Ancient Trials, Ancient Sins

Dumb
The descent went slow and in silence, the atmosphere felt off but it may have just been due to effectively walking in circles for quite a while which likely would've made any 'normal' individual lose any sense of direction or time. However, eventually, somewhere around fifteen to twenty minutes later when trying to reach fo rthe next step all they met by was an even floor, a couple steps more forward and the walls disappeared in the darkness to the sides and their guide stood still for a moment listening. Fortunately for the pair in theshuttle, the dice did not make any noise due to their texture.

What they could hear in the darkness was... clicking, two kinds of it, one of some hard and sharp tipping against the solid floor, almost like robotic legs, the other more organic, almost like a chitter.
As their eyes adapted to the very dim luminosity in they could see massive shadows in the dark. The Caravan leader nodded. Then turned towards them, breaking the silence, although only barely.
"We will be heading another floor down, don't make any hasty movements, don't make any loud sounds."
He looked off into the darkness a couple moments longer then nodded again.
"Come."
As they passed about the midway point of the room, they saw smaller shadows moving about in the dark, illuminated by similar dim red lights, some of them humanoid from which they concluded they were the other caravan members which descended earlier, the seemed to be tending and herding even smaller shadows, moving between the legs of the massive ones. However the most interesting thing of the whole scenery was likely the revelation of the larger shadows.
What they saw was a large, bulbous orb of flesh hanging from a midsection from which thin, stilted legs extended, the exact number of which they could not determine. Atop of it, high above them, sat a familiar looking structure, it was the trees they had seen outside of the settlement.

Hal paused for a brief moment, holding his lantern up in the air to get a better view, looking at it then pulling one of the dried leaves out of his pocket, his gaze wandering between the two, simply noting "I see." in the end, continuing to follow their guide.
Reaching the other side of the room, they descended another set of stairs, this time considerably shorter and turned around to another set, eventually ending up another room, not quite as high as the former one, but equally as expansive, they couldn't see the other ends of the room though what they could see that even from the point where they were standing there were murals on the wall depicting various sensible or less senible scenes from what was presumably the history of the planet.
It was here their guide stopped and sat down on the staircase.
"We are here, take a look around, I will tell you when we leave."

Dumb
Their guide frowned at them in the darkness, obviously suspicious of the question, though answered nonetheless.
"Usually I'd say that's none of your business, but you will find it anyways once you start going around the room. It's on the opposite side of the stairs."
He shook his head.
"Not like you're going to be to open it anyways but remember, no touching the gate."
He seemed to be rather confident in his assumption.
As he spoke the last words, Hal turned away and began walking along the wall, apparently inspecting the murals, the dim light of his lantern slowly getting smaller in the darkness as he moved further away.

In the meanwhile the dice went unnoticed, or if they had indeed been noticed the guide showed no reaction to them, going along the walls, they came to the conclusion, that the room was apparently octagonal and at that several dozen metres across, even larger than the room above them, a number of pillars were in the center of the room, forming another octagon, though whether they were load-bearing or merely decorational remained a mystery.

Dumb
As Mainframe approached gate, what she found was... curious.
Where one would have expected some monolithic doorframe what she found was an almost circular plate in the wall. there were no visible slits in it indicating to where or how it would be opening but it was clearly spearate from teh surrounding walls.
On the surrounding walls, stylised figures were depicted, some kneeling, their heads to the ground, others the hands raised up as if in praise or awe. On the gate itself, was a large, vertical stylised eye. Lines going going out from it like a radiance, all ending at the eye itself, surrounding it seemed to be what almost looked like a sort of crown, marking the border between the walls and the gate itself.
There was something unsettling about it, less about the depiction itself but more about this particular instance of it, as if it had a presence in of itself.
Taking a closer look at the surroundings,s he could not find Hal, he was likely walking somewhere through the darkness, the light too dim to show his position, however one the walls themselves she noticed figures she hadn't seen before.
There some bent over in agony, some kneeling instead of their hands on their ground, seemed to be holding htier heads and writhing agony, some of those she presume praising, looking like they tried to gauge out their eyes in painstaking detail the carving in of themselves should not be able to depict at this scale.
It was as if the gate had suddenly grown ever so slightly larger before her.

Whatever it was that rested here, they had certainly found something.
The question was, whether this was what they were looking for.

Dumb
As she approached the guide, she could hear him, before she actually saw him, likely courtesy of all of the interference on this planet. His voice genuinely surprised for one.
"Oh, you're back already?"
As she came closer she saw him tilting his head, as if looking for something besides, or behind her, which was not actually there. Though even more strangely, the man was not wearing his hood anymore, showing what could be pale skin and what could be silvery white hair, he squinted, his pupils a dark colour, though any of this was hard to determine with certainty, given the light they had given her was not exactly optimal. From what she could tell he could be anywhere from 30 to 50 years old, if human standards applied to them at all.
"Where is your companion? Haven't seen him since he you walked off, are you trying to distract me?"
It was now that she noticed, Hal was in fact not here, nor had she met him on the other side, or seen him at any point between. Which likely meant he was still looking at the walls.

Dumb
The man frowned and looked at her for quite a while, then shook his head.
"Strangers are a rarity, be they from here or elsewhere.
Some die out in the ash, others try to steal from us. Some are worse than that."
He looked out into the dark, Hal had still not returned.
"If you let a stranger in your house are not wary of them?
The deserts are a dangerous place, more so than you have witnessed, one needs to be careful or their days will be few."
The expression that entered his face was hard to read, he likely hadn't told her everything, though nor would he tell her anything more from what it looked like. The silence dragged but eventually, there were steps in the dark, shortly followed by a dim red light, gently swaying up and down in the dark before Hal came into view from direction of the gate.
"I see you're back."
There was a moment of silence as the man listened to something without Hal answering, their companions expression seemed to have no significant change from when he left, though he did seem to be in thought, which wasn't the first time.
"We're going back to the surface, I take it you've seen what you wanted, we'll be leaving tomorrow morning once the sun rises."
Hal simply nodded and followed as the carvan leader stood up and headed upstairs.

Dumb
Hal took the note and opened, but not before giving Mainframe a somewhat confused look, he made no further comment on it other than nodding absently but at least he read it.
As they reached teh surface and mainframe fired her flare gun, both Hal and her guide almost jumped out of their shoes, followed a string of foreign curses from the guide as he stared up at the disappearing balls of light and then back at mainframe.
"By the stars, are you crazy?! What are you trying to do attract the Hazra to this place?!"
He stared out into the ash in the dim evening light, clearly uneasy and searching for any form of movement, luckily for them there was none, at least none they could see right now. He grumbled, almost growled then half turned back to the group.

"By the Untouchable, I swear if we'll have to deal with Hazra tomorrow at sunrise when we planned to depart I'm going to throw you out as bait..."
He left them standing where they were and headed to the other natives looking up at the lights with concern.

Night approached, soon it would be time to rest.

Dumb
There was a silent clack of metal on rock as the drone made contact, eachoing through the massive pitch blqack hall in the depths beneath them.
Following it came a long, drawn out silence, the echo returned, followed by an even longer drawn out silence...

...and nothing.

Whatever way there was to open the gate, it seems the drone would not do, before any further tests could proceed, the two above ground were approached, this time it was Hal.
"You wanted something?", he asked eyeing them with mild curiosity.
"It's not going to be another thing upsetting the inhabitants of this place is it?"