OH MY GOSH I AM SO SORRY! I totally forgot I was doing this and then with the several week break I haven't been reading along and posting! T-T THIS IS AMAZING! I love the riddles and annegrams and the writing is so good and suspenseful! I will definitely post regularly. Can't wait to see what happens next!

Noooo I'm dead... :'''(

Lol, I guessed you because you posted the chapter, and somewhere else on the CB Rainbow (also you) posted quite close together, so I gave it a shot. I didn't know you wrote amazing stories like this, but I thought I'd check! 

Ohhh I wonder what my card says... and what the next clue is! I love this lodge sm!!

Pangolin knelt down by the body, trying to imagine the angle of the bullet. It must’ve been straight, close enough for the bullet to drive straight through. Suddenly, the body disappeared, leaving only Hawk’s lighter, the card Wild was holding, and the ship in a bottle. Pangolin’s eyes widened in shock. Was this the doing of the person who kept sending them clues? If they could make Hawk just disappear, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of killing her first.  It must’ve been someone in the garden.

“Guys,” Pangolin said, “I don’t think it’s the person who keeps sending us clues who killed Hawk.”

“What do you mean?” Ash asked.

Pangolin stood, moving to position herself in where the culprit might have been. “Imagine,” she said. “The shot must have come from here—meaning it was one of us. And the clue-person doesn’t have any motivation to kill Hawk anyways; in fact, they seem as if they actively wanted her to be found, because she had the clues. So it must have been one of us.”

Pangolin surveyed the group. Wild was jittery, but that could indicate guilt. Moon looked horrified at Hawk’s death, but that could be an act. Ash was lost for words, which could be a sign of a guilty conscience.

“What are you guys doing here?”

Pangolin whirled around. Her eyes widened in shock. Verde and Celine had arrived upon the scene of the crime, limping, in pain, but fully awake.

Two new suspects, Pangolin thought. As Wild filled Verde and Celine in on the newly-dead Hawk, Moon turned to Pangolin with a suspicious look.

“Hang on,” Moon said, stepping forward. “Pangolin, where’s your revolver?”

Pangolin immediately drew out her revolver, spinning the chambers around to show the single bronze bullet still within. “I didn’t shoot her. If you look around, you’ll probably find a bullet somewhere. They must’ve gotten a gun some other way.”

Moon looked at Pangolin hesitantly, but nodded slowly. “Alright. But that still doesn’t clear you.”

Ash and Moon sat Verde and Celine down, using the newly acquired first aid kit to clean and bandage their cuts. Wild, however, seemed intensely focused on the note.

“What does it say?” Pangolin asked.

Wild handed the note wordlessly to Pangolin. It read:

I assure you, I am not behind Hawk’s death. Though it does seem as though there is someone with murder on their mind among you all. I would advise that you solve my puzzles as quickly as possible, as the front gate shall not be unlocked until you do.

You’ll want to go to the briarly for the next clue. My favorite book is Life of Theseus by Plutarch—see if you can find it!

“Then we have to go to the library,” Pangolin said, connecting the dots. “There’s a killer among us, and we’re not getting out until we solve their puzzles.”

“What puzzle?” Verde asked.

Once Verde and Celine were all bandaged and relatively healed, Wild explained the next puzzle to them all, holding up the note and the ship in a bottle. “And this note is telling us to go to the library,” she finished.

Everyone in the group traded glances.

“Well what are we waiting for then?” Celine spoke up. “Let’s go to the library.”

Pangolin hung towards the back of the group as they filed out of the hidden garden through the newly opened doorway. When the last person stepped through, she remained in the garden, circling back to examine the scene of the crime.

Even though Hawk’s body had disappeared, there was still an indent in the grass where she had lain. Pangolin pocketed Hawk’s lighter, then frowned, trying to imagine the angles. Hawk had been standing; judging from where the bullet had went through, it should have landed somewhere around there.

Pangolin went to search through an azalea bush.

She was just about to give up, when her fingers scraped against something cool and metal. She drew it out. It was a bullet-head, steel-grey and slightly wet with blood.

This is my first clue, Pangolin thought, pocketing the bullet. Who could have been the murderer?

Not Wild. Wild had been holding the first aid kit; she must’ve been busy searching for that. Verde and Celine …

Pangolin didn’t know. Verde seemed too injured to shoot, but you never knew. And Celine’s only injuries were on her legs—which didn’t affect her aim.

Moon and Ash were both fair game. Pangolin had completely lost them in the garden.

She needed more evidence. Pangolin rounded on her heel and left the garden, retracing her steps to the library.

She found the rest of their group there, poring over an old book—Life of Theseus.

“It’s only one page,” Celine said. “The scene where he returns to Crete, over and over again.”

“Really?” Pangolin asked, joining the group.

Moon nodded, flipping the pages through to demonstrate. “None of them are numbered. They’re all the same—”

“Wait!” Ash reached out, stopping the flipping. They hurriedly flipped back to a random page, only slightly different from the rest. This one had a small annotation jotted down in the margins in familiar writing.

P.S. Please burn the ship of Theseus!

“This?” Pangolin asked, picking up the ship in a bottle.

“That’s not the ship of Theseus,” Verde said. “Read the label.”

Pangolin squinted, reading the tiny handwritten text on the label. Replica of the ship of Theseus, with all new parts.

“I think this is the ship of Theseus,” Wild said, from across the library.

