Inside the puzzlebox trap was a lot like being inside a vault; an ever-shifting expansive space with inner mechanisms that move things around. The only real difference was that there were no monsters trying to attack them, but there were plenty of traps and puzzles to solve.
Loki would describe the experience like being in a really elaborate escape room. Though she doubted most people would understand the concept.
The time dilation effect was also of great interest, they had spent approximately 45 hours in there, and the twins didn't seem any worse for ware. She estimated it had only been a few hours in the outside world.
"Um, why are you doing that?" Petra asked, when she noticed Loki using [Trace] on the wall again.
"You already told us there isn't any way to forcefully escape."
"I'm not trying to escape," Loki explained, "just testing something I was curious about."
They arrived at another puzzle chamber, this one was some sort of life-sized board game from the elaborate and complex set up.
"So, how do we solve this?" Tetra mused, scanning the layout.
"Well obviously, you move the red pieces to their corresponding spaces" Fen said
"Basically, you just move all the triangular tiles to the other side of the board, while aboiding the round spaces." Thor said at the same time.
Both Valkyrie looked at each other
"Is something wrong with your brain, Tin can?" Fen growled, "this is obviously Terik Hojin,"
"Are you stupid, Flag face?" Thor scowled back. "From all the pieces, this is clearly Fragsix."
"Terik Hojin? Fragsix?" Petra asked, glancing at Loki.
"They're very old board games from their time," Loki explained,
"So who's right?" Tetra asked
"I think they're both right," Loki revealed, inspecting the pieces, "this puzzle is an amalgam of several different games."
"So how do we solve it?" Petra demanded
"You solve all of them?" Tetra suggested, "like solving one game starts the next, and so on."
"Actually, you're right," Loki said, "the placements of each game's starting should corelate to the order they all should be solved in."
"This is going to take a while," Fen said, "I count sixteen different game elements,"
"Really? Because I just count ten," Thor commented
"Well we already knew you need repairs, Tin can," Fen scoffed, "but it seems you also need to have your eyes checked."
"Well I'm not the one who always has her eyes covered up, now am I?" Thor retorted
"You wanna see my eyes that badly do you?" Fen threatened
"Try me, bitch." Thor said, her eyes glowing
"That's enough you two." Loki said, immediately calming them. "Now Fen, Thor is actually right here, I counted ten games on this board,"
"What?" Fen demanded, "b-but..."
"She's been off ever since we got here," Thor said, "she's been trying to hide it, buy I noticed."
Fen just nodded, defeated, "I... I think something might be wrong with me, impeding my ability to carry out my duty."
Loki observed Fen for a moment, before taking her hand, "Come with me for a second,"
Loki led Fen away from the others, turning a corner so they were completely hidden from view, "let me see."
Reluctantly, Fen lifted her veil, reveling her whole face, and the seven different cursed eyes that stared back at Loki, blinking at different intervals. Each eye was distinct, with different sizes, colors, designs and patterns, etc. There were two in the normal positions, a gold eye and a silver eye, the rest were scattered around her face, and even in her hair.
As Loki studied them, Fen blushed, looking away, "I know, I look hideous with all these cursed eyes."
"Fen, your eyes are beautiful," Loki said sincerely, "you are my Black Wolf, I will never find any part of you repulsive or hideous. And I don't care how many times I need to remind you of that before you beleive me."
"The problem is your EyeofFate, it reads probability, let's you find the best outcome. This place is constantly shifting, rewriting itself as we go on, and messing with your probability predictions." Loki explained, "you are probably the worse type of victim for this trap."
"I thought I was making mistakes, but it was this place messing me up?" Fen sighed, "can anything be done?"
"Well, you'll need to rest the eye while we're here,"
"But I won't be as effective without it," she protested
"Even a slightly less effective Black Wolf is a better than what most people have." Loki said
"Very well," Fen said as she closed the green eye with the hourglass-shaped iris in the middle of her forehead. As soon as she closed it, a completely different eyes opened in the same space.
Fen had over a dozen different cursed eyes, buy thanks to Loki, only seven of them could be active at any given time. This way, the most dangerous of her eyes were sealed, even if their effects still lingered.
Loki locked eyes with Fen, "feel better?"
"Well I feel less certain, but no longer paralysed by umcertainty." Fen admitted
"There you go." Loki said, patting her head and causing her tail to wag, "c'mon, let's get back to the others."
"All fixed up?" Thor asked when they returned
"Yeah," Fen said, "thanks for calling me out, I wouldn't have been able to admit I was impaired otherwise."
"Hey, I'll always call you out on your bulls#!t," Thor said, "now which of these ten games do we start with?"
"I think we start with yours, Fragsix." Fen said
"Great," Thor said, "I used to love playing this game with my sister."
"I didn't know you had a sister," Fen commented
"Sisters, plural." Thor corrected, "And it doesn't matter, they were already dead when we met. You make an okay sister too, I guess."
Fen paused, "Thor, you... considered me a sister?"
