The morning a full week after the hero’s party leaves the Other’s lair greets Margarette Delaw’s soul-operated golem. When she had asked Graham, Fleur, and Sebastian what she should do now that the hero’s party was gone, they had replied as if it were a script they had used a thousand times. She’s finally started to accept some of the strangeness.

“Whatever you want or nothing at all. Feel free to get to know the folks around here. The main floor is quite wide so feel free to explore as well, just no tampering with soul stones. If the lights turn red and start flashing, that means you have limited time to clean up and take up position like a normal golem, but if you stand still in a random corridor or the rec room you should be fine.”

Frustrated at the lack of direction Margarette spent her first full day exploring the armory they had visited. Through some prodding of display cases she found two hidden compartments with various accessories that were either stylish or had some gimmick to them. She ended up rearranging all the robes by size and color, sorting the spears and swords, and agonizing over the magical staves and wands when a young voice sounded from the doorway asking if she wanted a tour, to which she readily agreed.

This new golem turned out to be someone named Jeb, and he was the previous rookie. It had become tradition to have the least senior soul show the new member around the place if they hadn’t started to properly explore already. Or at the very least, find those who quickly became lost in the pseudo maze of passages.

Familiar with the central room and armory already, Margarette soon discovered that the multiple corridors of soul stones all seemed to come to an intersection that turned left or right to connect to another soul stone lined passageway. As they were approaching the end of nearly the last corridor, Jeb instead carries on his ramblings about the various souls located there and walks straight through the wall instead of turning the corner.

A look of realization would have appeared on Margarette’s face as she realized the same type of barrier that was used for the rooms was in place here. She quickly followed Jeb through the barrier and was greeted with a happy tone and introduced to the actual main corridor of the floor, which circled the others they had just been in.

After this, time seemed to fly for Margarette as Jeb showed her the Rec Room, an area that would be the substitute for a dining hall if golems could eat, the warehouse, chapel, the library, R&D, the theater, music department, Acting Guild, and finally, a little room just off to the side of the Rec Room that she had overlooked the first time.

“And this is where you’ll find The Broker at 6 a.m. Which reminds me, we need to teach you how to read the [email protected]#$ clocks installed everywhere. R&D is the only area with a real clock, so the rest of us just suffered for a while before we got used to it. You see the areas of the walls covered in gems that are stacked in columns of 2 then 4 then 3 then 4? Those light up in different patterns, the left two being hours and the right two being minutes.”

“How annoying,” Margarette replied. “What’s this about a Broker? Why is this the last stop when there are other random doors strewn throughout the place?”

“A while back some folks, er, golems now I guess, got together and decided they needed some risk-reward system to make their newfound, relative, immortality more interesting, so they came up with the idea of having an underground gambling ring.”

“But we have no money right? And we wouldn’t use money on anything here anyway right? He doesn’t charge us for, I don’t know, things, does he?!”

“Ah, you are right on the first two and he doesn’t for the last one. Here’s how the system works. Find a group that you want to work with in a department, make a discovery or do something impressive, and the foreman or boss of the group hands out a commission ticket which you can redeem with The Broker. The Broker then gives out various cards that look like this, depending on your ticket.”

Jeb took out two heavy-duty cards from his right pants pocket. One had an emerald and the other had a jester’s cap.

“There are various rules in place for what each card is for, which you’ll figure out later, but these can be used as wagers or just collected as you see fit. There are some lair-wide bets though depending on his activities, so it has a feel of a tournament at times.”

“Yes yes, but what’s the point? What’s the prize or why should I even bother?”

“You may have noticed, but a number of us get dragged along on various projects yes? Depending on the cards you have, you can either take up a particular role or force it on someone else. For example, the card with a jester’s cap, if you and I were in a group, we would compare cards and if I have more jester caps than you, I can pick you to play the fool for whatever endeavor we’re on. If you ended up with the rapier card and had more than anyone else, you could play the foil to all his comments. Naturally, some collect certain cards to always play a particular role, like Luke and Jean with the jester’s cap, Scarlet and the rapier. I could go on for a while but like I said, you’ll figure it out and The Broker can help you with the rules.”

“Okay, but still, why?”

“Hon, it’s for fun,” says a female golem who was just leaving the Rec Room. “Two big things with it, the first being it’s kept an absolute secret from him, and playing a game under his nose is frightfully entertaining for some of us. Second, life after a decade down here gets extraordinarily mundane, let alone a century or more like some of these old codgers.”

At this a chorus of golems shouting, “Hey!” reverberates briefly around the room.

After this Margarette decided that she may as well start to get to know her new companions, and thus passed the week socializing and trying to figure out what to do to keep busy. It was like this that Margarette ended up meeting Scarlet one particular morning as Margarette was getting to know the Duke of an old empire in the cafeteria.

“Calling musicians of any caliber or capacity! No experience needed! Long term project of fun and torture looking to organize rotating shifts of musical mayhem!”

“Ah,” says the former Duke, “I was wondering where Scarlet disappeared off to this last week. Come to think of it, it was a day or two after you had arrived from what you were saying.”

