Green Room.

The room was piled floor to ceiling with silver, gold, platinum and other precious metals, not to mention stunning jewels and regal-looking furniture. The contents of the room were so shiny, in fact, that it seemed to be generating its own glow. I felt as if I had just stumbled upon the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh or something, but there was more stuff here than one person could ever hope to excavate. The question of “where was I?” was pushed to the back of my mind as I lost myself in the beauty of the room.

The suspicious person that I am, before touching anything, I looked all around for any signs of cameras or anyone watching me. I never planned to steal any of it, but I did want to check it out. It seemed weird that there would be an entire room full of this stuff left unguarded and open to anyone who might stumble across it. I also figured that wherever there was this much collected wealth, there must also be someone nearby – a guardian or owner or somebody like that.

As soon as I felt comfortable, I reached into the pile and pulled out everything from gold bars and heavy coins to jewel-adorned crowns and platinum-inlayed chairs. I felt like a king surrounded by all this stuff. However, I quickly felt like I was being overcome by the mass of measurable amounts of greed, so I removed the crown and put everything back in its place. “I should probably keep going down the hall,” I thought to myself. As I got to the door though, another object caught my eye. A modestly-sized chest rested along the wall by the doorway. It wasn’t covered with shiny metal or precious stones, so it stuck out like a sore thumb. An open padlock lying on the floor in front of it told me it was open. So after looking around again, I cautiously approached it.

What could it contain? Would it be full of answers and information about this place, its inhabitants, the people that owned this palace-like building, or would something leap out of it and kill me Raiders of the Lost Ark-style? Like most every other strange experience I’ve encountered in my life, curiosity got the best of me, and I opened the box. There was nothing evil about it at all – just some old books stacked haphazardly inside. I picked one up and dusted it off. The books were all inscribed with a bizarre language that resembled what I saw on the door. “Avare Treizuro,” it read.

“Avare,” I said, recognizing the word from the door. “That must be the name of this place.” My little knowledge of Latin and Greek made me think that treizuro meant “treasury.” That would definitely explain why all of that rich stuff was here. Remembering back to the door, I also concluded palaza was just another form of either “plaza” or “palace.” So what was Avare? I reached in for another book hoping to find the answer.

I searched most all of them, and they each looked like recordkeeping books. I didn’t understand any of what was written inside though. Suddenly, I saw a smaller leather-bound booked tucked away in a dark corner of the chest. I pulled it out and opened it to find diagrams, maps and charts of this place. I saw where the Palaza Avare was marked on one page close to the center of a body of water called Mont Lac. “That must be the lakebed I was walking along outside!” I exclaimed. Other diagrams of the building made it appear as though the palace floated on the surface of the lake at one time. However, it was now just an aged building resting in a shallow pond at a slight slant somewhat like the leaning tower of Pisa.

In some of the back pages I saw maps of various rooms and chambers. I instantly recognized the door where I entered, and I followed with my finger the long hallway I ventured down to get here. The next page had a title at the top, “Treizuro,” to let me see exactly where I was. The items in the room weren’t shown on the picture, and that allowed me to see details of things along the walls that were covered up but the piles of possessions. There was a small rectangular marking close to the top of the far wall that caught my eye. It appeared to be either a door or a window, but I couldn’t see most of it when I looked over to the wall. There only appeared to be the top right corner peeking out. From what I could tell in the book, there were more chambers hidden behind the portal, so that made me determined to get there to open it. How would I though? It was so high, and there was no ladder or staircase that lead up to it. That put me in a new position with a new problem. How could I figure out a way to get up there?

The easiest answer would be to build up the pile leading up to the door using the chest, the furniture and anything else I could gather together, and that’s exactly what I started doing. The process of working so hard to achieve this goal made me stop and think about what I was doing. I wanted to get out of here. Somehow, I convinced myself that the best way to do that would be to explore further into this place. I was doing that by utilizing the riches for things they weren’t designed for. Namely, I was finding a practical way to use the stuff instead of exploiting its value. The external, measurable greed contained within this place had found its true calling, and after building up the heap, I scaled its precarious precipice to reach the door. One swift kick around the sides knocked it wide open, and before I knew it, I found myself in yet another chamber – a smaller and emptier one. “What part of the puzzle did this place serve?” I asked myself.

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