Mervella looked down at the items that the strange man had presented her with. What in the name of all the gods have I done to deserve this?

It was pretty obvious that this old lady and her strange scroll were responsible for all of this. Maybe even that coin of hers. On her way to the next challenge Mervella had used the coin to pay for a drink at a tavern down the street - far away from the plague village, they hadn't even heard of it. It was just a small mug, but since then Mervella felt the pressing urge to relieve herself. But she couldn't. No matter what quiet spot she picked, it just wouldn't work. And then the same happened as when she had travelled to the village: For a moment her surroundings seemed to change. A subtle change, like an invisible wave of magic going over the country, but she just felt that things were different now where she was. Even though she had never had any kind of magic ability.

When she saw this strange house in the distance, standing all alone in a meadow, she knew that she had arrived at her next destination. Also, her bladder kept urging her.

It was a strange building indeed. Flat and white, the walls and edges almost perfectly formed into a cubicle, like this was made by dwarves. And not a spot of dirt on those white walls. It had huge windows, on the inside were strange long sheets hanging down that shielded the interior from outside observers. Weird looking lamps seemed to illuminate almost every spot around the building. The front door was of glass, next to it was a metal sheet that had odd looking buttons and some flat openings covered with lids. Each lid and each button had a small sign to it.

Mervella had approached this door and had tried to open it. When that didn't work, she pressed the buttons. Maybe there was some magic device holding this door shut, and the buttons would unlock it. And suddenly a male voice came out of nowhere, asking what she wanted. A few words were exchanged - that man used kind of an unfamiliar dialect, but Mervella could still understand him - and then a loud humming came from the door, and it opened when Mervella gave it a push.

A few steps upwards she was standing in front of a huge man. He was human, alright. And he faced her with the challenge. But not one that she had expected.

"Make me laugh! Then you can use my bathroom."

Mervella looked at him grimly and puzzled. "I don't want to take a bath. I just need to relieve myself."

That didn't seem to impress the man. "Make me laugh!" he repeated, crossing his arms before him. Mervella looked at him. Her instinct told her to draw her sword and smite this dumb grin off his face. But she had reached for it when he had opened the door for her, and something strange happened: For some reason she couldn't draw it. No matter how hard she pulled, the sword would stay in its sheath. The same went for her crossbow. She wasn't even sure whether it was her muscles disobeying her, or if the weapons were under some sort of spell that kept her from using them. It didn't matter anyway. This was the challenge that the old lady had put her up to.

She went through the items she had received. A piece of legwear, but much too short to be covering anything but... Was this the kind of undergarment that was common in this world? She shook her head. Next was a fish. The smell told her that its best days had been long gone. Still, the smell was more pleasant than the plague village she came from. A ball of strange soft string, the color almost bloodlike. A large and heavy brown sphere with an uneven surface that she had never seen before. And a flat full body image of a person, cut out from wood and put on a stick.

She looked at this image. "Who is that silly gnome with the weird hair?" she asked.

"That's our current prime minister," the man answered who had introduced himself as Mr. Dev previously.

Mervella frowned. "This is a man of power in your country? I would have assumed that he was the court jester..."

Mr. Dev chuckled. But apparently not enough to let Mervella pass. So she looked at the items again. They should have sent Rhojeka for this, she thought. This was just so senseless.

But maybe that was the point. Maybe this was some sort of riddle. Not all challenges are of the body, she remembered from her training. Hadn't she been the one who refused to drink alcohol most of the time, because she said a sword was a more effective weapon when it was combined with a sharp mind? She looked at Mr. Dev again. Speaking of sharp minds... this one was unarmed. Striking him down would have been dishonorable.

She looked at this undergarment. An idea came to her. She put it on the body sized piece of wood where the crotch of this scruffy looking man would be. It reminded her a bit of watching Rhojeka putting a diaper on a baby that she had to take care of during their travels. Then Mervella took the fish and inserted it head first into the undergarment. The bizarre grin of this wooden puppet shone over the limp rear fin of the dead fish. A grin that was mirrored by the tall man in the doorway.

The ball of string was something to be puzzled of, but Mervella took it in one hand and waved it in front of the face of this puppet. Her other hand... "Wooooh... woooooh...," she made while waving the ball of string in front of this things face. And then she raised the other hand.

And rammed the coconut right into the face of the puppet.

As puppet and coconut came crashing down on the floor, the tall man in the doorway shrieked in laughter and held his stomach. Tears were running down his face, and he struggled to catch his breath. Mervella left him a few heartbeats, though she had pressing matters to attend to... "Now, will you let me pass?" she then asked impatiently.

The man let her through. "Second door to the left," he instructed her, while still wheezing under laughter. Mervella walked right past them, shaking her head. Small-minded simpleton, she thought to herself.

It finally worked. When she sat on this white throne-like apparatus, she finally got rid of all this pressure. Next to her was a strange white scroll. It was long and rolled up, but it appeared to be blank. Is this some sort of magic spell?, she wondered. Is this maybe responsible for my entire predicament here? She was a law abiding person in general, but this time she decided to take it. For what this man had put her through, he deserved at least this. And maybe she could uncover what is hidden inside of this white scroll.

As she left this building, Mr. Dev hadn't even noticed that she had taken his roll of toilet paper...