Defenders & Artefacts: Broken Rules

      That was the address provided to them during the briefing, two days earlier. It was the dream of every novice Defender of Neopia to attend a real-life assignment, as minimal or trivial as this might have been. The headquarters had received an anonymous tip for a survey of an abandoned house and they quickly formed a team of in-training officers to go on a routine exploration mission. They had been advised to arrive early at the location and, indeed, a group of four future defenders dressed in plain, civilian clothes started arriving at the location.

     In front of them, a vast, unfamiliar house loomed, surrounded by a wooden fence. It was the first time they had laid eyes on it and its grandeur inspired awe and fear for the unknown. Its garden left to rubble, fallen trees and overgrown weeds dominated the once elegant garden. There were uncountable rooms in the house and they all had to be explored. It was a simple mission: enter the house, explore in order to find out the reason for the anonymous request as well as map the house and record it, and deal with any problems that might arise. Judge Hog himself had got involved during their debrief and deemed that this was an appropriate integration mission for the youngsters, without foreseeing any complications. After a moment to take in the magnitude of the building, the defenders moved to the front porch to commence their mission.

     Verde

     Location: Entrance Hall

     Discoveries: None

     Verde pushed the door of the house with minimal effort. The door swung open to welcome him into the dim, but sufficiently lit Entrance Hall. The wooden floor creaked as he took his first steps inside and noticed two doors on either side of the room. A brown carpet that hadn’t been cleaned in years signaled the way ahead, through the Foyer and towards the Grand Staircase. Verde knew what he had to do as he had run the brief through his head countless times. His sole objective was to explore every nook of this strange house and collect anything that might be of interest or importance to the defenders. Armed with his courage, knack for exploring and three more defenders which he could call friends, he was far from afraid. A natural-born adventurer, he believed that this expedition would be his rite of passage to prove himself and become a real defender. Having grown up on Krawk Island, he spent his youth exploring caves and gardens with hidden alcoves, forests and impassable, for others, terrain. He wasn’t about to let an old house hinder his defender’s rank progression.

     Even though they had agreed to not move as a team, rather to break up and each one to explore a different part of the house in order to gather as much information as possible, they had taken their precautions. On each of their wrists was strapped a strange but very useful piece of equipment provided by Dr. Landelbrot. Each wristband emitted a different faint colour; Verde’s was green. This piece of marvel allowed each of the defenders to track the location of one another. With the push of a button, Verde could see the tiny specks of each of his friends on a map, at this moment all waiting eagerly at the Entrance Hall. The map of the house would evolve with each one of their steps. New rooms would automatically appear on the schematic of the house with their doors connecting them and any other important information about the specific room, thanks to the advanced scanning technology of the wristband. Furthermore, pressing on the tiny coloured dots, he could see what equipment they had encountered and the overall state of Strength, Movement, Intelligence and Clarity of each defender, all honed through the vigorous training back at Defender Camp.

     Their four skills all had a starting value. This value was greatly improved during their training. They had all passed the necessary courses to reach, at least, the minimum skill level required to advance from an aspiring defender to the junior rank. Throughout their defender missions, these values could easily rise or fall. It was of utmost importance that they never decreased below their minimum value, or the defender would be rendered unconscious.

     Verde glanced back at his colleagues, gave them a nod with a grin and decided to start his exploration. He decided to ignore the path to the Grand Staircase and instead opted to turn to his left and pass through the door. As soon as he entered the new room he froze in place, eyes fixed on the ground. His foot had stepped on something horrendous, something slimy, something that would have made him slip and get knocked down had he not stopped moving when he did. The entrance to the new room was covered in a green, slippery material that resembled Meuka’s snot. It reminded him of the surface of the mossy stones he encountered in the past while scouting a rock-filled beach on the western side of Krawk Island. He had to be especially careful to not accidentally lose his footing back then, and the same defence mechanism had kicked in right now. After the initial shock, he stepped off the green mess, shaking his feet to remove any slime that had gathered on his shoes. Magically, the green mess disappeared and revealed the wooden flooring underneath.

     “This house works in mysterious ways,” he thought as he felt the excitement rushing.

     He slowly turned around to take in the new room. He must have been in the Library, given the vast amount of books adorning the bookshelves and the cozy sofas next to the unlit fireplace. The walls were painted in a nostalgic blue hue which, for unexplained reasons, really fitted the cold, metallic fireplace. Overall, this room was in a better state than the Entrance Hall, ignoring the initial spillage at the doorway. It was clean and the furniture hadn’t gathered a lot of dust. He stared at the books on the right wall for a while, when he noticed something strange. One of the books, at arm’s reach, was glowing with a faint yellow glow. He couldn’t explain the glow, it wasn’t like anything he had seen before in any of his adventures, but it was intriguing and inviting.

