The perfect lines were at odds with the stones, which were rough and uneven, their surfaces dark and riddled with magical script.
Bel reached over and touched the nearest one experimentally. It didn't budge, but light rippled through the magical script.
Heln sat down on the ground the moment he crossed the threshold. "Okay. I need to. Not be feeling things for the next fifty years."
Rhyss winced. His eyes were glowing so brightly that she could see them shining through his eyelids when he closed them. The light faded before he opened them again and he just looked tired.
"Guys." Bel was looking at the hand that she'd used to attempt to push a giant, floating stone they knew nothing about. If she was burned or something, Rhyss told herself she wouldn't really feel sorry for her. "I think these are the Rising Stones."
"From the festival grounds?" Heln looked up at her, standing slowly like he wasn't sure how his legs quite worked again. Rhyss helped him and they managed to get him upright but he shook like a newborn foal. "Are you sure?"
Bel knocked gently on one, ripples of magic and light slid around the stone with each knock. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure. We were both drawn here, right? I felt like we were going the right way and this must be why."
"I'm glad we know where we are and it's really neat that we found out where they go, but I think it's more important there's no exit from this room." Heln gestured to the other side of the room, which was all panels and dark lines. The smooth stone didn't even look like it could be a possible door from where they were standing.
"I'll check it out."
Rhyss decided it would be better to edge around the room rather than go anywhere near the middle. Besides, a door might not be directly across. It took a bit longer than she expected. Once in a while she had to dodge as the stones spun very, very slowly in place, light and magic flaring across their surfaces. The magic would connect with the dark lines on the floor and magic script scrolled on them would light up, too briefly for her to see what they were for, gleaming as it rushed towards the center of the room. Some went to the pedestal and the rest to the starburst on the ceiling, making it a brilliant green for a moment before it faded again. She was not eager to see what exactly was happening at the center, but she knew that was their next stop if there was no way out.
There was no door.
Somehow, Rhyss had known that was inevitable. Of course there was no door. As far as she could tell the chamber walls, despite their designs and the magic that was clearly happening, were completely smooth. She couldn't even fit her knife blade between the panel and the dark stone, and looking at it for too long hurt her eyes.
She completed her circuit and joined Bel and Heln at the entrance.
"No door." She told them, needlessly. "So, big brain full of information, what do we do now? Because we can't go back, and we can't go forward."
"Let's check out the center," Heln said.
Rhyss wanted to hit him, or scream, or really do anything but actually move to the center of the room, but she knew that she didn't have much choice. It was the next logical place that they could check.
"Maybe... I don't know, that pedestal is a button, or something that we can activate somehow, and if we press the button—"
"Then the secret panel slides open and we go home." Bel snapped her fingers like it was a done deal. "It's worth looking at before we, y'know, go back to certain death. Let's go."
The center of the room was brighter than the rest of the room. The difference in the illumination compared to their bubbles made her squint. Heln was oddly enough the bravest of the three of them, reaching forward to touch the pedestal. It was chest height and slender, perfectly round, as far as she could tell, like someone had cut a column in half.
"It's... a teapot."
"What?" Rhyss swore the light dimmed when he said it and she was able to see the object herself.
A teapot. It was nearly the same size as the pedestal at the base, curving up and around. It looked a bit like a dragon, if the person that had made it didn't know what dragons look like and had gone off of the vaguest of descriptions. The spout was open jaws and the handle was the curl of the tail. It was made of the same green stone as the panels and the pedestal. It seemed to glow with its own inner light.
"All of that and it's a teapot." Bel glared at it like it had personally offended her and at least ten generations of her family. "I mean, I was kind of hoping for treasure. Dragons, tunnels, ancient magic, all that. And it's an ugly dragon teapot. Think we could sell it?"
"I think the more important thing is that we can't get out of here," Rhyss said. "Not this way. We'll have to turn around and go back."
Even as she said the words, Rhyss knew she didn't want to go back. Every single part of her was completely opposed to turning around and going back down those stairs, unsure of what they would meet in the dark. She couldn't bring herself to do it immediately, even though it was her idea.
Rhyss sat down on the ground. "Let's just… Let's just rest, okay? Right here. And we'll figure out what to do after that."
Maybe Bel would pull some brilliant idea out of nowhere. Something about controlling power cores, or maybe even how to get a signal to the outside world with all of the magic they
