Adventure Time 

You know the feeling you get when you wake up thinking it's Saturday but it's actually Monday, you have to go to work and it's raining? That's the feeling Arcturus had when he woke up thinking he was at home but realized he had to go search some ruins for a day and a half. He rolled out of bed, grabbed his tent and cubes of dried food and walked out the front door. Once outside, he jumped on a scooter he must have stolen and started the drive to the Celtic Ruins on the edge of town.

He really moved with purpose and just walked down a flight of steps dug into the earth like it was his basement. The large empty room he stood in was the start of an underground labyrinth where each room had somewhat of a puzzle to solve. These puzzles included:

1. Touching walls until they felt good enough about themselves to spin open.

2. Standing on panels that were very obviously meant to be stood on.

3. Reaching into dark holes and just feeling around for anything.

4. Pulling absolutely gigantic solid stone statues around like they were made of marshmallow.

After all that silly activity through about six different rooms, Arcturus reached the final puzzle room of the Celtic Ruins. It was a large area with another smaller room attached. The main room had a hedge maze, a few pedestals scattered about with trinkets on them, some locked doors along the edges and a gravestone right in the center. The smaller room had a tent for Arcturus to sleep in. After a full day of traveling underground, he decided to take a nap in the tent before conquering the final room.

If you were wondering why there was a tent set up this deep into the ruins, the answer probably lies with that skeleton in the corner or that plaque on the wall. Arcturus read the plaque and learned the skeleton's story. The person had entered this last area and the door locked behind him. The final puzzle posed too much of a challenge for them and they decided to chisel their story into a plaque, hang it on the wall and then just die on a mat. Didn't want to die in that tent and put anyone out. The skeleton's story was actually a little bit boring, to be honest. Arcturus got into his jammies and slept in the dead man's tent.

When he woke up, he ate a bit of dried food and walked over to the hedge maze. He had to get started so that he didn't end up like that skeleton. Thinking about the difficulty of the hedge maze, the skeleton and the gravestone in the center of the room put Arcturus over the edge and he... started to cry.

"It just looks so hard!"

When he was all out of tears, he started walking around. The funny thing about this hedge maze is that the hedges are below his knees. He could step over them if he wanted but he played it legit. You never know when a poison dart is going to shoot out of a wall because you broke the rules. Picking up small treasures scattered through the maze along the way (one of which was a 5,121 year old bottle of wine), Arcturus reached the final door. There was a pressure plate that needed to be held down in order for the door to open permanently. He looked to his right at the statue standing there and pulled it onto the pressure plate. The door opened and he walked through.

This made Arcturus think about that skeleton next to the tent. Arcturus couldn't quite wrap his mind around the idea that that person had died trying to figure this out. Dragging statues onto pressure plates was how he progressed into this very room so that skeleton was really dumb. Anyway, inside the final room there was a brightly glowing hole in the ground, a few statues and a confusing amount of graves.

Thinking about windows?

Arcturus's phone rang. It was Ahilac, the alien that had visited a while ago. He took the call. I'll assume that Ahilac was still on her home planet. So, with Arcturus 20 feet underground and Ahilac being a few light years away, it's safe to say that AT&T is not providing his service.

That's great... Oh, me?... Yeah, I'm lost and dying.

After the conversation, Arcturus went over to the glowing hole in the ground. This must have been where Elliot dropped his "thing" because it was the last room and it was shooting out some moon beams. He reached in the hole and felt something squishy. That squishy something was also moving so he pulled his hand out to find it covered in various bugs.

Brushing them off, he reached in again and pulled out... a baseball. This is what Elliot had Arcturus find? Arcturus spent 36 hours in this dungeon and nearly died for something he could've bought at Dick's Sporting Goods? Ok. If not for the reward, he'd take this baseball and throw it through Elliot's store window.

Arcturus looked around and noticed a door had opened in one of the walls so at least he didn't have to backtrack through the ruins to get out. Walking through the door found Arcturus in a small room with some pots and a flight of stairs. The pots were the most exciting thing he ever saw apparently. Not the staircase out of there. The pots.

Well, it was time to head back to town on his scooter. As it turned out, Elliot's reward was just some ancient coins that could only be spent at a special French merchant's shop. Arcturus would have to wait for his next visit to take advantage of those coins though. His time here had been spent and I was met with an immediate load screen sending Arcturus back to his home in Riverview.

France's final message:

Although this phase of the adventure is done, there are many more to be had in France. Return home, rest up, tell a story or two of adventures had, then return to France for another foray into the unknown.

Uhmmmmm, no thanks!

Home at last. Guess he didn't need to take any bags anyway, but I do wonder how he managed to change into his pajamas to sleep in that skeleton's tent that one time. Does he wear pajamas under that suit? Something to think about.