Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Change of Plants

The rocks were evidently active at that point, but the stallion chose not to test them out just yet. Instead he moved on to the next side, and there began to look for another branch. He found it a little farther away from the square, hidden behind some grass, and again he used it to properly activate the rock pile. He did it again for the two remaining sides, finding each branch in a different and slightly hidden position, and finally every set of stones was properly set up.

Carefully he looked at the little pile in front of him, then at the square and the trees and the two large jutting rocks in the clearing. He put a hoof over the stone on top of the pile, and turned it slowly to the side. The trees moved. Or, to be more precise, their trunks remained in place anchored to the ground, but they rotated, shifting the position of their branches.

He smiled brightly, and turned the stone like a knob some more, getting a good and proper look at how it caused each tree to move. Eventually going far enough made them return to a previous position, and continue from there on the same path as before. More curious, and already forming an idea of what he was supposed to do, he tried a few other freely turnable stones and confirmed that the movements they caused were slightly different.

He then moved on to the next set of rocks to examine that one. There too he had access to a few different ways of causing the trees to turn, each only mildly different from the other but all wildly so from the previous set. Direction of the rotation of each tree, speed of each one, orientation of the branches and more, each one of those parameters was different, and it similarly held true for the remaining two piles of rocks.

As he returned to the first pile, he had a pretty good idea of what he was meant to do. The two large rocks embedded in the clearing pointed at places where the branches could theoretically connect, and he was certain the next step was to either get those connections working, or form full loops that included those connections in them. So, he began to turn the trees back and forth.

He found the first one came quite easy. He was only trying to get the connection down at first, but a full circuit came alongside it by itself. To confirm his intuition, the relevant rock slid into the ground. Once he had to get the other done, though, he quickly realised the real issue. He could get the circuit fully closed in the second setup and lower the other rock with a fair degree of ease, which he did in only a few few minutes of fiddling around, but immediately he'd noticed that undoing the previous circuit brought the first rock back up.

The problem, then, was how to get a circuit that included both connections at the same time.

Comments

[Sejen]

Reminds me of playing Myst or something similar.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Ah, very Rubik's. Solving just one side isn't enough. Something this elaborate must lead up to an impressive reward... or whoever's designing these puzzles is a bit of an ass.