“Well! That’s new,” West heard Roman exclaim on seeing the fifth hall, his voice brightening. The layout was a subtly different flavor from the rest. The inner wall was unnoteworthy, but between the sealed arches on the outer wall, every few paces, a small marble plaque inscribed in Zorrocean was inlaid on the wall.

Roman squared up to the nearest of them, examining the lighter gray of its stone and the embossed lines of its inscrutable passages. At the end of the wording were two gilded characters. He traced a small recess on the wall under it. “What’s this for? What does it say?”

“I d-don’t know,” Sunny said. “Each one has a d-different word in gold at the end here, though. It’s… I’m s-sure it’s important, but….”

“But none of us can read Zorrocean,” West concluded, his hopes flattening.

Roman's agreeable mood expired. “Vera could. Blast it!” The warrior turned to Sunny. “So what do we do from here?”

“Th-the schematics I drew–” she nodded to West, who was already drawing out the map, “there should be s-some marks along this wall. Those are the d-doors we’ve tried before.” She produced the crystal they’d acquired from the last room. “This will fit into those s-slots under the plaques, and I suppose if it’s the r-right one… well, that probably opens the way out. But, if we c-can't read the inscriptions to solve the puzzle….”

“So all we can do is try our luck?” West said, examining the hallway. There were at least a half dozen plaques just in their sight. He wasn’t strong enough at math for an exact calculation, but if he had to take a guess, the whole perimeter could have up to a hundred of the things. And on the map, Sunny had marked off… seventeen. “Well, this’s gonna be a right problem.”

Looking over the Investigator’s shoulder and making his own calculations, Roman blanched. “At least the odds in that last room were possible! How the devil– there can't even be that many rooms in this whole place!” He waved an arm furiously.

“No, th-there aren’t,” Sunny confirmed. “This w-wasn’t meant to be failed. For the V-Vaari, this would probably have been the easiest part. Probably just a simple r-riddle. But since we can’t read Zorrocean….”

“And what if we guess wrong?” Roman asked.

“You lose the gem, and have to try again.” Sunny nodded back toward the inner hall. “Each r-room has one gem. You just have to… k-keep trying.”

“Lass– erm, Sunneh,” West hastily corrected himself at her exasperated glower. He showed her the map. “There’s a wee mark here, different from the rest. What’s it?”

“That’s… l-let’s go find it, you can s-see for yourself.” The woman motioned down the hall. West tucked the map into his belt and led the way.

They walked, Roman grumbling with every step. It was some distance before they found a remarkable section of wall. Someone, or a group of someones, had gone after the wall here with a vengeance. Stony rubble littered the ground, the broken remains of brickwork pulled from the wall. Despite the effort it must have taken, only a thin crust of material was missing. Gleaming underneath was a fresh stone face. It was built from the same dark brick that dotted the outer walls every few meters, and also the same as the inner walls that slid into place to block doorways.

Roman went to inspect the damage. Surveying the mess with downcast eyes, Sunny said, “When we c-couldn’t find a way out, instead of t-trying to find a proper way to open it, we thought it might be better to force a s-straight passage through. But it d-didn’t work.”

“Evidently,” Roman said dryly, running his fingers on the unmarred layer of brick in the back. “What is this made of?”

Sunny shook her head. “I d-don’t know. It’s probably… the Zorroceans here were a-alchemists, right? Th-they probably treated the stonework somehow. The outer brick isn’t any harder than usual with the right tools, but the inner layer– we couldn’t make a dent.”

Roman grunted, dissatisfied. “Why only make the inner layer impregnable, though?”

“Well… when the p-pathways shift, the outer facade stays in place. Just this inner core moves, see? The material’s probably lighter and easier to m-move, or maybe it’s j-just harder to source. Either way, it’s t-tougher than the rest.”

West studied the damaged wall thoughtfully. “Somethin’s been on me mind, now that we’re talkin’ bout the walls ‘ere.” He nodded to the inner wall. “All the room entryways, they’ve got a bit of a passage between ‘em where the stairs are, aye? A few paces’ worth between hall and room. What’s between them on the other side o’ the wall?”

Sunny nodded. “I think… I’ve had a thought for a while now, that to manage a place like this, there’d have to be… sort of a back room, somehow? Ways to, to… to monitor what’s going on, a-and manipulate things.”

Roman stared. “There’s a back room? And a way into it?” His angry look transmitted his feelings plainly: This is information we could have used before now.

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“Yes. No. P-probably, but… it’s been tried. Anything you c-can think of, we’ve tried, at least once! Th-there’s no way through that inner core, not w-without real destructive power. Nothing we’ve e-ever tried has made more than a mark–”

“Hmph. So what you’re saying is, this is all useless speculation.” Roman huffed as he turned back to glower at the wall.

Sunny wilted into silence. West felt his annoyance bubbling up faster than he could slam a lid on it. With a venting sigh, he said, “Dinnae ye think that’s about enough o’ that attitude, Roman?”

