He noted the bareness of this tunnel, feeling a strange anticipation for what was coming ahead. Like there was some beast lurking that still stirred little fear in Anubis. Only a faint hestitency, for if he came across something so overwhelming that his magic would not avail him, then all his life and research would be for nothing.

So he jumped a little when the walls disappeared and he suddenly touched dirt, not stone. Disinctly not stone. He couldn't see anything, he could barely see the walls as they disappeared into darkness. Perhaps the largest room yet, the darkest, for sure.

He took a few careful paces out into the room before casting his magic to search for meaning, once again.

His headache was still ringing, though, only briefly intensified by the magic, which he swiftly lost control of. Growling in frusteration, he planted his feet more firmly in the dirt, taking deep breaths to steady himself. He still had a long way to go before he would turn around and leave and allow himself the proper rest.

Onward, he would press, until his quest was satisfied.

The sounds of movement all around him. Lights came up, but barely: the whole space dim, and moving with silhouetted shapes. The Pit was vast: a huge, circular almost-amphitheatre but with straight, stone walls, so large that even lit it was difficult to see to the other side. It was the size of an entire cell block on its own.

Creatures stirred here, some lying gnawing bones, others pacing, still others fighting, others leaping fruitlessly to try and scale the walls over and over. The sounds of shuffling, shouting, argument, laughter, filled the air. As the vision faded, and the room returned to darkness, Anubis heard a

final shuffling thud in the distance, before eerie silence returned.

@Anubis

At first, he came out of the vision quietly, as he had throughout the entire length of his journey. These halls were dead quiet, eerily so, and utterly empty and devoid of life. But...

As he stood there, thinking over the latest vision, which had given him almost no information, he realized that the last sound he'd heard...had that been in that vision, or had he truly heard that somewhere in the prison?

For the first time a real sense of fear overcame him. Something was here. Something had moved. That had been real and he quickly flipped through what he knew he could do to magically detect it and...had nothing. At least, nothing that would work here. There was no mycelium, as far as he could tell, but he cast it out anyways to try to glean something, if there was even anything there.

He considered leaving the fungus behind and approach through the darkness. He'd essentially be blinding himself, but if there was something there, it wouldn't hear him approach. But if it could somehow sense him otherwise, he was at a major disadvantage. Figuring it would be better to simply bring it with him, he padded out towards that sound, slowly, nose and ears working to detect if there was anything.

This place was oddly void of any fungal life. Anubis might have been magically blind, for all the good his spell did him. It did provide information: that this place was stifled and stagnant, that there was no decay for fungus to feed off of. The faintest touch sparked off him far behind, back where light and water twinned to the north and stone shelves fell away. But here? -Nothing.

No further sound came. Just the yawning darkness. Here, it would be impossible to tell if something were only a few yards to his left or right, or just ahead, or creeping around behind. His ears picked nothing up. If there were something out there, it was silent now. Maybe it had just been part of the vision..?

That old, rank animal smell remained, like long stale alien fur.

@Anubis

Paranoia prickled at his fur. He couldn't see, he couldn't hear. He knew the direction that he'd come from, but what lay beyond was shrouded beyond. Multiple times, as he went deeper, he whipped around, as if expecting something to be prowling behind or stopped and pricked his large ears up, but catching no sounds, just the oppressive ever-present silence.

There came a point where he paused, having enough and dropped his guiding light. More lights popped up surrounding him, small lanterns giving a bit more glow to the immediate surroundings. He growled, swiveling his head back and forth as he whispered into the dark, "Who's there?"

Silence erupted into sound.

As he had stood there listening, so too had something else.

thud thud thud thud THUD THUD

Rapidly approaching footfalls, from a walk into a run, heading straight toward Anubis in the dark.

It would be wise to depart.

@Anubis

He didn't hesitate. As soon as those footfalls began, he turned and bolted, dropping his nightlight and sprinting towards the exit. At one point, he slowed for an instant and tried to glance behind him, to see if he could catch a glimpse of what was chasing him as it crossed over his small patch of fungus, but that was secondary to getting the fuck out of there.

Only a second after he slowed, he turned back and went back to running as fast as his canine legs could carry him. He could only hope he could slip out in time and that the narrow tunnel would contain whatever monster was chasing him.

Perhaps that's why the corridor is so narrow in the first place.

The footsteps had stopped.

Maybe it had been partway across the Pit--whatever-it-was distracted by a glowing mushroom. Maybe it had been the corridor's entryway, too narrow.

Or maybe whatever-it-was knew a shortcut.

@Anubis

Anubis wasn't taking any more chances. He was tired. He was worn. And he was at a severe disadvantage. He didn't stop once he made it to the narrow corridor, he immediately turned right and bolted, fighting through rubble, racing down the tunnel, not waiting to listen for any more sounds or glancing back to check for anymore monsters. Nope. If Bacchus wanted to explore, he could go right ahead. If he wanted to send his test subjects to go poking around in that pit, all power to him. But Anubis would go no farther into that place, not alone.

*exit, unless stopped