Here's an AE that isn't official yet, but I'll try her out here.

Name: Jewel

Pronouns: She/her

Perceived Age: 13-ish

Appearance: Long dark blue hair in a fishtail braid, dark sweater, jeans, boots, dark eyes, light skin.

Packing List: Headphones, journal, snacks, pencils, more snacks, backup headphones, cell phone, charger.

Basic Personality: Loves listening to music, very introverted, usually sarcastic and not very trusting, good liar.

Favorite Precious Mineral/Gemstone: Umm emerald, 'cause why not.

On a Scale of 1 to 10, How Afraid are You of the Dark?: 0. She loves the dark.

Favorite Disney Movie: Avengers: Endgame

Favorite Flavor of Popcorn: Extra salt

Other: Nope

The first thing that Luna-Starr remembered was the light. Swirling, opalescent pastel pinks and blues and yellows; shifting through the air and softening the atmosphere of the space. A bit disoriented, Luna sat up, blinking past the blurriness. As her sight became clearer, she realized that she was sitting in a round cave with a floor of packed dirt. The rainbow of light was emanating from a scattering of cut gems jutting out of the ceiling above. 

Luna stood, brushing herself off. How did she get here again? She had filled out the form, and then the ground had opened up beneath her feet in a pitch black tunnel that had deposited her here. Next to her on the floor was a dark backpack. With a quick look inside, she realized that it had been stuffed with everything she had requested on the form.

The wall behind her shifted, a small circular tunnel opening up, and Castillo and Daylily tumbled into the room, along with their own bags, crashing into the CBer. 

“Sorry, Luna!” Castillo exclaimed, jumping to aer feet and reaching out a hand to help aer CBer up. Luna stood for the second time and brushed the dirt off of her shirt before saying, “It’s fine. Daylily, are you okay-”

“That’s impossible,” Daylily muttered, cutting Luna off. She was staring at the tunnels that they had entered from; or rather, where they had been a few seconds ago. The tunnels seemed to disappear as soon as the AEs had entered the room. 

Castillo grinned. “They letter did say that there would be no shortage of adventure.”

No sooner had ae finished aer sentence when two more tunnels opened up and Silver Crystal and dreamii were dropped on the floor. They helped each other up.

dreamiing tilted her head and squinted at the ceiling. “What kind of place is this?”

Silver shrugged. “The Cryptic Caverns, according to the letter.” She turned her gaze upwards. “I wonder how those crystals are glowing like that…”

She was interrupted by Nightfall DreamFire entering the space via disappearing tunnel, followed closely by Quill. The next few minutes were filled with falling CBers (and an AE or two) and soon the people that had come earliest found themselves dodging the ones that were arriving, along with their baggage, which was increasingly harder to avoid in this cave, which wasn’t too large even without a group of people crowding it. 

When the last person had fallen through, the cavern was inhabited by an awkward silence as they wondered what would happen next. This was the part when their host came to greet them, right? A handful of nervous whispers could be heard, and the unzipping of backpacks as curious people peered inside to see what had been packed for them.

moondemon was finding it increasingly hard to fit into the space; he was much taller than everyone else and he was stuck bending over to avoid the sharp crystals in the ceiling. Accidentally stepping backwards, his elbow hit a hidden square of stone, which sunk into the wall with a sharp grating sound. The whispers in the room between the confused CBers stopped abruptly.

“What was that-?” Wreeboo asked. 

A portion of the curved cavern wall swung open to reveal a wider, taller passageway lit by more of the luminescent jewels.

“Should we leave…?” Daylily questioned, unsure. But moondemon had already ducked into the new passageway, relieved to have room to stand up straight again, and upon seeing him leave, the other CBers followed his lead with varying degrees of confidence. The whispers started up again.

Jewel was the last person out. “This is a bad idea,” she muttered to herself.

The passageway twined and curved, and after ten minutes or more, dreamii began to wonder if they were being led on a path meant to trick them. Finally, the passageway ended, and the group of CBers entered the new room. Well, if you asked them at the time, they probably would have said that the word ‘room’ was an understatement. The ceiling was easily ten times the height of moondemon; it seemed as far away as the sky, and, of course, it was encrusted with the crystals and jewels which seemed to grow out of the rock and illuminate the hall with their unearthly, multicolored glow. The room was indeed a hall, with stalagmites piercing out of the ground, lining the huge, sheer rock walls that continued upwards. 

“Wow…” Quill whispered, a bit overwhelmed by the scale of it all. The others all had similar reactions, and some were speechless.

The ground had smoothed out into stone, which seemed to be granite with veins of gold running through it. About halfway through the hall, the ground ascended into stairs. And standing at the top was a woman who looked to be in her early twenties with raven dark hair and brown eyes, wearing a dress of shades of light blue and teal. On a silver chain gleamed a sky blue gem with five points, in the shape of a star.

