(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

speechless.
A giant statue towered over us, of a naked woman frozen in the steps of a
dance. All about her earthenware pots hung from the ceiling which cradled
masses of vines, each decked with leaves and blossoms like emerald and
violet gowns. The air was fresh: moist and cool like a forest glade.
A slim little man with owlish eyes looked up at me, nudging his spectacles
back to the bridge of his nose. He gestured at me with his watering can,
"Greetings, sir. Might I ask how you came to be here?"
"I just came down from those stairs... through that strange door I found."
"I'd best work on concealing it a bit better, then," he shrugged, then smiled
at me. "I'm the Brothel's caretaker, by the way. You're not supposed to be
down here, really, but it's all right if you look around a bit."
I gazed upwards at the graceful arches of the foliage, "Can you tell me what
this place is? It's beautiful."
He smiled, "Why thank you. I do my best, you know. This is the Brothel
cellar, where the ladies' sensory stones are kept... they use them as diaries
of a sort. You won't be able to use them, if that's what you're thinking...
each of them is attuned to one particular student of the Brothel, so that only
she may access that stone."
Slim silver rings bound each sensory stone like the fringes of a bodice,
accentuating the soft curve of the glass globe within. They hummed with the
unwavering gaze of a woman's thoughts and memories, mysterious as her
gaze and held in rein only by a slim layer of crystal. I reached out, daring to
allow my fingers to hover near the surface of one. It didn't so much as
flicker.
Each sensory stone had the name of a prostitute inscribed into its base, nine
prostitutes in all.
And one more. Held in the mesh of engraved silver bands, it pulsed with that
same soft light as all the others. Something had once been inscribed into its
base, but the writing had been scoured away.
Damn.
549