Chapter 46.3

I felt measurably torn at this.

On the one hand, I was still uncertain as to whether I wanted to encourage this sort of behavior.  But more than that, allowing myself to succumb to the Dolilim’s constant provocations would only set a bad precedent.  If they had their way, we would have never left the bedroom.

On the other, what she was suggesting was intriguing me in all the worst ways.

“How close are you to full?” I asked, mostly to stall.

All of us had been completely emptied out by our recent ordeal and, while I had gained the ability to absorb some of their Life Energy through various acts, it did not compare to the flood that came once they had their fill.  But it could take quite a while for them to achieve that without outside sources.  No matter how industrious we were.

Once things got serious, I would need all the Energy I could get.  So it was not a totally impractical question.

“I’m not sure,” she replied coyly.  “Taste me and find out?”

For a handful of seconds, we simply stared at one another.  I still was not altogether certain it worked that way but, with how dry my mouth had suddenly gotten, finding out had become a high priority.

“Tempting,” I admitted.  Then, with some difficulty, I forced out, “But why don’t you tell me about this painting first?”

She started to pout, but then her eyes widened slightly.  “First, huh?”

She licked her lips and turned, though her hand did not move from her captured prize, and her hips began to gyrate in slow, sensuous cycles.  I did not fight her.  It was a comfortable hand-rest.

“All of the paintings here have very muted color schemes,” she began.  “Browns and greens and oranges.  They all blend together if you don’t focus on them.”

I nodded.  “I think that’s the point?”

“It would be if this was something like a Clan house, but in this place, the more mundane the appearance, the more suspicious you should be.  Particularly, if there is ever a change in the pattern,” she explained.  With her free hand, she gestured back to the painting.  “This one has three, bright spots of color.  And all yellow.”

“Yellow like the Key?” Lynnria asked, coming around to my opposite side—probably to distance herself from whatever Arx was doing.  However, when she looked closer, she exclaimed, “Hey, wait a minute!  I know some of these people.  They’re all from Raialie.”

“Really?”

I only had a passing familiarity with a few of the townsfolk, so I had not noticed.  The only person I could have picked out of a lineup might have been Tips, the barkeep.  Or possibly that Tailor we had fruitlessly—and expensively—hired, but I was pretty sure we had never gotten his name.  Neither of them were featured in the painting.

“Yes,” Lynnria confirmed with an absent nod before pointing.  “All except this woman here.  The one in the yellow dress?”

Arx and I crowded closer, though what we hoped to see that Lynnria had not was a mystery.  All of the people had been depicted with rather detailed features, save this one faceless woman.  Other than the dress, her only distinguishing feature was a shock of messy, red hair.  It was almost like her visage had been deliberately blurred.  Like a censored newscast.

I might have thought it was meant to be Jax, save for the lack of horns.  That, and Jax would sooner die than dress like a Disney princess.

As for the other spots of yellow, one was a simple flower whose pot had been precariously situated on the balcony railing opposite from us.  The second—placed on a table just to one side of the hallway below us—was an unfamiliar type of bird with long tail feathers resting in its cage.  Whatever it was, the thing was almost completely uniform in its color and an identical shade to both the dress and the flower.

“That is suspicious,” I agreed finally.

However, what we were supposed to make of it was eluding me.  I was not even totally sure this was the display the note had been referring to.  We had scarcely begun exploring the hallway below, after all.  And it seemed a little too convenient for it to be placed so immediately next to the safe room.

Although… it was positioned directly across the way from the clock, and it had been a puzzle.  A puzzle for Arx and a puzzle for Jax?

That made a degree of sense.  And there was a certain poetry to such juxtapositions.  However, were that the case, I would have expected a continuation of Her three-by-threes riddle and, while there were three splashes of yellow in this painting, I saw no sign of esoteric poetry hidden anywhere.

Hmm… maybe because I broke it?  My attempt at improvised magic had bypassed a fairly significant portion of the construct.  Plus, Jax had ended up escaping through her own efforts—with a dash of help from my little mind-virus.  So it was possible the puzzle had been altered to compensate.

Now that I think about it, that whole thing never made sense, anyway.  I was supposed to have found three sets of crystals and, I assumed, used certain subsets of them to unlock my Dolilim’s prisons.  However, I had also needed to find Keys to unlock the containers the crystals were hidden within.

How that was supposed to be accomplished had thus far escaped me.  The only Keys we had found had been handed to us either via Faen having a laugh or divine fiat.  And after the point where we would have even needed them.  That was no way to construct a proper puzzle.

Maybe I’ve been missing something?  That was a distinct possibility.  And it would be just the sort of thing to happen to me, too.  I had never been particularly lucky with my perception checks.

Briefly, I allowed my eyes to wander the painting, hoping to find any other identifying markers.  Three spots of identical yellow were interesting but not much to go on.  And besides, a person could not be unlucky all the time.

“Look,” I said finally, pointing to the bottom of the frame.