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You spin on your heel, wincing as one of the pinning needles in the remains of the strickening striker jabs you in the leg. What pain remains from the prick, however, washes itself away quickly once you start moving towards the door nearest to your estimation of the ticking. You lengthen your already considerably long stride, and make short work of the distance, telling yourself all the while that you are most assuredly not about to spend time that you have already spent - or that if you were, then you will have something to show for it, surely. Impatient, you wrench the door open at the soonest possible opportunity, and stride right inside, your 'stick aloft. Dead center in the middle of the room, sits the only piece of furniture present; a circular table, with a sizable globe and pedestal sculpture placed on top of it, from which you judge the ticking to be emanating. Not too surprising, as there seems to be some instrumental aspect to the sculpture as well; you can see gears and bobs and what-nots ... though you cannot see any movement. Even with your admitted ignorance of the instrumental sciences, you get the sense that it is well made - which makes the absence of movement, paired with the ticking seem ... odd. Is it broken, or is something near or inside of it doing the ticking? And why did it only start ticking recently?
Before you decide to even bother approaching it, you take a look around this room you have found yourself - and the ticking - in. It must be the entry-way of the house; though it would be well-described as a foyer - had it any stairs to speak of! The ceiling of the room is high, very high - and when you look, you see that there is a wrapped balcony that runs along three of the four sides of the room, with the fourth side endowed with only a cat's walk and a bank of windows; all of which are dark. Below the walk, there are other windows; as well as the front door. Opposite the front door is another set of double doors, presumably which will lead into the room with the other chimney; besides these, there are other single doors along the wall, similar to one that you passed into this room through. This space is so suited to be foyer that you simply have to wonder if it was one at one time, and Aldoin just ... decided to remove the stairs. You can even see the overhang on the balcony, where the stairs could have started from and then lead down to the first floor ... honestly, it is rather unnerving, how little sense some parts of this place makes. Though you are in some ways glad that you are going to be quitting this place momentarily, you cannot consider yourself 'pleased'. Beyond your questions about the architects sanity, and a sense that you are stepping out on a deal of swag, you still have basically no idea of what really transpired here during and after Aldoin's death - and before it for that matter; what he was doing, and for whom. Was he your father's friend, or his mark? And most of all; who killed him - and why?