“Hello!” The woman greeted, smiling. “I am Hope, your host. Welcome to the Cryptic Caverns.”

~~~

I think that I’ll be using the Mystery for this, so they don’t know that it’s a ski lodge. If anyone still wants to join/add an AE or two, they are welcome to before I post the rooming in a day or two. Also, Luna, it’s my first time writing someone with ae/aer/aers pronouns; please let me know if I did anything wrong. Comments appreciated!

DAY 0, PART 2:

Hope glided down the stairs to the group of CBers and AEs, her dress flowing behind her like a midnight tide. To Harper it looked as if her feet weren’t really touching the ground. 

“I hope it wasn’t too much trouble to get here,” Hope said. “The entrance tunnels can be a bit… disorienting.”

Nightfall shrugged. “I thought they were pretty cool.”

“How did they disappear like that after they delivered us?” Daylily asked, her gaze still fixed on the ceiling. 

“The tunnels?” Hope asked. “Oh, that’s just some simple magic.” 

“Magic?” Bean questioned. She didn’t quite believe it, but was there any other explanation for what she saw in the entrance cave?

“Yes,” Hope responded, waving her hand in the air. A rush of turquoise color flashed through the room as all of the illuminating crystals momentarily switched colors to the same shade as Hope’s dress. “My life force is connected to these Caverns, and I can manipulate them to a limited extent. This place is called the Grand Hall; I worked on it for months.”

“It really is beautiful here,” Luna said. “Thank you for inviting us.”

“Thank you for coming.” A rush of warm light washed through the Hall. “Now, that reminds me; you all should be finding your rooms now. Follow me.”

Hope turned and made her way to the back of the Grand Hall, the group of CBers trailing behind her. Various excited conversations arose throughout the group.

Jewel came up to her CBer’s side. “What do you think about it?”

“About what?” Silver asked, stooping to pick up a loose crystal that had fallen on the ground. It was metallic and glowed with a silver radiance. She slipped it into her back pocket and turned her attention back to her AE.

Jewel waved her hands in the air. “You know, the magic and the tunnels and everything.”

The crowd entered one of the large passageways that branched off of the Grand Hall, not unlike the one that they had entered the Hall from. 

“It’s interesting,” Silver replied. “I’m going to ask her more about her magic later.”

“You don’t find it suspicious?” Jewel asked skeptically. She was never too trusting, and this situation made her especially uneasy for some reason. 

Silver rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a pessimist, Jewel. The whole point is to have fun.”

The group stopped moving at a fork in the passageway; on the right, the path was labelled “Rooms” and the left read “Dining Hall”. 

At the front, Hope turned to them and gestured to the path on the right.  “Right down there, there are four rooms that are all connected to the path. I tried to mix up the rooming, so CBers won’t be with their AEs, and since there’s an uneven amount of you, one room will have four people instead of three.” She pulled out a small scroll, which she unrolled and read from. “In the Quartzite Room we have Luna-Starr, Jewel and Harper. The Obsidian Room has Nightfall DreamFire, Princess Juniper and dreamii. Daylily, moondemon and Quill, you’re in the Carnelian Room. And in the Selenite Room there’s Silver Crystal, Bean, Wreboo and Castillo.” She snapped shut her scroll. “Now, go settle down for the night. I’ll see you all in the morning at the Dining Hall. If you need anything, my room is just through one of the passages off of the Grand Hall; you can’t miss it. Until tomorrow!” She turned and left the hall in a flourish of blue.

The crowd dispersed and made their way to their rooms. The first one, almost directly to the left after taking a few steps into the path marked with the word “Rooms”, was the Quartzite Room. Harper swung open the door, which was round, quite like a door a hobbit hole. Inside, the space was a circular shape, with spaces for beds carved out of the wall a few feet off of the ground. Quartz crystals decorated the space and lit it up, and a circular rug sat in the center with three large plush chairs surrounding it. Harper made her way to the closest bed and peered inside. Inside of the bed space, which was, like everything else, rounded, it was dark and cozy, with a small bookshelf at one end and blankets with swirling patterns on it. Luna and Jewel also entered and chose their beds, setting their dark backpacks down.

The other rooms were very similar, yet different in subtle ways. In the Obsidian Room, instead of chairs and a rug, there were cushioned benches made of black wood around a central table of mahogany. Everything was also tinted darker, as the crystals lighting up the room were obsidian shards. 

In the Carnelian Room, everything had a cheery orange glow. There was a central fireplace that burned without fuel and emitted no smoke, causing the shadows to shift indefinitely. A ring of comfy stools stood around the flame. 

The Selenite Room had a very calm feeling, with the clear Selenite crystals casting a crisp light over the four beds and central space. In this room’s central space, there was a cluster of stalactites on the ceiling in the very middle of the room, and silvery water dripped from their points into the swirling basin below. Silvery beanbags and throw pillows were scattered around it.

