The tiny owl hybrid was slowly shuffling her way along the tunnel. Thus far she was hungry, she was cold, she was wet, and just generally quite unhappy with everything. Hecate had no way of knowing, of course, that the rains weren't normal in the caves--she just knew that she'd crept and stumbled away from Eridanus' crashing storms and found herself in the relative quiet of Tunnel H.

The dripping was still present, but it was a quiet echo instead of a constant roar. She was relieved, at least, at the relief of pressure on her ears, but it felt almost unnerving, now--as if the silence left her exposed. She could make out the dim glow of lights in this tunnel: golden throughout, though a strange, blue hue at one end. It was hard to see, for her, past the green of her gemstone, but she made her way toward this nonetheless.

She paused at the wide mouth of Polaris, pressing herself to the tunnel wall. Hooked talons curled around the stone beneath her.

Where was she? What was this cave? Was it safe, ahead? Instinctively she let her magicka flicker out, trying to get a hint of what lay ahead. She didn't yet know what her magic would do, that it showed the past rather than the present, but it was all that she knew to do.

At first, the vision is clouded and sounds are muffled, as if everything is far away; but passing creatures come into focus as they near the mouth, chattering in an unknown language. As they enter Polaris, their images again become blurred and out of focus, out of reach. They are large and hulking creatures unlike anything Hecate may have seen before—many arms, spiked appendages, large or long, monstrous and brutish: there is an endless stream of them heading into the Core. However, they do not glimmer with the highlight of a blue glow. It is instead an oily green that shimmers with black and purple. The creatures seem to be filing into Polaris for some reason, but it is not clear in the vision what that may be.

@Hecate

Hecate crouched in the darkness, alone, and yet-... not. Half-blind eyes turned to stare, wide, at the strange colors and shapes that paraded past her, and for a moment she feared speaking. These creatures were frightening--and she hadn't even heard them coming! Only after they took no notice of her did she speak, her fledgling voice quiet and meek in the shadows.

"Hello-?" They ignored her--every one of them--and a little indignant, she spoke more loudly. "Where are you going?! Who are you?" Had anyone looked in on her, they'd have found only a lone owl hybrid babe calling out to nothing; yet to Hecate, there was a whole world passing her by.

And what of the light..? Past her gemstone shell, it had seemed... turquoise, almost; yet now it had gone dark, and (why can I see it clearly?) oily black and green. It was a sickly shade, acidic somehow or toxic, and she recoiled from it instinctively.

But...

The creatures faded; they vanished. Terror spiked through her; she knew little of this world, as yet, but that did not seem natural. Her vision, too, changed: back to dull and green, leaving her baffled and afraid.

For long moments she sat alone; then, at last, she called out again, her hesitant voice quavering, echoing softly down the tunnel. "...Hello? Where did you go..?"

The little hybrid waited, and listened, but the strangers filed out, and her vision faded. The blue glow, too, seemed to shift subtly back to green, and she was left--scraggly, and shivering a little--alone in the tunnel once more.

She was of two minds: the first was, I'm glad they didn't see me, relieved. The second was How rude! with hurt, disappointment. Had they simply ignored her, or missed her entirely?

Hecate hesitated, and then she waited. When a few moments had passed--enough, she hoped (with her very little experience in such things) for it to be safe but not so long that they'd be wholly out of sight--she hopped quietly after the parade of figures, and into Polaris.

exit