They step through the six channels, and then Rokat instructs Pona to head another four miles out of the village and see where the edge of the range is, but the Aestrix misses a bit of their conversation before she tunes back in.

"... but don't go too far, now," Rokat admonishes her.

"I know where the boundaries are! I'm not seven," Pona protests. The cadence of her voice suggests that she's running again, her breaths coming between words. "Anyway, I'll check in every 500 paces."

"Shields are definitely useful," Kose agrees. "Actually, that gives me an idea! If you're going to want to make your magic artifacts as durable as possible, you could set up testing them like we just did as a challenge for adventurers. It would let you test shields and refine your designs, while also providing a non-harmful physical challenge."

"It's just an idea, though," she continues. "It's ultimately up to you."

"Oo! Yeah, that does sound good! Much easier than coming up with another puzzle. I should carve out a little testing area for them, then..." She will get to doing that, because doing that explains why she is not being talkative while there is a conversation she is attempting to listen in on going on. Boundaries? Why are there boundaries?? That sounds like valuable information about the fabled ~outside~ that she knows so little about.

Unfortunately for her, they really are just testing the limits of the communication pendants. Or perhaps fortunately, because she hasn't set up any kind of speech-to-text system, and she suspects she will be very quickly overwhelmed if there's too much talking at once. This was, probably, a good test for her system as well. There's still time to set things up before anyone goes saying anything important on these things of hers.

She builds her testing chamber with dual purposes in mind; first is the obvious, and second is a place to fit her planned sensory accommodation. So far her architecture has been tall and delicate, but the room at the bottom of the set of stairs leading down and away from the rest of the dungeon is sturdy and squat. It does not break into being a sad box, because she has standards, but it's definitely not the striking gothic architecture from before. Just a very sturdy domed and square room, with visible and only mildly decorative support columns. This is so that people can try to break things inside without causing too much mayhem, but also so that it can support a second, secret room above. That'll be where she has her speech-to-text system, once she figures out how to pull it off.

Before she works on it properly, though, she has some general dungeon chores to take care of. Kose gets her spare ring of sustenance (this being what it clearly is) and the planter in her room gets a little sun lamp that is very pointedly enchanted to give off sunlight, thank you. The next set of communication pendants, already made and untouched by the last set of adventurers, get the titanium in them swapped for the titanium-platinum alloy that worked so well for holding the magic of the glasses. She has a vague hope that this will keep the magic from fraying for longer, but the fundamental structure of the concepts is exactly the same. It's just hopefully on a material better suited to hold it for longer periods of time. While she's doing chores, she neatens up the ring puzzle, adding color and making it lighter and easier to turn. The strength element is kind of silly, okay, she wants little old ladies to be able to wander in here and get something to make their wells safe all on their own, thank you, even if it means extracting less dungeon bullshit per capita.

From there, she adds a couple of elements to her growing library, from elements she thought of that might perhaps become relevant to her interests. Bismuth, tungsten, lithium, and antimony are the ones she can definitely recall being real actual elements that really exist, and from which she can probably actually build stuff out of. She could make more dangerous elements like sulfur, magnesium, phosphorus and mercury, but she'll pass, actually. No war crimes, thank you. She might make lead at some point, it's genuinely a useful material, but doesn't waste budget on it when she knows she'll flinch away from ever using it for fear of giving people lead poisoning. From there she then has herself an extended experimentation session trying to make things she remembers that may or may not actually exist. This gets her iridium and cobalt and palladium, but not much else. Really, that was better than she was expecting, she's glad she had this idea. Pity that she cannot actually bring all of the various Minecraft metals and alloys to reality, she could have done some great things with enderium, but yes, yes, fair enough. Following the almighty periodic table of elements, and all that.

With this all done, she then gets to work on that speech-to-text enchantment. It's going to be a bit of a project, but if she can stupidly program a puzzle to solve itself, she thinks she can absolutely pull off impressing the concept of written language. Maybe even before someone says anything notable on the communication channels! Wouldn't that be nice.

The next thing to interrupt her experimentation is a visit from Tanth. He is nervously fingering the hilt of his sword, and appears to be alone.

He pauses just inside the dungeon, and clears his throat.

"Ah, Aestrix? Do you have a moment to talk?" he asks.

She has not, at any point, told him her name.

“… yes?” she asks anyway, still aiming for the picture of innocence even as she’s on high alert. “Is something wrong?”

"No, no, not at all."

He steps a bit further into the dungeon, and then stops. He looks at the architecture, for lack of a better place to direct his gaze.

"We just, uh, that is to say ... the other villagers and I haven't been entirely honest," he explains. "And we talked about it, and we want to come clean. Because you don't ... that is, you don't really act like other dungeons."

Kose leans on the doorway to the core room with her arms crossed, watching him with a neutral expression.

