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Liliana sighed relieved as the monster missed her entirely, her racing heart slowing calming. She looked and smiled at Peyton and Calintha, "Thank you very much, that was a close one."

She looked to her foam finger to see she still did not have any light and smiled at the confirmation that she hadn't been swiped without noticing. Her eyes roams to the blue water Ladon had fallen through before she turned back to Peyton and Calintha.

"Ladon fell through the floor. I think the game wanted us to cross the brigde and defeat the monster, but instead he tried to jump the water," she stated filling the two in on what had happen in its absence.

The bridge was cleared and they could move forward, but Lily felt torn. It was obvious that Peyton and Calintha we're fine, but Ladon she wasn't sure and where was Alessa.

"I haven't seen Alessa either, I thought maybe she'd gone with the two of you. We should probably go on, but I am going to see what happened to Ladon and maybe find Alessa too."

Lily looked to the fake blue water frowning slightly, "I do not know how this works, but here goes nothing." Lily wallked around the blue water, investigating the floor Ladon had disappeared though with a frown before stepping onto it herself.

She felt bad for Ladon, but that's what you got for trying to circumvent the game. She looked interested in the monster, but was NOT about to go near the water that happened to also be a trapdoor. "I'm sorry Liliana, but I don't really want to be swallowed into a weird trapdoor either." She turned away from the other girl, heading over the weird bridge.

That also being said, a little black part of Calintha's heart hoped that Ladon at least had another light so she wouldn't be the only one loosing. She didn't particularly really want to split again and go with Peyton, but if the group insisted on fragmenting, she was going to continue onwards, seeing what the next room would bring.

((Edit: Gaia went all funny and made me double post, so I deleted the post I had under this- sorry guys!))

Alessa is now armed with the Mace. [X] [ ] [ ]
Calintha is now armed with the Sword. [X] [X] [ ]
Ladon is now armed with the Axe. [X] [ ] [ ]
Liliana is now armed with the #1 Fan Foam Finger. [ ] [ ] [ ]
Peyton is now armed with the Baseball Bat. [ ] [ ] [ ]

The Water - Liliana
As you are about to step onto the paper-blue water, you notice a dirt smudge in the general shape of a shoeprint. So Ladon really was here! Your eyes weren't paying tricks! When you step onto the exact same spot, however, the floor sagged a little bit. You shift your weight. Nothing. An experimental hop results in a muffled clink! from beneath your feet, but nothing else.

It appears to have been a one-use only. There isn't anything to do but continue on. Scroll down.

Continuing On - Peyton, Calintha, Liliana
Beyond the bridge is yet another hallway. There isn't anything to it, aside from the scattered bushes and piles of dirt that try in vain to make the indoor attraction similar to an outdoor "forest." After a minute of walking and several turns, you see a niche in the wall. Upon examining it, there's nothing in or around to indicate that something was supposed to be there. Even pushing against the back wall yields nothing -- it's solid. Aside from some debris that appears to have been swept in, nothing catches your interest.

The next room , however, is the biggest room you've been in yet.

There appears to be a sort of alter here, as well as three exits from the room. Or what you could call "exits" -- there are three suspended baskets, each a different color: red, black, and yellow. They appear to be all the same size, as if each could hold a chair. The alter in the middle of the room has a sign, with a broken border:



Well, there's a black, red, and yellow basket... Maybe it's indicating that you should stand in one of the baskets?
Stand on the red basket.
Stand on the black basket.
Stand on the yellow basket.

The Dark Budgeted Labyrinth - Ladon
When you exit the room, the lighting is better here than it was in there -- but in comparison to the floor above, the lighting is even dimmer. That is, until the crackle and hum of electricity suddenly starts up, lighting the room up a bit better before the ambiance soundtrack starts. The metallic-sounding bird chirps don't fool you -- only burrowing owls live under ground, and they don't chirp like that!

There's no trace of anyone else here in the area. There are three exits to the room -- one way is darker than the others, and the other seems to have something down the hallway. Maybe it's a large rock? The final direction has a breeze, and the faint clank of metal.
Attack the darkness Walk towards the darkest room.
Go towards the stone-like object.
Go where the breeze is coming from.

The baskets were very strange, very strange indeed. The adage on the wall was even stranger still. Calintha mulled it over, repeating it through her head a couple of times. And suddenly it clicked with her. It reminded the blonde girl of the old rhyme her grandmother used to spout when she visited, and it was about venomous snakes.

