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THEY were soon faced with red, blue, and yellow doors.
“Which way do you want to go?” Hatta asked.
“Let’s just go in order,” Seb recommended.
They entered the red door and found a seemingly normal room.
“Lookie here. Kettle, unfinished teacups…someone must’ve been having a tea party just now. Want me to plant a bomb here, Alice?” Hatta asked.
“Is that any way to say hello?” an unfamiliar voice answered.
“What the—” Hatta instinctively leaped back. “Show yourself, coward!”
“Look under the table, my dear boy.”
“A mouse? Sorry buddy, but I’m afraid I’ll have to put you down now,” Hatta said, chucking his boomerang, only for it to rebound inches away from the mouse. “Huh?”
“Now, now,” cooed the mouse, “enough with the vile barbarisms. Come, have a seat.”
“We may as well do as he says,” Alice remarked. “The exit’s gone anyway.”
Hatta and Haigha quickly darted their eyes across the room and noticed that the door was, just as Alice had said, missing.
“You have nowhere to go,” continued the mouse. “So come, please sit. How bad could it be?”
Realizing they were completely out of options, the four sat down at the table.
“This is my domain. Attacks of both physical and magical nature are rendered null here,” the mouse said as it ran up the table. “Here’s a question for all you fine folk. Do you plan on seeing the Demon Lord? If not, I’ll release you from my domain at once. If you are, we’ll have to sort things out a little differently.”
“What are you trying to say?” Alice asked.
“The door leading up to the Demon Lord’s throne room can only be opened by those His Highness has personally deemed worthy. Or those in possession of three select keys,” the mouse explained. “If you recall, there were a total of three distinct doors for you to choose from.”
“So basically,” Alice began, “if you want access to the Demon Lord’s throne room, you’ll have to collect all three keys from all three rooms, correct?”
“My, my! Aren’t you a bright one?” chirped the mouse. “That is correct.”
His calm reassured demeanor was more than enough for them to believe his words.
“You wouldn’t bother telling us all this if you intended to fight,” Hatta remarked. “So, what’s your game?”
“Funny you should ask, seeing as I have one set up for you. Win and the key is all yours,” the mouse said. “We’ll start by introducing ourselves. I’m the Dormouse; I spend most of my days sleeping.”
“Call me Alice or the cutest princess to ever grace this world. Either works.”
“Name’s Hatta; I run the best darn item shop around.”
“I’m Haigha, a magic user, more or less.”
“I go by Seb. I’m Lady Alice’s butler/bodyguard.”
“Here’s how this goes: whoever falls asleep first loses. Seems simple enough, right? Well, there’s a catch. Once you drift off into dreamland, you’re never coming back,” the Dormouse explained. “Unless someone brings you back, of course.”
Hatta and Haigha could feel saliva sticking to the back of their throat as they swallowed wearily. Who could blame them, really? You’d be a little nervous, too, if losing meant never waking up.
“Let the game begin!” Alice cried, passing out instantly.
“That was fast!” the Dormouse exclaimed.
“Oh, sorry,” said Alice, waking back up. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I’ve never seen anyone pass out that quickly,” the Dormouse said. “You truly are one of a kind, Alice.”
“I get that all the time,” she said proudly.
“You never cease to amaze, my lady,” Seb enthused.
The Dormouse let out a faint sigh as he listened to Seb sing Alice’s praises. “Seb, was it? Her parents must be quite overprotective to keep you around,” he said. “This is going to be a fast game. I can feel it already.”
“Is it? I had a big breakthrough just now, thanks to Lady Alice.”
“Big breakthrough, you say?”
“This room is specifically designed to induce sleep in humans. The humidity, the temperature, the calm music in the background, and the fragrant aroma of flowers all led me to believe this. At first, I thought that’s how he’s going to get us,” Seb said, all eyes on him. “But then Lady Alice passed out, yet the game continues. Meaning—”
“Meaning we can just take turns sleeping and win easily,” Hatta concluded.
“But then why would he make us play a game where the odds are in our favor?” Haigha asked.
“Because there’s a catch. Either he has some trick up his sleeve to make us all pass out at once, or he’s purposefully stalling for a different win condition,” Seb said, inspecting the inside of the kettle. “Empty, just as expected. By ‘different win condition,’ I meant, of course, us dying of hunger or thirst, whichever comes first. Things could’ve gone very poorly for us had I not noticed.”
“I take back what I just said,” said the Dormouse slyly. “That’s the first time anyone’s caught on this quickly. Congratulations.”
Although he might’ve looked like an ordinary mouse, his power level was easily that of a boss monster. Even if they still had Deedledum’s special powder on hand, they all knew it would have no effect whatsoever.
