She has an electric torch. She investigates the opening and the spot where the doors meet the floor. Do they have rollers or something?

"You said this was the ocean spire? Could it be underwater?"

"It's closest to the ocean but far from shore. A road ran alongside. Unlikely to sink."

Or something. Smooth rounded stone coasters on the top and bottom edges, equally smooth channels they rest in. Or, at least, that's how it's supposed to work - currently they're pressed up against the edge of the bottom channel and leaning in, and derailed on the top side. There must be a lot of weight.

"We used it as a sailor's landmark, but it was miles back from the coast," Eb confirms, "Also I can't feel water to manipulate."

"Hmm. Hmm." She pokes a debris piece with the spear. It doesn't budge at all.

Is the debris metal? Just how big is the gap?

"It doesn't seem impossible to clear out. Maybe by cutting or pulverizing what we have here and extending supports so the rest doesn't just collapse on top of it. Digging through debris can be worse than digging through solid stone... What does it look like from outside?"

Not entirely metal, also gravel and some larger stones, but there's a lot of metal. The gap they've made is about four inches.

"There are thick enough drifts that it's hard to locate the door from outside. Safe to say it extends out at least fifty feet and goes up at least fifteen, but it might go up as much as fifty."

"And this is a fortune of metal. Not sure exactly what type at a glance but it seems tough. Oh man, yes. I'm gonna need - water jet cutter, I think - it'll be a process but even just extracting a few pieces at a time, I can make more tools to work faster.  Might not be entirely safe to try and widen things more... At least until some pressure comes off the top."

"Two army's worth of bronze and iron, scattered across the landscape, twisted together like Barik. That's the Blade Grave."

"It didn't shift much when we shoved it open this far, though it was an exhausting effort. I'd expect we could at least do the same with the other half."

"I want to build my linear smelter now. The cutter could help Barik and anyone like him too..."

Wait.

"...Are there dead bodies in there?"

"Probably some bone fragments."

Deep breath.

"Well. I can't promise you when without more time, but I believe I can indeed cut through the debris gradually, and open a path. Alternately... I could try to create some extremely strong  gearings, to exert massive force, but very slowly. Wrench the doors open that way. Both would probably be useful later as well."

"I'd say the cutter, if a foot or two of gap is enough to work with. Time estimate, to cut through a strip fifty feet by five? Assume that was your focus but not everything you were doing."

"Build the cutter... Three days, four? I need an engine still. And then if I train someone else to use it so I just have to prepare the abrasives and, like, build supports or sort the debris... And assume I have a couple of the garrison helping with the lifting... Probably two or three hours to cut a foot deep five by five, and then remove everything? Call it five to ten feet a day if all goes well and we have people working on it constantly, in shifts? So eight to fourteen days. I might be underestimating how fast the cut will go, since I'd be leaning slow and careful. That's all estimation, mind."

He nods. "Do that within a span - twenty-six days, has anyone explained our calendar? I will break the Edict by then."

"Right, the bounty of metal would be impetus enough for that anyway. It's high time to step up a few centuries. And, not explicitly. I've heard spans and fists."

"The metal should be useful when you have it out? Excellent!"

"A fist is five days - Warrior's, Healer's, Judge's, Farmer's, Smith's Days - and a span is five fists, followed by Kyros's Day, which is a day of rest. Fourteen spans in a year, plus Year's End Day, which is another day of rest. Today is 1st Farmer's Day, Span of Conquest; four days ago was Kyros's Day of Blood, the end of the span; after Kyros's Day of Conquest will be the Span of Rapax. You'll also hear of weeks and months, which are seven days and twenty-eight; that's the old lunar calendar of the Tiers, forbidden for official business but still used some places. Thirteen months with a flexible extra week added to the first month every few years to keep the spring equinox in the right part of the calendar. Very confusing for record-keeping, Lantry told me Sages have been using Kyros's True Reckoning calendar for years to organize their chronicle."

"It should! I still want to find an industrially useful ore deposit, but that's always going to be a longer term prospect. Hmm." She writes this down. "It's not like our calendar couldn't be confusing at times, they kept amending it with random extra days to keep the equinox consistent, and other places used more different calendars, too."

"I'm glad we only have the two, then. Anything else you want to see here?"

"Maybe a look at some oldwall material samples, I haven't managed that yet?"

"Right, you mentioned that... I think Lantry took some from the breach we used to get in, that's the outer walls. And there are broken Bane seals - some are trapped in the walls, then break out if anyone comes near - not far away, that might be a different stone."

She will go and collect these samples, then. And then maybe go say hi to Lantry, and also ask why the Sigil of Lightning is so inconsistent.

The Oldwalls deeper in are split-level like this door room, but with many more gaps and pits. Even from sticking close to the near wall where the broken seal was, she can see many glowing crystal pillars, projecting colored sigils above them like holograms, and a number of what look like sliding bridges with gear-tooth-like indentations. There's also distant moan-howls from the pits and off in the distance through gaps in the walls, though, so she may not want to stick around.

Back, above, Lantry has the larger, darker samples for her.

"The Archons of Lightning - or of Storms, they vary - have rarely been reliable people. And of course lightning strikes at random, it seems in the nature of the phenomenon to be sporadic and sudden. You might be able to adapt Forge-Bound heating rituals, though; Fire isn't much better, classically."

Yeah she's out fast whether she can chip off a piece or not.

"It's not actually random. Just difficult to predict. I suppose I could just try a big enough grounding rod..."

"Well, it does strike tall places, but - have you learned to predict when it will strike?"