"Later," she giggles.

"Pfff. Fine. Let's go see what's in the rest of this palace."

Derron nods and heads up the stairs opposite where they came in; the other two start following.

Cayra follows along.

They emerge into the remains of a hallway; a little way along that hallway is an arch leading to a gorgeous throne room. The throne is a beautiful dark wood that might be familiar from Cayra's brief trip to the southern rainforest, inlaid with silver. The floor is an elaborate mosaic showing the whole continent, with rivers and mountains and desert and forests all picked out in chips of colored stone.

"Pretty!"

"Yeah, wow, this is amazing." Tem grabs his paper and charcoal and starts drawing a copy; he has an excellent sense of proportion and shading but plays a bit fast and loose with details like "how many abstract-mountain-peak icons are there in this section".

"Are you trying to be exact?"

"On the geography represented, yes; on the artistic style, yes except the difference in medium makes it hard; on copying every tiny detail, no. I want it as an example of ancient art and as geographical information for future expeditions, not as a substitute for the real thing."

"Okay."

"I think I'll try to get some colored inks into the cargo allowance on our next trip out; I keep wanting them."

"Did you have very limited space? Too limited for ink?"

"Yeah. Well, we started out with a fair amount of space and then used most of it on food and drinking water."

"I guess that makes sense. I travel light but you guys aren't automancers."

"Yeah. And you're faster, we need to spend two weeks on a boat each way."

"Yeah, that too."

Eventually Tem finishes his sketch and they move on from the throne room. The rest of the palace yields only a handful of desk-drawer knobs and damaged pens.

The next building they check used to be a bakery. Tem identifies the metal plaques scattered about as reading "Breads", "Cakes", "Cookies", and "Delight of the Week". There's also a metal box with a dial on it.

Twiiiiist?

Hot box! It's an oven. Also it feels like the dial will come off in her hand if she's not careful.

She's careful. She summons the others to check it out.

Tem can read the numbers on the dial; presumably they're temperatures. And yup, turning it changes the amount of heat they can feel emanating from the box.

Nifty.

"This is another one we can't bring back with us. Now that we have several artifacts we can bring back, it might be worth trying to take this one apart."

"Is it going to be - made of interesting stuff, not just a box?"

"I don't know! We have no idea how artifacts were made; if we take it apart we might find some clue to its construction and from there to how it was enchanted."