The Next Room

Everyone was feeling the chill, especially the dino-kin ladies. It had been a while since Jonah and the twins had felt a chill like this; this just had the added complication of having everyone in swimwear. The one who seemed to be taking it not as particularly hard was Ariana.

“How are you not feeling the chill here,” inquired Marsha to Ariana as she shivered and rubbed herself to warm up.

“My sire has gifted me a resistance to the cold,” said Ariana with amusement as she approached the door. There seemed to be an arcane riddle or puzzle on the door; it was so faded it was almost hard to make out.

“What do you mean by that,” inquired Trisha as she worked to warm herself up, suddenly realizing she could use magic to make her attire feel warmer and did some arcane gestures to warm her attire and that of her sister. Molsalkisa noticed this and followed suit, doing the same trick with her robe and each piece of Ulnarka’s attire to keep the two warm.

“I’m a Warlock,” said Ariana, “My sire is my patron,” she turned her attention to the whole group, “This door has some sort of arcane puzzle on it, but it’s so faded I can barely make out the symbols.”

“It’s quite uncommon for a Warlock to not be bound to a fiend for one reason or another,” said Molsalkisa as she moved in to better observe the puzzle, “but not unheard of. Genieborn, such as yourself, are also highly irregular, not rare but a bit scarcer than uncommon. That all said, it isn’t all that common for the sire of a particular child to also be their magical patron… Ah, I see what the solution is now.” The ceratopsian woman performed some arcane gestures around the symbols on the door, and it slid up into the ceiling as it opened.

The room beyond was almost sixty feet across, from wall to wall, going left to right, the wall across from the door seemed to be around forty feet from the entryway as the group filed in, and the ceiling was at least fifty feet above their heads. The room was also much warmer than the hallway that held the door; it was almost toasty in the room. Likely due to the fifteen-foot pool of glowing molten rock in the center of the room. A cursory look around found the door on the left wall, around thirty feet up. There didn’t seem to be anything to really work within the room, at least on a cursory look.

Almost as soon as the last individual had entered the chamber, the door closed with a loud clanging bang behind them. A quick look at where the open door had been revealed what looked like an iron or steel plate of polished metal, so well-polished it was basically a mirror. After a moment of studying the reflection, Jonah made a discovery. “Um, is it just me,” said Jonah, “or do the reflections of things in the room beyond ourselves look a little off?”

“Huh,” said Trisha, “now that you mention it…there’s some sort of model of a volcano where that pool of magma is, and I think I see some kind of copper or gold script under the door, but the door is still a bit further up the wall than I would like, don’t see a ladder or stair to help us get up to it. We probably have to solve the puzzle or problem in the room to exit; the details on that are probably in the script.

“Wait a moment,” said Marsha, “I’m just noticing it, but the model volcano looks suspiciously phallic.”

“What,” said Jonah and Trisha at the same time, both taking a closer look at the reflections in the closed door.

“You’re right,” said Jonah, “I would be worried about that, but seeing as where we are almost seems like a tropical porn shoot, I’m not feeling as worried as I probably should be at the moment.”

“Porn shoot,” inquired the dino women and Ariana almost in unison.

“Where we come from,” said Trisha, “there’s a type of art known as pornography.”

“Oh,” said Ariana, “that became something we were informed on when Yuri’s knowledge was shared with trade and the like.”

“I do recall coming across some academic materials that made mention of that,” said Molsalkisa.

“A porn shoot,” said Jonah, “is basically having photographers and videographers record the subjects in sensual, sexual, and erotic positions and the like.”

“And,” continued Marsha, “one of the more popular pornographic settings, at least last time I checked, is the ‘tropical beach’ sort of setting.”

“Makes sense,” said Ariana, “what about that term you used, ‘phallic’? What does that mean?”

“It’s a term meaning of relation to a phallus,” said Trisha, “the word phallus usually means a penis but can refer to the clitoris…and that is something I never thought I would be saying in any sort of context before now.”

“Oh,” said the other women, nearly simultaneously, as they took a more intense look at the reflection in the door.

“I can see it,” said Ulnarka after a moment, her sight slightly slid over to the text, “I can barely make out that script,” she turned her attention to Molsalkisa for a moment, “Can you make it out?”

“Not quite,” said Molsalkisa, “but I think I have a few tricks to make it more legible; it will take some time to see how effective they are.” She reached into her bag, and pulled up a sheet of wood the size of her hand and started doing some arcane muttering and gestures toward the script in the reflection.