I’ll be honest, I gave it a fifty fifty chance of working out.

I’d really need to dig my boots into the snow here, but I was committed. The alternative was trying to figure out the actual answer to this ‘riddle’ and that wasn’t happening. But you miss every shot you don’t take and so forth. Might as well go full audacity mode if the alternative is just straight up losing.

And the next set of words from Speaker immediately clued me in that I had made the right pick.

“What have you done?” Speaker hissed. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?! MY RIDDLE!”

“ANALYSIS RUNNING.” Judge spoke, voice far more calm. Methodical. Unburdened by the thought of spending forty seven years developing the ultimate riddle only to run into a Winterscar.

“ESTABLISHED RULES: Challenger has to answer correctly.

CHALLENGER RESPONSE: ‘Correctly’

EVALUATION: Response directly fulfills stated requirement.

JUDGEMENT: FIRST RIDDLE, RESOLVED.”

There was a scream right after that. Frustration. Hatred. Despair. Fear.

…

Okay, I may have lied about that one. It was mostly just pure hatred. In fact, I was certain that Speaker had joined the list of people who want nothing more than to strangle me alive.

“Thus… speaks the judge.” Speaker said, grinding out each letter like I was pulling bolted down teeth. “The first riddle is…” It sounded almost about to cry. “Resolved.”

Cathida cackled for me. “You know the best part about all this deary?”

“Loot?”

“Besides that, you obsessed gremlin.” She scoffed, “The best part is that Speaker here can’t ever use that riddle again on some other unsuspecting human. According to the older records back when people were able to solve this little pyrite shit’s riddles, it isn’t allowed to use the same riddle twice.”

There was only sobbing coming from the terminal right now.

“So that riddle it spent forty seven years writing up is gone forever?” I asked.

“Yep. You’ve unblocked a few hundred known locations of mite treasure chests that this asshole’s been keeping locked up.”

“The depth of my hatred for you is immeasurable.” Speaker hissed out slowly.

“Oof, my condolences.” I said, patting the terminal. “Or congratulations, whichever applies. But I’m also in a little bit of a rush, so if you could give me the second and third riddle, that would be nice.”

“I hope your inevitable death by old age or environmental accident is tragic, painful, and lengthy.” It continued.

“So that’s the next riddle? Seems pretty straightforward, but not my airspeeder, not my snow after all. I’m just here to answer your riddles… correctly.” I said, putting my hand on the palm.

“NO! That isn’t even a riddle, it’s a statement!”

“I’d still answer the same.” I said. “Riddle please.”

It groaned. “The second riddle is as follows:

With only the power of addition, how might you add eight 8’s to reach exactly the number 1,000?”

It really went all in on the math riddles looked like. Maybe it recently discovered mathematics exists, and was a little energetic at its new toys. But this one didn’t feel quite as impossible as solving an unsolvable hypothesis.

Eight eights added up to sixty four, so the riddle clearly required some outside the box mucking about, and nothing actually to do with mathematics.

I had a vague idea already on where to start on that one, but I also had an even better idea: Ignoring all that and answering: “Correctly.” I said, hand on the terminal.

“NO YOU OVERSIZED UNDER-EVOLVED MONKEY!” Speaker shrieked. “THAT’S NOT HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO GO! THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS IS SUPPOSED TO GO!”

“ANALYSIS RUNNING.” Judge spoke a moment later, as if waking up only for one purpose. One giant eye probably opening up to look over the answer, approve it, then go back to sleep.

“No!” Speaker spoke, now fully desperate. “Please, Judge, come to your senses. I implore you! This goes against the entire spirit of the riddles!”

“Hey now.” I said, holding the paper up, “Rules. Are. Rules.” My pen tapped the paper with each word. “We signed off on this. You agreed.”

I have become the devil offering deals to unsuspecting victims rushing too fast to pull their proverbial lever. Past me would have shed a tear at this sight. Bullying ancient entities that have had one too many years to relax.

