"No, no, it's good for him to get his exercise," Lomon responds. "If he weren't here I'm certain that Rokat and I could cooperate to shift them just fine."

She leans in to whisper "Personally, I think she just enjoys bossing him around."

Snort!

"I do get that impression," she agrees, just as softly, with a little giggle.

Lomon straightens back up, glancing at the others to see how much progress they're making on retrieving the water purifier.

"The light-up floor seems simple enough," she remarks. "With testing dexterity and communication. But what gave you the idea for rings that move each other? I don't think I've encountered anything like that."

Years of video game puzzles. That's it, that's the reason.

"Really? Huh. It seems like it'd be straightforward, to me? I wanted to make something that would reveal a pretty thing I made, but if I didn't have the rings move each other at all, it seems like it'd be too easy? It's obvious the way every ring is supposed to go. So I had to make the difficulty in how someone would reach the answer they knew was right." She hums thoughtfully. "... I guess I wanted to make it like... like making magical items is for me? Because I find that a fun challenge. I know what I want it to be, but the implementation is the hard part."

Lomon nods thoughtfully for a moment, but whatever she was going to say is interrupted by a triumphant cry from Rokat as the rings slip into alignment. She turns to look at them, and then walks over to peer into the revealed alcove.

Kose looks at Aestrix's core for a moment, and then walks over to congratulate them and explain the function of the purifier.

…? Why the strange look from Kose?

…. Oh, uh. She made the puzzle before she made the purifier. Shit. Fuck. This is why lying is the worst. Also, you know, the various bits about ruining trust and whatnot but. Needing to keep all of your lies straight with an actual real timeline of events.

Well, nothing for it now. Except some self hatred for how stupid she definitely is.

Once they have been briefed on the function of the purifier, the adventurers make their way back out, with a certain amount of cajoling from Tanth. As they step past her threshold, Aestrix receives another burst of energy.

"Tanth promised they would test the pendants and let us know how well they last," she says, walking back up to Aestrix's core.

"Okay! ... I guess I should probably make something for measuring the power left in them. Does that sound like a magic item they'd like?"

Kose nods. "The only alternative for really testing magic items is using them to exhaustion, carefully noting how long that takes," she responds. "And since every magic item is a little different, that doesn't give a totally reliable estimate."

"Makes sense. Hmmm. How do they look after they've started degrading? I think I might need a comparison point, I haven't seen one that is partially exhausted or completely out of power."

"That makes sense," Kose agrees. "Unfortunately, magic items don't wear down inside of dungeons. Something about your natural energies reinforce the magic."

She glances down at her rings, and picks out one from her left hand, set with a yellow stone.

"Here -- this one is a simple light. I think I've used it outside a dungeon enough that it should be partially worn down."

She holds the ring out on her palm, for Aestrix to examine.

"Even ones made by other dungeons? That's neat."

But, yeah, she'll get to peering at this one ring in particular. Does it look... faded now, or something??

The magic has started to tug free of the ring, like a favorite sweater that starts getting pilly and shedding fibers until it wears away at the elbows. The concept of light hangs off the ring like stuffing starting to work its way through the seams of a well-worn stuffed animal.

"Oh I see..." she muses, as she looks at this. Well, this is easy enough to fix; she does so. It's just reinforcing the concepts that are already there, and smoothing out the rough edges that have started to come apart. Tie everything back down, nice and tidy, and then press it back flat against the material of the ring, so it doesn't start to wiggle loose again.

"... Well, it's really easy to fix if it's just started... I'm going to call it fraying? Which is to say, oops, I fixed your ring. I think I can make a magic item to see magic items, though, this was very helpful, thank you!"

Kose blinks, and then returns the ring to its place on her finger.

"I ... didn't know that fixing a magic item was possible, short of disenchanting it completely and putting new magic in from scratch," she admits. "How does that work?"

"Hmm... sort of like... smoothing out thread? And tightening the anchors it already has." It's kind of a pity she can't shrug. "Honestly, if there are a lot of magical items that fray like this, I'd be happy to just fix up any that adventurers bring to me. It's really, really easy, and kind of. ... Nice to do? Restful?"

Also really goddamned helpful, she bets, but. It is in fact also restful. Nice mindless work of Putting Things In Order.

Kose sits against the wall of the core room and lets her head slump back against the stone. She is silent for a moment, and then takes a deep breath and lifts her head to address Aestrix.

