"Wouldn't that be more of a sideways step?"

"They turn back eventually! Sometimes. If they were turned into something animate, at least."

Elatra laughs.

"Of course stabbing them before they turn back generally prevents this." She hums. "I'm not sure the people here will be much help with putting themselves back together..."

"Most of the spells I have ready now are focused on making people worse at things or killing them."

"Well, let's go to the facility first, then - we might be able to figure it out without help, anyways, or there might be something helpful there."

"After you."

"Alright."

The facility has a back door that Glint's able to find pretty easily, and is otherwise mostly underground. The door's embedded in a tree, actually, with steps down inside. They come out into a control room, which has a number of crystals resonating at odd frequencies - out of tune with each other. One's cracked. There's four raised circular pads along the wall, and two exit doors.

Eliana winces at the discordance.

"We should retune these crystals, if only to stave off the headache I can feel building."

"Notes mentioned a tuning fork, right?"

"They did." Is there one around?

Not in easy evidence, even after Glint looks in fairly bizarre places.

"I have something close to perfect pitch. We may be able to make do."

"Good. Then how to change the tunes..."

Poking them seems to change the tunes, somewhat, as they wobble in and out of alignment.

Eliana guides them into harmony.

And the four pads develop glowing outlines and a soft shimmer inside when everything's aligned, though nothing else seems to change.

"Is it working now?"

"Dunno! Those look like teleport pads, though, probably to elsewhere in the building," she says, pointing to said pads.

"Unmarked teleportation. My favorite."

She laughs. "I'll go first, then!"

"If you die in a particularly gruesome fashion, be sure to come back and warn us."

"Well, ghosts are a thing. So I promise to be at least half as coherent in death as I am in life."

"Very comforting."

She laughs, steps onto the closest pad, and vanishes in a showy sparkle of light.

And she's back a minute later.

"It's an observation room! For one of the torture chambers. I think it connects to some others in the sequence - there were other pads - and this's a shortcut to the last one. Also had a swanky chair for watching the fun. There's buttons for manic or demented tactics but they just caused errors when I push them. Maybe 'cause there's no one in the chamber? Errors weren't very informative."