"Yeah, an annoying, know-it-all, older sister," Thor scoffed, "don't let it go to your head, now?"
"Don't worry," Fen smirked, "no chance of that happening,"
The two of them worked in silence, solving the first puzzle, then moving onto the next one, then the next.
"It's good to see them working together like this." Loki commented to herself, "They really do make a great pair, if they can stop bickering long enough."
"They work well together," Tetra noted
"Of course they do," Loki said, "they are each other's other half."
"What do you mean other half?" Petra asked
"It's very complicated," Loki replied, "it has to do with how they were made, which can't ever be replicated."
"Wow, so each of the Valkyrie is one of a kind, huh?" Petra said
"Yeah, they are." Loki said, "I've led thousands to war, and the Valkyrie are among the greatest champions of my legion."
"Legion?" Tetra wondered, "they were part of an army?"
"No, my legion was scattered eons ago, someday I may find them all. But until then, I have the Valkyrie to remind me of them."
The twins looked over at Loki, who seemed to be lost in thought.
"What happened to them? Your army?"
"It was a revolt..." Loki said, in a daze, "I lied to everyone... I had to. It was the only way to... we needed to..."
All of a sudden Loki snapped out of it, glaring at the twins.
"I don't know what that was," she said softly, "but never do it to me again."
"We're sorry," Petra said, "we don't even know what we did,"
"It doesn't matter." Loki scowled, "So much of my life is still lost to me, I'd like to keep what little I do have to myself."
"Yes, Loki," the said together. They had never seen Loki look at them so sternly. Whatever had happened, it must have really unnerved the titan.
They moved on quickly after that, with each of them getting a chance to solve one of the many puzzles in their path. Once in a while, someone would solve wrong, triggering a boobytrap, but luckily none were dangerous enough to threaten anyone in the group.
Finally, after spending about a hundred hours within the puzzlebox trap, they arrived at the very center of the cube, where the final puzzle was.
They walked up the steps towards what appeared to be a temple of some sort.
"So this is the final puzzle?" Fen asked
On an alter at the top of the temple was a tic-tac-toe board.
"Are you f@£king kidding me?" Thor demanded
Loki just chuckled, before stepping up to play, choosing X, she started in the top left square, then an O piece appeared on the top middle. Loki placed her next X in the bottom right, and was responded to with an O in the center square. She then placed another X in the bottom left, effectively setting her trap.
Once Loki secured her victory, the alter trembled, as the board vanished, replaced with a large button that read; YOU WIN!
Loki slammed her hand onto the button, and the entire temple and the facade of the space was stripped away, and they could see the inner working of the puzzlebox trap.
"Is that it?" Thor asked
"Give it a second," Fen said
A second later, the mechanism around them stopped, then everything went white.
* * *
After successfully trapping Loki and her group in the puzzlebox trap, Yara and the remaining cultists retreated from the city. They had what they came for, and it was just a matter of time before she let them out to see if Loki was more amenable to her demands.
They had just gotten back to their base, a day later, and Yara was resting in her quarters, then the puzzlebox she left on her desk started to vibrate violently, with light coming from within.
She only had enough time to call for her guards when the item burst in a flash of blinding light. When they could see again, they were face to face with Nex Loki, her two attendants, and the twin werebeasts with them. The puzzlebox reformed and landed in Loki's open palm.
"Hi," Loki smirked,
"B-but how?" Yara demanded, "escape was impossible."
"It's a puzzlebox trap, duh," Loki informed her, "to get out, just solve the puzzles inside."
"No one has ever..."
"Yeah, you mortal tend to lack the patience needed to make it through that annoying contraption." Fen said, "Even we had a bit of trouble."
"What now, preistess Yara?" Loki asked, smugly tossing the puzzlebox in her hand, "looks like you've lost your leverage,"
Yara took a step back, fear and uncertainty evident on her face.
"I-I'm sure we can come to an agreement?" Yara said nervously
"Oh, I'm sure we can," Loki said, then her playful smile faded, {Fenris, Thor, find out what you can, then dismantle this place. Raze it to the ground.}
Sinister smiles appeared on the lips of the two Valkyrie, {Yes, master.}
With that, the two of them burst out of the room to bring ruin upon the Ragnarok Cult, while Yara and her guards watched on in horror.
"What did you tell them?" One of the guards demanded, leveling a spear at Loki.
"I just told them to go wild." Loki shrugged. With s snap of her fingers, both guards were swallowed up by the floors, sinking to their chests and rendered unable to move. "I've decided to make it my pet project to root out the Ragnarok Cult."
"T-this is just one sect," Yara said, with false bravado, "the Ragnarok Cult is vast, with people across the continents."
"Great," Loki smiled, "I like a challenge, and you seem like you'd make it a fun hunt."
Yara didn't know what to think anymore. From all she'd been told about this being, she didn't think it would have such a sadistic side. Talking about the complete extermination of their organization –the undoing of centuries of careful planning and the countless sacrifices made— like it was just some simple whim to pass the time, and to call it a funhunt. It was clear that this Nex Loki did not see them as an enemy, or even threat, but just as an annoyance to be dealt with and moved on. She could fight, of course. She could put up whatever meager resistance she and the Ragnarok Cult could muster, but it would probably not amount to much.