Everyone entered their rooms and found their places, talking and laughing amongst each other. In the Obsidian Room, Nightfall noticed a small black box perched on the bookshelf in their bed. They reached out and took it in their hands, opening it. Inside was a necklace of dark blue jewels, dozens of them like beads, separated by gold beads of the same size. They realized that it was sapphire, their favorite gem that they had listed on their form. 

One by one, people were noticing their gifts. In the Selenite Room, Silver and Wreeboo were comparing diamond bracelets, which were similar but for the fact that Wree’s was strung with copper, as opposed to Silver’s platinum. Back in the Quartzite Room, Luna held up a tourmaline set of earrings to the light of the crystals. Quill was delighted to see a ring fashioned from anthracite coal in her box, and moondemon found a circlet of silver and moonstone in the Carnelian Room.

Eventually, the talking died down, and the CBers and AEs settled in for the night.

Unbeknownst to everyone, when one person first touched their gift in the midst of the surprise and joy earlier, their mind was flooded with knowledge, and a string of words. Chatterbox, Ski Lodge, Mystery, danger, murderer, murderer, murderer…

WOW. Just wow. This is incredible!

DAY 1, PART 1:

Juni was the first person in the Dining Hall at the start of the next day. She had gotten up fairly early, or at least she thought she did; it was a little hard to tell without any sunlight. The Dining Hall was right through the path to the left of the rooms, and it was no less beautiful than the Grand Hall, though smaller and less fancy in her opinion. The ceiling was much lower, and a chandelier made of tiers of many different colored crystals hung over the handful tables in the room, with chairs surrounding each one. Plates sat at each seat, though they were empty. Juni took a seat at one of the tables and waited.

Just when she was contemplating going back to her room (maybe she had gotten up too early?), Luna walked in with Harper right behind her. 

“Good morning!” Juni said, waving them over. “I’m just waiting for Hope to get here. Is Jewel with you?”

“Nope. She wanted to sleep in some more,” Harper replied, both her and Luna sitting down next to Juni. 

Luna scanned the room. “Do you see an entrance to the kitchens? Usually the kitchens and dining room are right next to each other.”

“I don’t see anything,” Harper noted. “That’s weird.”

The three of them dismissed the matter rather quickly, talking instead about their gifts that they received yesterday and what their different rooms looked like. Slowly, the others trickled into the room and pulled up chairs at various tables, chatting and greeting one another. Nightfall and dreamii were the last ones in, and they probably would have slept longer if Quill hadn’t gone back to the rooms and woke them up.

Finally, Hope entered the Dining Hall, wearing a dress of yellows and oranges today. The sky blue star gem stood out against the vibrant sunset of colors. She clapped her hands once and the conversations slowed to a stop. 

“Greetings,” She began. “I hope you all had a good night's sleep?”

Everyone smiled and nodded, and they all meant it. The beds were surprisingly comfortable, and even Quill, who was very claustrophobic, slept the whole night through peacefully in the enclosed space.

Well, everybody except for one. They had spent the long hours where the crystal light dimmed laying still in bed, their brain clicking together pieces of the puzzle until they could see it clearly in all of its twisted glory. Their mind was heavy with the certainty of what they had to do. I’m referring to the murderer, of course, though they had yet to kill anyone. 

*Just one day*, they told themselves, glancing around at the CBers and AEs around them, relaxed and looking to Hope for further instruction. *One day for them to be happy and normal. Just one more day.*

But though the Mystery’s roots were still shallow, the murderer felt it twine itself around their wishful thinking and choke it to dust. The finality, the *necessity* of this job washed over them, and they shivered from the ice cold resolve crystalizing in their heart. They shook it off and turned back to the conversation, which they had been ignoring. 

“Yes, the chandelier took me quite a few long days to complete,” Hope was saying. 

“This whole room is very pretty,” Harper commented. “But Luna, Juni and I didn’t see any kitchens attached here. Are you bringing the food?”

Hope smiled. “Something like that.” She waved her hand in the air, and along with a sunny glow from the chandelier, a breakfast of french toast with powdered sugar and a little pitcher of syrup appeared on everyone’s plate.

“The plates are magic, too?” Daylily asked.

“Almost,” Hope replied, taking a seat at a mostly empty table and picking up her fork along with everyone else before pouring the syrup over her food. “I’ve imbued some of my magic in each one. They’re connected to me.”

“Don’t you have a certain extent of what you can control?” Wreeboo asked. “Couldn’t you just put your magic into anything?”

