Be Welcome to the Seat of the Council.

[Harry Dresden]

Harry took his guests back to the front gate of the Halls, pushing the door wider as they left and pulling the massive entrance shut with his staff. "Hold still, please. I'm not sure how much juice the Omnilium I used for the door has; I'm still new at using the stuff." Lamenting the fact that the doors were too massive to use a circle, he channeled will through his staff and felt out for the enchantment on the door. He found it in short order; it thrummed like a beacon of energy. The runes on the door lit up and began pulsing faintly, like a remote set to programming mode. In fact, that was almost exactly what was happening. "OK, one at a time, touch three runes on the door. Remember them. That's what lets you in. It's gonna be keyed to any more wards I lay on the door, too, so you won't become crunchy bacon. Your code only works for you; the spell recognizes a single person touching three runes, not anyone touching them."

While Proto Man and Samus set the door to recognize them, Harry walked down where the dirt was thicker and dragged a circle into the dirt. Sitting cross-legged, he decided to try out a little more of that summoning. He pictured a speaking stone, holding the image of the rock itself and a mental construction of the enchantments upon it in his mind. It took five minutes, by which time Proto Man and Samus had probably been waiting a while. He stood up with his new device; a small obsidian rock, carved with runes, in the rough size and shape of a cell phone, but with no keys. "I don't know if I'll be able to get in touch with either of you with this, but I'd rather have it in case I need it than not need it at all. Might be able to get a wizard on it somehow."

Proto Man nodded. "It might be able to work with my communicator, but I don't know. Let's go." Samus nodded her assent, and the trio walked out of the tunnels, Harry leading them and explaining the confusing pathways. "It's actually pretty simple once someone actually explains it. You start from either an entrance or the Halls, walk forward two intersections, and take a right. Then go forward three, then take a left. Walk forward two, turn right, then three forward, then left, and you repeat it until you get to the Halls. It brings you back to the main entrance to the tunnels from the Halls, too. Never more than a ten minute walk if you take the most complicated entrance." The wizard could practically feel the note-taking; there were a lot of tunnels down here, enough to make a veritable warren.

True to his word, not five minutes later and they were climbing out of the trapdoor they had gone in. Harry reclaimed his stakes as they exited the town in silence, the ruins giving off a haunting atmosphere now that Harry knew some of the story behind them, and had inferred a lot more of it. He'd have his privacy, that was certain.