Tantibus

THE TENTH CHAPTER

Admira grew up under pleasant circumstances, with the blood of a noble family flowing through her veins. They lived in a fairly big and luxurious mansion in the eastern end of Canterlot. She grew up as an only child, under the umbrella of her wealthy parents. Her father was a highly ranked general, from which most of the family’s riches came from, and her mother liked to sew decorative banner patches, clothing and she would sometimes even stitch soft plush dolls. She owned a small embroidery boutique where she would sell the products of her hobby, for a small and reasonable price.

Since coming from a rich family, Admira never truly learnt the harsh, and sometimes cruel nature, of the outside world: the world outside the safety of the walls in Canterlot. Her father shielded her from any potential bad outside influences, seeing as he wanted her to grow up to be a kind role model for her own children someday. However, it was a difficult task to hide everything, especially some of the decisions a general has to make. Whenever she was in need of something, he would therefore be sure to let her have it, to compensate for his lack of honesty and interaction. He also could not stand to see her sad and hoped to raise her to feel the same empathy. He succeeded to an extent. She was compassionate and courteous, even though she lived a life of false security.

With Tantibus entering her life, Admira’s walls begun to come crashing down and she came to realize that reality was not always the fairy tale she was raised believing it would be.

It was merely a second ago that she had been in the massive hall, but now she found herself in a completely different room. It was as if she was taken out of existence and placed somewhere else. Unfortunately, the distinctively hallow and ominous atmosphere was still present and she could deduce that she was still in Tantibus’ clutches.

Admira shrieked. The first thing she saw was a skull, although it was facing away from her. It was sitting upon a desk which itself was positioned right in front of her. The skull appeared to be placed there as an adornment, albeit a disturbing one. But it was not entirely unexpected that Tantibus had creepy interior design to match its central, twisted theme. She looked around and saw that she was in a long and rectangle shaped office. The desk was standing in the middle of one half of the room with an accompanying chair on the other side of it. Several bookshelves were lined up on the three walls surrounding the desk. They were filled with multiple books of various colors and sizes, but neither of them had a label on their spine, which Admira found strange.

The skull appeared to be staring at the creaky chair behind the desk, or whoever used to sit in it, with its empty eye sockets. It could also be looking at the book shelves by the wall. She then turned around and noticed the door, which was located across the room on the opposing wall from the desk’s standpoint. Immediately, she ran straight for it, almost shouting at first glance. Her speed made her knock into it and she then furiously started twisting its knob. But it would not budge. It became apparent that it was locked, especially judging by the key hole in the middle of the gold coated handle.

“Come on!” she burst out, feeling distressed and lost. Unlike before, she had now no one else but herself to rely on.

Admira looked back at the desk and noticed that it had a few built in compartments: the number one most preferred spot to store an office key. She ran back and rounded the desk to reach its rear where she would begin opening its six compartments.

In the final and bottom compartment, there lay a book. The book was covered in a red matte finish and felt cold to the touch. She found no title or any text whatsoever on it. Nothing but the aggressive, red color. The simplistic design was odd, and she had never seen anything like it before. She picked out a book from the bookshelf and found that it was the same. They all were. Hundreds of books. The only thing that changed were the colors.

She opened the original red book. On the very first page, she was met with a simple message constructed from a typewriter.

THERE IS NOTHING HERE

What? What does that mean? she wondered, and flipped through the other pages. They were all blank. Those were the only four words in the whole book. She turned around and looked at the shelves. Hundreds of books… she thought. Am I supposed to look through all of these?! She picked out a book at random from the shelf behind her. It was blue, and upon opening, it looked exactly the same only with a different message. Just like before, all other pages were empty.

NOT HERE EITHER

You’re feeling playful now, Tantibus? she sighed. Admira picked out several other books, but the results were the same. It did not matter which book she opened. The first page read ‘NOT HERE EITHER’ and then the rest were empty. But she refused to give up and a pile of books began to form on the floor as she intended to go through them all if she had to.

Apollo quickly recovered from the vanishing act and immediately analyzed his new surroundings. He was in a tiny room, a bit smaller than Admira’s. But unlike her rectangular office, the floor of this room was a perfect square and comparatively empty. All he could see was a bureau and a few paintings on the otherwise barren walls. The paintings were portraits, but the figures they portrayed had had their faces cut out. It was unsettling, but Apollo preferred it over the potential alternative. He hated the feeling of being watched. However, he still could not shake the ominous feeling that he was and had been throughout his entire stay in Tantibus.

The bureau had a decorative, white cloth with a glass fishbowl on top of it. The fishbowl was filled up with water, but there were no underwater decorations or living creatures in it. It made him realize how thirsty he was, so he walked up to it right away. Before diving headfirst in, he dipped his hoof and smelt it. After smelling nothing, he decided to lick it. The water did not taste of poison like he had feared, but it was incredibly salty. He knew it would be unwise to drink it, so he swallowed his saliva and moved on.

