The sugar warehouse was eerily silent, devoid of life and mostly untouched. While most of the building appeared to be normal, there was a significant problem, a complete lack of doors. Only one door was present and insanely small and tucked away, hiding behind the fuel station. There was no padlock present and the door wasn’t at all locked, but it seemed that something had bitten off the door’s handle.
“Looks like the previous owners were my size…” Phovos whispered as she tried to open the door. It swung open much easier than Phovos had predicted and made a small crack in the wall behind it. “Oh. Oops.”
“It’s fine,” Tenuk grinned, before licking the door for no real reason. “Mmmm, artificial strawberry…”
Elksi laughed, then covered her mouth, trying not to be too loud. Tenuk licked the door a few more times, then stepped aside so that the others could come in. Well, Phovos and Elksi could. Retvik quickly realized he would have to get on his hands and knees to get inside.
“Is there even room for me to stand in there?” Retvik hesitated, not wanting to get stuck. It wasn’t a fear of being trapped, more that Retvik didn’t want to embarrass himself.
“Yeah, there’s enough room. Just about.”
Satisfied, Retvik crawled in, then found he could stand up straight. But Retvik also noticed that his companions were staring at something way above them.
“Ooh… shiny…” Tenuk exclaimed. “I wonder what it tastes like.”
“Probably that weird artificial yellow flavour…” Phovos suggested. “As long as it’s not that weird generic bubblegum flavour…”
“Between you three,” Retvik sighed. “Are you purposely trying to taste the entire space between universes?”
Tenuk grinned. “No, but that does sound like a good challenge!”
Retvik rolled his eyes in a “forget I said anything” way, then turned his attention to the rest of the room. Aside from the disco ball at the centre of the warehouse, everything else was just green, yellow or red containers, all of which were made out of a hard, lollipop-like candy. As Retvik ran his hand across several of the containers, he noted the different sounds that each container made.
“I think half of these are empty,” Phovos pointed out as she knocked on another nearby container. With each gentle knock, she could tell whether the containers were empty or not.
“Not all of them though!” Elksi joined in on the container identifications, before slamming her fist through a red container. As Elksi removed her hand though, a dense liquid began to pour from the hole she had made. “Oops. Do you lot need honey?”
“Elksi, what did you just… do..?” Tenuk hesitated, glancing over at the Time Drake.
“I punched it!” Elksi repeated herself. She tried to plug the hole with her hand, but the flow of honey managed to push past her and continued pouring on the floor around her. “I think I might have made a mistake…”
Suddenly though, the honey stopped dripping. Using his control over fire, Retvik melted the candy around the hole Elksia made, before melting it all back together.
“Phew, thanks Retty!” Elksia beamed, patting Retvik on his back with a sticky hand. “Coulda fixed it myself but you’re quicker!”
“You are welcome…” Retvik grunted. “We need to be more careful with these containers. The last thing we need is to make a huge mess. I recommend we start from where we came in and go from there.”
Elksi nodded in agreement. “Good idea! Let’s get going!”