It seemed no one knew any water magic. Bummer.

  "Are they weak to anything else?" Zan asked MAC.

  "No. But they can be destroyed with any sufficiently strong or persistent magic. In the absence of water-magic, which is the most direct and easiest way to remove Poison Needle fae, I would recommend magically induced flames upon a torch. Hold the torch close to the door and slowly wait for the creature to decay and slip out of its nest."

  "Anyone have a torch on them?" he asked.

  "I do," Jiehong remarked, producing from his satchel a torch he had acquired at some point in their journey. Jiehong lit the torch using some of his own magical accumulation and held the torch against the point in the doorway which the fae creature had come from.

  It was... uneventful.

  What had started so ferociously, with MAC's warning and his wonder if he was about to be killed, ended with dull waiting. The flames lapped at the door. Jiehong held the torch closer. The flames continued their lapping like a cat's tongue in a bowl of cream. Eventually, a thin black wisp fluttered out the crevice from which the fae creature had made its nest. The smoke puffed like an old man smoking a pipe. It stopped as suddenly as it began. Then, out came the fae creature as a goop filled with burnt bits of metal.

  "The fae threat has been eradicated. You all did excellently," MAC said, leaving them be, the conservation over.

  "That easy, huh?" he said, referring to the ease of handling the second-ever fae creature they encountered.

  "I guess so," Jiehong replied, looking at the goo himself. "Is there any way for us to sense when one of these Poison Needles is nested upon a passage? Speaking of, is it only doors which they nest? Or can they be anywhere?"

  MAC returned to the conversation and said, "Poison Needle fae can be anywhere. However, the majority of the time when they are found, it is through a passageway; over time, these fae creatures have evolved to favor doorways as that is where their prey invariably tends toward. As for sensing them, careful attenuation to the presence of malformed magical phenomena will help you better sense when a Poison Needle is present. I would recommend first looking for physical signs of the fae's presence through every door you use. Then, once you've found a passage with a Poison Needle nest, reach out with your mind, make yourself sensitive to magic. Attempt to feel the magical malformation within the passage. Over time, you will gain an awareness which was not there before."

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  "So, we have no choice but to look at every door we pass through?" he asked, really hoping he had misheard the Screen Master. But no. With another chime, MAC confirmed that, yes, they did have to check every door manually before crossing through.

  "We'll make do," Whiskey said, returning leniency to their recently tedious outlook. "Shall we continue?"

  "Yes. I'm already bored looking at this door," he replied, getting from his knees and looking at the actual contents of the thirteenth room.

  Nothing. Oh, wait!

  Not nothing. Two doors in this room. One to the right. One to the left. A little up from their entry point.

  "Let's take the door on the right, first," he said. He approached the door and made sure to carefully check the passage for a Poison Needle nest once the door slid out of the way. He found nothing. Confirmed by MAC.

  Inside this fourteenth room was nothing. Perhaps, long ago, it had been a supply closet. Or maybe a storage nook. A jail cell? Or a small bedroom?

  Walking out of the room, however, MAC brought up their attention now, to a new fact: "Observe the threshold between doors."

  "What am I looking at?" he asked.

  "Oh! The slime," Whiskey said, pointing out something which took him much longer to see.

  He eventually saw what the Screen Master wanted them to see. He crouched down to one knee and touched it. "What is it?"

  "This is the improperly decayed remains of a Poison Needle type fae. Fae remains such as these contain potent poison from the no longer functioning fae construct. It is possible to harvest it for use in trade or the apothecary sciences."

  Touching it quickly, he found it to be sticky, slimy. "Anyone have, like, a small bag or something? I don't want to toss something this gooey into my satchel."

  Whiskey raised her hand and said, "I do. Here. I traded for some salted waxed paper a long time ago, thinking I was going to purchase some slabs of meat at the butcher. Never got to the butcher, though. The Expanse came a-knocking you know, so here. Might as well get some use out of them."

  She handed him a couple of small pieces of the waxed paper. "Cool. Now I will just... carefully... pick this thing up... like so..." he said in narration of his harvesting. Using his fingers to quickly grip, pull up, and deposit the goop onto the paper. He wrapped up the goo quick and stuck it in his satchel.

  "Sweet. Now that poison needle goo monster is out of the way, let's get to that other door, just yonder," he said, hoping the next door would lead to deeper mysteries than needles and why fae creatures were such jerks.