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Sophie would like it on the record that, when she accepted the job, she didn't know that the Librarian had to do so much bloody politics. She could be out healing the sick, like Natan in his day. She would love to be out healing the sick. Instead, she's in one of the innumerable studies of Hush House, searching for a book for Hokobald, even though she wishes dearly that she could toss him out on his shiny arse. She doesn't mind helping out Yvette, or Arun, or really most of the others. It's just Hokobald in particular who should really go fuck himself. But it is her duty to remain strictly neutral, and she takes that duty seriously. So she'll find his damned book, and watch like a hawk while he reads it. And should he happen to violate that neutrality himself, well, she might have a few things in her pockets to introduce him to. (Swaddled Thunder isn't casual to make, nor the Rubywise Ruin in case of violence. But she's made them enough to feel they're replaceable, at least.)
She smiles. "Flowers! Our magics are so different. I can make you many flowers without much paint, if we need it, but they will also be cheap in the city."
"Oh! Excellent, painted flowers should do very well."
(They haven't actually discussed the magic paint, but it's come up a couple of times and Sophie has internalized that it can make stuff under certain limitations. Doesn't really merit a whole digression unless some confusion comes up.)
Nod.
(She can't take it personally, when it hurts them to smile. They'll get the others back.)
The door Luto opens leads into a square room, thirty feet to a side. The walls are lined with stone slabs at about countertop height, with a variety of jars scattered about them.
Above the slabs are a set of paintings depicting the gold figure from last room in various dramatic regal situations - in front of a massive crowd of bowing people, calling down lightning and fire upon his fleeing foes, ordering the construction of incredible buildings. (On closer inspection, there's some tile mosaics spread out between them, noticeable primarily due to the contrasting visual style.)
On the far wall, there's a sealed door with no handle, no hinges, and a plain circular indent at chest height.
In the center of the room, there's a stone pedestal with a bowl in the top, about the same size as the hole in the door. It's surrounded by a ring of stone tiles in the floor, each with a symbol carved within.
Luto stares into the room intently but she's not seeing anything move immediately, so she opens the door and steps in, beckoning to the others to follow a moment after.
Sophie follows.
She takes in the room. "...some kind of ritual chamber? Maybe a puzzle-door..."
She nods. "Puzzle room, yeah." (Ridaya floats into the room above the two of them, looking down from above.)
From above (or from deeper inside the room), the symbols on the stone tiles are all visible. There's a flame, a drop of water, a leaf, a gust of wind, a stone boulder, and a star.
"...Waters of Nun... stone of Benben... star could be Khepri or Ra... after that the theory falls over a bit, though," Sophie mutters. "I don't even think they had a fire god who wasn't mostly a sun god."
Luto, having finished her initial investigation of the room, drops to the floor with an effortless grace a cheetah would envy and begins inspecting the tiles.
"These are pressure plates," she says, frowning. "Can't tell if this is the kind where we press them in order or a few at once, though. ...Or what happens if we fail." (That's usually Uma's job, which she's not going to say because it'll make Ridaya sad and she already knows.)
"Mmmm," says Ridaya. Flame, Star, Leaf, Wind, Water, Stone...
Her eyes fall on one of the mosaics. It's... a plant sprouting out of a pool.
"Hey, check this out." She points.
Ooh!
"There's a clue. I was hoping for one, but so often these turn out to be checking if you're in the tribe, what order do we venerate these gods... That looks like water-and-leaf to me."
Other murals?
Luto pops back to her feet in a motion that surely must have involved pushing up with her arms or something, but it's not super clear when, especially if you happened to blink.
"This one is... a sunrise? over a bunch of plants? ...leaf and fire?"
"could be star, too," Ridaya says on autopilot, still looking around, "Burning Mother's a star, just a lot closer."
She floats over to a point near the ceiling on the left wall. "This one is just a star though."
Sophie finds one with a gust of wind, carrying seeds from a plant that looks like a more grown version of the plant from the first tile mosaic.
"...water birthing plants, sunlight strengthening them, here I've got wind spreading them... and a star. That seems like an odd man out, here."
Luto finds, half-tucked behind a piece of pottery, a fifth mosaic: dust falling from the star onto... a rock? "Hmmm. Star-and-rock?"
"Hmm. Is it just a sequence? Except... I'm not sure what to make of the star, or the sunset..."
"Right. And I'm not certain of the order, either, even for just the plants – it seems like water is probably first, but sunset and seed dispersal both seem like valid endings to the sequence."
"–here's another," she says. "And I think I might have an idea for the sequence? You start with the star alone, then the star falls to make a stone, then the stone gathers water, then the water sprouts a leaf, then the wind carries away the leaf's seeds, then the burning sun sets on the leaves... I don't know, does that sound right? One single, then five doubles?"