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A Door and a Mural
Also a "Salamander"
by Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight (Yan Knot) · Sep 03, 2026 · view history →
: “Why do I go exploring without the map-maker and the one who can record memories?”
ꙮ Light falls on– surprisingly squared-off carved walls. A dead end, it looks like, at first glance, and there Ĉasid is, locked in mortal combat with and fruitlessly bunnykicking all the hell out of some kind of weird, pale cave salamander, with frilly red gills, which seems utterly impervious to Ĉasid’s assault, no matter how vigorous it is, and consequently rather bored now that the chase is over.
ꙮ One of the walls isn’t a wall.
: “No? What do we have here?”
ꙮ Everything’s ancient with dust, but there’s an indentation in the wall, and a weird little– well, you’ve been to Samudra, it’s not that weird, you’ve seen their keypads for controlling doors and elevators and their fancy baths, even if you didn’t take a fancy bath while you were there. This looks a little bit like that.
: “Fascinating. A moment, before acting rashly.” Luĉja takes out their Behemoth Blade, and drags it heavily behind them, leaving a groove cut in the floor. “Before further inspection, someone owes an apology, Little Hunter.”
: “I do not believe either myself, or the Little Hunter to have suffered any injury.” He holds up Ĉasid. “This is Ĉasid. They are not a Bunk. But he does have a habit of running off when exploring new places.”
ꙮ ”Oh. My God. Oh my God he’s so cute. Oh my God?”
: “He is. He is also, unfortunately, a master escape artist. There appears to be some form of door, down the caves in the direction I found him. I am interested to go inspect it again. Do you mind?”
ꙮ She blinks repeatedly and -immediately- her attention is– well. Not fully diverted from the Little Hunter, but enough. “If I can come with you! I’m no Finder, but that doesn’t mean I’m not curious as all get-out.”
ꙮ Between Luĉja’s light and Sarah’s lantern, you get back to the ‘dead end’ without any trouble.
: “There was a small creature that the Little Hunter was chasing. Pale, with red frills - do you know what it was?”
ꙮ ”Oh, a salamander? They usually don’t go anywhere near us, that’s funny.”
: “It did flee quickly. Here. This appears to be some form of entry device.” Luĉja takes a closer look at the keypad.
ꙮ You have seen salamanders, Luĉja; the Beast was lousy with them. While what the Little Hunter was wrestling with may have plausibly been a kind of salamander, it certainly didn’t look like one which you recognised. Extremely cute, though. The keypad - you whirr and spin up and blow the dust off of it, and a light comes on in it. It’s got a crystal display, and twenty oddly soft buttons to push.
Luĉja does not see any issue with differences between planar varieties of salamander. Though a small voice bubbles up, not quite yet in the back of their mind.
: “I do not wish to put you or the cave system in harms way. Is this best reported to Chaya or another explorer?”
ꙮ Sarah lets out a long, slow whistle. “Chaya’s gonna wanna hear about this for sure, yeah. Your fiend found this? Chasing a salamander?”
laughs. “Friend-Sarah. Look at the two of us. Tell me which you think is fiend.”
Luĉja’s unmoving face would smile, if…well you know by now.
ꙮ She looks from Luĉja to Ĉasid and back again a couple of times and then points to the coeurl kitten, confused. “Him, obviously?”
: “No…”
: “He is a live animal.”
ꙮ She says, “Woah”, and looks at the kitten like she’s about to ask for his fucking autograph, and then the other shoe drops and her eyes widen and she looks at Luĉja and goes “WOAH”.
laughs again. “Not just a fiend. But not not a fiend. In any matter, yes. My coeurl found the door while chasing a salamander.” The back of the word scratches at the edges of Luĉja’s mind.
ꙮ ”That’s. So cool? That’s SO COOL. Does Chaya know that– so fiends can– that’s so– waow…”
ꙮ ”Well.” She sounds INCREDIBLY smug in this moment. “I’m the only person in the sietch right now that KNOWS they got to hang out with a more-than-just-a-fiend that can talk all day and-“ -she scrunches up her face. “Does that mean that the guys in the murals were fiends too, then? I mean I guess that makes sense.”
: “Murals? Are they nearby?”
ꙮ ”Nothing’s -too- far away in the caves. Except for like, the weird places Chaya delves. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
: “Fascinating. That seems to defy logic, but I will follow.”
ꙮ ….it’s pretty far. She was not, strictly, telling the truth. There’s a lot of circuitous, twisty passages, following red-moss for a while until switching over finally at a crossing at blue-moss and going back largely the way that you came, and so on, and so on, but eventually the cave passage opens out, and evens out, onto a smooth stone promenade with a large flat wall. ⁂
ꙮ There are - or, well. There were murals on the wall, once, that look like they covered most of the wall; they look like they were damaged, cracked and crumbled, the walls and the floor as well, there are seams in it, irregularities in the height. The colors have largely faded, the lines grown dim - and yet. A few things stand out. ⁂
ꙮ A group of people, standing near a wide, curved wall– some of them remarkably tall, and then you look closer, and you are not certain, but it is hard to not see them as Endjinn like yourself; you can see how Sarah made the connection- facing two… hovering clouds, dark, and vaguely a human shape. If you squint, they look a bit like Shades. ⁂
ꙮ Another section of the mural - what looks like it could be treetops, possibly, in a gentle valley, with the vague outlines of a grey diamond in the sky. Another section that’s just a remarkably lush depiction of one bank of a river; it still feels like you could reach your hand out, trail your fingers in its current. The whole emplacement must have been truly wondrous, once, long ago. 🙧
How many people in the group, can I tell?
ꙮ Impossible to tell - the damage to the mural cuts straight through.
ꙮ Sarah laughs. “I mean, you can always take them to see it, it’s not like it’s going anywhere. I like to come here and make up stories about Before.”
: “I think they would be eternally grateful if you showed them the way. I must introduce you upon our return. I will apologize for stealing you away from the kitchen for so long.”