She presents her floating rock. "This is a floating rock! I enchanted it, probably nobody is going to want to retrieve it except maybe me I guess."

"And what is the nature of the enchantment?"

"It repels the air using an air rune and an arcane rune, so it floats instead of falling."

"Hm." He examines the rock, sniffs it, flips it over and pokes it into the air, watching it bob. "...Neatly worked."

Grin. "Thank you! Making it was fun!"

"Hmp. Continue your studies, young- ...What was your name?"

"Maragosa!" chirps Maragosa.

"Ahem. Continue your studies, young Maragosa. You may be worth your egg yet."

She gets out of the way and lets the next sibling take their turn, then whispers to one of the others "What does he mean, 'worth my egg'?".

"Uhhh. Sounds like an idiom. Those are usually kinda logical? If you look. Um. Eggs need to be cared for, so maybe it's like you're worth the effort?"

"Huh. I didn't realize eggs needed that much effort. I thought they just sat there." Back to watching. What other artifacts has everybody got?

Several rocks that are colder than the average rock. One rock that is solidly encased in a prismatic chunk of ice. A rock that drips snowflakes. A shiny rock. A rock that is the opposite of shiny.

Neat! She speculates about what runes went into each one until everybody has gone. What are they going to do then?

There are three paths leading forward from the area where they are now. Once Azuregos is done inspecting everyone's submission, he stands in front of the middle path. "To the left is the library, where writings and other accounts of knowledge are kept. To the right is specimen storage. Ahead is general storage, where we will be putting... these." He pats the box o' rox. "Don't touch anything." He leads the way further in.

She follows Azuregos instead of trying to sneak off to the library, but both options get some consideration first. Hopefully they'll go to the library later. And ideally also specimen storage. But mostly library.

General storage is basically a series of very large rectangular cabinets of a dark blue material, textured like wood but hard as stone, and with no obvious markings explaining what's inside. There are no apparent doors or handles to the cabinets, and they're anchored to the floor. It is, in short, slightly unclear how Azuregos expected a flock of whelplings to be able to cause a mess.

Maybe somebody caused a mess in the past and then they made it easier to avoid doing that but forgot to stop worrying about it. "What are these cabinets made of?" she asks the next time an opportunity arises.

"Imbued treant bark, from the grove in specimen storage," Azuregos answers. He slaps a particular spot on a particular cabinet, and the front of it shimmers and disappears to reveal shelves full of boxes very similar to the one he carries. Everyone jostles in to get a closer look.

Maragosa has no particular advantages at jostling, but not particular disadvantages either. She ends up somewhere in the middle of the crush, while wondering what exactly the bark is imbued with. Magic, maybe.

A whelp is jostled too close to the shelf and yelps in alarm as the ward flares. Azuregos sighs. "You can see it just as well from three feet further back, so everyone move away."

The ward is actually really interesting, magically speaking. There's a bunch of different layers and signals and trigger conditions baked into its weave.

She shuffles back along with the rest of the morass, staring at the ward and trying to wrap her head around all of its logic one piece at a time.

Arcane energy gathers around Azuregos's fingertips and he pokes the ward just so. It ripples back like a curtain being pulled from a window, exposing some of the inner folds. Kharmeena takes one of the boxes off the shelf and Azuregos puts the one with their rocks in its place.

"If you have any questions, you may ask."

"How does that ward work? It's so complicated!"

The explanation is almost as complicated as the ward itself. Azuregos can be persuaded, if prodded, to slow down and explain with fewer unfamiliar terms of art.

She does a combination of prodding and memorizing terms of art to ask someone else later, and ends up with a mostly decent understanding of what's going on with the ward and a strong conviction that she wants to build stuff this impressive someday.