Like many other edifices she had entered since she had been summoned to this alien land, the one she entered now appeared to have been abandoned suddenly and recently, as though only a few minutes before her entrance the restaurant’s staff had prepared the tables for a grand feast, and retreated into the kitchen. For all that, no food sat on the plates, nor guests sat at the tables.

The large reception was wasted on the single traveler, and the cloying scent of an unknown sorcery brought her pause as she scanned the utensils on the tables through a narrowed eye.

A soft click alerted her to the fact that the door had closed behind her. The rasping sound of the bolt sliding into was more obvious.

Pithy reached towards it at once, confirming her fears. It refused to move, as though affixed in place.

A curse danced on her lips as she turned, studying her surroundings with renewed intensity. The locked door itself did not upset her as much as what it meant. Her presence was known.

The voice that greeted her as she slowly stepped away from the front entrance turned that into a certainty.

“Welcome, Pithy.”

The voice echoed around her, seeming to bounce off the cutlery.

The woman froze, listening attentively. It was a familiar voice, even through the reverberations, and her first thought was that Nero had lain in wait for her. The longer she heard the voice speak, however, the less convinced she was. Gone were the ill-timed jokes and irreverent tone she had come to associate to the announcer.

Still, they knew her name limiting the possible suspects. Furthermore, while she was not familiar with the word ‘camera’, it was clear that they had left a means to spy into the announcer’s tower, meaning the owner of the voice had been a party to her conversation with Nero, and conceivably her later attempt to locate him. It was possible such a device was being used to observe her at that very moment. Was the owner of the voice even present in the edifice?

The announcer’s drawling voice echoed in her mind. [i]There’s shifty business goin’ on in the College. Some of ‘em ain’t so bad, aside from bein’ willing to sacrifice a lot just to research all the nonsense that’s goin’ on in this place, but some want that wish for themselves.[/i]

The magic swelled around her with such intensity that it made her nose itch, disrupting her train of thought. The runes in her rapier shimmered, frost appearing over nearby plates as the blizzard inside her swelled in response. Pithy shivered.

It dawned on her that the voice was trying to intimidate her, and her lips twisted in a spiteful grimace. Her eye went to the shooter in her left hand, mindful of the weight it carried. She needed only pull the trigger to alert Dew to these unexpected developments. Her finger twitched, her hand tensing.

She brought the weapon up, returning it to its holster.

[i]Not yet.[/i] It was not the time. She did not have a target. Even if Dew was able to cross the boundary to this territory she had walked into, it was likely that she would simply end up stuck with him as company. After all, if the voice knew to wait for her, it would also know she had her own pawn nearby. She doubted the voice had heard the exchange she had had outside, but revealing her hand too early could cost her dearly.

Instead, she drew her rapier from the hoop at her belt, the blades of ice she had summoned fanning out around her, wary of unseen danger.

“To rescue Nero...” The irony of the task the voice had left her with was not lost on her. She was reticent to take any promises this mysterious addition to her worries gave her at face-value, but at the same time she was unwilling to leave empty-handed after she had tracked down the announcer’s location.

[i]Is that the arrogance of newborn power I hear? How vexing to listen to it myself is.[/i] Just what had the foolish boy done after he’d slipped away from her?

The plates in the nearest tables trembled, eight of them slowly rising in the air.

The first two spun towards her head. Pithy ducked, the plates crashing against the door as she spun to the side to keep all the floating discs in front of her. She brought up her rapier.

The next two were turned away by her ice, two blades batting away the projectiles before they reached her.

The third set met the same fate. The last two plates crashed against a solid surface, a thin disk of ice that now levitated before her, its rapid formation aided by the cold she was still bleeding to the surroundings.

As an afterthought, one of her blades spun around her and lanced towards a nearby window. The glass shuddered in its frame against the impact, but for all that, it bounced off, leaving not so much as a mark. 

Pithy frowned as she reeled the ice back towards her. [i]That was hardly a threat, but if I’ve been truly sealed off, for how long will that last? I do not believe it is my limits that are being tested.[/i]

The avenue of assault the voice had chosen bore thinking about. Levitation, at first glance. That could prove problematic if the power was able to touch her or her ice directly. She would need to be watchful of that, until she knew if the voice had not yet bothered to do so because it was unable to, or because it felt it unnecessary. Considering the objects moving as if of their own will, combined with the fact that she seemed to have been sealed inside the building, along with the roiling power suffusing her surroundings and the allusion to an entity other than the voice, her first guess was a haunting. Had a poltergeist been bound to this place?

Pithy walked towards the nearest wall, hesitant to wade between the tables, and followed to march towards the back of the establishment, wary of more sudden projectiles even with her own conjured weapons trailing behind her. She quickly caught sight of an array of doors, some featuring the images she now knew signaled the restrooms, and moved towards the unmarked ones.

“Does my voice reach you?” she asked out loud as she walked. She wanted to keep the voice talking for whatever information it might betray. [i]Ought I to play to their expectations, then?[/i] “How did you get to Nero? I admit to feeling as though the chance to properly humiliate him has been stolen from me.”