Roman whipped around with a glare. His chin jutted up. “Do not start with me, West. I’ve had my fill of both of you,” the swordsman scoffed. “All I’m asking is that we stay focused on what can actually be done to get us all out of here in one piece. That’s not too much, is it?”

West narrowed his eyes. It wouldn’t do any of them good to butt heads here, but if Roman kept reprimanding Sunny every time she tried helping, they’d be pushing to a conflict sooner rather than later. But if later can wait ‘til we get ourselves out o’ here, that’s the better, West thought. With a sigh, he broke the staredown. “I understand ye. Let’s keep our eyes ahead then, and try nae pickin’ at one another, aye?”

Roman straightened. “Of course. After all, we’re professionals here, aren’t we?”

My blue ass, West scowled inwardly, but smiled amiably. “O’ course, lad. O’ course we are.”

Roman blew his breath, not missing the Investigator’s sarcasm, but didn’t press. “Well. We have one gem. I suppose we ought to use it?”

“Y… yes. Here.” Sunny offered up the gem to Roman. “On this end, a-anything starting f-four down to the right hasn’t been t-tried. You should… m-maybe you’ll be lucky.”

He took the gem tepidly, backtracking to study the plaques. West moved to follow, but before he passed, Sunny put out a hand for his attention. “W-West.” Sunny’s voice was hushed as she approached. “M-may I ask you a f-favor?” She shied from eye contact, biting at her lip. “Would you mind if I, um… I held onto the map?”

The Investigator cocked his head. “Ye need it?” he asked, confused. After all, she’d drawn it, there shouldn’t be any information on it she needed–

He remembered. ‘It’s… they kept it on them, last time. Shouldn’t have let them, but they insisted.’ Sunny had said something like that when she’d been drawing the thing. She’d been working on a map like this previously, but it had been lost when whoever had been holding onto it had died. She’d lost precious time making it again, not to mention any details she might have forgotten. She didn’t want to risk it happening this time.

“... Ah.” The understanding softened his voice. He pulled the map from his belt and handed it over. “O’ course.”

Letting out a breath of relief as she took it, Sunny nodded gratitude. She secured it inside her dress belt, then turned wordlessly to follow after their companion.

West trailed behind. Norui’s already lookin’ toward what happens after us, he thought starkly. He felt perversely glad now that he hadn’t outed his identity to her. If they failed, she wouldn’t have that extra layer of grief; they’d just be another set of corpses in the audience to her, bearing grave witness to the next hapless fools to wander in on a treasure hunt.

Grimacing, West pulled his badge from his vest. The summer dawn would be here in a bit more than an hour, now. How long would they have before Whistler would act to wrap up the game? West wondered whether he’d made the right call by insisting they rest earlier after all– if he’d anticipated how much time they would lose on that last room, or what they’d be facing here now….

Ah, enough o’ that. It was what it was, and it wasn’t like him to get caught in a spiral of despair. The odds were stacked against them, but no sense worrying about it.

West tucked away the badge, hurrying to catch up with the group again. He felt oddly light now, focused. Whatever happened from here on out, he’d give it his all– that’s all he could ever do, and it had worked out for him so far, hadn’t it?

Roman stopped in front of one of the inscriptions, seeming to decide that it would do as well as any. “Just drop this in here, then?” he questioned, positioning the gem over the niche in the wall. At Sunny’s nod, he took a breath, held it, and tucked the gem through the hole. It dropped and disappeared into the wall.

The plaque shimmered, then blackened. Roman let out his breath with a sigh– and West too, surprised to find he’d been holding it as well.

“N-not right,” Sunny noted, her tone unsurprised but still disappointed. West understood how she felt. However many hopes were riding on the guess, they’d known the odds of getting the right answer on a single try were feeble.

“Bollocks,” Roman grumbled. “Right then. So we need to get another crystal, and try again. As many times as it takes. That’s all, right?”

The woman's eyes winced, but she kept the rest of her face straight and murmured only, “Yes.”

The swordsman reoriented on the hall. “Right then. We passed a doorway on the way here, didn’t we? Let’s go take a look, and see what can be done.” Somehow or another, Roman seemed to have finally pried himself out of his prickly mood– maybe because by silent agreement, both West and Sunny had ceded the decision-making to him. It wasn’t as though there were any bad choices at this point, anyway. Roman led the way down the hall with a determined stride, seeking out the next room.

As they walked, Lím’s head popped up from his resting position in Sunny’s arms, and he let out an urgent squeak. “Wait.” Sunny stopped in her tracks. “Th-there’s something ahead.”

Slowing, Roman scanned the hall uncertainly. “We’ve just come by here, though. How could there be something that we didn’t see before now?”

“I d-don’t know. But there’s definitely… do you h-hear that?”

There was something. Several somethings, actually– a soft pattering, as though from many light-stepped feet ahead. Roman eased his sword from his sheath. “How the blazes did someone get behind…?”

“Too early to be figurin’ how,” West said, slipping on his steel knuckles. “Righ’ now, we oughta be askin’ who… or what.”