Cosy code-breakers

     Thanks in part to our floor layouts we had already drawn, but mostly due to the lack of other stairways or entrances, we made our way back onto the same floor THEROS had been laying out. After a few minutes of wandering on this floor, we eventually found him close to the staircase we had found before that led up and towards the portal. He seemed a little surprised to see us at first, assuming we had probably finished and therefore done a rushed job of it, but then he saw we were slightly out of breath and a look of concern crossed his face.

"What? What is it? Have you found something? Is HoN Co. here?!?!"

I was still out of breath showing how unfit I really was, and Amie explained to THEROS what we had found. He seemed confused at first, as though he thought we were making it up until he heard the part about the fountain we found was scrawled on with strange symbols.

"Take me to it. I must see this! It could help us with the Eyes of Ender!"

Catching a glimpse at THEROS's map before turning to head back down, I was relieved he hadn't asked to see ours. His was detailed in ways we couldn't even have thought of, but then again he was the trained cartographer. Maybe he had noticed and didn't care... It didn't matter, there were more important matters to attend to. We followed the exact path we had come back along to get back to where we had found the first chamber, and he too seemed surprised by the central column with a waterfall. He took a moment or two to examine the place before allowing us to continue through to the next room via the stairs, which was almost identical, albeit for the four chests. When we entered however, we noticed something odd about them; they were all closed now, and the entrance leading through to the chamber with the fountain in it had no closed... That wasn't immediately the issue at hand at the moment, as THEROS seemed intrigued by the presence of the incredibly old chests.

"Is there anything in them? Books, writings, objects, anything?"

"No unfortunately, nothing like that. But it's not the contents of the chests that attracted our attention. Syeonyx noticed that there's a filament wire running the length of each from the lid to the floor."

"A filament wire...? Like it's attached to a trap?"

"Well that's what we thought initially as well, but it seems it was actually a hidden passage. Each of these chests has the same wire mechanism, and it's activated when the lid is opened. Open all four and a secret entrance appears leading to the fountain. Although they were all open when we left here... Weren't they...?"

I nodded, and went over to one of the chests and opened it. Despite knowing and understanding the mechanism enclosed within, I still flinched as I saw the wire extend, pulling on an unknown weight beneath the chest. I then repeated this action for the remaining three, whilst Amie and THEROS watched. Like before nothing happened at first, and then the horrid, spine-tingling grating sound of stone on stone was heard behind me. Turning in that direction, I watched as a large vertical chunk of stones shifted backwards, paused and then shrank into a small niche in the wall, exposing the entrance to the fountain beyond.

"My god... This is incredible!"

"It gets better. Through there is the fountain with the symbols on it. Nothing we've ever seen before, but that just makes it more exciting!"

With THEROS in the lead, we followed him through to the next chamber and directed him to the side of the fountain where the symbols were visible. He went up close to them and ran his finger along the symbols, tracing them individually before pulling back, with a look of shock on his face. On the back of the map he had been drawing, he copied the symbols down exactly how they appeared on the fountain.

"We're going to have to leave the mapping of this place to another day. We need to tell UOPETA and the others about this! This could be one of the greatest finds of our time! And not only that, but there could be lots more secret areas and chambers hidden throughout this place! Who knows how much is hiding from us!"

THEROS turned and ran from the chamber, with Amie and me following quickly behind. He didn't stop running, even when he got back to the entrance to the building, and continued all the way through the obsidian tunnel. We followed all the way along the tunnel I had excavated, back up to the wooden shack. It looked like we had found something that was definitely of interest to someone. I wonder if AMPHIS could make anything of the symbols...

     Everyone now knows about the strange symbols marked onto the fountain in the Ender building; after telling UOPETA, he suggested that we go up to the base and inform the others. He would remain at the shack and continue waiting for SERVERE to ensure we don't miss him, whilst the rest of us carried on to the base. COLUS was intrigued to understand more, and as well as taking the photo I took of the symbols, he's sent AMPHIS down to investigate further with THEROS. Meanwhile I'm looking over the symbols in the lab with Amie and OROTHO. THEROS left his map with us where he had scrawled them onto the back of, allowing us to work on them ourselves. From the few symbols we had found, it was possible we could figure out what they mean, or what the rest could mean. I had already said they seem to similar to the way our alphabet operates, especially as there were a few duplicate symbols.

"But how do we know if it's based on a similar system, or something more complex... A single symbol could signify a single letter, word or an entire phrase!"

Well that was definitely possible as well, but it was better to work from a basic stance and work up rather than the other way around. There was less chance of error working that way. There were likely to be various complex methods if the easier ones didn't come to anything. For now we took each symbol as an individual letter. Even if that was actually the case, I doubted they would translate symbol for symbol exactly as our alphabet... That would suggest there are twenty six symbols... We could only see ten unique symbols, which could suggest there were another sixteen to find, or maybe even more! For simplicities sake, we assumed that there was a symbol for each respective letter of our alphabet. Remembering the basics, repeated letters were likely to letters used most commonly, such as E, A, T and S. But none of these letters seemed to work when putting them into the repeated symbol places. We worked on it for a few hours, not getting anywhere. We even went to the extent of trying every letter combination possible, but after not getting anything that made sense after the letter F, we took a step back and considered the other options.

"The problem with the current system is that we're searching for letter combinations that make up words that we recognise... I can guarantee that this wouldn't be the case... Maybe we need to consider the length of words or something else..."

A thought had occurred to me some time ago, but I had dismissed it as highly unlikely. But thinking back over it, it was better than what we had got so far. The number of symbols on the top line - therefore making up a single word, we had deduced - was the same as the English equivalent of the object we had found them on. F O U N T A I N... That would certainly fit as the fourth and last symbol were identical.

"That's a point... And look, it's used again in the last bit... The symbol for T is repeated as well as the O... Maybe you're on to something..."

COLUS, who had been watching us for some time now, seemed to think it was necessary for us rest, as we had been awake and working for some time. We argued that we felt fine, but he felt happier if we went for an early night... Seeing that he wasn't likely to take no for an answer, I made a mental note of the symbols and letters, and went off to my room. Amie followed me, but instead of heading off to hers, she joined me in mine.

"If we continue working on this now we can have it decrypted by morning! Easily!"

I was happy with that. More than happy actually. Sitting on my bed beside Chiron, I took out a few sheets of paper that were lying around and quickly noted the symbols down before I forgot them. I could see Amie was very enthusiastic about the symbols and their possible weight they could carry in helping us, but I was under the assumption there was an ulterior motive to her being here in my room...

Syeonyx signing off