Right before the exit though, there was a pressure in front of the door wich when Gerard stepped on, sealed off the way to the entrance again, but it looked like the front door was shut anyway. There was no trace off the girl anymore either. She seemed to have gone deeper into the dungeon of course. Surely though, this would lead to an exit…Right? Going deeper into it she seemed puzzled as to how to open another obstacle this time using a simple door mechanism to open it. She was still holding the piece of treasure like a stuffed animal too and didnt seem to notice Gerard's presence. If he went deeper that is…

"….For the love of-" Gerard hissed as once again, his path was obstructed. Each time it happened didn't make it any less infuriating. It was almost as if there was an invisible, intangible force hell-bent on delaying him as long as humanly possible. Stamping his foot in frustration he turned on his heel back to where he had been. It was always like this. The more of a hurry he was in, the more roadblocks and stalling he was presented with. There weren't any holes large enough for a person his size to pass through that led to the outside, so forward he went. By now he had considered the ancients to be cruel sadists who delighted in the anger and irritation of their victims, dangling the possibility of escape just out of their reach to prolong the suffering. Well he wasn't going to have any of it. He was getting out as quickly as possible, and nothing–not even an addle-brained fool or obtuse riddles would stand in his way.

Turning around a corner he saw the girl idling before a mechanism clutching her prize. "Well what now?" He complained, asking the question more as a rhetorical one than out of genuine concern. It was the door, wasn't it? He could tell, as if it weren't she would've been running along her merry way.

In fact, she wasnt really stuck at all. It just seemed that she has halted all of her mental processes and just kind of crashed mentally… She just stood there making spit bubbles with her mouth for a solid five minutes before she finally 'rebooted' her brain. She blinked once and seemingly tried to remember what she was doing. Shortly after she noticed the bard next to her again. "This puzzle is too hard! I cant figure it out!"

He stared at the 'puzzle', then stared at her, then stared at the door again. Letting out an aggravated sigh, he went to work. It was a simple door mechanism, and he did the routine check for any traps around it before doing anything. The door had a large set of disks set into its surface with grooves and patterns carved into each one. The disks were concentric, so he assumed they needed to be lined up correctly. After fiddling with the positioning for fifteen minutes, he completed the pattern and the door rumbled before opening. That wasn't too hard. The fact certain rings moved others at the same time made it more time-consuming, but it was more straightforward than the altar code. Gerard was sincerely hoping that the ancients had built an alternative exit that would lead directly out after this gauntlet of tricks and traps was over. Again, if he saw an opening that led to the outside he would check if he could fit himself through to jump ship and get back to approaching Mamlak.

Right behind the door there was an extremely deep pit, wich also seemed to be the only way to advance into the ruins. There was mist at the bottom and possibly there were spikes on the bottom or something lethal like that. And Gerard wasnt getting a break either because behind him a loud sis could be heard and upon turning around, all the tiles in the room were lifted upward and the taps ejected further out of the wall, ready to pour out water faster in larger amounts. It was obvious what would happen if they made a wrong move and upon looking down there were holes in the wall that could let them climb down but above them there was another large opening that dripped more water down. Presumably some of the climbing holes would be rigged as well. The whole path ahead was made to flush intruders down into the hole. If Gerard knew anything about what Vicyeth was like with her tendencies to cause trouble from any angle he would certainly at least look in her direction to make sure she's not about to activate a pressure plate, and sure enough, her heavy fish like tail was laying on one…

"Oh great. A bottomless abyss. What next, a boulder dropping down from the top of a hallway poised to crush intruders flat?" Gerard griped, hearing the water again. It was like climbing a rock wall, except if you did the wrong thing you'd have no chances left to retry again. Tired of having to pull both of their intellectual weight, he decided it was her turn to actually do something useful. Looking at Vicyeth, he motioned with his hand at the obstacle. "Well, why don't you go on ahead first? Knowing you, you're probably itching to have a stab at it so why not?" For survivability's sake, only one of them should try going across at any given time. Especially when she had as much discretion as a rock. And he wasn't going in first, that was for sure. Yes, have her set off all the traps and then make his way through after they revealed themselves. It was the only thing that would work with Miss Eager Beaver over there.

"Really?! You want me to help?! YAAAY Let me get a run up first and ill jump!" Of course she had to get a run up behind them in a room that after the doors were opened was filled with pressure plates and as soon as she stepped on one, the aforementioned further ejected water faucets began streaming water fast. For some reason she seemingly changed her mind and began swimming stream upwards like a salmon and did a pretty good job at it, luckily for Gerard, it would soon become clear what had to happen as the water from above the pit became crashing down as well and the impact of the water could be heard on the bottom on the pit, perhaps filling it up would make it safe to jump…

Listening carefully to the sounds in the room, Gerard got an idea. There was no mistaking the splash of water hitting ground, which meant there was no drainage in the pit. And seeing that there was no discernible way to tell how not to trip off the traps, then they would have to simply keep triggering them until they ran out of water or the pit was filled. And when the word 'they' was used, he mean Vicyeth. Standing in the relative safety of the area behind the pitfall, he shouted to the healer. "Yes, keep up whatever you're doing! Maybe try going back and forth a few more times on them to make it pour faster!" He wasn't a person who complimented others without reason, and his reason being as a motivator in getting the foolish girl to actually do something which wouldn't get them killed. She was simple-minded, but meant well–which made it easier to convince her to comply if she believed it was helping. Keeping an eye on the fish-girl and the sound of the water entering the pitfall, he waited until the pit was now an unnaturally deep pool with spikes far at the bottom. 

Wonderful, now they could just bypass the need to climb entirely and swim across. Or if they chose to take on the challenge, at least they wouldn't be falling to their death. He called to the girl to let her know that she could stop turning the water on. "Alright, that's enough! Get back over here and cross!" He shouted.

She was swimming upstream from the water and wasnt sure on what to do or how to repeat what she did, she just keps swimming circles and tapped the pressure plates on the ground, increasing the amount of water pouring down from the room. The pit soon filled up with water and instead of swimming, she began flopping on the ground like a fish on the dry. The water ran out on it's own and she stayed on the ground for a few minutes, resuming her flopping. Soon enough though she got up and leaned over the ledge, looking down nervously. As if the rampant stupidity wasnt bad enough, she also apeared to be afraid of heights… "Huuhhh I dont want to jump… Im scared…."

Oh so now she was scared. She had no fear of being impaled by darts or skewered by spikes, but when it came to jumping down into a water-filled pit she was scared? Either way her antics had helped to reduce the danger of being flushed downwards, so he visually charted out the shortest route of handholds on the wall and took the jump. Grabbing onto the niches acting as places to hang from, he swung over using his momentum to reach the next nearest one. He then waited for a few seconds, and when nothing happened he kept going. Landing onto one he felt the handhold move slightly and switched back as water gushed forth from a spout above where he had just been. Thankfully instead of washing him away, it only served to fill the pit even more. Several minutes later, he was on the other side. He waved his arm signalling for Vicyeth to now cross. He didn't expect her to have paid attention to his progress across the climbing wall, much less remember which ones didn't cause water to start pouring. Well at least she'd just fall into the water and be forced to spend more time coming back up.