They moved on to a storeroom full of long-ago-spilled chemical jars. (Hence, not having anybody carry a lit torch.) A panel on the wall stood open with various switches in it.

Ruyo said, "Translation challenge, guys. Can we read any more of these labels?"

They dug out the notes they'd collected on Lost World language and puzzled over them. Khulis said, "It's a kind of map, listing the things that -- wait, did you want us to not read lists for some reason?"

"Pretty sure this one's all right," Ruyo said. "It's for the equipment connected to this room."

"Right. I think this one here connects to a... spirit container. Not quite the same symbol though."

Elly said, "Pir?" and pointed him toward the markings. He recited each, showing little interest.

Khulis said, "Different word, then. And this mark has the same word as we saw at the entryway shop."

Lisette crowded close. "That word appears down here too. What's this other one?"

They decided they'd found the "gift shop" and there was probably an undiscovered restaurant or dining area. No physical directions though. Ruyo said, "If we had some kind of electric spirit to trace the wires, that'd help." She called out mentally to Nusina for an update.

She sounded excited. "It's a maze in here! I'm trying not to get lost."

"Come back, then."

"I will. A lot of this plumbing is wrecked anyway. But I did see a connection to the garden you found, and a kitchen you might want to loot."

"Where?"

"Lower floor. Feel my location?"

Ruyo shut her eyes and sensed that Nusina was below her, in the general direction of the garden. "Then we'll look for stairs over there."

She relayed the conversation to the others, who were still deciphering the power junction box. Nusina pinged her to come open the bathroom door for her, and was startled to find a flickering, buzzing light overhead. She hopped back in a defensive pose. Nusina popped out from a sink and said, "Did you do that?"

"No."

Back in the storeroom she asked the others. Khulis said, "We tried flipping the switch that seems to mean the bathrooms. So this place still has working lights!"

"Barely."

Elly said, "All of the switches were off. Why would someone turn everything off?"

Nusina said, "I can answer that one. A device like this shuts off automatically if it's overloaded and in danger of exploding or something. You then turn things back on, one at a time, and avoid whatever was causing problems."

"Then what device was doing that?"

They didn't know, and had to move on. At least, Nusina did. Ruyo sent her to scout ahead to an area down the hall that had symbols saying Biohazard. Reluctantly she let Lisette get a little closer too, so that she could send Pir ahead. The fire spirit's range from the human "feeding" him wasn't nearly as big as Nusina's but he was still a useful scout.

While they waited, the others checked out the lights in the bathroom. The horse-groom came back looking shaken. "Why don't we have such a simple thing today? And water taps everywhere? And such huge buildings? And this was a hospital?"

Khulis said, "These ancient people thought they were pretty great, but look where they are now."

"Maybe it wasn't their fault. Maybe it was the gods that wrecked it all."

Ruyo paled.

#

The spirit scouts reported. Nusina said, "Between us, and Lisette here holding the notes for us, we think this room's safe. It was for testing things. You would send bits of blood here for instance and the staff would tell you if you had a disease."

"Why the health hazard warning?"

"A precaution since you could get accidentally jabbed with infected blood or something. Remember, we're on the same floor as the entryway and there are no guard posts in between. This wasn't a place the builders were seriously worried about."

"So no horrible monsters await us?"

Lisette said, "There's a skeleton. Holding a writing device."

They crept forward toward a small downward staircase, that overlooked a doorway mostly blocked by rubble. Ruyo said, "I'm going in. Anyone else want to risk it?"

Everybody did. Virid and Tamur cleared the rubble by magic and muscle, exposing a door that already had a hole in it. Easily broken open.

There was a high-ceilinged metal room with a smooth tile floor and lots of ductwork above. Ruyo looked around at many black-topped workbenches, cabinets, and unidentified machinery like a boxy metal machine seemingly for inserting some of the room's glass vials and spinning them.

"Broken vials," Elly said, pointing to the floor and to some others littering a few benches. Others were perfectly intact. "Is it safe?"

Nusina said, "I'd say so, so long as you don't cut yourself. Ah... mind the skeleton over here."

Ruyo braced herself for seeing it. The dead figure in one corner had badly broken legs and probably died in pain. A heavy pipe lay nearby, fallen from the ceiling and stained with old blood. The skeleton wore the remains of a white jacket and other ruined clothes.

Ruyo said a prayer. Then she took the glassy black tablet that lay next to the bony hands. "You say he was writing with this?"

Nusina said, "Pir recognizes it and the notes confirm it's a writing slate. Unfortunately I doubt it'll work."

"The record player did."

"It's a much simpler device. But try powering it by mana."

Ruyo did, and nothing happened. Nusina said, "Didn't think so. To even try we'd need a device for converting mana to electricity."

They rummaged carefully. "Is any of this machinery worth taking?" asked Elly.

Khulis held up a metal-pronged tool and said, "Look. Fire-starter." He flicked the handles a certain way and created sparks. "Not magical, and I see a couple of them. Some rolling stools, knives, glassware holders. Hundreds of little dishes made of that 'plastic' stuff."

