept an ear open for anything of interest concerning the king.

As everyone was distracted with conversation, Erin slipped one of her knives into her sleeve.

"How are you liking the food, Erin?" Prince Link asked.

Erin jumped in fright. For a split second, she'd thought he'd seen her. "Great," she said curtly, regaining her composure. "Delicious, even."

The prince smiled.

The dinner ended uneventfully, and the guests soon began to peter out.

Erin stood with her back to a pillar, hidden away. Never the party person, she was waiting for everyone to leave.

"Lady Erin," the prince said in a low voice.

Erin looked up in surprise. She hadn't heard him approaching. "Yes—?"

The prince kissed her on the lips. Then, he smiled. "I know you can't see me, but I won't let that deter me," he said. He meant it to sound romantic, but it came off as a little creepy.

What the prince couldn't see, was Erin fury.

***

Back in her chambers, Erin spat into the sink with a furious scowl. She downed a cup of water.

"That bastard!" she snarled in Allister's voice.

***

"Which one of you betrayed me?" Taul growled.

"Hey, genius, the world doesn't revolve around you. All except one of us has been betrayed," Guam retorted.

"Yeah? Everyone except you, maybe," Taul accused.

"Taul, you're the one who kept trying to guide us to the wrong answer," Kelani chimed in.

"Yeah, why is that? Are you just stupid, or are you the impostor?" Guam agreed.

"I didn't guide you to the wrong answer!"

"So you are stupid!"

"I'm far more successful of an investigator than you! People know me in Ruhe! They fear me!"

"Guys, once we kill the impostor, we'll still have to figure out where the doors are," Kiru reminded them.

"Woah! Who said anything about killing?" Guam asked.

"Wouldn't the impostor try to get us to kill each other?" Kelani suggested.

"Kelani, stop instigating. That's something an impostor would do!"

"Kugo, you're awfully quiet. Know something we don't?"

The four argued like children as I stared out, through the clock tower's clock. My eyes widened.

I entered this tower around noon and have been in here for roughly four hours. Every clock until now has ticked backwards. From where I'm standing, the clock appears to be ticking clockwise, but to those on the outside, it would be ticking anti-clockwise. Now, I understand small clocks in special rooms ticking backwards... But the clock tower itself?

"Kugo!"

The shout snapped me out of my reverie.

"How did you know a wheel is rotas and what the hell even is a sator square?" Taul questioned.

"I can't explain it," I said, stupidly.

"Why? Because you're the impostor?"

I barely heard him. I was zoned out again, thinking about the issue at hand. My mind raced at breakneck speed, to the point where I could barely keep up with my own thoughts.

112 contestants passed the first trial... Twelve left and one hundred remained... Twenty groups of five... Five chairs, five notebooks... Five chests... As if planned... We enter room one right after the previous group has made their choice, yet the game designers aren't worried about us bumping into each other and somehow we haven't yet... Game designers somehow have time to put everything back to normal between groups, despite not being able to plan for when we finish...

These rooms have all had red herrings. First, the blank room was trying to make us believe it was empty. Then, the museum room tried to make us believe that the door the thief entered from was the one he fled through. The others didn't even question his entry, as if it were a given. The third room... Ciphers craft a reality by their nature...

Crafted realities... Rooms designed for five... Everything put back to normal... No overlap between contestants... Clocks ticking in reverse... Crafted realities...

My index finger twitched.

This entire clocktower is a simulation.