“She must be somewhat famous around here. You aren’t the first person I’ve heard that has said something about her,” Margarette replies.

“Well, she is, or was, a very accomplished musician and has become notorious around here for collecting the rapiers and gemstones. Like Fleur and Sebastian, she seems to attract his attention whenever he has a project needing music.”

“Also,” Margarette says, nodding, “You guys do torture around here? I can’t say I’m surprised based on the rumors but the atmosphere seems… off.”

“Oh, if Scarlet is saying there’s torture involved I’m sure there is, just not as sure as to if it’s the musicians or someone else being tortured, In any case young lady, I should head out and meet some colleagues, so feel free to ask her yourself. It may be a good time to earn yourself some credits.”

The former Duke waves as he leaves for the lab and Margarette turns to talk to Scarlet. Three others had already come forward to ask some details in the meantime.

“Really really,” Scarlet was saying as Margarette approached. “Bill was going through the recordings for the last couple days at a fast clip and our little dragon was quite enraged.”

“Wait, sorry, I’m new but did you just say dragon?” Margarette interjects. “As in a real dragon not just a euphemism?”

“Oh, I’ve heard there was someone new around here,” Scarlet replies. “First, as I’m sure you’ve gotten used to, what’s your name and how did you die?”

“Ah yes, sorry I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Margarette and it was by dragon breath, so you caught my attention.”

“Oh~?” Scarlet says, sounding as if she was narrowing her eyes. “This may be a bit interesting for all of us then, and a few around here have a grudge against this particular dragon. Then you should know of Brinlog, yes?”

Margarette freezes and then begins to haltingly speak, “Yes… but… how…no…why… I though Marvin said…”

One of the other golems nods and says, “Ah, still a bit fresh then. We’ll meet up in the music hall in a couple hours Scarlet.”

“Go ahead and sit Margarette,” Scarlet says, waving the others off. “The short of it is yes the Hero killed Brinlog in the end, but due to some… peculiarities I’m not quite sure of, the Hero ended up trading Brinlog’s carcass to the Boss and Brinlog’s soul happened to have been acquired in the process. Unfortunately we can’t slowly roast souls over a fire at this point, so we’ve settled on just mentally breaking him before he gets a new body.”

“Wait,” jumps in Margarette in a panic, “New body? So he’ll be like one of us eventually?”

“No, unfortunately this world is not that kind. The particular kind of dragon Brinlog was, is, whatever, can never actually die unless their soul is outright destroyed. That’s the fuzzy bit on my end, but what I do know is we want to set a record for the longest consecutive time to ever torture anything, so the rest of us have decided to aim for a hundred years. ‘That should be short enough that a pair of ancient dragons would overlook in this case,’ is what the Boss said.”

“This… This is the strangest place I’ve heard of, let alone visited or lived. Casually talking about torturing anything, even if it is evil, for a hundred years and making it believable.”

“You’ll get used to it after a decade or three,” Scarlet says. “That being said, do take your time with it. If you ever feel like signing up, we’re planning on meeting up on left hexagon days after The Broker closes, at the music hall. You have been told about the time keeping around here right? With the dots and the lights?”

“Yes, but hexagon days? Is that what the extra crystals off to the side of the time are for? I noticed they were always shining but couldn’t figure out a reason over the last few days after I noticed.”

“So you know about the time, which makes the days easier. We were told the center crystal is supposed to be a rest day, and then it starts over from the top, then downwards left then right, left then right, bottom, and then repeats. Why it’s a set of seven we never figured out but it may have something to do with lunar cycling from what the astronomers among us say. At the end of it all though we just decided to call the days by where they are on the hexagon. Also, if the colors change from blue with yellow to red with blue, he is somewhere in the lair. You were speaking with Duke Selim earlier, right? He was the one who decided to add that function when they were last updated.”

“What is it they actually do in R&D anyway?” Margarette asks. “The few I’ve seen who are out and about always talk about this or that project but never anything, how to put it….”

“Sensible? That’s why most of them stay in R&D. I’ve been told there are three groups there, the purists, the traditionalists, and the insane. Or, solely magic, magic with something physical when needed, or physical phenomenon.”

“The insane? What is that about?”

“You know about flight magic yes? How would you be able to fly without flight magic? Would a dragon be able to fly without flight magic? Do small animals like birds even need flight magic? Anyway, on top of that every century or two, I’m told, the Boss takes a number of failed projects and opens up an ‘ancient ruins’ somewhere on the continent and places them there.”

“What…”

“Really really. I remember I was so angry when I found out the family heirloom we have ended up being a side project. It was stupidly powerful too! A side project that someone felt was fine letting loose upon the world!”

“That has to be rare right? There has to be plenty of legitimate artifacts from old dynasties, right?” Margarette says, looking for some hope.

Scarlet just sighs lightly while patting Margarett on her shoulder, and says, “You’re still a minion in training, so what you should be focusing on right now is torture and revenge.”

“You’re just dodging the question!”

“Let’s talk after you’ve thought on the subject of Brinlog~,” Scarlet says while walking off in search of more help. “We’ll have someone waiting with more details if you want in.”