Virid peered into a device with tubes for looking through. "I think this is one of the devices you mentioned, Nusina, for seeing small things. And we have four or five that look intact."

"A nice find!" It was on her list of inventions to rediscover. "Even broken ones might be useful."

Khulis said, "So the fancier machines are worth even more?"

"Probably not yet. You need tools to make better tools. These other devices are simple enough to use today. Now, if you want! These others are well outside my specialty. Other people will have to learn to make and use them."

The groom looked puzzled. "What do these tools have to do with finding diseases?"

"To demonstrate, we'd need a drop of dirty water, or blood."

Tamur said, "If one of us sheds a drop of blood, you will learn something? I offer."

Lisette cut him very slightly along one arm, blushing and stammering apologies. They dripped a little blood onto a glass plate while Ruyo tended to the cut and made sure it'd heal quickly. The horse-groom watched Ruyo at work and then wanted to peer into the "microscope" with the others.

Virid looked, fiddled with the knobs, and stepped back. "What? This is inside the blood?"

The groom edged closer and stared into it. "How...?"

Tamur said, "Is there one of your disease monsters in my blood?"

Nusina said, "No, probably not. There are living things in normal blood, and most are harmless."

The warrior looked uncomfortable. "Too small to fight with a weapon."

The groom said, "But there are ways to fight the bad ones. Aren't there, Nusina?"

"There are. I only remember the very basic ways, like having clean water. And... fire cleans things too. Not just magic, either."

The young man looked thoughtful, stepping away from the ancient tool and looking around at the laboratory. "A lot of people must have been devoted to that."

#

They looted the more portable parts of the lab, including the microscopes. Khulis shepherded some rolling stools noisily down the hall and stuffed his pockets with other trinkets.

Elly thought to check the lab coat itself, muttering apologies to its wearer. She fished out a plastic card with a portrait of an ordinary, smiling man. Elly said, "I guess everybody here had one of these." She held it up to show Pir, who recited unfamiliar words. A name.

Ruyo repeated it, sparing another thought for the dead man. Then she said, "We should look for the lower floor next." She asked the groom, "Seen enough? Ready to switch places?"

"I'd like to see this garden you mentioned, too."

He, Ruyo, Elly, and Nusina went in that direction, past the skeletons, while the rest got organized at the gift shop. Down another hall they reached a locked door with a tree-like symbol, next to a glass wall they'd broken through last time. Beyond that was a big open room with a high ceiling, where walkways wound through dirt and dead plants. A sort of bandstand in the room's center overlooked some benches. On one upper wall was a windowed office with a rope still dangling from it.

"I'm the Goddess of Used Furniture," Ruyo said, spotting some nice chairs Khulis had insisted on bringing down from the office.

Nusina looked fascinated. "Of all kinds, they put a fire spirit in charge of tending it?"

Elly said, "We were thinking people would come here and relax and listen to music, and that was a different kind of healing than all the machines and doctors could do."

Ruyo spotted for the others while they went up to the office to rummage some more. Elly said, "I bet Tamur could rip this door right off!"

"I thought you said there was an earth elemental," the groom said.

"Guess it vanished after we smashed it."

She helped float some cabinets safely down; Nusina said it was good practice. Always more practice, toward... what, someday? Magic for all? Rebuilding places like this? Controlling the weather? Doing this small expedition today reminded her there was no grand plan yet, beyond continuing to learn and grow.

Maybe there didn't need to be one, no more than she'd needed to rule people to serve them as a merchant. Her followers were already doing a good job of inventing things and finding uses for her power. For now at least, she should focus on making herself useful to others.

"How about the doors?" asked Elly.

Ruyo went to inspect them. "This glass one should be as easy to break through as the last, but it's frosted and I can't see through it. And this one with the vines..." She approached as though they'd grab her, but they were just dead plants and she cut some of them away easily to reveal a simple metal door.

The groom looked down. "It seems like a shame to smash our way through."

"We haven't got the keys." Ruyo checked the doors again, and chuckled. Though there was an ordinary lock on the metal one, the glass door simply creaked open without one. "That's the life of one poor, innocent door you've saved."

She called out, "Stairs! And... plaques." She helped everyone get down so they could see from the doorway. A suspiciously cracked concrete stairwell led down several flights into darkness. Several large metallic signs on the walls showed words and pictures. "We should hang back and regroup."

Khulis said, "Somebody should copy down the words."

Ruyo had been wanting to do that anyway. She waved the others back, crept ahead along the upper landing, and looked at the first picture. On the tarnished metal the colors were muted, but she saw a group of five people posing with hardhats at a building in a pit. A second photo showed a room of heavy cylindrical machines.

"Not sure what it means, but we at least get a hint. Somebody hand me paper."

"Here, let me," said Elly. She did something strange, pressing paper up along the plaque and rubbing charcoal along it to create an image of the letters. "Learned this trick from that explorer."

"Nice. When you're done with that, we're heading back to camp."