A Snowed Abode

Twos

They went down the stairs, and what they found was a bit of a surprise to them... some sort of holding, with a stream running past on the side, but what was a surprise mostly to Pax and Clemens, was who also was there... actually animated people (as opposed to the somewhat static creatures from before, their lives we were not even sure of, since for all anyone knew they were holograms, or robots who happen to disappear as soon as a certain condition is fulfilled, or creatures from millions of years ago who somehow slipped past time and for some reason decided to hole up in some strange castle with odd inscriptions). Then again, there was something strange still about them... they were quite small, for instance, and... Pax was not certain, but there seemed to be another oddity...

"Currently locked..." Pax confirmed upon checking the gates which had these people inside, "perhaps the possibility for unlocking is nearby, maybe?" Where, though? There was not much space around here... no switches or keys could be in water, likely, and behind these rooms there was a short, concrete passageway, some of which seemed cracked...

From behind the gates' bars Pax could talk with them, but what they said was even stranger...
"We were there, once, then suddenly... where were we? Who are we?" I think the common denominator here is the letter 'w', but besides that... how could one both not know where and who they are? At least one of the two would be a known quantity, one would reckon... unless it's total amnesia? Like, perhaps an asteroid crushed into the ground and it turned out to be a spaceship? Pax would not be surprised if they were aliens from outer space... but even if they were, why would they effectively be inside a prison guarded, bizarrely, by three crystals which in turn do not turn off unless some strange, organic-looking green people have accepted that whoever found certain concepts written in some pamphlets, guarded respectively by a giant beetle and a manic clown? One has got to admit, it is the stuff of utter fiction, but here the two are now, below the staircase and face-to-face with some other strange lives (that at least we could presumably confirm are indeed alive, unless now dead creatures can walk around too? I suppose zombies do that, but they do not look like those at all... also much shorter...)

"Who...? Twice over? Am I seeing double here, Pax?" Clemens asked, because the second strange thing about them was... they walked in two. As in, they seemed to walk synchronously... they did not seem to be conjoined twins or such, in that sense they were separated physically, but they still walks absolutely in sync, somehow...

"Not quite, I see them too... and... eight others here? I can not understand what happened exactly, besides who they are... and what the monarch seems to have done for all of these (people?) - to end up here... seems confusing." One could say, especially since they were not any people, but ones (or twos?) - that somehow do not walk around separately. Perhaps that is the reason why they are here? Only speculating here, but that seems to be the common factor...

"Indeed... hey... misters? Can you tell us anything more?" Clemens asked them in turn. Misters, one supposes, is a bit of a filler here, an awkward address in lieu of any other kind of knowledge about them, but I guess if the synchronous two were called Tom we could call them that.

"We seemed to have lived so distinctly... this concrete, this disease... not us, we are not, at all..." They replied in turn, which I suppose was not quite a lot of information, and not actually very distinct from all the other symbolic statements we recently encountered, but still not as much perhaps, and it did provide a slight bit more information about this specific conundrum the two were wondering about, with concrete likely referring to the flooring and walls, but disease was not quite as obvious as to its reference... also, how one lives distinctly, one is not positive...

"I still do not understand how or why they ended up here, but we seem like we could help them... as soon as we find out where they were..." Clemens said in response, which I assume is epistemologically correct, as one indeed can not exactly help if it is unknown as to how to help, and where they live? I mean, has anyone ever seen somewhere full of people walking in sync, anywhere? Which is what makes them being here even stranger... than even a giant beetle.