Welcome to Gaia! ::

They arrived on the top level of the labyrinth, surrounded by a garden of glowing blue flowers and bathed in sunlight that filtered through the lake above their heads. "Seasons on Mercury tend to be dramatic," she said, dropping Mont Blanc's hand and releasing her hold on Mendel's collar. He wandered away, body language relaxed, and went to go sniff a spray of hyacinths. "Or... days and nights, anyway. It's a bit reversed. Orbits are weird."

"You'll be safe as long as you're with me," she said, waving for him to follow her, "but we should go down to level seven and get you keyed into the security system." Just in case. She was already the girl with the carnivorous wonder - but she was doing her best to put that behind her.

Leaning against the elevator call button, Mistral gave the other squire an expectant look. "So, what do you think?" she asked. "I haven't done a great deal of traveling, but my impression so far is that Mercury tends to be a little bit heavy on the obvious technology. I'm not sure if everywhere else is less advanced, or just more subtle. The Silver Millennium was a galaxy-spanning empire, after all. It had to be at least a little bit Star Wars."

The elevator slid open. "After you."

The elevator moved slowly, and its cables groaned but not in a particularly concerning way. "Since you asked so nicely," she said, smiling gently at him. Mistral wasn't going to agonize over Mont Blanc's stuttering or the cause thereof - maybe he was just a naturally nervous person. He hadn't seemed familiar with her history amongst the knights, and she would wait. "Yes. We can come back up once we finish in the lab, and I'll give you some fresh cuttings. Lucky girl - or boy. I don't judge."

The elevator rumbled to a stop. "Keep close to my side," instructed Mistral as they stepped off. "The scientists here were... prolific when it came to setting traps. Chaos was invading. They wanted to keep people away from their research... As far as I can tell, though, the labyrinth was never breached. Just buried and forgotten about."

She showed him the most direct route to the security room. The security pilar had retracted at some point, tucked away by whatever magic kept her wonder running. Mistral brushed her hand over the wall panel emblazoned with her wonder's winged Mercury sigil, and the console rose out of the floor.

"Put your hand over the palm-print," she instructed. "That will give you clearance to access the lower floors of the labyrinth. Careful, though. Um. It bites. Runs the clearances off blood. DNA and magic."

There was a pneumatic his, and a needle plunged into the palm of Mont Blanc's hand. It retracted slowly. A hologram, slightly glitched, wearing the regalia of a knight of Mistral, her dark hair unbound and hanging to mid-back, appeared. "Squire of Saturn," it said, in its dead creator's voice. "Welcome to the halls of Mistral."

"My mother," said Mistral, a pang of sadness catching in her throat. "An echo. Not the genuine article. Thank you, Raziele. You're dismissed."

The hologram blinked out. The security pilar retracted into the floor.

"Let's go back to the elevator," Mistral said brightly, forcing away thoughts of how things might have been if her own wonder were like Babylon, and she'd had an ancestor to guide her. I wouldn't be Asimov. I wouldn't be me. "I use the deepest lab. It's the best stocked, and I have the most memories there - Mendel, don't stand so close. You'll trip me."

Her dog, who'd been circling her legs, fell into position slightly to her rear and to her left. Mistral lead the way back to the elevator, sticking to the same path they'd taken before. "Too many ghosts," she said quietly. "And I can't go to six at all."

She hit the call button, and the doors slid neatly open. "There was a... a massacre here," Mistral said quietly, following Mont Blanc into the elevator. "Graft versus host. I brought a team of knights in to help me find things in the labyrinth. I'm fragile - I can't walk for that long, or run, or climb - but they could. The labyrinth thought they were invaders. I couldn't have known, but - I also should have. I was just a page. I didn't know what this place was capable of. Most Wonders can't kill you on a lark."

The elevator moved just as slowly as before, and Mistral leaned slightly against the wall in the way people leaned when they were trying to not let on that they were tired. "Thank you for the offer," she said. It was tempting to take him up on it. Her wonder would pose him no danger now that he was keyed into the security system, and it would be difficult to get others to come back here any time soon. "That's very generous. I'll keep you in mind."

The elevator doors slid open, revealing the lab beyond. Mistral had been doing her best to cart all her trash back to earth, but this part of her wonder was clearly lived-in. There was a kettle on one of the benches, resting on a hotplate that was clearly of ancient Mercurean design. Another bench had been taken over as a makeshift pantry - Mistral appeared to eat a lot of cereal, and her dog, a lot of kibble.

"Go ahead and pull the blueprints up," she told Mont Blanc, indicating a table not currently pulling double-duty. "I'll get the materials we need."

She walked away, headed for the cabinets at the far end of the room.

Her dog, apparently off high alert now that they were "home," took the opportunity to circle Mont Blanc's legs, sniffing frenetically at his pants and shoes.

"You can pet him now," called Mistral as she pulled things out of the cabinets. She'd seen the looks the other squire had been giving Mendel. "I mean, he's a service dog, so thank you for waiting? But now's a good time."