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Cynthia in Galatea
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Our camera slides in from above, into a grassy plain. In the center of the frame, a hole into the ground. We fly into this tunnel, down a way into the earth while winding slightly, and into frame comes a pile of hair. It awakes and yawns, stretching in a way to reveal it is human female.

She flicks on a nearby lantern, illuminating the small room she slept in along with the engraved ring on her finger. The walls are covered in little tick-marks, evenly spaced around two-thirds of the walls. She gets up, extracting herself from her backpack she had flopped onto to sleep, then walks over and aligns herself to where the next mark would go. Peering at the wall, a sigh, obviously not finding what she was looking for yet. She scratches another tick mark with a small chisel, and then realigns to the next space. She peers again, eyes unblinking.

Then, a smile starts on her face. A squiggle is drawn in the space. More gazing, more marking, until a small outline of a shape sits on the wall, some sort of structure. Her smile grows larger by the minute.

A sudden shout of joy. She throws the chisel over her shoulder onto the backpack she was using as a pillow, grabs the lantern. then races off down a side tunnel. With motions of her hands she moves the earth out of the way and packs it into the walls, extending the tunnel as she crawls down it. The path heads on, winding around nearby paths, then heads straight in the direction the drawing was pointing towards.

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Winding tunnel after winding tunnel, she can get rid of enough earth to finally find what she was looking for: a door. It is twice as tall and six times as wide as she is, engraved with pretty symbols, made entirely of stone, apparently carved from the wall.

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“Yeeeees! I TOLD them something was here, and here it is!”

A small space in front of the door is cleared out, and the girl climbs out of the tunnel to look. Past the floor-sweeping black hair, she has a faded-green-tunic and pants with the right-leg intact and the left torn-off. Toss in a bright-red-scarf, a shovel haphazardly hanging from her right leg, and the signet ring marking her as a member of the Explorer's Guild, and you have Cynthia. Touting Elementalist powers (for detecting metals in an area in front of her in the room, and to move the dirt) and the stubbornness to sit in her tunnels to look for ancient ruins...

“Okay, work worked, time think...” She swaps her active blessing off of earth-moving and into cognitive-power to deal with the excitement a bit better. “Okay, big door with symbols, time to work.” She takes a minute to center herself and mentally note a few things.

Click. Enhanced-memory-blessing. I haven't seen these symbols before.
Click. A shorter-range use of the detect-metal-blessing. Cohesive, no way around...
Click. Telekinesis blessing. Grab some paper in her pocket, sketch the door. Easier to draw in magic than with my hands... Focus! Done.
Click. Enhanced-reflexes-blessing. Cynthia grabs her shovel and walks up to the door, and uses the tool to push the door open. If that fails, hit the door with it!

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Both things fail. The door is sturdy.

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"Door is not able to electrocute me on touch, good to know!" Cynthia giggles to herself, this is all enjoyable.

Click, cognitive-boost. Symbols on the door... Patterns? Colors? Are they some sort of hieroglyphic-wording? What is this door about? Don't forget to check for a door handle or keyhole! She tries to figure out what might open this door...

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There is no handle or keyhole, just the carved symbols. They don't seem to really... mean anything.

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Cynthia scratches her head, and shrugs. She puts down the lantern, holds the shovel at the ready, switches back to reflexes, and pushes the door to open it with her hand. Maybe it's just that simple.

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Nope, it's not. Doesn't budge.

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Cynthia expresses her frustration in the most elegant way possible. "Damnit you goddamn PIECE OF ROCK!" She kicks the door. Ow.

"Fiiine... I guess I have to go research again or something. At least I get to tell people I found the thing! Oh, what possibilities await, here and there..." Grab the lantern, out of the doorway-room, put a pathetically-thin-cap on the tunnel, then it's back to the room of marks. She grabs her backpack, and it's up and out of her tunnel system. Feel free to insert a credits montage here.

Outside, a wild grassy plain, not much of note except for her tunnel-entrance. She squints at the sun, and dusts herself off. She smiles, and then it's the flight-blessing off into the sky! When she gets high enough, part of her backpack expands into a hang-glider and she soars off into the camera. Insert big-letter-thread-title. Either way, it's off to the nearest town to contact the guild.

