Norman and George quickly moved the each side of Amanda, helping her back to her feet, as the woman approached. It was difficult to make out her features in the dark night of the new moon.
As the woman grew close, a distant street lamp provided just enough light for the group to see that she was stunningly beautiful. She looked like a buff supermodel. As she reached them, she said simply, "Choose your champion."
Lillian, Amanda, Norman, and George waited expectantly, but the woman said no more. Norman and George exchanged a look, and Norman shrugged.
Discomfort and impatience driving her bravery, Lillian, hair still dripping from the beer that Amanda had spilled on her, took a few steps toward the woman. "Care to elaborate, lady?"
With no further words, the woman grabbed Lillian's arm. The two of them disappeared in a flash of light.
***
Lillian blinked. She and the mysterious woman had appeared in a dark stone room, lit by torchlight. Three pedestals that looked a bit like bird baths stood in the middle of the otherwise empty room. The one to the left contained glowing blue liquid; the one in the middle, swirling green; and the one to the right, dull red liquid.
Lillian turned to the tall, gorgeous woman next to her, trying to decide which question to ask first, when the woman gave her a cup and said a single word. "Choose."
Lillian paused again, waiting for the woman to say more, but, again, she didn't. It was fairly clear that the woman expected her to take a drink of one of the three liquids. Lillian had no idea, however, which to choose.
"Is this like a Harry Potter sorting hat kind of thing?" she asked aloud, not really expecting an answer, and not receiving one. The woman simply stood there like a statue, gaze locked firmly on the stone wall across the room. "Loqacious, aren't you?" she sassed the woman, probably unwisely, but she was a little emboldened from her frustration and having to make what seemed like an important decision based on no information whatsoever. Walking around the pedestals, she finally decided to look at their supporting columns. She saw some wording etched in each one. They all said the same thing:
cogitant facti sunt
It looked like Latin. How she wished she had taken Latin right now! Lillian chided herself, she need to do the best she could to figure this out.
Cogitant looked like cognitive or cognition, so it probably had something to do with thinking. Facti. She wasn't sure. Fact? Sunt. She had no idea about that one. Think fact? Think about what you want to be, maybe? It seemed to make sense. It had to be something like that. She again tried to think of what sunt might mean, but it was no use. Between the pressure and the events of the night--not to mention the couple of beers she'd had at the party--her brain wasn't in full gear right now.
Think fact. What you think is what you become. What did she want to become? She should probably think about what she wanted to be like or change into or something when she drank the liquid.
She walked around to the other side of the pedestals to see if they said something on the other side. They did! The words inscribed were:
Blue liquid - spiritus
Green liquid - animo
Red liquid - corporis
Lillian didn't know what animo meant, but she knew that spiritus was spirit and corporis was body, like corporeal. Animo had to be mind. Mind, body, and spirit. It made sense.
So... it seemed like the blue one made her spirit become something, the green one made her mind become something, and the red one made her body become something. I guess the question is, Lillian thought, which one do I want to change...
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