Ant nods. "Understood! Where do I start?"

A very tiny and floofy red panda waddles up, and chirps. "My granddaughter doesn't speak the human tongue yet," the panda boss explains. "Her name is Akachi. Follow her."

Ant nods seriously, and will follow the tiny, floofy red panda.

Tiny floofy red panda is capable of scampering, and keeps running ahead of Ant and then doubling back for em.

The path is not really meant for humans - it's plenty wide, but no particular effort's been made to level it, or reduce the numbers of steps or hills or weird bends.

Ant, thankfully, is in fairly good shape, and has youthful exuberance in eir side, although ey can't keep up with Akachi, ey can at least normally keep her in eir eyeline.

Then: mountain climbing! There's luckily a hiking trail. This small red panda has very little respect for cliffs and heights, but so far seems to be keeping her balance.

Ant keeps a close eye on her, having a little more respect for cliffs and heights - ey's pretty sure Ira will intervene if ey falls, but ey'd rather not fall.

They come to large, stone steps, leading to a massive temple. Akachi climbs to the top of a tall panda statue and looks around, then scampers back down and nods into the dark depths beyond the open stone doors.

Ant narrows eir eyes at it. "You coming with me?" ey asks.

She hops a bit into the dark and nods.

Alright then. Into the dark they go.

Long, narrow walkway with no handrails over a drop of indeterminable depth, leading to a massive landing before a grand staircase, leading to a maze Akachi keeps darting out of sight in...

Ant picks up eir speed, not happy about losing sight of Akachi, because ey doesn't know what risks are in this maze.

The maze widens into an enormous room, with what looks like a puzzle cube at the center.

Okay. Ant looks around for any clue as to what ey's supposed to do now, and also where Akachi's gone.

The cube's a bit taller than her, but seems to have grooves for moving things, and some things stick out and have deeper grooves around them. 

Akachi is climbing some of the carvings on the wall. The carvings are in the same style as the puzzle cube; their relationship otherwise isn't immediately obvious.

Alright. Ant can try and work out the puzzle cube - if it turns out to be one of those cubes from Hellraiser...

Wait. Ira'll just eat the Cenobites. It'll be fine.

Ey considers the wall carvings - does it look lik ey can move the objects on the cube to resemble the wall carvings?

It's hard to tell in the gloom, but possibly.

Well, with a lack of other ideas to try, ey'll try that then.

The stone shapes are heavy and hard to move, and it really doesn't help how Akachi keeps scrambling over the wall carvings. When Ant's gotten into one series of steps that seem to require quite a lot of quick motion and balancing, Akachi starts to slip.

-Nope. Ey can start this again. Ey lunges to catch Akachi.

The puzzle cube shudders and things click into a place they hadn't been before.

Akachi is caught! She squeaks.

Okay. That's...not good. Can Ant get Akachi out?

Akachi will cooperate with being carried.

Good. The small red panda is getting taken out somewhere safer, and the test be damned.