“It became obvious the moment the door locked behind me and the dishware attacked,” the elf muttered quietly as she walked, too absorbed on her magic to take note of the scolding tone the voice had taken towards her. It also helped her ignore the ever-present sensation of menace that now filled this new enemy’s territory, sinking into her limbs like tiny pinpricks. The effort made it easier to keep herself from trembling.

[i]And when I do tremble? Certainly not in fear. It is simply cold.[/i]

The lattice of crystal forming under her robes ceased expanding as the magic ran its course, allowing Pithy to merely hold it in her sorcerous grasp. It hovered as a single object, rigid under her cloak in a way that was sure to give away its presence if she moved carelessly, but she expected such a hidden layer of armor would be of use. The runes on her rapier’s guard continued to glow brilliantly even as the ice formation spell came to an end, her focus still divided between carrying her shields, her one remaining icicle, and in maintaining the freezing magic that even then continued expanding the sheet of ice layering the floor under her.  

The voice seemed eager to talk as she moved, readily agreeing to her request. “Of course! Though since this is not a lecture, you'll have to figure things out for yourself. Feel free to think of Kno One as an ordinary ghost, if it helps you understand that you cannot harm or interact with it.”

For a brief moment, Pithy was sorely tempted to correct the speaker on his assumption regarding ghosts. There were entire schools of magic devoted to the study and use of incorporeal entities in her realm, and whether this Kno One was incorporeal at present was debatable, but she was under no obligation to say as much. She was more interested in keeping the voice talking on the off-chance that he might be distracted enough for some kind of opportunity to present itself to her. 

What kind of lapse she might be looking for, she did not know. So far, the all too pleased way the voice spoke in only served to grate on her. 

As she followed the passageway into the next room, Pithy paused, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. A moment later, her features morphed into an irritated scowl.

Along the walls she could see a variety of tables, one with a pipe running up and down in an arch, which she assumed would deliver water, most others either empty, or laden with kitchen implements and cutting boards. Some of them had ingredients over them, as if placed there by someone and then promptly forgotten. 

Alongside these there were also large metallic boxes, reaching almost to her waist. Metal pots simmered over them, bluish flames feeding heat to the bubbling water inside them. 

It was cleaner than she was used to, so much so that a part of her had trouble thinking of the room as a kitchen. The fact that half of the room had been fashioned into a wall, starting with the tiled floor and ending with a patchwork of steel and cast iron, had not helped her confusion.

“Now, take a look at this. You've figured out the building itself is invincible, but does that still apply to parts of it I've moved? The tile was part of the floor, after all.”

As the voice receded, movement came from the nearby pots. Pithy started, a vision of boiling oil being poured over her flashing in her mind, but instead of that, she saw strands of what she assumed to be dough beginning to rise from the pots to hover in the air. 

Suddenly wary of the rapidly increasing amount of food floating in the air, Pithy allowed more of the cold power to pour out of her and muttered an unintelligible word under her breath.

A frosty breeze suddenly spread out from her position, sweeping over the cooking pots. The flames under them suddenly vanished, as did the sound of bubbling liquid. For the barest of seconds, the dough snakes continued to rise from their burrows until, with a crackling sound echoed from every pot, the water inside froze. The strings at the pot’s mouth still stretched outwards, as though attempting to free themselves.

In that time, the strands of dough that Pithy had originally thought to be a threat simply continued to float lazily through the air, seemingly uncaring of the intruder in their midst. 

Pithy shook her head, failing to find a reason for this particular act of levitation. What did the voice expect to do with these? Scald her? Strangle her? Or were they meant to distract her from something else? Perhaps it would have been more apparent had she allowed all of them to rise.

Her eye turned towards the box the pot had been sitting on, noting the ring of holes where the fire had once been. If she listened intently enough, she thought she could pick out a soft, hissing sound over the phantom howl of faraway wind in her mind.

She was not entirely familiar with the cooking apparatus, but she thought she recognized an echo of this technology. [i]The City of the Blue Flame.[/i] She recalled a human city, known for its beauty and technological acumen. A city of inventors, it was said, that had been built over a humongous cavern of flammable gas. In that city, massive tunnels had been dug out for the networks of pipes that delivered fuel to the street lamps that lined all the main roads, coloring the city with the blue pallor that had earned the it its title. 

