"You are rifling through the dusty clutter on an ancient workbench when you trip a mechanism by mistake. You brace yourself as the room seems to shift—no, rotate. All of the previous entrances to the chamber are now inaccessible, replaced by four new exits, each stinking of dust and stale air."

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fyre - 255 Words

Regretfully, circumstances had left Kalim and Promise short of a party member; though there could be a silver lining to even unfortunate happenings. In searching for dungeoneers to hire they had come across others in a similar boat- a treasure hunter and guard missing one of their own. And, as any smart dungeoneer knew, one did not face the dungeon short of eyes, ears, or any other helpful senses.

So a truce had been reached among strangers.

Kalim and Promise could keep any bits of knowledge and history; ciphers, tomes, artifacts- things that answered questions.

Meanwhile, the others, Amalthea and Oberon, would walk away with the more gilded goods- treasures worthy of locked chests and high pedestals.

It was an uncertain alliance, but an alliance all the same.

Now they just needed to find something worth bringing back among the many ever-changing halls and cavernous rooms... While also avoiding any of the dungeon's more malicious tricks and dangerous trials. A heavy task in and of itself for any dungeoneer or party who dared to move further down...

"Do either of you recognize this part of the dungeon...?" Kalim would speak up to their new acquaintances, ears raised in curiosity. He vaguely recognized it himself, walls covered in cogs, cranks, and pulleys; but something about it was off to him. He couldn't quite place it...

Things looked... newer here...

"It looks like the place we found last time," Promise chimed in, but something in his tone held uncertainty too.

Maybe their newfound companions had some idea.

SeaCrest - 353 Words

Amalthea examined the mechanisms, frowning. They looked newly minted, their edges still sharp, not smoothed by time and use; the metal was still bright and shiny, the ropes unstained. As if this whole place had been built just before they had arrived, as if at any moment a worker might return to tighten a cog here or adjust a pulley there. It was an eerie feeling...as if they were being watched. She wished Thiel were here; he would have been able to puzzle out the complicated, interlocking gears and figure out what they did. But he was stuck at home, forced to work in the armory by the father who had never approved of his son's obsession with the buried secrets of the Dungeon. He might tolerate it, from time to time, but he'd been in one of his moods again, meaning Thiel would remain in the armory until his father had decided he'd done enough penance for his adventuring.

"No..." she admitted slowly. She looked up, where Fei illuminated a large wheel that looked for all the world like a compass. The wisp hovered, equally uncertain as its mistress. "I don't recognize this. It seems so new," she added, lashing her tail back and forth.

Oberon pawed at the floor, considering their problem. His iron shoes scraped through the thin layer of dirt on the smooth flagstones, revealing curved, deeply cut lines, filled with dirt and debris until they were level with the stones themselves. He snorted, tracing one of the lines. It curved around, meeting the wall where a gear interlocked with a notched rod, and that gave Amalthea an idea.

"Is it a door?" Amalthea suggested, thinking hard. "If there's a channel for this rod to travel through..."

With that idea in mind, she reexamined the mechanisms. If those lines were to guide the door, there must be a pivot point—and a way to trigger it all to open the wall. Surely nobody would have built this complicated contraption without a purpose, and an unnecessarily complex locked door sounded like a good way to try and protect one's treasure.

fyre - 293 Words

It seemed their companions thought similarly about this place; something about it was amiss. Uncomfortable and off from that which they knew well.

Kalim gave an uncertain snort, shod hooves clicking on the stone floor as he shifted some. Maybe if they looked more closely... A smart thought if their newfound companions hadn't been steps ahead. With his attention drifting from the impossibly large wheel down to the uncovered lines in the stone, the courser couldn't help but tilt his head slightly.

So it seemed there was something else...

"What have you found...?" the knight held curiosity in his tone, ears raised as he listened for the other's theory.

A door...?

...Maybe. The dungeon did those well.

Too well.

"I'd say that's a smart guess, ma'am," Promise chimed, his attention also taken by the discovery. The puck's long ears flicked as he began to look around. Listening, hunting, hoping for something notable among the clicks and whirrs of cogs. "Now we just have to sort out how to open it." The large puck moved along the mechanism as well, following Amalthea's lead as she had the right idea. Maybe there would be something notable.

His gaze traced the contraption's layout from the door, opposite whatever direction the other might have taken.

Maybe one of the cogs would be different...?

"Maybe you two could check the desk and bookshelves over there...? If we don't find something over here then maybe there's something written down somewhere." The perlino puck suggested, the comment aimed at both Kalim and Oberon.

With a nod Kalim left the observing and listening to Amalthea and Promise; sharp eyes and sharp ears would do better hunting amongst the contraption's many mechanics. Searching dusty paperwork would be the easier task if anything.

SeaCrest - 353 Words

Oberon sneezed explosively, sending a loose sheet of paper flying in a cloud of dust. The grey giant muttered something darkly under his breath, nudging a dusty tome whose leather binding was flaking with age. Bits of leather stuck to his nose, making him snort, although he didn't sneeze again. As much as he was loathe to admit it, he rather missed Maggie's presence; a Hand would have been a welcome aid among these clearly non-Courser artifacts. Morgana did her best to help, but she didn't quite have the dexterity Fetch's Phantasmal Hand did.

The hawk fluttered over to a stack of books on one of the tables, hopping ungracefully until she could lever the top one open. Oberon followed her, peering at the script inked there, but he couldn't read it. It was in some strange language he'd never seen before, something sharp and strangely triangular.

"Meh," he snorted, turning to an odd brass contraption that seemed to be some sort of overly-complicated scale.

Amalthea exhaled heavily through her nose, her eyebrows furrowed as she stared intently at the mechanisms. If she followed the rod up, there were three more rods attached...one of them was hooked to a pulley, and the other two to different sets of interlocking gears...that gear turned that one, which pushed this rod...She blinked, and lost her train of thought. With a snort of disgust, she started over.

"Find anything?" she asked Promise hopefully. Before he could answer, though, there was an ominous clunk. Amalthea, Promise, and Kalim whipped their heads around to stare at each other, searching for the source of the noise. Their gazes landed on Oberon, or more accurately, his hawk.

"Uh—" said Oberon, staring at the scale, where Morgana now balanced. Her weight had tipped it, triggering that clunk, and now...

"Oberon," Amalthea began, her voice full of warning. "What did—"

She stopped abruptly as the walls began to shake, clouds of dust and bits of rock cascading down as the mechanisms moved. Gears rotated, pulleys spun, and rods shifted.

"No!" Amalthea cried as the walls began to rotate, shifting with a thunderous groan. The floor tilted beneath their feet, making them scramble for balance. "Not again!"