"I'm clearly far superior in both aesthetics and function?" she teases, lightly. In her experience, a little playful humor helps break the tension. So long as it’s backed up by sincerity and gentleness, which is the tone that follows. "It's okay. I understand that dungeons are, uh. Really extremely scary? You're just trying to stay safe."

His shoulders droop a little, in relief.

"Yeah, that's exactly it," he agrees. "Dungeons ... they're the source of magic. But that also means that within their domains, they can do pretty much anything."

He moistens his lips.

"So, uh, with most dungeons we really can't treat them as more than opponents. But you're not ... acting like you want what most dungeons want from us. And we -- that is, the whole village -- talked about it, and we thought maybe this time could be different. And we agreed that if you were going to help us, with the restoring old magic items and all that, we should start off on the right foot."

He takes a deep breath.

"Kose isn't really a fairy," he blurts, and then tenses up like he's expecting the pretty gothic arches to come down on him.

!! Aww!! Awww they're really actually trusting her!

"I know," she says, still in that gentle reassuring tone of voice. Fluffy and nonthreatening and not at all surprised by this revelation that is supposed to be massive, that's her. "Honestly, I'm glad you have a system to keep baby dungeons from going mad with power or something. It's much safer this way, isn't it?"

He is struck dumb for a moment.

"W-what? What do you mean you know?" he replies.

"Tanth you enormous idiot!" Kose says, striding down the hallway towards him.

"Do you have any idea how many times you've almost blown my cover this time? Well, I say almost. Things go very slightly differently, and you loose all your hard-earned caution?"

She reaches him and pokes him in the arm, releasing a small spark of electricity.

"Ow!" he objects.

"... yeah, that's probably fair," he continues after a moment. "When did you figure it out?" he asks Aestrix.

"I first had an inkling something was up with the pendant that warms when a dungeon is paying attention to the holder," she says, a little amused. "I very nearly offered to make you another, you know. From there it was just a matter of paying attention."

Kose raises an eyebrow. "That early? Damn. And it's not exactly something I can improve on, given the givens."

"Well, if you already knew, then it's probably a good thing we didn't try to drag it out."

Tanth shakes his head.

"Anyways, I was sent to deliver the message because I was most likely to get out alright if you took it badly," he continues. "But I'm not exactly good with diplomacy, as Kose so delicately pointed out. Since you seem to be taking it well, would it be alright if I went to fetch some of the others? We're hoping to work out a fair deal that can get us both what we want with, uh, fewer monsters and deadly traps than usual."

He seems vaguely lost at the idea of not having to deal with monsters and deadly traps.

"Yeah, of course. Go right ahead." Then, to Kose: "Uh, best advice I can offer for a hypothetical next dungeon is to pick the light ring or something else very innocent to show instead of the pendant? But that's very nitpicky, and I doubt I'd have done any better. ... If we've stopped lying to each other, can I put protections around my core now, I feel a little like I'm hosting while stark naked."

Kose emits a surprised laugh.

"That is ... gosh. I have so many questions about what the experience of being a dungeon is like," she responds.

She fishes the amulet out, and holds it out for inspection.

"Unfortunately, this particular artifact requires a little bit of attention from a given dungeon before it can 'recognize' them. If I don't work in showing it off early, it does me little good."

"Oh I see, so it wouldn't work unless you showed me. Damn, that is a problem. Hmmm, maybe I can... wait, wait, no. Proverbial clothes first before I fall back in to magical item crafting." She brings up the tube of core protection, then carefully adds in some kinetic-dampening shielding with little bits of invar. "Anyway, yes, let me see if I can do better..."

"Why do you ... have a nudity taboo?" she asks. "Since you don't have, you know, nudity."

She walks back towards the core room, but just leans on the doorframe instead of going in.

"Actually, scratch that. Why do you know anything? We've worked out that new dungeons show up with a ... basic set of assumptions about how the world works. And that 'dungeon fairies' often fit into those assumptions, even though they don't really exist. But we have no idea why. And I can't normally just ask, since I have to project an aura of competence to stay on top of things."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I was alive, as an actual human, before this. I don't... think that's true of all dungeons, but. That's why I'm so aggressively nonstandard. I have a truly astonishing grab bag of strange knowledge. I... might have trained for this?? I'm not sure. That's more plausible than actually just having a bunch of bizarre architectural and geological knowledge. Definitely volunteered to be a dungeon, though. For a while I kind of suspected the bloodstain on my floor was my own, but then I keep... having knowledge you don't seem to, so."

"... huh."

She absentmindedly spins one of her rings.

"That is ... bizarre."

Tanth, Rokat, and Perkre interrupt their brief conversation by stepping into her corridor. Timrat follows behind with a scroll tucked under one arm, and a charcoal stick in his other hand.

"Hello!" Perkre calls. He sets down a chair he was carrying for Rokat, who sinks into it gratefully.