Chapter 504 – Opening a Door

“You don’t have to do everything with magic,” Xin’ri scolded Sophia. “Yes, I can rig something up, as you put it. It won’t even be difficult. I didn’t see a keyhole in the door; where do you think we put it?”

Sophia stood and walked away from the game. She had to check the door, now. 

When she got there, the answer was relatively simple and obvious to her modern eyes, which explained why she didn’t really notice the lack of a keyhole. The door handle was a lever; the fixture was made of the same brassy metal as the key. Directly above it, there was a square of the same material raised from the painted door. It wasn’t large enough to fit the entire key, but Sophia suspected it didn’t have to be; it probably only needed a specific part of the key. She just wasn’t sure which part that would be.

It took Xin’ri two days to adapt a small golem so that it could hold the key and move it around as needed. During that time, Dav, Sophia, and Revanos cleared the doorway.

Sophia managed to suppress her desire to remind Xin’ri that everything didn’t have to be done with magic. The fact that she could alter even a simple golem on the fly like that with only the tools she carried everywhere she went was impressive enough that Sophia was willing to let the hypocrisy pass.

For now, at least. She was still holding it in reserve for the next time Xin’ri tried to tell her not to use magic for something.

The door was revealed well before Xin’ri was ready. It was quite a bit more annoying than it should have been, because every time they dug close to the door, they had to deal with the extremely annoying “stickiness” of the stasis field. Clearing that part took significantly longer than clearing out the rest, even though it was far less area. They still wanted to clear it out; opening the door was going to be tough enough with the stasis running. They didn’t need anything in the way to make it worse.

Sophia hoped the stasis would end the moment the seal was broken. She just couldn’t count on it. That would be too easy.

“I’m ready,” Xin’ri finally announced. “Do we try now or wait til tomorrow?”

“Let’s do it,” Dav suggested. “There are a couple hours left until the light starts to go, that’ll be enough time.”

“Probably,” Sophia said sourly. She’d had Dav do the math for her and she knew that if her guess of an hour per century was right, it would likely take days for the door to open. Admittedly, it was a total and complete guess and probably the lowest the number was likely to be. If it was any faster than that, it was hard to believe that one or both Mimirs wouldn’t have won and broken out of the workshop. “But yeah, we might as well try.”

Xin’ri brought the golem out. It was obvious that she learned a lot about making constructs from Sweetfire, because her “golem” was a collection of balls that linked together a pair of hands. Unlike Sweetfire’s balls, Xin’ri’s were nothing more than similarly-sized semi-smooth rocks; she hadn’t even bothered to make them round. “Go ahead and give it the key.”

Sophia held the key out. She wasn’t sure where to put it, since the golem stood on its two huge hands, but it shifted so that several of the balls lay down and braced itself so that one of the hands could lift in the air. It was a weird movement. 

Even weirder was the fact that it could actually travel fairly well when Xin’ri directed it to approach the door in the workshop. It looked more like an earthworm than a snake as it moved, but that didn’t change the fact that it worked, even with one of the two hands occupied by a key.

The group followed the golem, then so that they weren’t in line with the door, just in case. They couldn’t get too far from the key because of the confusion, but Xin’ri needed to be able to see the golem in order to know what to tell it to do anyway, so standing off to the side was the best they could do.

Xin’ri had the golem hold the key up against the metal plate on the door. It took her a few tries to get the golem’s clumsy hands in the right position, but when she did it was obvious: the metal plate glowed with a soft blue light. It disappeared seconds after Xin’ri pulled the key away, but that was more than enough to guess that they’d unlocked the door … probably, at least.

Xin’ri shifted the golem so that the side of the hand that held the key pushed down on the lever of the door handle.

Nothing happened. The door handle didn’t move at all.

Xin’ri huffed and had the golem shift so that it hung from the handle. 

Sophia frowned. Why wasn’t anything happening? Was the blue flash a rejection instead of the approval she thought it was? Hadn’t this taken too long?

Sophia chuckled at herself as she realized that no, it hadn’t taken too long … from the perspective of the inside, at least. If there was a problem, it would be that they hadn’t held the key there long enough. In fact, it seemed entirely possible that time was the reason it took several tries before the access plate illuminated. “It’s sticky, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s moving,” Xin’ri answered. “I think.”

They waited and watched, then waited some more. Eventually, Dav said, “It’s definitely moving. The golem’s at least an inch lower than it was when it started.”

Sophia squinted. She couldn’t be sure he was right, but he was the one with the photographic memory. “Good. Uh, how long do you think it’ll take?”

