Part 3: The entrance hallway

Previous chapter.

Despite its ornate decorations and the sheer size of the institution’s entrance hallway, an important place of first impressions regarding The Society and its people, a feeling of claustrophobia never fails to cloud the air; perhaps it was the way the chandelier floated effortlessly above the members as they walked briskly and purposefully to their next destination, the way the large glass windows at each end seemed to open up to the horizons of the vast fields of sienna wastelands, or the way the unsettling eyes of The Society’s past presidents (whose portraits hung between the marble pillars) stares into the empty chasm between the two walls. Nevertheless, one never spends too much time in the entrance hallway.

From here, one had three choices of where to go – four if he includes the choice of walking out the front door back to where he came from. The first branching of the hallway on the left leads to the grand houses of the different classes, where the infamous mechanical induction room may be found, as well as the society member’s lodgings, cafeteria, classrooms and training grounds; the second and third branches leads further underground to areas of higher restricted access, reserved only for the class supervisors and directors.