Red touches yellow, your a dead fellow, Black touches red, keep your head. She repeated the phrase a few times.

That was right, right? Mulling it over a little more, she decided that it was indeed correct. Her grandmother must have sang it to her about a hundred times in her childhood, and she trusted her first memory recall about it.

But what basket should she choose then? Not yellow, that would be bad news, clearly. Yellow meant poison and death. But the question still remained between the black and the red basket. Silently, she walked up to the black basket. It was the only one in the old saying that didn't mean poison. Yellow meant poison if touched by red, and red was only safe if it was touching black. Calintha stood inside of the black basket, and braced herself a little for whatever was to come.

"I think we're all supposed to pick a basket guys." Calintha didn't offer any further hints to her reasoning. This was a game, after all, and a game that she was already losing. Let them make their own conjectures.

His choice just kept getting better and better. While he was out of the dark, he now had the chirping of demonic birds overhead and pathetic shrubbery. The flickering light that suddenly came on overhead was welcomed, but he wished it was brighter. If they were going for any effect, it was lost on him. The only feeling he was getting was that the birds were giving him a headache and that he was faced with 3 directions that didn’t seem good in any way. Oh yeah, and he was still very alone. Since he had fallen down, he felt he was in a subbasement of the already shady building, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the three girls above were already done and heading home.

“Well, what do we have here?” He sighed, taking the liberty to talk to himself since no one else was around. Hallway one was dark, fading into the shadows. “Yeah, I think cartoons have shown that’s the bad way.” The second one had something he couldn’t make out further down, but it looked like stone. This made him wonder if, like so many of the games Tate played, the monsters would get progressively tougher, going from cardboard to stone. Then he really took in his surroundings, with the dim light, dieing shrubs, and the bird recording. Yeah, they probably couldn’t afford that much. The last was the most inviting, as he could even take in a soft breeze, but even with the chirping, he could hear …clanking? He really hoped this wasn’t like how video games worked. If he had to face a stone monster or a metal monster, his foam axe wasn’t going to cut it. Literally!

Ladon looked to the dark hallway again. Hmm. Tough choice, but typically following where a breeze was coming from was a good sign. Right? Turning, he headed towards the breezy hallway, holding up his axe and wondering what 2 other options he just passed up.

WELL, clearly Calintha had though way too much into the situation. Apparently, red and yellow didn't mean poison, but instead they meant sky. And black meant the basement! With that realization she stepped off of the basket, thankful that it was well constructed and that it had been a smooth ride. With how cheap everything else was, Calintha was very glad they hadn't penny pinched with that attraction. She wondered where Liliana and Peyton had gone on their magic hot air balloon ride. However, the hole in the floor she had come through had already slid shut by some unknown mechanism, leaving the place dark. The lights on her foam sword light the room eerily.

Someone was approaching now, to the side. "Hello.... who's there?" Calintha called out unsurely. She shivered a bit in the cold breeze, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness. Once they came closer, she realized that it was just the missing Ladon. So this is where he hand ended up to with the whole trap-door thing. "Ladon? Is that you? Its Calintha." She waved a little, even though the motion was kind of useless in the dark.

Not having known about the previous passageways, Calintha stepped towards the breeze, wondering if it was artificial or real. If it were real, that would be a good thing. Besides, as a wise old wizard had stated 'The air smells better down this way'. And that was indeed the case. The basement floor, covered in dirt as it was smelled like decay. And while this usually didn't bother her, the overwhelming smell and creepiness of the room was getting to her. "What have you come across so far? Liliana tried to get down the same trap door to find you but it wouldn't budge."

Liliana stumbled as the basket lurched, but regaining her balance she relaxed in the sturdy basket. The basket took her to a room above and Peyton was there, but no Calintha. Lily frowned, at the fact they had indeed been split up. She went over to Peyton basket looking around, then to where Calintha would have been if she'd been risen up as well.

Lily was drawn out of her thought by the flute music and the sound of running water. The is room was far nicer that the rooms they had previously visited, but Lily could not feel relieved. There group of five was now two and Lily was really wondering where the other three were.

Lily was lost in her thoughts and hardly noticed the door until she heard what sounded like a click. She quickly spun around to see that she was alone. Apparently Peyton had gone through one of the door, but which one Lily did not know and now she was alone.

Lily sighed and headed for the left door hoping what lay beyond it was good and clean. 'Oh please let it be clean.'