“Depends on how far the handle has to move,” Dav noted pedantically, “but I think it’ll be soon. Most lever handles don’t have to move that far to let the door open. In fact … Xin’ri? Can you get it to pull back at the same time?”

The golem shifted so that the hand holding the key was on the ground and braced against it. Despite how slowly the door moved, the golem seemed unaffected by the stasis. That was good but also not really surprising. The door wasn’t open yet.

“Why don’t we play a game while we wait?” Dav proposed. “It’s going to be a while.”

“How long has it been?” Sophia asked before she agreed.

“Eleven minutes,” Dav answered. “Well, twelve now. It seems a lot longer than that.”

Sophia nodded in agreement. It felt like she’d watched the golem hang from the door handle for hours, but that was probably boredom. “I guess we can play. I’ll get the key from the golem. If the door suddenly springs open, I’m sure we’ll hear it anyway.”

It didn’t. 

Instead, Revanos lost badly. He couldn’t keep his attention on the game and kept making mistakes, to the point where they only played two boards before they gave up. None of them really wanted to play ekkru; they wanted to see what was behind the door.

After the game, they tried to move on to the normal evening activities, starting with dinner. Sophia and Dav decided to skip their usual evening spar; realistically, they weren’t feeling much more focused than Revanos was, so there was just no point. It was a relief when Revanos called out that he could see past the edge of the door.

Sophia hurried over. It wasn’t until she was three feet away from the partly open door staring at the blue light that shone from it that she remembered that she was trying to be careful and not get caught by the stasis.

Well, if that was going to happen, it was already too late, wasn’t it? 

Sophia looked around. She paid extra attention to the forest in the distance. It looked like the leaves were moving normally, so she probably wasn’t too close. Maybe the stasis wasn’t spilling outside at all; th door was still not moving visibly.

All she could see was a blue glow. “Are you sure you can see something?”

“The glow from M’Beja’s pendant is weaker at the top and bottom of the door,” Revanos answered seriously. He took a breath, then let it out slowly. “Other than that, no.”

“Why can we even see it?” Dav asked curiously. “If time’s moving a lot slower in there, shouldn’t the light coming out either be really dim or turn into … I’m not sure if it would be radio or gamma waves. Radio probably since it’s moving so slowly?”

“It’s not moving slowly out here, though, it’s moving normally,” Sophia answered. “I’m not sure why it’s not dim, though; you’d think there would be less light coming out since it’s being generated in there. I can see it not working that way with sunlight, but then you’d think it would really burn since you’re standing there and getting years’ worth of sun in minutes … but I know that’s not how it works. What did Mom always say? Something about how it works the way you expect, no matter what physics says.”

That wasn’t quite right, but it was close. Her father would always mutter about Intent when her mother started talking about time and then they’d argue a bit about what it should do. Sophia was pretty sure it was the sort of comfortable, well-worn “argument” she sometimes had with Dav, where the real meaning was in the fact that they were spending time together rather than anything they said.

Dav shook his head. “No, I can see how that works, sort of. If it works one way, where the light from the pendant appears the way it would if the stasis weren’t there, it only makes sense that it appears the way it would if the stasis weren’t there from the inside. The pendant’s light isn’t varying, so it doesn’t change out here either. M’Beja probably sees a blur, though, since everything is changing rapidly.”

“I don’t think so,” Sophia said with a grin. “I’m pretty sure she’s seeing the inside of a door.”

Sophia rather thought she was having one of those arguments with Dav right now, in fact. She was having fun and she thought he was too.

The pointless argument didn’t last all that long before it was brought to a halt by mutual yawns. The door still wasn’t open enough to actually see much of anything; the best that could be made out was that it was fairly dark inside other than the blue light. 

Sophia knew there was no point in watching; the door would only open slowly. It had proven that. At the current rate, they’d probably actually be able to see inside in a couple hours, but that wouldn’t really mean much. “We should go to bed. Xin’ri, can the golem keep trying to open the door all night?”

Xin’ri yawned, then answered, “If I give it a little more mana, it’ll last about four hours. That’s the best I can do. I’ll have it release the door and step back before it shuts down; maybe it will keep moving.”

Sophia really wasn’t sure if it would or not, but it might. It was hard to say if there was any momentum or not, since the door seemed to be on the other side of the stasis. “Can’t hurt.”

“Go to bed,” Revanos told them. “I’ll stay here and watch.”

“You should get some sleep too,” Sophia told her Patron.

“I know, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep,” the Wanderer answered. “I can go without for one night. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Lady M’Beja.”