Arranged Marriage To The Princess Of The Red Scorpions

It took her a while of thinking for her to consider the answer to the first riddle, or what she thought was the right one. But where was she supposed to put it was the next question.

Standing up she began to look around the room again, it didn't seem to her still that there was any kind of place to put the answer to the question. There was no door, no panel that she could see on the wall to type anything into, no computer or device to interact. What was Jovani expect her to do? He could've at least included some type of better hint in his riddle since there was nothing obvious sticking out to her.

She found herself tsking again as she felt along the walls for a third time. Nothing was still sticking out to her. How much damn free time did this man have to work on something like this? It was utterly ridiculous. Sitting back down at the table she tried to think again what she could be missing. She needed to get past this and figure out the second riddle in less than an hour if she wanted to make the time frame she was being constrained to.

Staring at the piece of paper on the table, she noted that the only thing that she hadn't moved since entering the room was the bottle of water. She didn't think that there was any reason to touch it or anything because she wasn't going to drink it and it seemed there was no reason to pay it much attention. Maybe there was something about it that Jovani had done taking into consideration that she wouldn't touch it?

The princess tilted her head she looked at it. She didn't think that there was anything different about it compared to any other bottle of water that she had seen. Nonetheless though, she picked it up from its position and looked it over. The label looked perfectly normal as though it hadn't been messed with and there didn't seem to be anything inside the bottle either. Was that not the answer either?

Putting it on the ground she felt over the table. If there was something she was missing, it had to have been placed in an obvious area that one wouldn't generally think about. The surface of the table didn't feel odd either. Although there did appear to be an more heavy spot in the middle of the table that didn't feel right to her.

She was going to have to flip the table over if she wanted to find out what it was, she just hoped that she didn't come face to face with some type of explosive. Perhaps not realistic but a concern that came from reading one too many mystery novels that placed heroes in such situations that seemed almost impossible and required them to go down to the wire to figure out a riddle that seemed impossible to solve yet they would somehow managed to do mere seconds before the bomb was set to go off.

Carefully putting the table on it's side and flipping it over, the princess didn't come face to face with a bomb, but instead it was a chess board that looked like it had been modified. There was a button in the middle that indicated that it needed to be pressed. When Lena did an annoying mechanical and squeaky voice began to speak from the chess board.

"Ho, ho. It seems you found where I hide the board. It seems like I will have to do a better job next time. Now that you have found it- you only have three chances to pick the right answer to the riddles. If you fail- well I'm sure you won't but I can't promise that you will like the consequences!" The voice laughed at the end. There was a pause before the voice continued.

"It seems you need directions since you're not moving. In order to answer the riddle, you need to indicate either the pieces or moves that cannot be made based upon the riddles that you encountered. The system is set up to know if guess them right by the piece you first pick and the movement that follows." despite the annoying sound of the voice, the instructions seemed fairly straight forward to her. She just needed to make sure that she would input the answer to the riddle that she thought was correct.

She licked her bottom lip as she kneeled on the floor. She needed to be careful about what she was doing in order to make sure that she completed it perfectly without mistakes. The first step to that was picking the queen piece and doing what she believed was the right way to show what moves it couldn't make. It was done slow and thoughtfully because she didn't want to make a mistake. A chiming noise followed her place the queen back where she began. Based upon the green checkmark that followed, she could only presume that meant that she did it right.

The next one though she still wasn't sure about. The riddle didn't make one bit of sense to her, but her hand automatically reached out to the king because it was the only piece she could think of that anyone would lay down their life for even though in her mind everyone would want to aspire to be a king because of the status and power that came with it.

She had hardly lifted the piece before another chime sounded indicating that she had gotten the answer right. The next part that happened was unexpected. Without warning the floor beneath her shifted and opened up. It was such a sudden and quick action that she couldn't stop the curse that came out of her mouth as she found herself falling downward. She didn't even have a chance to react before she found herself falling down something dark that she could only imagine would've been a chute.