Puzzler's Space

Lesson 2: It is my Star who Sits in the Sky

Six Hill Tower was a mire - a city drowning beneath a puddle.

It stood at the cliffs of a faraway sea, perched atop a small rock in a precarious manner, yet submerged in its fuming waters for seven and seventy thousand years. Metal decorated its high buildings and shining places as a testament to the hubris of its architects.

There were no birds here, for they would sink in its depths - plants abhorred the murk, growing about the boundary where Six Hill Tower began, and the coherent world ended. It was the exact environment that Liu Kui detested. Once before in the outskirts of Encircled Waves, this weather had come from the south and produced a terrible congestion in the sinuses of the young and elderly alike.

Ban Songqi and Liu Kui were walking the muddied path into the city, which was hewn from ashen stone, baked under a blinded sun.

"Here it is," proclaimed Ban Songqi. "The final day of Six Hill Tower is before us."

Puzzle 1: Consider the Hunger of Many Tongues. When addressing the beast bearing the name, what language would be appropriate? If you find difficulty in this question, consider the accounting of the late scholar Evitrakkar Amemmiit, on the nature of Word-Thievery.

Entering Six Hill Tower was not so much a formidable feat. Desolation was the natural inhabitant of the city, and emptiness its owner. There were no markets, for their only customer would be the abyss.

And so Desolation greeted Ban Songqi with a wave of its palm and a whispered word. Ban nodded, and reached into a side pocket to produce a small scroll of rites. Liu Kui nervously shuffled about in waterlogged sandals, which were about to dissolve in the acrid mud.

Ban Songqi handed the scroll to Liu Kui, who nearly fell in surprise, face-forward, into the darkened street, and the great stairway that led downward from that point on. Glancing about, Liu saw the imprint of Six Hill Tower against the deeps and began to question the presence of the city itself. "Songqi, when we had stepped on the path towards Six Hill Tower, was there not a great crescent moon hanging above us," asked Liu Kui, "in opposition to the noontime sun?"

In fact, there was no sign of the moon in the skies now, but instead in the water. And it was a halo of pale light, sick in color like a wind-bleached bone.

"No," replied Songqi, motioning for Liu Kui to read the scroll.

Puzzle 2: Answer this question from the perspective of a Teacher of Things, a Student of Things, and a Street-Creature. What is the answer to the question?

Liu Kui began speaking. "Five times before you were the foundation of the earth felled, five times before you were the pillars of the deepest ocean pulled away, and five times more were the plants and animals and all life brought before you and pushed away into cruel emptiness. Five times more will the deeps of your folly be inundated with flame, and five times finally will the spires of your proud construction bend backwards in destruction. The Emptiness of yours which smothers your dwelling will be filled and removed. So it was before all else, so it was in the continuation, so it is as it stands - so it shall be as it proceeds, and so it shall be and no more after."

Desolation immediately fled and could not be seen. An immeasurable change came upon the city, and Ban Songqi squinted fiercely at the distant sun.

With a terrific creaking, the metal which towered up from the darkness underlying Six Hill Tower tore themselves apart in all directions. The waters rose furiously with a tremendous commotion but evaporated with a greater speed, steam screaming outrage into the firmament.

The earth was shorn open, incandescent magma billowing outwards, and for a brief moment, complete blindness flashed across the vision of all which could see.

Then Six Hill Tower was no more but slag in a dried-up puddle, the ring of the moon silently watching from the sky.

Puzzle 3: Dissatisfaction, like a small duckling, must be weaned first on grasses and small leaves before it matures into a great duck. Very few have accomplished the inverse, but despite its immense difficulty, to try it is safe. Document your own attempts and results. What did you learn?

Ban Songqi took out a small fan to assuage the midday sun, and passed it to Liu Kui, who remembered that there was no scroll of rites.

They went on in silence.