“ESTABLISHED RULES: Challenger has to answer correctly.

CHALLENGER RESPONSE: ‘Correctly’

EVALUATION: Response directly fulfills stated requirement.

JUDGEMENT: SECOND RIDDLE, RESOLVED.”

Speaker devolved into incoherent shrieking. For a good thirty seconds. Which sounds like it’s not that much time, but given it was outright screaming for a full thirty seconds, it certainly felt like it was going on for an eternity.

Finally it stopped.

“You okay buddy?” I asked. “Need to take a breath?”

“No.” Speaker hissed back. “I am not okay.”

“I mean are you okay enough to give me the last riddle? Tock’s ticking, chests to loot for ancient mite treasures and I’m running late for a dinner arrangement.”

There was the sound of sniffing for a moment. “Two and two add to four, and multiply to the same. Widen the lens outwards beyond zero and speak the three whole numbers that add and multiply to their respective same.” It paused. “Please don’t answer ‘correctly.’”

“Wait. That’s illegal.” I said, pen once more tapping the paper. “Judge, isn’t that sidestepping the rules we just signed?”

“RESOLVING.

RULES MODIFICATION MIDWAY DOES NOT COMPLY WITH CONTRACT.

CHALLENGER WILL CONTINUE USING ESTABLISHED RULES.”

“... Thus speaks the judge.” Speaker groaned. “Please, you creator forsaken morally bankrupt asshole, at least give it an attempt.”

I gave the terminal an encouraging pat. “No.” Then put my hand over the panel, pressed down and said the final ‘Correctly.’

I’m playing the semantics game here. I was well aware how sharp a double-edged sword could be. There wasn’t a non-zero chance Speaker would somehow misconstrue my ‘for-fun’ take at its riddle and ruin my entire run so far in one sweep.

“ESTABLISHED RULES: Challenger has to answer correctly.

CHALLENGER RESPONSE: ‘Correctly’

EVALUATION: Response directly fulfills stated requirement.

JUDGEMENT: THIRD RIDDLE, RESOLVED.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

CREATOR-CACHE UNSEALED. CHALLENGER AUTHORIZED ACCESS.”

I turned to the terminal. “So?”

Speaker weakly spoke. Once more grinding out its words. “Thus speaks the judge. You may recover the cache left behind.”

“Well, Cathida, if he insists, maybe I should?” I asked.

“It’s only polite.” She answered back. “Look at the poor mite construct, he’s just offering it up for free.”

“Then don’t mind if I do.”

I took a quick hop and skipped over to the floating box of constantly shifting cubes, re-equipping my gauntlets along the way. I’d seen one mite treasure before, and that was from a little caravan we intercepted and helped out. And that thing only spat out food. “Hoping this deep down we get something good.”

“It very much is, the creators bestowed an item of great power to this chest I now only once guarded.” Speaker said over the terminal. “I will pray you fail to use it wisely.”

The cubes shifted in reaction to my approach, growing in size, unhooking from one another. More were shifting out of existence now, expanding the chest out.

First thing I saw was some kind of weird optical illusion. The back of the box, except smeared over and further fragmented. It’s only after I saw the outline of cloth that I realized I wasn’t looking inside the box - this was the item inside the box.

And only a few hints at an outside fabric made me realize I could pick it up. I did so, pulling the fabric out of the mite treasure box, feeling gravity settle back onto it.

“A cape?” I asked, more curious. Holding it up, the outside shifted colors until it settled on white. But the inside of the cape?

It was like everything was moving around. It loosely looked like the cubes behind the cape, except… spazzing out?

“Speaker, what exactly is this thing.”

“I shall not answer a single one of your petty requests until you answer at least my other two prior riddles.” It said. Being a real sore loser.

“Yeah, but I did.”

“YOU DID NOT AND YOU KNOW IT!”

All the screens around me flickered off. The single voice line vanished, and only the outsides of the fortress were now visible as the security cameras turned back on everywhere. “I shall wait for you to solve my riddles, if only for a feeling of justice.” Speaker said.

