You find yourself in a dark place. The stone walls are uneven and fluidly transition into the ground and the low ceiling, giving the impression of a tube. The room is littered with spikelike protrusions sticking up and poking down all around you, as if you were trapped in a petrified worm´s teethy maw. There is barely any doubt in your mind that you have entered a cave. But as the circle of light cast onto the wall by your dynamo-flashlight brightens with each turn of its crank, your conviction wanes: The supposed cave consists of bricks, supposedly cut in minutely planned Arbitrariness by some long-forgotten master to create the illusion of organic growth. But this theory too is called into question when your light gets hold of a stalactite. Would cement really be able to withstand gravity like this? And, judging by the decayed, mossy texture of the bricks, for multiple centuries at that? Sadly, you know neither enough about architecture nor physics to take a truly educated guess on the matter, so you have no choice but to dismiss the brick stalactites with one last disbelieving headshake before carefully climbing around them and heading deeper into the cave, towards a faint light.
>go forward