The Ranch

Fairytale Maze (5)

About five hours have passed since the start of the maze game. They've run into a few other riddles but have breezed through them. They've now reached another dead end and plan to retrace their steps and take a different path when they hear intermittent voices behind the dead end.

"...give..back to...original owner....story...."

The metal shrubbery seems adept at disrupting voices, making it hard to tell what they're talking about.

"WHY.....REAL?!? .....FIGHT!!"

What's not hard to interpret is the harrowing screams that came after the voices.

"AGHHHHHHH!!"

"AHHHH!"

After a minute, the scream ends and returns to silence. A few minutes after that, the dead end opens up.

The group looks at each other.

Sherlock hesitantly starts," Should we go some-"

"Who's to say a different direction will be easier." Kai steps through the doorway with Tih in arm.

Forcing his hand, Sherlock follows from behind, along with Lucien.

The group enter their second puzzle room. In it contains a small grassy field filled with tiny flowers. There's a horizontal road cutting through the middle of the room. There's no traces of the previous people except for the faint scent of blood in the air.

In the center of the stone road lays a wicker basket. On the left end of the road stands a child in red hood who's face is concealed and a hungry wolf whining on ground on other end.

"Red riding hood." Kai concludes.

"Actors?" "Npcs?" Sherlock and Lucien look at each other.

Sherlock chuckles playfully," I didn't know we were in a video game?"

Lucien stays silent at Sherlock's remark. In a sense, actors and npc aren't all that different. They both have a committed role they have to play out. With that in mind, laughing at him is the same as laughing at himself.

Kai notices, "We weren't given an objective like the Alice in Wonderland room." He glances at Tih, leaving him in the corner of the room so he could get a closer look without worrying about Tih touching anything.

The group starts searching around the room for any clues. Kai will occasionally check up on Tih out of the corner of his eye.

"Hello?" First, Kai goes up to riding hood to speak with her, but the girl doesn't react.

Sherlock observes the whining wolf that looks incredibly realistic, but not perfect. If a real wolf was truly that hungry, it wouldn't be waiting around to die with food right in front of it. Sherlock tried to come up with multiple reasons for its behavior, like it being trained or it being an animatronic. Although he thinks of many possible conclusions, he has no way of testing them out without risk.

"It's like a scenario. Are we supposed to play out the story like how it's told in the books?" Sherlock wonders aloud.

"In the story, the girl is taking a basket of food to her grandmothers house, but when she arrives a wolf had already eaten the grandmother and was pretending to be her to eat the little girl." Kai recalls.

"But to dress up as the grandmother, the wolf would have to be somewhat anthropomorphic, correct?" They look at the normal, but starved, looking wolf.

"Can we touch them? Will they react?" Lucien wonders curiously.

Sherlock thinks it's better to hold back," We don't want to accidentally provoke them. Especially when we don't know what they are."

"...I think they're given us an option. Hand the basket to the girl or the hungry wolf." Sherlock hypothesizes.

"...those screams earlier." Lucien makes a short quip, reminding the others.

Sherlock continues that thought," According to the voices, they should have given it to the girl, but that wasn't the right answer."

"What if, the one that doesn't receive the basket tries to grab it themselves," says Kai.

"So were actually choosing who we want to fight with." The group look between the girl who's face is obscured and the starving wolf.

Meanwhile, Tih has squatted beside the wicker basket and has started rummaging through it. He pulls out a slice of french bread and starts bunching on it.

After living a couple month on the island eating a full three meals a day plus extra depending on who he's hanging out with, Tih's appetite has grown significantly. They've been in this maze for the past four and a half hours, meaning it would be about lunch time right now. Tih has gotten used to the full course meals they serve at the cafeteria. Six sugar cookies aren't going to do it for him, which is why he is acting more like a hungry wolf than the actual hungry wolf.

After Tih's placed the bread in his mouth, he glances at both ends of the road before standing up with the basket in hand. He walks towards the wolf that's lying down on the road. He shuffled through the food in the basket and pulls out a thick slice of roast.

As he squats down to the animal's level, he takes a bite out of the meat. He then places the meat chuck next to the wolf's snout.

"WOAH!" Sherlock flinches at the little girl starts to move all of a sudden.

Kai is also confused, "What? Why is she- DODGE!" The speed of riding hood is not to be underestimated. She quickly finds a target and aims to attack Sherlock.

Sherlock barely manages to jump out of the way, thanks to the training they've had from parkour. As parkour has no attacks, Sherlock can only continue to dodge, but the girls speed is slowly increasing. Lucien joins the two, making himself a target. Now, the girl is attacking two people instead of one, giving Sherlock some breathing room.

Kai looks around to try to find out what caused riding hood's attack mode to be switched on. His eyes land on the child he took his eyes off of for less than a minute.