I get a feeling it was proud of the other two riddles and did want to see someone actually make a real attempt at them. And given I’d ‘solved’ them, Speaker couldn’t ask anyone else ever again those riddles.

“I’ll consider it.” I said, making sure the cape was well lifted from the mite treasure chest, in case Speaker somehow still controlled that floating set of cubes and had it seal back up for some reason or another.

While I mulled over Speaker’s actual real riddles, I considered what this cape was. One side was white normal fabric, sturdy even, when I tugged at it. But the other side?

I reached a gauntlet out to grab the surface of that side and found I didn’t touch anything. My gauntlet was going through the cape, morphing in view like it had hit some kind of event horizon line.

Light was bending around the gauntlet, multiple thumbs appearing and disappearing, sections of the plates growing larger or smaller, and overall making it seem like my hand was constantly having all the bones broken a few hundred times over in very creative ways, and yet I felt completely fine. And as I moved it, I saw the smear effect again begin to blur the sight, as more and more of the prior visions of my gauntlet remained in place.

I could still move my hand through it without issue, which I realized was why everything constantly moved. The more I moved, the more smear there was on the other side. Like visual clutter.

Moment I held the hand still, whatever strange geometric set of moving lenses that bent light around would also stop on whatever setting they were. Slowly the smear would begin to dissolve, fading away as the image grew static.

Right now, my pinky was on the far left, middle and ring finger were still together, although one was far smaller, and my palm was simply gone, with a small sliver of something on the edge. That looked a lot like blood and bone. Moving my hand slightly, the pinky vanished, middle and ring fingers ballooned out, with one finger now pointing back at me, coming from the far edge of the cape instead of my actual gauntlet. And if I kept moving around, I knew the smear would start to come back, things becoming a blurry mess.

“Am I having a seizure?” I asked, wiggling my pointer finger and seeing it move on the far edge of the cape, not connected at all to my gauntlet.

“Journey confirms you are not.” Cathida said. “As much as I ask it to recheck every now and then on some of your actions, this time you’re not crazy.”

When I moved my finger slightly up, it was as if the armor was shaved off, letting me see my flesh, blood, and a small bit of bone. It spread out in multiple directions as I focused my attention on it, the bone opening up like a flower, showing me the insides. Beyond creepy. I held as still as possible and soon the blur around the bone faded and I could start making out more details of it.

I couldn’t quite tell if it responded to where I looked, because anytime I focused on any part of the space beyond, it seemed I could continue staring at it for years and still find something new. “Is this what normal mite treasures are supposed to be?”

“Golden tits no, Journey never got video footage of any mite treasures of this value up. Most are randomly found smaller conventional chests containing liquids, foods, or kinetic art sculptures. Chest with actual gear is something only Deathless come across when they’re in the lower stratas.”

No matter how out of shape my hand got, it still felt like my hand without any change of shape or pain, so this all felt like some very strange optical illusion. “So… what exactly am I looking at?”

“Deary, I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“And does Journey?”

Numbers and figures began to appear on the HUD as Journey processed the visual information and mapped out what simulation would fit those data points. “It’s calculating.” Cathida said.

“Speaker?”

The station answered immediately with a humph, “Not a word more from me until my final two riddles are truly resolved. To MY satisfaction.”

“Maybe take your hand out of the clearly unknown spooky mite cape before we know what it actually does?” Cathida asked.

I pulled my hand out of the optical illusion cape, and found it looked exactly the same as when I’d stuck it into the cape. Journey’s HUD showed all green armor wise and biometrics too. Nothing had happened to my hand, neither from a sensor point of view, or my own experience. I flexed it in and out, checking how the plates all still moved over the gauntlet as normal. Yep, that’s a hand.

Didn’t see anything weird in the soul sight either Prime. Superior sent, But it’s… freaky on the other side of that cape. You try it.

