[b]Lil’ Euphie![/b] Everything is finally making sense. For a little while there, you were worried you’d lost it! Your sense of self, shattered on the floor, reflecting shards of yourself. But it’s okay now. It’s all so bright and shiny! All you needed to do was fix all those pieces back together, and let your Euphie-ness fill in all the cracks! So what if there’s another Euphie? You’re clearly the best one. Once you win, you will have proved it, and then you can switch places with yourself and next time you’ll be in charge of the maze and she’ll be the one winning the competition! It’s all so wonderful! The world around you is plastic. Everything contains the seeds of being something else hidden in its heart! You have inside you the Shortcut to Art. With a glance and a wave of your hand, what once was solid warps and twists like molten glass to fit your vision! You are Creating! This is what it must have felt like for the devil-matrons when the world was freshly-baked and theirs to shape into form!! Tch. Princesses. They’re still jealous of you, Euphie. Jealous of your vision. Except for delightful little Mittens! You love her so, so much! You can’t wait to take her on walkies, and give her ear scritches, and keep her so, so, so safe. You’d rather crack the world in half than see her hurt. You’ll keep her safe and yours forever and ever and ever... *** [b]Kathelia![/b] You adjust the Labazaar Quartz Telescope and bring the glass dragon into focus, and proceed to confirm one of your theories! This is so exciting! Like many species of butterfly, this dragon’s oversized, impractical eyes are actually a form of [i]ocelli,[/i] or eyespots. Ocelli are commonly used for mimicry of a more dangerous predator or to draw attention away from vulnerable body parts, though some species use them for intraspecies communication and even courtship, such as the famous ocelli on a male peacock’s feathers. Instead, the visual organs of the glass dragon are hidden at the intersections of its scales, small hard coal-like eyes with many facets. This is so exciting, and might mean Eupheria has broken the record for most eyes on one animal! Of course, you already know the top ten animals with the most eyes. It’ll be impossible to approach the dragon without waking it up unless you use invisibility, unless its eyes have special abilities? It’s entirely possible! If you can find several different invisibility methods, you could even do tests! Moving on, you also note that there are gardeners tending to the flowers. They have the heads of lions, wings like bats, and the bodies of jocks. You take an instant dislike to them. Notably, several seem to be tending to a thick, thorned topiary statue of Argossa with a glowing red light at its crown, one that immediately strikes you as familiar. It’s one of Alina’s lights! Weirdly, instead of complimenting you on your cleverness and analytical skills, Alina and Kyouko seem to be freaking out. *** [b]Mittens![/b] It’s time to [i]goooooooo.[/i] Momma waved her toy Caduceus at you, and maybe she can actually use it, maybe Eupheria’s playing along, but chain-trees and scarf-vines are bursting out of the ground in a grim and terrible forest all around you. Kyouko’s scream could shatter glass as she hops from foot to foot, her curse making her practically useless in the face of danger. Everyone knows cheerleaders need to be saved by heroic princesses, after all! The way up the hill is becoming a very, very dangerous obstacle course, and that’s before you get to that glass wall. Your Momma opens a door in the side, and after she walks through... she closes it seamlessly. Eep! That manacle nearly got you! Run!! *** [b]Adila I![/b] “You’re the secret master of the Watch?” The Jedadi Princess seems dumbstruck. “I... I thought you’d be taller,” she manages to say, lamely. “Alina’s in danger?” The Iluminan is evidently Alina’s sister. The resemblance is obvious, though she seems, if anything, more hotheaded. She’s a danger. Eliminate her from the situation as early as possible. The Rowani seems to be coolly evaluating you— a kindred spirit? Perhaps she could be trusted more than the rest. And then the small, mousy princess squeaks. “It’s not the glass snake!” What? Then the earth explodes and the Snake-Husband of Jedad rears up out of the ground with a terrible bellow. Ah. Well. This is inconvenient. Especially because the glass snake has been half-freed from the prison you painstakingly made for it, and is throwing itself furiously at the Snake-Husband. While this means they might neutralize each other, their flailing and laser eyes mean that you might be crushed by two hundred tons of stone or glass, squished into paste. And... are they both writhing like they’re about to vomit? Best to evacuate.