Today, Ikeriabelle has a lesson with Ambition, directed to what seems to be a broom closet in a dead-end hallway of the palace. The room inside is, naturally, far larger than should be geometrically possible. There are no walls in sight, and the door protrudes only from a pillar. The surrounding area is dimly lit, coming from one source in what is presumably the center of the room. Keria starts walking towards the center of the room. "Ambition?" On the threshold of the third row of pillars from the center she hits a barrier; it does not reveal itself, staying silent and unseen though regularly stalwart. Passing along the barrier, it appears to wrap the entirety of the third row, save for a break by a single pillar. Drawn on this pillar is an image of a ritual circle—a highly complicated rendition like those used by Ambition. Under the depiction is a scrawl of characters that look as if drawn by quill, the idea dejected by the fact that it is carved directly into the stone. It reads only, “You’ll figure it out. Best of luck.” "Well that's straightforward." She stood for a moment, thinking. The room contains seemingly nothing beyond the pillars and the invisible barrier. The circle itself is enclosed completely, save for an open apex. She tries to walk into the apex. Ikeriabelle finds an opening in the barrier, immediately to the left of the marked pillar. Almost immediately, she hits another barrier, though she quickly comes to realize the system is far more nuanced than that. There are gaps and openings, and barriers layered upon barriers. It’s almost like—dear God—an invisible maze. "Heh heh. This is easy." She raises her hands, and magma starts flowing out, forming a shell around the barriers, and falling in the openings. The magma slips down the barriers and onto the ground. Though it shouldn’t, the substance is indistinguishable from the floor itself—the Valley’s non-Euclidean geometry at work. "Well that's lovely." She tries to send lava out to prod the barriers, not sticking, but testing for a gap in the barriers. The lava splashes against the immediately surrounding barriers, revealing multiple openings. Which one to take, though, is unclear. As the lava slips to the ground, cracks in the hardening surface form uneven words, ‘Think smarter, not harder.’ "Hmmm." She looks for inscriptions on the pillars like the first one that showed an entrance. There are none. The only clue she has to go off of is the first circle, in itself highly complex and confusing. Keria tries to reach out with my mind, and see the picture as a whole. No matter what you examine, your mind can only default to the ritual circle inscribed on the pillar. "Hm." Keria stands, and thinks for a moment. The invisible maze, much like the ritual circle, feels complicated to even think about in concept. She walks over to a barrier, and tries to see if it is possible to climb over it. The barriers seem to reach from floor to high, high ceiling. "Hm. Smarter. Not harder." The trainee stands and contemplates the connotations of such a statement. She walks over, and examines the ritual circle. The circle is layered, staggered and complex. The carving itself almost seems like a... maze. Upon finding it is carved into the rock, Keria attempts to use lava to make a reverse copy of the carving. A thin, brittle mold of the circle is created. It’s not exact—many of the intricate details are missing—but it is surprisingly accurate. "Perfect." She examines the carving to attempt to find where she should go first in the maze. As she tours the unseen labyrinth, she comes across gaps in the knowledge of her makeshift map. Here, her mind alights with subtle details from her lessons with Ambition which had seemed, at the time, unimportant. These little remembrances fill in the gaps that her map omits. "That is rather useful. Thank goodness." I continue on my way through the labyrinth. You reach the center of the maze without much more trouble, besides seeing a rat that somehow ran through most of the barriers before disappearing into thin air. In the middle of the room, atop a pedestal, is a slip of parchment. I walk over to it, and pick it up. On it is a message—the same scrawl as that inscribed into the pillar, this time in ink. ‘Great job, you beat a maze with a map. This time do it by memory.’ The quillwork served to emphasize the latter sentence. Ambition, in his manner, had set up an elaborate and exciting invisible labyrinth, simply to force his student to memorize a complicated rune-circle.