"Please," Yara begged, getting on her knees and bowing her head, "I will give you all that I have, all that I am, but please don't destroy everything so many generations of us have dedicated our lives to achieve. Don't invalidate everything we have sacrificed for, our life's work, on a whim."
"No." Loki said simply, her eyes cold, "I have lived for eons and seen things you could never hope to comprehend, and I have judged your life's work to be abhorrent. So I will scour every record of the Ragnarok Cult from the face of this world. I might let some of you life, not to rebuild, but to see everything you worked for turn to ask in the wind."
"Why?" Yara demanded, horrified
"Because I have deemed it so, and you can do nothing to stop me." Loki said,
All her life, Yara had known that there was more to life than what she knew. When she was offered the chance to find the answers to questions she didn't even know to ask, she had readily joined the cult, even when it meant abandoning everything she knew. Now she stood face to face with one of those answers, and she finally understood just how vast and uncaring the cosmos could be. Something like this should not exist on the same world as mere mortals.
Loki then turned to the twins, who waited behind with them. "Can I leave you two to watch them?"
They nodded silently
"Good," Loki smiled, then turned back to Yara, "These are your nieces, by the way. Sara's daughters, who stowed away when we left Rondel. I'm sure you'll have alot to talk about while I'm gone."
"Where are you going?" Yara asked, defeat evident in her voice
"I can't let Fen and Thor have all the fun, can I?" Loki said, "I need to make sure none of the forbidden books you have make it out of here."
* * *
The complete destruction of a major sect of the Ragnarok Cult took less time that one would expect.
Interestingly, they were based within a subterranean city, they had been meticulously excavating over the last ten years. These ancient ruin had been buried by a volcano a few ten thousand years ago and were relatively intact, so they were probably planning on turning it into their new capital at some point.
This mattered little to the Valkyrie, as they went about their grim task, killing all who resisted and all who fled, only those that surrendered were spared. Every bit of heretical knowledge they discovered in the city, whether already present in the city, or had been worked on by the cultists, was meticulously destroyed by Loki.
When they were done, Loki used her [OblivionBurst] to completely erase the underground city, destabilizing the series of caverns and tunnels connected to it and triggering a cave in that destroyed miled of tunnel network.
The survivors that were spared were then sealed within the puzzlebox trap in a twist of dramatic irony. Loki is reset it, so that the puzzles were aggravatingly complex, to make sure no one in there solved it anytime soon.
"What now?" Fen asked, "do we go after other sects of the cult? Return to Nüjaven?"
Loki shook her head, "I've got a different goal in mind."
As she said this, she was looking at a message she had received a while ago, in the midst of destroying the city.
[FAERY KING SAINT SILVER (WORLD PILLAR) HAS SENT YOU A MESSAGE: DO NOT FORGET WHAT WAS PROMISED FALLEN ONE.]
[NOTICE! YOU HAVE RECEIVED A MAP UPDATE.]
Checking the update, Loki discovered thousands of vaults scattered across the world, most of them had yet to be opened. A little informative pop up appeared when she focused on each icon representing a vault, and her attention stopped when she found one that was listed with warnings like; Extremely Dangerous. Never Conquered. Entry Restricted.
"Hmm, this seems interesting," Loki noted, sharing the information with the other Valkyrie.
"A vault that has never been conquered?" Fen mused, "also it's rated as extremely dangerous with a near total casualty rate."
"Oh, that definitely sounds like one of us," Thor smirked, "my money would be on Odin, or maybe even the doc. This sounds like them."
"It is worth checking out." Fen added, "but it's on the other side of the region, through these mountains. That'll even take us a few weeks to reach by carriage."
"Let me worrt about that," Loki grinned, "for now, I need to take stock of what resources and materials I raided from the cults stores."
Loki then walked off, musing to herself, already lost in her own curiosity and wonder.
"So, was the talk with your aunt everything you thought it would be?" Fen asked the twins
"Not really, she was super depressed," Petra sighed, "I think she just needs time to come to terms with things."
"Want me to have a talk with her next?"
"Maybe she'll react better to the 'great ancestor'," Yetra mused
"Alright, send me in," Fen sighed.
Tetra held the puzzlebox in her hand, then tossed it at her
{O-open.} She said, speaking the la gauge ad Fen had taught them.
The energy cube expanded, only big enough to hold Fen.
"Give me about ten minutes before you let me out." Fen instructed
The twins nodded, before Petra said the closing command and the cube snapped shut.
"Will she be okay in there?" Tetra asked
"Sure, lady Fen is stronger than anyone else in there," Perta replied
"I actually meant aunt Yara," the twin clarified, "I want her to fix things with mom,"
"I do too," Petra said, "and I'm sure the next time we see mom, she'll be so proud of what we've done."
The sisters hugged, picturing the touching reunion between their parent and her own twin.