Chapter 2: One Bad Apple

Lauretta joins Wolfram in looking around the stinking, smoke-stained temple hall with disgust. Finding the goblin treasure sack, she would divvy up the silver to the group and take a closer look at the strange thing found inside.

"Found some coin here. Something else too. I remember the days I'd be more excited about finding a haul like this. Seems harder to get excited now when I'm trying to save lives rather than make a living."

Joining the others at the sinkhole, the priest scowled before quickly pinching her nostrils shut and waving her hand about in front of her face. She stood to the side, watching the clockwork smash his way through the crevice. With the way opened up, she followed behind the others.

"Great work. Consider yourself lucky to not have to smell this, Renly."

Done with distributing the coin, Lauretta reaches back into the burlap sack for the oddity she felt earlier. Her eyes light up as the sash slowly unfurls out from the bag.

"This looks like well-made finery. Where on Erth did goblins find this?"

The item was quickly wrapped around her waist next to the white banner she normally wore. A smile warmly grew on her face thanks to the simple pleasure.

---

Having made their way through the opening and into the next chamber, Lauretta eyed the eyes around the room. The axe at her back made its way into her hands.

"Between the tomb of spiders and now this, I have to say that I'd be quite glad to not have to look at anything with more than two eyes for the rest of my life. Not seeing a way forward though."

Tzal managed to enter the cavity on the wall by dangling and getting bumps and bruises. He grimaced and then entered the strange room filled with eyes. It was a strange, surreal but interesting sight, and he walked close to inspect the giant eye with the black membrane. He also noticed Lauretta's new sash and looked at her warily, "Be careful about whatever you take from this damned hole. I hope these don't turn out to be cursed again."

"It suits you, Lauretta! Wolfram remarks. "Certainly far better than it would have suited me. And that's a good question. Where indeed? But for now, we should devote our energy to figuring out about these grotesque eyes. They are everywhere and watching our every move too, it seems. But to what purpose exactly?"

Faced with a giant staring eye, R3N-L3 did as his programming demanded. "Are you a Wizard Creation?" R3N-L3 greeted the eye cordially, drawing his sword out from his scabbard.

R3N-L3 seems sad to be ignored by the eye.

Tzal looked at the eye and scratched his beard, "Why does it feel like I need to touch the eye, but I don't want to? It also feels like somehow, I have to remove this black membrane. Do all the eyes seem to have a black membrane? Check all the eyes and tell me if you see one with a black membrane?"

"Hey, what's with that one eye that doesn't move like the others? It's not watching. Maybe it's a button?"

Wolfram, while keeping an eye (pun intended) on all the other eyes, takes tentative steps toward the stationary eye.

"Something tells me the goblins wouldn't have held on to it if it was also cursed. Probably would have left in the town. But maybe I'm just trying to convince myself."

Lauretta smirks and glides her freehand across the sash contentedly after hearing Wolfram's compliment. Years as a gritty mercenary made little pieces of finery such as this into rare treasures that could offer some small comfort. However, life was different now. The sash may have still been a small luxury, but the priest merely hoped it helped to convey the grander image of the holy figure she strove to be.

"I'm not sure if we should touch anything in this unholy place, but I'm also unsure of how else we can move forward. This is far from my area of expertise, so I'll leave this to you and Tzal to figure out."

Tzal scratched his beard in irritation. He obviously was confused and didn't want anything bad to happen to his friends. It felt awkward as Lauretta told him to figure it out when in most cases she took the lead. But she was doing the right thing to let him understand the mystery, as he was technically more learned regarding magical contraptions.

He sighed and said, "Honestly, I am confused. But I think apart from all the eyes that have different colored eyelids, the one with black and the one without the eyelids interest me most. I have a theory that they compliment each other, as one is the closing eye and the other one is the awake one. So...I guess we should touch both the eyes at the same time."

Interpreting it as a command, the clockwork promptly stuck his gauntleted metal digits into the open eye.

Seeing R3N-L3 move to press into the eye, Lauretta followed Tzal's instruction to press the other as he did.

Taking a couple steps back, Lauretta gripped her axe and watched the clattering chaos of stone eyes open a way forward. As the cacophony settled and ceased, the tension in her dropped somewhat. It may not have been a trap, but that said nothing for the danger inherent to simply being in this temple.

"Well, it looks like we've opened up a couple different ways forward, Tzal. I'd say that's good work. Now... which way should we go? This way leads a fair bit down."

Tzal looked even more confused when two pathways opened. "Well, I wasn't expecting that. I thought both mechanisms needed to operate the pathway. We should probably explore both."