[i]I also recall it being funneled to smithies and alchemical labs. I recall stories of great fires caused by carelessness. I recall tales of invading armies besieging the city only to stand down and retreat when the lunatic ruler of the time threatened to send the city and army sky-high if hostilities continued. A popular fable, often accompanied with the jest that it was called a free city for a reason.[/i]

A thought occurred to her. 

[i]Would a gas explosion have any effect on this place?[/i] 

Perhaps not, but if the owner of the voice was within the building, it might well air them out. All she needed to do was ignore the leak.

It was a dangerous gambit—[i]one that might quite literally blow up in my face at that[/i]—but if she could finish her business inside before the gas became dense enough to be a danger, or at least before an explosion was triggered, something could come out of it. She would have to trust in her magic, otherwise.

Pithy let out a long breath through her nose, looking back to the checkered wall and hoping that if the voice could indeed see her, it had not noticed her gaze lingering on the stove. Or worse, that the voice noticed the leak and used it for its own purposes. Choosing not to block off the gas slowly pumping into the room from the multiple stoves meant she had a time limit, and so she focused on the newest obstacle.

Nero had spoken of a window in the kitchen, but the only opening she could see in that room was the entrance she had used, and there had been no other open passageways before that. If such a window existed, it was on the other side of this wall.

It seemed she would have to play the voice’s game. 

Pithy pointed her arm forward. Her remaining icicle sped towards the wall, slamming against the center of a floor tile. Pithy grunted as the ceramic remained intact.

She levitated the icicle back to the air, pondering the problem. She had seen plates and tables break in the first room, so the qualification for this extraordinary durability was clearly not the spook’s control. 

[i]I cannot harm [/i]it[i]. I cannot interact with [/i]it[i].[/i] It [i]is this building.[/i] That was what she had been told, and it seemed to hold true. However, the distinction between what was and was not a part of the edifice seemed arbitrary to her. 

[i]There is a possibility that the distinction comes entirely from the user’s perception of what is a proper part of this place,[/i] she mused. If so, it was not a hypothesis she could voice readily. If it so much as approached the truth, this haunt would become even more dangerous.

Another thing of note was the fact that to bring the tiles up in such a manner, the mortar connecting tiles to the floor would have had to be detached. Did this mean that the mortar connecting the tiles was not considered to be a part of the building?

Her icicle floated forward, parting through the floating dough. Even now it did nothing to deter her, simply floating dumbly through the air, and so she continued to ignore it. Once the bladed ice had come close enough to the wall, Pithy pressed the ice into the gap between two floor tiles. After a few seconds spent mounting on the pressure, she realized the adhesive would not break. She would have heard a crack already had that not been the case. 

Pithy recalled her blade, glaring at the obstacle in front of her. It was when she looked up, to the place the makeshift wall connected with the ceiling, that a change became apparent to her. It was slight enough to make her doubt her memory, but she could swear that the wall, once rigidly upright, had taken on an incline. However, the tile and mortar at the bottom, where the floor bent at an incline to raise the wall, remained unharmed regardless of the shift in position. [i]That makes no sense. Had it moved, something should have broken, unless…[/i]

The pipes that had attacked her suddenly sprang to mind. “I see. That would allow one to twist metal freely,” Pithy spoke in a low voice mostly aimed at herself.  “Then, the way these tiles were moved…” 

The mortar indeed seemed to be considered a part of the building. That which had been broken had been broken under the haunt’s own power. The rest, however, had been altered for malleability. 

What was more, it seemed like this alteration allowed her to interact with the wall to a certain degree, deviating from what the voice had said earlier.

She glanced back to the two discs hovering behind her, then frowned. [i]Not these. Might need a shield soon.[/i] Looking past them, her eye alighted over the pots.

Pithy snapped the fingers of her left hand. The three pots nearest her suddenly trembled before rising in the air, the ice stuck to their interior forcing the metal up with it. The three moved in unison towards the upper end of the wall and turned sideways, their bottoms pressing against the ceramic. 

The sorceress breathed, feeling the strands of spellwork drawing their life from the torrent of power at her core. She isolated the spells grasping the ice in the pots and, as if diverting water from a stream, bled the strength of that current into them. The pots pressed against the wall with tremendous force, seeking to push the floor tiles back to their original position.