riddle me this. ― ʜᴏᴜꜱᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴀɴᴜʙɪꜱ

thirty seven.

"we think they're clues to the different chemicals we need to use." nina explained. "there are six funnels down the lion's mane, six of those," she continued, referring to the riddles. "so one per snake." she concluded.

"the first one, the taste of the great bitter lake, that's a real lake in egypt." fabian read out one of the riddles, explaining it to them. "the water's salty, so that makes it bitter." 

"so the bitter taste is salt." nina reiterated.

"sodium chloride." bella corrected, causing the others to look up at her. "what? copying a periodic table a hundred times makes you remember things." she shrugged.

"okay," nina nodded. "so we've got one, only five to go." 

"you know what we could do?" alfie suddenly joined their conversation after doing god knows what behind them this whole time. bella did notice a ping pong bat in his hand and a line of sweat across his forehead. "we could bring samples of the chemicals up from the tunnels and try to identify them in the chemistry lab." he suggested. he was met with a stunned silence as they were all taken aback by his useful idea. 

"you came up with that while bouncing the ball," fabian glanced down at the ping pong bat in his hand before back up at alfie. "really badly?" he questioned in disbelief as he voiced everyone's thoughts. 

"yeah." alfie nodded his head before returning back to his terrible game of ping pong by himself. 

༻✦༺

"seriously, i would like one day of not having to figure out egyptian spirits and spooky riddles." amber sighed as she sat at one of the tables in the frobisher library as bella was busy flicking through a few books that she had found on egyptian rulers. 

"hey, i did say i could do this by myself." she pointed out, sending a look towards amber. amber sat up straight in her seat, shaking her head.

"there's no way i'm missing out, plus you can't do this all by yourself." she added. bella chuckled, nodding her head before returning to the books she had sprawled out on the desk. amber watched attentively, wondering what kind of research the girl was doing that she needed to read a million books at once to figure it out.

"i think i found it." she mumbled, picking up one of the books as she flicked through it.

"found what? what exactly is it you're looking for?" amber questioned, finally asking her thoughts aloud.