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^ Chimera mountain

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Mikyla groaned as she tried to pick apart the riddle. She'd asked Sam so many times to repeat it that she swore that she could perform the whole rap, acoustics included, yet none of it made sense. Each line seemed to tangle further than the last into a Gordian knot of befuddlement and a Chinese finger trap simultaneously.

With a heave a distraught, Mikyla shook her head as she pointed at Sam to cue the riddle once again. She scrolled over word by word in her head as Sam made an orchestra out of the whole thing but the words just kept blurring and the more she tried to unravel the meaning, the more she got lost in the semantics.

"Why can't I get it?" Mikyla forced every syllable through gritted teeth. "The last riddle was so much easier. In hindsight everything makes sense with the hallucinations and desires not to mention the obvious warning about the two paths with one being dusted with brazen! But I can't get this riddle at all! I mean, what does 'a nurtured shrike' have to do with lightning? Isn't that a giant bird?"

"What about the fire riddle?" Sam offered lightly. He tried to remain upbeat in the situation but the erratic terrain in companionship with the stress emanating from Mikyla was causing him to become slightly frazzled. "You know, the first one. Could you solve that?"

"The one where you fainted after running?" Mikyla smirked, the creases of her upper lip foreign on the solemn face.

"Fainted?" Sam feigned shock. "How could a Noble like myself faint from a tiny bit of physical exertion? I'm not a Dregblood!"

Mikyla rolled her eyes. "You'd be surprised how nimble Drows can be."

"Heh, yeah coming from the Dreglover." Sam had a glint in his eyes. "I mean, you did seem pretty surprised when that Drow Lavender punched you in the face."

"Shut up!" Mikyla flushed red and despite annoyance of intermittent darkness, she was glad that the light wasn't frequent enough. She just wished she could have a hint of some sort. Being accustomed to the darkness and then being blinded for the cycle to repeat itself indefinitely wasn't something she was getting used to. On the contrary, the small irk only seemed to get worse with time like a leaky ceiling dripping slowly but surely, on and on, pushing the limits until oblivion.

"Yeah, well." Sam shrugged. "All we have to do is find a portal, right? If we can find the portal without the riddle than it's a win and if we find the portal with the riddle it's still a win. I say, stuff the riddle and just look for the portal."

"That'd be nice and all but- it's hardly likely that we'll just stumble upon the portal."

"The portal that looks like a spiral?"

"Yeah."

"A faint blue tinge that flashes with a faint cooling glow?"

"Yeah."

"A swirling disk that has an amniotic trance to it?"

"Yeah." Mikyla repeated with slight annoyance. "You sound like you haven't seen one before. It's not exactly hard to miss but with the amount you can see or rather the amount you can't see in this realm, I suppose just searching for it would be-"

"Like that one over there?" Sam pointed over Mikyla's shoulder.

Sure enough, when the next lightning bolt struck, Mikyla caught a glimpse a blue pearl glinting in the distance. It looked so near but with the amount of mountainous silhouettes in the distance, she knew the trek would be a lot longer than she would have liked.

Mikyla shook her head in disbelief. "It looks like you've done it again."

"Huh?"

"First with the gryphons, I mean, I didn't expect them to just let us go by asking nicely, perhaps next time ask them to drop us down instead, but again, just by looking for the portal you found it. It's just incredible."

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