“Now all that’s left is to find the path to victory,” the Dormouse continued, “or else you might as well flush that brilliant insight right down the drain. Take your time; no reason to rush.”
“There’s plenty of reason to rush,” cried Alice. “Seb, think of something! Anything!”
“Give me a minute, my lady.” Seb crossed his arms, delving deep into thought.
“This might take a while. Hatta.”
“Yeah?”
“Humor me with your signature strip dance routine.”
“‘Signature’?! When have you ever seen me strip dancing?!”
Haigha looked at her brother with disgust, her eyes rejecting any possible number of excuses.
“Why do I have to humor you anyways?”
“Haigha can do it instead,” Alice replied. “I don’t mind.”
“Who, me? Oh, erm, sorry. I’m waaay too boring for that; yep!” Haigha felt like bailing, but there was nowhere to bail.
“Love magic sounds anything but boring, if you ask me. Haigha did say something about ‘returning the favor’ with her love magic back in the Mysterious Forest, if memory serves.”
“You said you’d erase all your memories!”
“Of you talking with squirrels, Haigha. You’re conveniently leaving out a crucial bit of context! Now show me this love magic and make it snappy.”
Why, why do you just happen to remember this one trivial exchange word for word?
By this point, Hatta and Haigha realized that if they didn’t think of something fast, their sanity was at a very real risk of collapsing, so they joined Seb.
“Typical. How about you; do you want to play?” Alice asked the Dormouse.
“Sure, but what?”
“Anything, who cares?” Alice said, lifting him up by the tail. “Actually, didn’t you say you spend most of your days sleeping? How are you still awake?”
“I can manipulate my sleeping tendencies at will. Sometimes, I’ll sleep for three days straight; other times, I’ll stay awake that long. Depends on my mood, really.”
“That’s quite the convenient body you have. Let’s see if we can find what makes it tick!”
Alice tried poking him, playing around with his cheeks, and yet…nothing. Or so they thought when Seb had a sudden stroke of genius.
“Let me try something, my lady.” He reached for the Dormouse, only for his hand to rebound mere inches away. “I see. How about now?” He reached for the Dormouse again. This time, his hand made contact. “Care for a game, my lady?”
“A game of what, exactly?”
“Catch.”
Hatta and Haigha—realizing Seb had finally conjured up a solution—preemptively moved to the corner of the room to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
Seb positioned himself against a wall on the opposite side of the room and tossed the Dormouse to Alice.
The Dormouse began cackling and said, “You really didn’t think this through, did you, Seb? How is Alice going to throw me that far? I mean, just look at her!”
Hatta and Haigha started shaking in each other’s arms, painfully aware of what was coming next.
“Oh, just you wait and see!” Alice wound up and hurled him through the air with inhuman speed.
Seb gracefully moved out of the way as the Dormouse proceeded to smash against the wall. He slid all the way down to the floor beneath him, his limbs twitching erratically.
“I can see you’re still holding back, my lady,” Seb taunted as he scraped the Dormouse off the floor, tossing him back to Alice. “Give it all you’ve got!”
“Be careful what you wish for.” Alice wound up again.
“H-Have some mer—” The words died in his mouth as he was launched through the air, screaming on the inside.
Seb gracefully moved out of the way again as the Dormouse collided against the wall with an audible splatter, passing out instantly. The missing red door shifted back into place, his domain abolished.
“Seb, you have some serious explaining to do,” Alice said.
“If you recall, the Dormouse mentioned how attacking him was pointless. Indeed, Hatta’s boomerang throw demonstrated just that,” he explained. “This led me to believe that touching him was outright impossible. But you, my lady, proved otherwise. That’s when I knew I just had to try something.”
“That being?”
“At first, I tried grabbing him with the intention to squish him to death. As you saw, that attempt failed miserably. For my second attempt, I tried grabbing him with no particular intention, and it worked just fine,” Seb continued. “Essentially, what his domain really did was protect him from physical actions performed with harmful intent. Meaning you, my lady, harbored no ill will, even when you went all out.”
“Makes perfect sense,” Alice nodded.
This does not, in fact, make perfect sense, as it takes a truly ‘special’ person to knock someone unconscious without any harmful intent whatsoever, Hatta thought.
“On to the next room we go!”
“But before we do, my lady, you might be interested to see what I found lying next to the Dormouse,” Seb said, holding out a red key.
“Guess we really will need all three keys to access the throne room after all. Hatta, Haigha, I know you two are deeply in love with that corner, but I’d really appreciate some movement.”
“Wh-What about the Dormouse? We can’t just leave him like this.”
“Good thinking, Hatta. Let’s stuff him inside the teapot, just to be safe.”
That’s actually the exact opposite of what I had in mind! Hatta thought as Alice sealed the Dormouse away.