The Seven Rings

A rule announced after the teams were already loaded into their starting blocks. One ring is hidden in every apartment of the seven-story course, and no team may cross the finish line until it has driven through seven of them, one on each floor. Each team is additionally assigned a single mandatory ring and shown it on the map, and the assignments differ between teams, which destroys every route plan built on dropping straight to the ground floor. The rings register as magical gates, so a Detect Magic skill or anything that reads magical flow will find them, and a Trap Sensing ability or advanced GPS will separate them from the counterfeits.

Book 8 appearances

• Chapter 73 — Dr. Metcalf relays the last-minute rule: seven floors, a ring hidden in every apartment, seven rings to be driven through before the finish line, and one mandatory ring per team already placed on the map, with Carl's inside apartment 231 on the second floor and Osvaldo's somewhere else entirely.
• Chapter 74 — Carl's crew clears Gate One under the kitchen table in 712 and Gate Two off a bathroom wall in 614; Florin passes on Lucia's finding that the rings count as magical gates, and Prepotente warns that false ones exist and that the one his team saw concealed a disintegration trap.

Related entries

• The L'Engle Building (Place)
• Dr. Metcalf (Character)
• Hole (Spell / Skill)
• Disintegration Trap (Item)

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