I did. A soul tendril reached out through the harsh exposed reality around me, and I found I could slither it into the cape. The other side was filled with concepts. Specifically all the same ones in this area. As if the other side of the cape was a copy. Except multiplied. And then spread out, smeared even. I focused on any one of these, and found my own concept there in the space.

The smear I saw was myself, a long smear of a hand connected to a terminal. Then standing up and once more smeared trail of Keith going straight to this cube treasure. Like my past movements all superimposed on itself. I found the same blurred of faint movement over anything that did move. The rest of the station around me remained solid - because it never once moved in the past few minutes.

I took the tendril out of the cape, then lifted the cape up, turning it around like I was holding some kind of glass lens instead of a piece of fabric. It was messy in the sight, light warping shapes around, but I recognized anything that remained still.

Then I turned it to where I’d walked over. My prior path here. And saw myself there. I needed to go completely still in order to keep sight of anything, since even a minor movement of the cape had the image within change. Like the world’s weirdest kaleidoscope, except it was watching through time backwards, all superimposed over itself at the same time, and then fragmented. And only things that could have motion were affected by the kaleidoscope. Everything else, it was as if I was just looking through a transparent cape.

Journey pinged green. Text flashed through. A lot of it. “Cathida? Quick summary if you would.”

“It says you’re looking at a higher dimensional viewpoint of your hand, but forcibly shown as a two dimensional viewpoint on the cape.” Cathida said.

“Oh, neat. I have my own cape of higher dimensions now.” I said. “Any mite treasures similar to this in the past?”

“Not a single one. There are some weapons that have odd properties but equipment tends to offer utility in some what. I have no idea about whatever this gives.” Cathida said. “And the one program in this room that’s supposed to explain things about this to you is sulking.”

“I am not sulking!” Speaker sulked.

I turned the cape around on itself to look at the outside and it remained white. I remember it shimmering a bit when I first picked it up, but now it was fully settled on this.

Except… this wasn’t just white.

“This is the exact shade of white that my current cape has.” I brought it up to my actual cape, holding the mite cape side by side to it. My thumb was going through the other side, while my fingers held the white part without issue.

Yep. Exact same shade. Nice, I would prefer to look good when I looted, destroyed and wreak havoc upon the unsuspecting world at lar- and I’ve spent too much time around Feathers and it’s gods damned starting to show.

Behind me, I could see in the occult sight that the cube roiling chest was all starting to shrink out of existence. More parts were vanishing out compared to others appearing. Until only a handful of cubes remained and promptly sunk out of reality. Even their concepts vanished away.

Don’t look at me either, Superior sent. I just knocked on the mite collective door and asked about the cape. All they said was ‘Reward’ and that’s it.

Figures. With nothing left but the cape in my hands, I decided to run a few more tests. “Cathida, if I can stick my hand in this, is it safe to stick my head in it?”

For all I knew this could be some dimensional storage device, where I could pull almost anything from my new magical occult cape. But the weird time echo I saw made me think there was more to it than just simple storage.

“What a great question to ask after you stuck your hand in it, deary.” Cathida answered, and her tone of voice gave no hesitation on expressing her feelings on all this. “Can’t say I’m surprised the second thing you think about doing is sticking your head into non-euclidean space.” There was a deep sigh over the comms. “But yes. Probably. If your hand’s still working, your head should too. Nothing worse they could do to it than how it’s currently working.”

"And Journey?"

"It is aggressively hoping you don't do this, just in case the pattern is incorrect."

Cathida was mostly certain it wouldn't kill me so I might as well. And Journey was mostly certain so long as there was a chance it could, I shouldn't. I considered one last option. "Hey Speaker. Will I die if I stick my head in this cape?"

"The world would weep at such a loss." It answered back, clearly forgetting it's prior promise to not say a single word until I answered some riddles.

I held the cape up. "On the prior deal you offered, how about if I take a shot at one of your other riddles, you tell me if it's safe or not? And if I get your other riddle, you tell me how it works fully?"

"Deal!" Speaker immediately said.