She lifted a glass bottle from a display pedestal gingerly, bringing it over to the table. It was filled with tiny splinters of broken wood and tattered cloth. The label read: Pieces of the old ship of Theseus.

“So we burn that one,” Ash concluded.

“But that’s not a ship,” Celine pointed out. “Those are just the pieces of the old one. What if we’re meant to burn the actual ship?”

Pangolin stared at the two bottles, deep in thought. Which one is the real ship of Theseus?

~~~

Your puzzle is: burn the ship of Theseus.

Your clues are: the annotation, the two bottles.

Your answer will be: burning something.

The next chapter will be posted when you have the solution! And for posterity’s sake, I am not Rainbow, I’m Rainbow Riot. Apologies to Rainbow—I have accidentally impersonated you! Hawk, feel free to continue to participate in puzzles :)

Oh no Hawkstar is dead!

Sorry I haven’t been posting. I had a school ski trip and didn’t realize the CB was back online. 

Btw, this is so cool! 

Apologies for taking so long to write the next one! You have guessed the correct answer—it's just taking me a little while to get to writing it. The next chapter will be posted on Sunday!

“We should put the pieces together and then burn it,” Moon suggested.

“Look at it! It’s practically splinters! How are we supposed to put it back together,” Wild said, gesturing at the old ship.

“Maybe we should just burn both, to be safe,” Celine said.

“That’s all I can think of too,” Verde admitted.

“But what if we’re wrong, and we’ve just burnt the wrong thing? Then what?” Pangolin said.

The group was silent. Ash glanced around hesitantly. Tensions seemed to be running a little high. Maybe because they now knew there was a killer among them. Ash would be nervous too, especially with what their note said.

“Ash,” Wild said. “You haven’t spoken yet. What do you think?”

Ash blinked. “Oh—me? Well, I’m fine with anything.”

“But what do you think is the right answer?” Pangolin pressed.

Ash thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess Celine’s right. I don’t know how they’re going to punish us for burning the wrong thing. Let’s just burn both.”

Pangolin grinned. “Brilliant.” She took out Hawk’s lighter, flicking it open. She pressed it to the mouth of each bottle until the wood and rigging caught fire. Then, quickly, she put the bottles on the floor.

As the flames flickered against the glass, Ash was terrified for a brief moment that they’d been wrong.

Suddenly, as both ships disintegrated into ash, a loud chime sounded.

Ash stumbled, the floor shifting beneath their feet. With unnatural speed, the room seemed to break apart into many pieces, the bookshelves rotating and twisting into various configurations. Quickly, Ash had entirely lost sight of the others.

The room didn’t stop shifting. It kept moving, seemingly like a constantly-changing maze. Ash looked up just in time to see a bookshelf swinging towards them. They yelped, springing out of the way just in time.

Where is everyone? Ash thought, looking around wildly. Had they done the wrong thing? Had they done the right thing?

The last time they had separated, someone had died.

Ash looked around, indecisive. Then, they chose a pathway that seemed to be open, sprinting down it.

They found no openings. Rapidly, the bookshelves began to close in, squeezing the passage narrower and narrower.

Just as the bookshelves were brushing their elbows, Ash ran out into an intersection. “Moon!” they exclaimed.

Moon stood in the intersection, looking around. “Ash! Why is it moving?”

Ash skidded to a stop, breathing heavily. “I don’t know.”

Suddenly, the intersection began to rise, sending them skywards. They were deposited in another passage, with only two directions to run. Ash looked down both. “Which way do we go?” Ash asked.

Moon looked at the passageways, then at the bookshelves.

“Up,” Moon said decisively. “If we climb the bookshelves, maybe we can get a better view of what’s going on.

Ash raised an eyebrow. “Smart.”

The bookshelves proved easy to climb, when they weren’t constantly spinning and shifting. Each time the maze shifted, they had to pause where they were, and wait for it to stop before moving upwards again.

Eventually, they reached the top of the bookshelf. Ash clung to it, peering into the distance. All they could see was a mass of constant change, in all directions. Then, they looked up.

“What’s that?” Ash asked, pointing upwards.

Moon looked up too.

Ash had never noticed the domed ceiling before, at least until now. Right in the center of it, there was a gleaming brass dial.

“That’s the same color as my monkey wrench!” Moon exclaimed.

“What if that stops the maze?” Ash suggested.

Moon grinned, but her expression quickly faded. “How are we supposed to get up there?”

Ash glanced around at the bookshelves. Some were occasionally rising or dipping. Some even rose to the height of the dome. “This bookshelf will take us there,” they said confidently, and hoped that they were right.

Within a few moments, their bookshelf began to rise. Moon scrambled onto the top, setting her monkey wrench to the correct width and pressing it to the dial. Straining, she turned the dial slowly.

When she had turned it enough, another chime reverberated through the entire room. Immediately, their bookshelf began to lower, spinning around wildly. Ash grabbed Moon’s hand in order to keep her from losing her balance.

Slowly, the bookshelves came to a stop. Ash and Moon scrambled down, looking around. The library was in the exact same configuration as before.

“Guys?” a voice called.

Ash hurried down the line of bookshelves, finding themselves in the open space they had been in previously.

In the far wall, which had formerly been solid stone, a new doorway had opened up—sharp and cut straight into the stone.

And in front of it lay Wild, facedown on the floor.

~~~

Apologies for the very late update! School caught up to me … but yes, here it is at last!