"I ... that would be wonderful," she agrees. "Adventurers often have old magic items that are worn out or nearly so. Often they keep them as family heirlooms. We can make the offer when they come back with the results of testing the pendants."

She notices her hands are trembling very slightly, and folds them neatly in her lap.

"Okay. Sounds good. ... Are you all right? Should I work on your room sooner rather than later? I have the slack for it, now."

If her read of Kose is right... that's a mix of relief and probably terror. Yeah uh. That's incredibly valid. Possibly it was a mistake to display this much competence, but, look, she can't really bring herself to regret offering people an end to a type of scarcity.

"I'm fine," she replies, a little too quickly. "But it's very kind of you to ask."

She breathes out. "Yes, I think it would be nice to look at my room. And that would let us stop using your core room for wood storage," she continues.

Aestrix snorts. "Yeah. The pile of wood is a bit of an eyesore, isn't it."

So she gets to building Kose's room. As promised, it's directly below her core room, with a set of stairs winding around the core itself and down to it. The room itself is rectangular, and Kose's bed is set into the stone directly below the core itself. The idea is to put Kose at ease about how totally vulnerable to killing she is (don't mind the foot thick slab of stainless steel she's putting in between the two, hidden in the stone) and to justify putting protections over the whole area later. See, she's protecting her dungeon fairy, that's all it is. Along with that, there's a wooden writing desk whose sides are made of interlocking arches that evoke tree branches, and a wooden shelf in the same theme. There's a door out to the main corridor of the dungeon, divided from the corridor itself by a curtain of (fake) vines, and a leaf-themed rug on the floor. It's a bit empty for Aestrix's taste, but this is what Kose asked for, and the walls are nicely decorated, with lots of (fake) flora nestled in the lovingly detailed designs.

Plus, there's a surprise. Across from the shelf is a planter, also set into the stone, and filled with some of that dirt that Aestrix keeps having too much of. She'd asked, and Kose had been cautiously desirous of real, actual plants, but resigned to their inevitable death in underground conditions. So, it's of Aestrix's opinion that clearly the only thing to do is to figure out how to make a magic sunlamp, and let her fairy/chaperone have literally any real part of the outside in here.

"So I don't have any seeds or any real idea how to make them," she informs Kose as she shows her the room, "but I bet I can rig up a magic light that'll act like a sun, so you can grow whatever you'd like. If you want to."

Kose sits on the bed, and looks up through the ceiling.

"I think plants don't usually do well under magical lights," she warns. "But if you could manage that, it would be wonderful."

She runs her feet along the rug.

"This is a really nice room! Thank you for making it for me," she continues. "Do you think I could have a moment to myself to admire it?" she asks.

“You’re welcome! Rest well.”

She’s a little too nervous about having displayed such skill and competence to do much of use, but. She’ll add in reinforcements around her core room (hidden by stone) and do general touch ups around the dungeon. Like re-doing her first puzzle to make it better programmed, because it’s been bugging her a bit, okay.

Kose walks around her room for a bit, casually running her fingers over the various surfaces. When she is satisfied she lies down on her bed for a moment, facing into the alcove.

"We need to talk," she whispers. "I'll brief you, and then you need to call a vote. The dungeon ..."

When she emerges a few minutes later, she is smiling again.

"The room is nice," she tells Aestrix as she makes her way into the core room. "I like it. Do you have any ideas for your next puzzle?" she asks.

"Thank you! I'm glad you like it." Jury's still out on if she's about to be murdered or not, but that sounds like a thing she should not think about too hard! Probably she's too valuable to kill immediately after only milking her for five magical items in total! (Three communication pendants, and two of the water purifiers.) That just seems like a pathetic amount of loot to her gamer mind, okay.

Anyway, on to thoughts safer for the role she's playing. She's 100% going to steal a puzzle premise from an app that she played regularly. And also plotting out how she'll do her magical item that sees magical items. Honestly, the magical item creation is more fun than the puzzles; can't she just set up a gym or something for the squishy humans, let them challenge themselves without her needing to do anything...? Bah. Not enough trust built up for that sort of thing, probably. Maybe one day.

"I was thinking... something about connecting lines of color on a 2-D surface without intersecting them? Different motes of color need to be connected across a... probably set of tiles, hexagons sounds too complicated, and each tile can only be one color at a time. Does that make sense? I might need to just show you what I mean, it's pretty visual..."