![]() Geegaaliim stepped easily across the undulating colors of the mother-of-pearl floor beneath her feet. It reminded her of something familiar, yet distant. An ancestral memory, perhaps, of a home in the wilds of the fey, or an actual memory she could not recall. It felt comfortable and warm as she danced lightly across the room. The rest of her companions were not faring as well, wobbling uncertainly as the ebb and flow of colors overwhelmed their senses. The opalescent room was as empty as most of the rooms in this strange place, with only two doors leading to who knows where. “Shall we take the door to the left, or right?” she asked, torn between her desire to explore both places at once.
“Left,” said Hijros with certainty, “We always go left.” Geegaaliim shrugged her shoulders and skipped to the door. “Wait, let me check it-,” but the gregarious gnome had already burst through the door before Meilos could finish his sentence. “Weird,” was Geegaaliim’s only response as the rest of the party filtered into the room behind her. A winding channel ran down the middle of the room, the walls of which were polished oak. The channel was smooth and looked like the work of long days and nights of water running over it constantly, though nothing currently flowed. On the door side of the channel, in the southeast corner, there was a large hole and ladder descending to the floor below. Opposite the hole, to the southwest, there was another, much smaller hole with notches all around the edges. Meilos immediately began inspecting the channel, trying to decipher where it fit in the natural world. Keller’s eyes alighted upon the notched hole in the floor and she moved to give it closer inspection. “Geegaaliim, where are you going?” Leukan asked, keeping his eyes on the most dangerous force in the room: unbridled curiosity. Geegaaliim peeked her head up from the hole leading to the floor below, “Just looking!” “Let’s not separate,” Leukan offered, “It never seems to work out well.” Geegaaliim sat on the edge of the hole, kicking her feet absentmindedly while her companions fell to examining the notched hole more closely. What was so interesting about it? Looked rather plain to her. She stood, cast one less-than-interested look at the notched hole, then left the room. Crossing the ocean of opalescence occupied her for a time, but she ultimately found herself bursting into the “room to the right.” Steam and the gentle clicking of machinery enveloped her and she fell into it with abandon. She followed pipes and tapped on gauges, feeling the heat of broilers, and the hum of energy beneath her feet. “Hmm,” Geegaaliim hummed, approaching a section of wall that looked almost like… a door? She tested the handle of the inset compartment, but it didn’t budge. She couldn’t see a lock or keyhole, nor any other way to manipulate the mysterious portal, so she quickly forgot about it and moved on. Conveniently, something came along to grab her attention on her way back out the door: a jumble of pipes lying on the floor, two open pipes on the wall right above them spewing steam and scalding water. As Geegaaliim started sorting through the pile of pipes, Keller appeared in the doorway, “By my arcane blood, Geegaaliim, there you are! We figured out ---,” her thought faltered as he took in the room of complex pipe paths and machinery. “Yeah, I wondered how long it would take you to figure all that out. Come over here and help me repair this pipe section. I think we’ll find something interesting when we do.”
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