Ice World, Rain Noise, Timemakers
In the middle of an arctic icescape, the sun rises, glinting off the white sloping hills and cliffs of the environs. Jutting out of the ice, like the first sign of life in the early spring, is a clocktower. It is run by streams of melting ice that comes cascading down, sloshing through pipes and spilling over the gears. The tower seems to descend for miles, and the machinery gives off what would be sweltering heat if the ice wasn't cooling it.
As the intertwined stairwells descend lower, the water starts falling more and more, until there are almost full size waterfalls pelting down on not just the gears, but the walkways, the stairs, everything.
And there is steam, so much it seems to encase the tower into a cloud. Deeper still, with a stark contrast to the arctic no man's land above, the only light now is from a bizarre phosphorescent plant that seems to grow on the wet stone stairways like moss. When the stairs finally end, it's a pool three feet deep.
The path is still regulated by a maze of fenced walkways, and in the spaces between glow more of the strangest plants, not bothered by the almost too warm temperature of the water or the billowing steam. The room could be anywhere from the size of a football stadium or the size of a broom closet, there's really no way to tell, even trying to find out through walking to the walls is futile, because the steam obstructs the vision and confuses the sense of direction. It takes hours to return to the stairway that leads to the surface.
It would be inadvisable to return to the ice and chill above, now soaked through with albeit warm (but warm grows cold sooner or later) water. After sometime it is possible to internalize the turns and loops of the room, but it is knowledge slow to gain and quick to lose. There is another staircase that seems like the one back up, but it is only to the surface of the water and then another door. It is not locked.
There is no need for locks here.
A step through the door and the iron and stone give way to tiles. Water runs through the rounded passage, which also seems to function as one of the many pipes for the smallest amount of water seen for hours, and smaller pipes are seen coming from the sides every now and then. The tiles are carefully designed, a beautiful mosaic of cool light blues and bright, bombastic reds and everything in between. Some colors almost seem brand new they're so vibrant. The light comes from a line of electric prongs in an indentation covered with bubbly glass on the floor, the only artificial light source so far.
These halls seem to go on for hours until another door shows up. Inside, the atmosphere jolts into a new tone once more, not quite dark, but dim. It is a room where the walls are draped with six tapestries, woven with symbols and pictures that seem foreign and old, but they are far from worn, and are as bright as the tiles in the halls left behind. The water, for it seems there will always be water reaching into a room in this enigma of a timepiece, falls into a small moat-like carving in the floor to the pillars standing in between the tapestries. The other side of the door, the only visible exit in the room, is a mirror. Another is in the center of the room, and they reflect back on each other, creating the illusion of a tunnel. And yet...
The center mirror seems to ripple, seems almost permeable. At the touch it is the coldest thing felt in hours, it also gives way like a gel, into cold thin air above the landscape. It is a simple but dangerous act of climbing from one mirror frame to the next to progress, and with each step the world below blurs more and more, until finally there's nothing to see but a void in the reflection in the last mirror, ready to be stepped through to the other side...