He just now noticed something peculiar. There was a lack of a certain item that was absolutely necessary for any room to even be considered a room… an opening. There were no windows and not even a door in sight, just the walls covered in a beige wallpaper. Unsure of what to make of it, he set to action. Apollo began to carefully look through the rest of the tiny room to determine if it was safe. He looked in the bureau first. After seeing that the top compartment was empty, he really had no hope for the rest containing anything either. And as indicated by the aggressive slam of the bottom drawer, they did not. He went as far as to kick one of the walls in anger, only to find out that it was hollow…

At the same time as a thump was heard from one of the walls, Ebony snapped into focus. Not paying much attention to the actual wake up call, she was surprised to find that she was lying on the bottom of a big cube constructed out of glass. The cube itself was located at the center of a much larger, rectangular room. The glass panels were thick and would not even as much as budge, no matter how hard Ebony knocked into them. She called out for help, but the robust prison did a good job of silencing her.

On top of the glass box she could see a transparent compartment which seemed to contain a small maze. It was akin to the mazes built for lab rats in shoeboxes, except that now the walls and outer casing was made out of robust and transparent glass of military quality. On the inside of the glass cube, in its ceiling, was a fragile looking knob that she could potentially lead through the maze. Unfortunately, this ceiling was just barely out of her reach. In order for her to as much as touch the knob, she would have to jump high and nudge the knob inch by inch. Punch too hard and the knob could break off.

Ebony tried to solve the maze visually, leading her eyes through it. It took her a while, but once she reached the end of the surprisingly intricate maze, she noticed that there was a button. Sadly, it could only be pressed by the part of the knob that was inside the maze, and it all started to make sense. She was meant to lead the knob through the maze, ever so slowly, and just hope that pressing the button meant getting her the heck out of this cube.

Finally, there were four metallic tubes leading out from the glass box in each of the four top corners. Even if she could reach them, there were no hope in as much as sticking her arms through those thin holes.

Looking out of the box, she found herself in a large empty room. There were neither furniture nor any decorations. The only thing waiting for her was one door leading out of the room. From her position within the cube, she was far from reaching it anytime soon. Instead, there was only one thing for her to do in her situation: to try and solve the puzzle.

“Here we go.” She announced to herself before jumping up and touching the knob for the first time. It moved about half an inch but triggered something far greater. She stopped and heard a loud sloshing sound. The trap was triggered and water starting pouring down from all of the four tubes simultaneously. At the quick pace it was flowing, Ebony estimated that she would have less than a minute before it would fill up the cube completely, effectively drowning her. The game was on.

She found it. Finally, after having looked through what must have been at least half of all books, she found the right one. Instead of finding the expected text ‘NOT HERE EITHER’, the book had been hollowed out. In the space left from the cut out pages, a key rested comfortably. The key had a golden coating which indicated that it was a match for the door.

As she shifted her mind from the key to the door, a new element had been introduced to the room. Listening closely, she could now hear a silent sizzling sound. It seemed to come from the area around the door, but it was too quiet to make out its origin accurately. She slowly walked closer to it, hoping to get a better grip on what was causing it.

Admira had a keen eye for detail. It was one of the perks that came with a life full of sewing and stitching. Since she had a mother working at an embroidery, she could not help but to find herself spending hours on the hobby as well. Spending years of her youth with needles had trained and honed her perception to an impressive extent, which was something that certainly came in handy at this moment. Her eyes caught the glimpse of thousands of tiny, sharp needles poking out from the floor. Thousands of them were laid out like a carpet of needles stretching from the wall to her left to the wall to her right, sealing off the door completely. Lying in front of them on the floor, Admira could not see much of them, since they only revealed about a third of an inch that was visible from the ground. The risk of stepping a needle did not intimidate her greatly. Instead, it was the sizzling noise that they emitted which made her nervous.

She stood up and grabbed one of the books and ripped out an empty page. She then crumbled it up into the shape of a ball and threw it onto the sea of needles. Almost instantaneously, the bottom of the ball began turning into a yellowish green and decomposed. Seconds later, it caught fire. Eventually, all that was left were the scorched remains. The needles were spewing out highly reactive and corrosive acid.

Admira looked ahead and noticed a blank spot just next to the door which appeared to be without any needles. She could probably make the jump if she got a bit of momentum on her side. Running out of options, she decided to go for it and put the key in her mouth. She backed up a few feet and began charging forward. In a swift and graceful jump, she flew over the deadly carpet of needles and landed safely in front of the door. Although it was an unsteady landing and her momentum slammed her into the door, she could have ended up far worse. Now she was at the door with a key in her mouth. She took it out and slid it into the knob, which she then twisted. A muffled click spelled success and she could gently push open the door. She had done it… She could finally leave this prison cell of a room.

Admira turned around and took one last look at the office she was about to leave behind. She had spent a considerable amount of time going through hundreds of books, and now it had paid off.

With a loud, disturbing and crackling noise, the skull began slowly to turn. The empty and expressionless eye sockets started to face the door and looked straight into the eyes of Admira. She reactively jumped screaming out of the door and locked it behind herself hastily. Too morbidly curious to walk away, she leaned over and listened closely. She could hear the sound of creaking floorboards and mechanically moving objects coming from inside the office. She unsteadily placed her hoof on the door knob again and prepared herself to reveal what was haunting the room. She caught herself twisting the knob and stopped immediately.

Admira concluded that her business with that room was finished and there was no need to poke around in that which she probably should not.