     He was drawn to it, so he got closer. He extended his arm outwards, his fingers meaning to touch it. As soon as his fingers made contact with the book, it flew out of the shelf. It levitated above Verde and quickly flickered through its own pages. He glanced up to keep up with its motions. With a thump, it fell on the floor. And Verde felt his intelligence rise by one point.

     Blanca

     Location: Entrance Hall

     Discoveries: None

     Blanca entered the Entrance Hall right behind Verde, whom she saw leave towards the left, leaving behind her the other two colleagues. Upon entering, she inspected every detail of the old paint flaking from the walls. Part of it had fallen on the ground forming small lumps of yellow dirt; not the best first impression of the host. She noticed the dirty carpet in the middle of the room which she followed to arrive at the Foyer. Further ahead it led to the Grand Staircase, but she didn’t continue her journey. This new room was strange. There were two doors on either side of the room but there also was a wooden hatch on the right hand side of the floor, just inches away from the right door.

     Prior to her defenders training, Blanca was an avid archaeologist. She spent countless hours in the Lost Desert mapping the pyramids, sweeping old artefacts and piecing together broken tablets to solve ancient mysteries or unravel new ones. Her studies had taken her to Tyrannia as well, where she immersed herself in the secrets of the omelette and archaic stone symbolographies, one of the oldest forms of writing. She even had the honour of visiting Maraqua and studying the old alphabet, in addition to its ancient history. Her family came from a long line of artefact enthusiasts, magic meddlers and knowledge-thirsty individuals. All these experiences had made her very meticulous, an attribute which was greatly undervalued by others during the exhaustive training at the Camp.

     Blanca went on her knees and stooped low to examine the hatch on the floor, looking for the handle. She found the handle on the surface of the door, which was a circular hoop of rusted metal securely connected to the hatch with a small chain. She grabbed it with both her hands. It was cold to the touch. With all her strength she tried to lift it up. The hatch didn’t barge at all. She gave it a few more pulls without success. She figured it must be locked from the other side. She stared at it for a long moment. The surface was almost identical to the wooden flooring, except the outline of the trap door itself which was slightly darker in colour, revealing the miniscule gap around its perimeter. It was easy to miss for someone who was not paying attention, as it camouflaged well with the floor, but this was not the case with this defender.

     She stood up, and looked ahead. She decided to explore upstairs, and moved straight to enter the room of the Grand Staircase. An ornate handrail designed with elegant swirls and held in place by polished posts, welcomed her. There were no other doors in this room, and no other pieces of furniture. The wooden steps invited her to go upstairs, so she followed her instinct. Climbing the stairs she reached the top floor and stepped on the Upper Hall. She spun around to check her surroundings. Similar to the room she just left behind, there was no furniture in this room. There were, however, four doors to choose from, one in each direction.

     She decided to continue through the door on her right. From afar, she saw the floor of this new room being different from the rest she had seen up to now. The outer parts of the floor were still wooden, however the middle part of the floor had a strip made of shiny marble. She stepped inside, right on the marble strip. A shrieking noise filled her ears! With every step she took, the floor creaked and moaned as if it was alive. She checked the map on her wristband which glowed white; she was in the Creaky Hallway. Unfortunately, she was out of movement.

     Azul

     Location: Entrance Hall

     Discoveries: None

     Azul doubly and triply checked to make sure that his wristband was securely strapped around his wrist. It was of utmost importance that it didn’t fall off during his journey, otherwise he would be lost in this foreign house. He checked and double checked that the map was working, by pressing on the button to bring it up. The faint blue map was marked with a green dot, showing that Verde was in the Library and had gained an extra intelligence point and with a white dot, showing that Blanca was in the Creaky Hallway. That specific room did not sound pleasant at all.

     The son of a famous and Neopia acclaimed defender, he had no choice but to undergo the Camp training and then to endure the tough introductory courses to become a defender himself. In reality, he was unsure if he actually enjoyed the position or the pressure from his family and his father’s reputation pushed him to take regrettable decisions. One thing was certain though; he was anxious about everything, and mildly scared. The fear stemmed from the fact that he wasn’t confident in his own skills. Had he passed the Camp and the training based on his own merit or had he always lived in his father’s shadow?

     He finally moved past the Entrance Hall and into the Foyer. The notes shining from his wristband stated that the trap door on his right had already been attempted by Blanca. It was probably locked, or stuck, or simply an artifact from the previous owners of this house in order to deceive potential burglars and make them waste their time. Azul skipped over the trap door on the floor, passed through the door on his right and entered a new room.

     His vision suddenly got hazy. Puffy purple and pink smoke filled the room while far away distant bells could be heard chanting. His mouth drooled, his eyes half closed as he embraced the trance. He was senselessly looking around the room, trying to understand. It was filled with white, polished statues and busts of famous Neopians. He could barely comprehend what he was looking at because of the smoke that left a blurry outline on every item it touched. The only other door was straight ahead on the other side of the room, but he was still unaware and lost inside the thick veil of puff.

