Evangeline rears up slightly, startled by the strange scraping noise coming from inside the walls as she steps on one of the engraved tiles. She steps back off of the tiles. Tuesday steps forwards to stand next to her, bending down to examine the place Evangeline had just stepped.

“I think there’s some kind of mechanism in the walls. It’s probably a way to open the path ahead - a secret door of some kind.” Tuesday says, her voice level. She swishes her tail.

Aeneid watches with a mildly miffed expression as the two Coursers trot ahead of her. A dead end would not mean the end of the journey, but it’d certainly be some sort of setback. What a horrid delay to her overarching plans of being The Literal Best that would be. Her ears prick at the sound of something rumbling, letting out a snort as she makes her way over to the tile Evangeline had just stepped on. Without any hesitation, she slams her hoof down onto it again, causing the sound to reverberate through the chamber again.

Hmmmmmm.

Immediately, she begins to search for other tiles, seeing if any of the rest would make a strange noise. It isn’t long before she finds another one, a slightly different noise being produced when she presses down upon it.

Nîmes, on the other hand, lingers back. She would be there to help if they needed the additional hand, but erring on the side of safety wouldn’t hurt. It had certainly helped back during their encounter with a particularly violent skeleton.

“I believe you’re correct. I assume we need not but simply figure out which tiles activate the mechanism. Should we be lucky, merely pressing them all will solve our problem.”

She flicks an ear, casting her otherworldly gaze onto the floor as though searching with her eyes and her eyes alone. She makes no move further in.

“Tch,” Evangeline snorts as Aeneid steps past her and begins pressing down on tiles all willy-nilly. She could do that too, you know. She begins walking forwards again to do just that when Tuesday stops her.

“Wait,” Tuesday says, both to Evangeline and to Aeneid. “There could be traps. Nîmes is right, we need to find the right tiles to press, but if we press the wrong ones, or press them in the wrong order, we could set something off.”

She looks between the two other mares, as Evangeline glares daggers as Aeneid - typical.

“We should try to find clues of some kind as to which tiles need to be pressed in what order.” Tuesday concludes. “The tiles have engravings on them. Maybe the artwork on them is a clue.”

She carefully steps over the first tile that Evangeline found, and makes her way over to the second tile, where Aeneid stands, leaning down once more to examine the engraving. It has a trotting courser on it, same as the first tile did, but the courser is trotting in a different direction than the first one was. Tuesday tilts her head to one side curiously.

Aeneid rolls her eyes at the aggression displayed towards her, turning her head away with enough sass to get her thoughts on the matter across loud and clear. Her companions had a point, however- the art appeared to be a clue. As much as she would like to just traipse across the floor and find every single tile by pure brute force, some cunning would be required. Yes, she could see it now, Aeneid the Wily. That one had a ring to it.

With a huff, she begins to take a look around, swiftly spotting yet another trotting Courser tile. She stomps her off down near it, drawing attention to the tile without pressing it immediately. Found one.

“I’d err on the side of caution. Once we figure out how many tiles we’re working with, I’m sure it’ll paint a clearer picture.”

Nîmes turns her gaze ever so slightly, and points out another tile that is quite a distance away from her. How did she spot that?

“There’s one over there as well. That makes four total, each one pointed in a different direction,” they muse aloud, tilting their head as they ponder even further. “Do you all think there’s some deeper meaning here? A true puzzle at play? Or merely something simple?”

Aeneid makes a weird face at Nîmes’ words, but she doesn’t want to even spare the time to humor her. She instead opts to trot around the corridor yet again, trying to determine if there’s some sort of obvious guide. Ideally something that clearly says “Hey! Press the tiles in this exact order!”. That would be nice.

Tuesday follows Aeneid around the room, looking carefully at each tile she points out, making mental notes of them all. When Nîmes speaks, Tuesday looks up and nods back at her, trotting over to the tile she pointed out to examine that one too.

“Could be something simple. Like, what if the directions the coursers on the tiles are pointing lets us know what order to push the tiles in. Go left from this tile to hit the next tile - something like that.”

“That almost seems too easy.” Evangeline butts in, her brow raised as she looks at Tuesday, who only shrugs.

Evangeline huffs, tired of standing around, and trots along the opposite wall to Aeneid, looking for clues over there. If there's any justice in the world, she’ll be the one to find the clue that cracks this puzzle open. God, puzzles could be so irritating. She was a hard answers kind of courser - she didn't like when she couldn't figure something out on her own.

“I feel as though the answer is directly before us. Perhaps…” Nîmes fixes herself, staring directly at the end of the corridor as though she sees something that isn’t there. “The simplest answer is the correct one.”

She looks towards the other mares and finally decides to trot in as well, heading towards a tile none of the others were standing around. Aeneid, getting a sense of what was going on, makes yet another face. Are we seriously going to be following the directions of the creepiest horse here? Despite their discontentment for one another, she shoots Evangeline a particularly miffed look. Obviously there should be more clues around here than some weird wizard type giving them orders.

“The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can move on. Shall we?”