Cryptic fountain

     Standing up, I offered a helping hand to Amie, and picked her up from the floor. After checking she was okay, I went back over to the box still confused... The filament wire was definitely connected to something beneath the chest, but it was too heavy to move. Was it a trap? I was initially thinking that it would activate some horrid trap whereby the person opening the chest died horribly. Maybe it was a trap, but the mechanism had jammed or decayed over time... Lifting the lid back and firth slightly, I noticed that the filament wire was still taut when the lid was fully open and when partially closed, so it was still attached to something beneath the chest. Looking around at the others I could guarantee there would be similar mechanisms in each of them, however the likelihood of those still working was incredibly remote... Going over to the next one along to my left, I cautiously opened the lid; once more I was presented only with the bottom of the chest, and after some careful examination, I found a similar filament wire, also running the length of the chest into the bottom.

"Maybe it's not a trap... Maybe it's a release mechanism to activate something... Maybe it's a way to open a secret door...?"

It was a good theory, and would certainly provide evidence as to why the possible trap mechanism no longer worked, but the filament wire remained intact. As for how such a system would work was beyond me. I could think of a series of different methods such as only one of the chests being opened unlocked the secret place, or only a certain combination... Luckily there were only four chests so the likely number of combinations was minimal. It seemed Amie had had the same idea; she closed the lid of the first chest, waited a few seconds and then came over to me and closed the chest that I was stood next to. Going around to the next one, she opened it and waited a few seconds, before closing it and heading around to the last. She repeated the same actions, but there was still no more movement anywhere.

"Well, we've tried each individually, now let's try the other extreme..."

I looked at her quizzically, not entirely sure what she meant, and she just started laughing at me. I felt a little foolish, and I sometimes had to remind myself that she was likely to be much more intelligent than me, so I was the one that had to keep up.

"When you test extremes, you look at a scenario and look at the extreme inputs that can be achieved. The first extreme input we tried was each chest at a time individually. The polar opposite extreme would be to open them all at the same time. After we've defined those extremes, if there's still no result, we test the intermediate values..."

Suddenly realising what she meant, I went around to each of the other two chests and opened them, whilst she opened the last one. We waited a few seconds, and Amie just shrugged.

"Those are the extreme inputs... Just the intermedi..."

A sharp, grating sound became audible, and we both turned around to stare in the direction it was coming from. The wall on the far side across from the entrance had begun to change; large segments of stone shifted backwards slowly, before stopping. There was a moment of stillness, before the stones then moved off into a hidden niche in the wall. Once all the movement and the grinding noises had stopped, me and Amie were left staring at a new hole in the wall which led to some unknown room.

I moved towards Amie, ensuring that I ventured into the unknown first. Holding the pieces of paper and the pencil in one hand, I grabbed Amie's free hand in mine, and I slowly edged closely to get a better look. Expecting to see another long tunnel leading away into the distance, I was surprised to find that a large open chamber lay within, containing what appeared to be a running fountain... I jokingly said 'ladies first' and she gave me a dry smile...

"Age before beauty..."

Touché... Stepping through the new hole, we cautiously went through to the next chamber, not sure what to expect. Once entering the room, we circled the strange fountain in the centre once to check for traps and other entrances, before heading back around to the entrance. I wonder what the significance of this place was...?

"I wonder what this was used for...? It's just a fountain... Or a pool... Or both... It doesn't seem to hold any significa... Wait! Look!"

Amie pointed towards the side of the fountain between two streams of water, where there were visible signs on the wall of the central part. Looking closer, the signs seemed to be strange letters or characters in an odd language... It wasn't something we could decode with the pig-pen cipher, nor was it any kind of alphabet I had seen before. I doubted it was HoN Co. as this place seemed totally untouched by anyone for ages. Amie went up to it and traced her fingers across the symbols.

"I wonder what they mean...? Do you reckon they were written by the Endermen...?"

That had been my first thought as well. Looking back at the letters, I noticed that there were a few duplications of the letters which may indicate a very similar alphabetic system to our own.

"I think we need to go and tell THEROS about this. We can map it out later, but for now he needs to see this!"

We headed out from the new chamber back into the previous one with the four chests, and back the way we had come, down the stairs, following the route we had taken to get to the fountain. Let's just hope we didn't get lost on the way back.

Syeonyx signing off