     Unexpectedly, the statue of Queen Fyora started moving. First her head with her hair took life, then her torso and her sceptre slashed the pink puffs around her, momentarily leaving a smokeless trail. Afterwards, her legs kicked away from the pedestal and she hopped on the floor. With her long fingers, she started gesturing for Azul to follow her through the swirling purple portal that had appeared right next to the Queen. Azul let himself get carried away for a second, taking small and steady steps to reach her and the circular entity that both took in and extracted further purple smoke. During a split second of lucidity, he realised; follow her where? His legs were under her command. His mind had started to clear but his body was not yet aware. Any instructions were mere passing memories.

     Between moments of clarity and moments of foolish enchantment, his mind rushed to the training on mental attack deflection they had received from Zee, the blue Xweetok with the power of force field generation. During her course, her primary focus was to educate the trainees that possessed the same ability as her, on how to use it efficiently. For the rest that relied on their wits, she had instilled in them the importance of clarity as a skill, and how to properly evade an attack of the mind. In a nutshell, her force fields were a natural evolution of her high clarity and her expertise in diverting attacks; physical or mental.

     With all his clarity, Azul started concentrating on the blue light emanating from his wrist, signifying danger, to try and clear his mind of any outside influence. He started panicking. The bright blue light was piercing his eyes, trying to register to the rest of his body that this wasn’t right. He kept dragging his feet towards the portal until, at the last second, as he was about to be engulfed and transported to an unknown location, he managed to snap out of it. The portal sucked all the puffy smoke that overwhelmed him and disappeared in a blink. As the Queen slowly dragged herself up the pedestal to once again turn back into stone, the distant bells reached a crescendo, maintaining their sound. With one final slash of her staff she granted Azul a point in clarity and all was then quiet in the Corridor of Statues.

     Purpura

     Location: Entrance Hall

     Discoveries: None

     Purpura let all her friends pass through the Entrance Hall and watched them as, one by one, got lost in the maze that was surely going to prove to be this house. She was always the one to take care of everyone, the one who always listened to every single conversation that was taking place at the same time during any dinner party, the mother figure of the group. What did it matter though if she entered last, as if to watch over everyone? They would all go their separate ways and she would still need to do her own exploring, partly because this was what the job entailed and partly for her own selfish reasons.

     Having lost her parents at a very young age, she quickly took on a protector role in all her experiences in life. She finished school with the highest marks, proving to be a capable and smart young Neopian. It wasn’t long before the Defenders of Neopia took note of that and quickly enlisted her in their ranks for training, a position she gladly accepted. The defenders had access to magical abilities and equipment which could help her track down her parents, as she was convinced they were still somewhere out there. Did this make her egotistic or was she allowed to do everything in her power to seek them out and help them?

     She passed from the Entrance Hall to the Foyer, not paying much attention to her surroundings. There, she decided to take the door to her left, to prevent going the same direction as her friends. It led her to a room that must have been abandoned for a thousand years. All the furniture was run down by pests, the coffee table barely clinging to life through toothpick-sized legs, the floor all cracked and broken, the big carpet in the middle torn up and eaten as if by savage Meepits. She was stunned by the ugliness that characterised the Abandoned Room. Surrounded by desolation, she noticed an item lying on the table, its faint white glow, barely visible but distinctively different from the other items.

     She went closer to it, getting down on one knee so that she wouldn’t need to touch it but still be able to examine it. It was a mask, mostly white with gold accents. It had two holes for the eyes and when worn, it would only cover the top half of the face. On its top part, connecting the two eye holes were shiny silver arches that resembled a tiara. It reminded her of fancy ball masks which Pets would wear to go to a dress-up party. The more she looked at it, the brighter it got and the more inviting it felt. She touched it.

     As soon as her fingers made contact with the silver arches on the top part, the whole room started swirling around her. The room with its contents was spinning so fast that the furniture had lifted off the ground and started becoming long, thin streaks of brown and white and red. Continuously spinning around the eye of the storm, was her and the mask. And then as suddenly as it started so it stopped. She felt her legs trembling and she almost lost her balance. She tried to steady herself by holding onto the nearby coffee table but to no avail, as her light touch made it crumble into pieces and fall on the floor, right in front of her and the sofa, causing the mask to fall on the cold tiles. She slowly bent to pick it up from the floor.

     Her wristband glowed purple as she saw two new notifications. The faint purple light grew bigger and brighter, jumping out of the wristband like a balloon and hovering above her wrist so that she could read it properly. The first notification was instructions for the mask. It explained that the mask, when worn, would provide her with two intelligence points but it would remove two clarity points. The effects would revert back when the mask was removed. Secondly, it ominously announced Visions: ONE.

To be continued…