“No,” Hope said. “Those plates only took a very simple and small amount of magic, they wouldn’t work if they got too far from the caverns, because I’m connected to the caverns and they’re connected to me. My magic only works down here, and it’s not unlimited.”

Everyone fell silent as they ate, enjoying the food. Well, almost everyone. The murderer was extremely annoyed. The fact that there were no kitchens meant no easy access to knives and other things that would make their job a lot easier. Oh, well. They’d have to improvise. 

“All right, everyone,” Hope said when everyone had finished eating. “We’re going to take a trip to the Rainbow Pools after this, so I’ll give you five minutes to get ready.”

The CBers and AEs left the room in groups of two and three, and Hope watched them with a smile. When the last pair, moondemon and Daylily, had departed, the smile hit the floor in a matter of seconds. She knew what was to come. Last evening, when the murderer had been chosen, Hope felt the impact of it reverberate through the caves and tunnels until it found her. She knew the job had already begun. 

She knew, and yet she stood by and let it happen. The Mystery was out of her reach. It took them all in the end. 

Fake smiles and fake laughs, as it gutted them out from the inside.

Oooh! I don''t think I'm the murderer because if you read closely it looks like the murderer came down after me.

Oooh! I don''t think I'm the murderer because if you read closely it looks like the murderer came down after me.

DAY 1, PART 2:

Hope led the group of CBers to the Grand Hall and through another one of the passageways labelled “Rainbow Pools”. They walked single file, talking to one another excitedly. 

Finally, the passageway opened up into another cave, this time with a low ceiling and lighter colored walls. The walls sloped down, and at the CBers feet started a rough pool of pitch black water. The space was dim and dark, and stalagmites pushed up through the inky liquid. Bridges of rock arched over the pools from where they were standing. Quill couldn’t help feeling a little bit disappointed. This wasn’t at all how they imagined the Rainbow Pools would look like. Similar thoughts ran through the group.

Nevertheless, Hope spun around to face them and beamed. “Welcome to the Rainbow Pools! Now, before we begin, let’s play a guessing game.” She pointed to the water that looked opaquely black in the lighting. “Is this water four inches deep of forty feet deep?”

Daylily squinted at the water, trying to analyze the light reflection off of it to see the depth, but there was no way to tell. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

Wreeboo flapped her wings and flew to hover over the pools and get a different view, but she came to the same conclusion. 

“Well, I think that it’s forty feet,” Bean announced confidently.

“Why?” Castillo asked. “There’s no way to tell.”

Bean shrugged. “I don’t know, but there’s a fifty/fifty chance, right?”

“Actually,” Hope said. She clapped her hands once, and hidden crystals lit up so bright that it took everyone’s eyes a second to adjust. “It’s four inches.”

The group gasped. The light illuminated the water, turning it from opaque black to a swirling mass of rainbow colors. Even the stalagmites seemed to shimmer among the water and light. Now that there was light, dreamii could see the rainbow water only went a few inches into the hard rock ground. It was amazing that none of them could see that before.

Harper was the first one on the bridges over the water, and other CBers and AEs quickley followed her. Castillo was dared by Luna to touch the unnaturally colored water. Ae reached down and submerged aer fingertips in the pool. The water felt warm and it glowed where it touched aer hand. When ae took aer hand out, aer fingertips were coated in luminescent rainbow.

Wreeboo and dreamii were using their wings to propel themselves from one bridge to another, flying over the pools. moondemon had to bend down a little to fit in the space, so he stayed on the side with Nightfall, who was teaching him to to skip stones on the water.

Eventually, they were corralled by Hope and started to depart for lunch. Everyone was in a good mood- even the murderer, for the first time since they were chosen. 

As they made their way out, Juni noticed a half covered cavern entrance partly hidden by a giant stalagmite in the Grand Hall. She made a note of it and continued talking with dreamii.

Lunch was fun (they had pizza topped with whatever they wanted), but the murderer felt their happy mood slip away. It was about to start; these few seconds here were the last ones not stained by what they were about to do. They sighed and took another bite out of their pizza. This was for the good of them all. They would all understand, in the end. They would have to.

~~~

I’m sorry this is so short, but I had writer's block. Things are about to get more interesting, so I’ll probably update more. Btw this whole setting is greatly based on a trip I took to some caverns a few years ago; there were these black pools and we had to guess if it was 4 inches or 40 feet deep. I said 40 feet but it was actually 4 inches, and let me tell you, it’s impossible to judge the depth in that lighting. Anyway, thanks to anyone and everyone who comments or has commented!