After the horrors of the previous room, what we walked into at the end of the hallway seemed entirely tame by comparison. I mean, very weird, but a different kind of weird.

Viktor was the first through the door and did this really weird little thing where he made an odd noise and then both jumped and started punching forward at the same time. It would have been more amusing except that neither of us could see what he could and the uncertainty took all the entertainment out of it.

Once he settled down, he stepped aside and it was time for us to experience his jump scare. The room was dominated by a large vertical wall, upon which hung a more or less complete BeetleMech exoskeleton. And yes, BeetleMech was my name for it; it's like a battlemech, but Beetle-y-er! No, you can't have it, go make your own.

So there.

Once I finished taunting myself - and coming to the realization I probably needed sleep soon - I fully took in the rest of the room. It was clearly a mechanical workshop, but there were a lot of esoteric pieces to it. On one side you had your standard mechanical tools that did things like wrench malfeasance and bolt turboencabulation… you know, whatever makes machines do things. On the other side you had a collection of substances in clear, corked jars that were emitting light at luminance from 'nightlight' to 'melt your eyeballs'.

I was surprised to see what looked like some form of calligraphy brushes of various sizes near the jars, neatly arranged. I turned to István.

"Do you paint on Seals?"

He looked at me for a few seconds, seemingly confused I didn't know before his forebrain caught up and informed him I was both: A) new to this, and B) an idiot.

"Oh, yes. There is a specially created pigment, or perhaps 'ink' is a better word…"

He trailed off into a self-reflection on lexicon, prompting me to physically nudge him back into our reality. With my elbow. Nicely, mind you. I'm not a complete ogre.

"Ah right, either way, yes, you carefully apply the components of the Seal in a specific order while infusing your Nebula into it. If properly chosen, the carrier imparts the materials of the 'ink' into the surface of the material in question before it evaporates. Before you ask, yes I did learn my version of the trade from the Umbral Veil.

"That said," he added, turning to look at the different racks around us, where every component of the BeetleMech™ was laid out, "It is pretty clear they have either moved on from what I have taught, or more probable, that they never taught me the state of the art in the first place. I'd quite like to 'borrow' some samples. I am particularly curious as to why all the ink is glowing, it does not normally do that until application."

"If you can stuff it in your pocket, it's all yours," Viktor commented, looking around the place. "I am more interested in however they got the completed ones out."

Viktor was direct as always, and I couldn't disagree, there didn't seem to be any obvious way to do to remove a completed carcass from the wall.

This only lasted until I tripped on something and grabbed a protrusion to catch myself. A protrusion which - when the mass of a young woman with two left feet was applied - revealed itself to be a control or lever that allowed the entire wall free rotation away from us to lie flat.

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Usually the only purpose of my clumsiness was to inflict self-injury, so this was a definite improvement worth celebrating. The new orientation revealed that the space was a pass-through into a 'garage' of sorts where a half dozen or more vehicles with beetle-y appendages lay waiting, should you wish to be touched by them. Err, drive them.

Beyond that lay a zone of sorts that was not-so-clearly an elevator, or at least we determined as much after looking around inside the space - there were controls on the wall that clearly indicated upwards and downwards movement. Not idea what moved it, as we hadn't had functional elevators in any of the office buildings for ages, but apparently this one still works.

István also noticed that the 'unloading bay' went both up and down, which meant we still weren't at the bottom. I'd kind of figured as much, since the nasty vibes I'd gotten from the energy flowing downwards had only increased as we'd descended, but this room clearly wasn't the source of my bad juju.

"Let us drive a few of them onto here before we move on," István advised, "There is no guarantee that we can get back to this location."

"Seems fair to me," I replied, before asking what I assumed was the obvious question: "How do we drive them, though?" I'd been walking around one already on the elevator while talking. "I can't even figure out how to get in."

István did a circumferential orbit of another machine, before spotting something. Bending down, he touched a rune near the tail, and it immediately lit up, causing the "shell" to open. He clambered in with a slightly awkward manner, then motioned for us to do the same.

I reached down on mine and once I figured out how to correctly touch the butt so that it liked me, it opened up. Turns out you needed to imbue some Nebula into it. Something that more or less terrified me at this point since most things I'd done that to had a nasty habit of detonating in a manner that made Viktor envious.

Fortunately, there didn't seem to be enough of a difference between the energy in my Nebula and whatever noxious version the Vale used to cause the machinery to malfunction. That said, I did notice that my very proximity to the Seals on the machine was making them light up, something Viktor also noticed.

"That explains your conundrum," he said to István, pointing at me. "Our flashlight did it. Guess her batteries are working again."

István just gave me a clinical look, something I was becoming accustomed to at this point, while Viktor grinned at his own humor, much to my chagrin.

He was promptly put in his place by some well timed karma when he tried to get in one of the BeetleMechs and didn't fit. Like at all. He wasn't a whole lot smaller than the vehicle to begin with, and it kind of looked like some weird mating dance watching his dark-shirted back try to wiggle against the constraints to fit in.

I was about to laugh from the absurdity when he lost his patience with the whole affair, bent down, before grunting mightily and heaving the whole thing right off the ground. He then carried it over to the elevator and set it back down rather inelegantly, the crash of noise echoing through my feet like the very earth moved. Well, if there was anything unaware we were here at this point, they definitely now know.

Not that I was about to tell any of my thoughts to Viktor. He looked pretty satisfied with his performance and I had no intentions to debase him of that feeling. I might wind up as a cushy landing pad for the next one he wanted to move.

Ducking into my own, I was able to locate something approximating controls, and after attempts to push them around realized that it was more about resting my hands against them and then willing the motions with my mind.

István spending several minutes of careful instruction in small words had no influence on this discovery whatsoever… why do you ask?

With my new ride in motion, I was able to maneuver it over to the elevator, only running into a wall twice. István had moved three in the same amount of time, so we were full-up. I did also get stuck trying to get out, but luckily for me, my instructor-turned-savior István was able to operate the hatch-wings from the exterior.

That adventure over, István correctly surmised that it was safest for Viktor and I to stay outside our unorthodox conveyances for our trip downwards, so he had us manipulate the elevator while he played sentry from inside his BeetleMech.

With a hideous screech and some lurching motions that didn't seem at all reassuring, we set off for whatever awaited us below.

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