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The nearest town is a couple of hours that-a-way.

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Wheee, flying.

Between [her] hang-glider, wind-blessing to help fuel it, and flight-blessing to supplement... There's no need to bother with the silly 'ground' thing. Fly fly fly.

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Eventually she reaches the town, where there are people. She should not to magic around people like that, it is rude.

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Flying the whole way here, only to stop at the edge of town? What kind of travel is that.

Cynthia pushes [her] hang-glider back into the backpack, and uses the flight-blessing to avoid having to walk through the city. She just flies over and plops down in front of the explorer's guild and would walk in. She doesn't really 'get' social stuff, but definitely gets 'convenient to fly'.

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Yeah people will look kinda offended by that. This is just Not Done in public. The clerk behind the counter at the local Guild's chapter just sighs.

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The walking pile of hair does not know enough to care, and might not care even if.

Cynthia walks up and waves her hand, showing off the ring in a very blatant and silly way. "Hi. I found the ruins I was looking for, and now there's some door with symbols in the way... Any Enchanters around that I can bother enough to drag over? Or can I just steal the next metamancer you'll behead for a day-trip or something and skip several trips?" Business as usual for Cynthia.

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The clerk's eyes widen when she says the 'm' weir word and he looks around, as if trying to make sure no one heard that. "What are you talking about," he hisses.

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Pretty sure I said that all correctly...

"I found some ruins. It is blocked with a strange door. I don't know how to open it. Is there anyone with a different magic that I can take over there to help try to open it?"

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"Maybe, just, don't say things like that," he says, frowning nervously. "Here, you can post the details of your finding on the board upstairs."

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"Sure then." Am I not allowed to talk about what I found right away?

She starts going upstairs, then remembers the whole cleanliness thing. Standing next to the doorway, click, dirt moved-off, click, get rid of the smell with some water-moving... Click, earth-move the bit of mud outside. Upstairs time.

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The clerk grimaces at that and looks like he's questioning his decision to invite her upstairs but she's gone before he's made up his mind to say anything.

The floor consists of a sort of lounge and a couple of bathrooms. There are some more stairs leading up, but a shimmering blue field bars access. It's solid and smooth to the touch, like infinitely thin glass that's always the same temperature as your hand. Presumably there are living quarters upstairs accessible via tokens one rents downstairs.

The lounge contains a handful of floating sofas, chairs, and tables, some of which support board games, as well as bookshelves and scattered pieces of decoration. The board mentioned by the clerk downstairs is probably the flat rectangle made of stone attached to a wall, displaying images and text notes that shift in a continuous slideshow.

There are a few people present: two old women in camping gear frowning at each other and a game, an old man napping on a sofa, a teenager reading a book, a girl who looks far too young to be in the Guild but who nonetheless sports an unmistakable signet on a ring and is watching the game between the ladies, and a man in the process of leaving one of the bathrooms. The girl, the teenager, and the man all look at Cynthia when she walks in, but then return to whatever it is they're doing—the man has apparently been talking idly to the teenager before his bio break, for they resume a conversation as soon as he takes a seat.

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To the board, and to write things on it.

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The various posted images and texts float transparently over the board, but they react to her approach—and, more specifically, to her ring's approach. Her identification appears, and something of a "menu" does as well, allowing her to browse current news, ads, look for specific people, or post her own ad.

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She just repeats what she explained to the clerk onto an ad.

I found some ruins. It is blocked with a strange door. I don't know how to open it. Is there anyone with a different magic that I can take over there to help try to open it? - Cynthia, Elementalist

Yawning and mumbling, "Would be easiest just to get a meta to haul over..."

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The message is saved, with her identification so people can respond to the ad.

When she says the 'm' word, everyone else looks at her, and the young girl says, "Language!"

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She turns around, looking confused. "What did I say? Did 'haul' suddenly turn into a curse word while I was away?"

Wait, asking usually doesn't help in these situations...

"Uhm, sorry. Move?"

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"Not that! The 'm' word!" the young girl insists. "You shouldn't say it!"

"Hey, look, we ain't lookin' for any trouble here," the man talking to the teenager pipes up. "So don' bring it, aye?"

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