The trio stepped onto a small, grassy field, the panels behind them falling back into the void, blocking the way back. From their perspective, an endless amber forest stretched into the horizon, with vividly colored palm trees dotting the landscape: yellow leaves ending in a streak of light brown wood, and a charcoal black tip. Several geometric rocks dotted the field they were in, with a giant, flat hill unscrupulously positioned next to a large pit — the way forward.
Susie, Noelle and Berdly each took their turn marveling at the scene before them, with the bluebird stepping forward to touch a large, rectangular rock, with one side notably smoother than the other. "It's... soft? Feels a little warm, too." Feeling adventurous, he sat down on the rock, bouncing up a little as his armored legs hit the rubber. Susie stepped towards the cliff, the grass rustling beneath her boots like sheets of paper. Though the cliff face itself was flat, it was covered with hundreds of blurry smudges, several purple swirls, and the words "SUZIE RULEZ" scribbled on the top right.
She crossed her arms and pouted, while Noelle investigated the side of the hill. "Oh, hey! I think I see something up there?" Several meters above, a pointy, wide-brimmed hat with a blade cutting through along the cone on the side hanged from a root that was growing out of the cliff, out of reach for the three, even if they stood on each other's heads. Susie looked up, noticing a small handle on the brim as at her side. "I... don't think it's meant for any of us. Probably just an item we can't equip." None of them wore hats, anyway.
Off to the side, across the gap, a dozen colorful palms grew in a line, a rainbow of colors, neatly ordered by shade. Disregarding the dangerous headwear, Noelle stepped aside, looking into the hole. While the fall wasn't too deep, the bottom was covered in sharp spikes, sticking out of the ground in pairs of two, as if someone had stuck a dozen pairs of scissors through cardboard. "I— I don't think we should try jumping here." She turned around, hesitantly looking at Susie. "O-Or should we?"
The purple-scaled lizard stepped forward, gauging her ability to fly against the possibility of splattering against a bed of spikes. "Nah. There's gotta be, like, a puzzle here to solve, or something. Try to look around, maybe?"
But there was nothing for them to miss. The field they were in was rather barren, and even if they piled all the rocks in the pit, they still wouldn't be able to cross the gap. Berdly's claws began idly tapping on the ground, while Susie picked at the side of the cliff face. Her claws managed to grab onto the edge of a thin, transparent sheet. "There! Now we just have to—" Susie peeled the sheet back, the topmost layer of the rock sliding off, and taking all the purple ink with it. She grabbed another loose corner and peeled it back — now the smudges were gone, too. Aside from the tiny text remaining in the corner, it was a completely blank canvas. "...nevermind. That gave us jack."
Watching the transparent sheets fly into the air and disappear into glittery mist, Noelle and Berdly converged on the same idea, at the same time. Noelle turned to the bird, who was already looking through the pockets of his green skirt for items. "Berdly, you, um. Do you still have your notebook with you? I want to try..."
He reached into his armor and pulled out a single, tightly wound scroll, with metal coils around the rims protecting it from any damage. He pulled on the edge, and a sheet of brilliant white paper emerged, the scroll feeling a little lighter, now. "The greatest minds still think alike. Though I am unsure of what your plan is, I believe..." He reached into his armorspace again, pulling out a regular metal pen, which somehow survived the transition to the Dark World unscathed, "...this should help? Interesting. I expected to see a metal quill..."
Before he finished his thought, Noelle took both items from him, tearing a page out of the scroll and pressing it into the cliff face, nervously holding the pen in her right hand. "There was this game me and Kris used to play, right after their family got their first computer," Her hand went down to draw a small rectangle, with an odd perspective indicating it was, in fact, a flat three-dimensional box. Susie and Berdly huddled around her, watching her draw, which only made her nervous. "We— um. I-It was a small browser game about drawing. We each had to draw something that would fight for us in a giant arena, w-with other people's drawings watching us from the stands." She put down several squiggles along the sides of the box, and began to draw another right on top of it. "Kris would always spend way too long trying to make the, um, 'most awesome beast', fwahaha!" She paused, trying to ignore Susie and Berdly's breaths on her back. "Th-Though I think all the stats were randomly generated, so it didn't really matter, in the end." Susie stepped back, noticing how nervous she was getting, while a third, long box was drawn on top of the other two. Noelle took time detailing the drawing with little flourishes, awkwardly scribbled tufts, and a cartoonish spring sticking out of the very top of one of the boxes. "Th-There! That should—"
