[The Hymnal Caverns] A Journey Alone (Traverse)

[Irriari]

37th Day of Summer, 509 AV

It had taken Irriari half a season of pleading to convince Chaotic and the other Elders that she would could handle going out alone into the Sea of Grass to collect reagents and mushrooms for her posioncrafting. Her demonstration of the potent effects of poison had helped sway their decision slightly, but Chaotic had demanded that she prove her combat and survival skills. The young zith had bristled at the latter of the two requests. If she was gone for a few days, there would be no need to for her to hunt for her own food, provided that the colony would supply her with rations. Sleeping would prove to be more dangerous, as many colony members had pointed out. They taunted her with stories of zith that had been eaten in the daylight as they slept. The fables were gruesome enough to test her resolve and make her question whether any mushroom was worth such torment. Partially out of spite, she had answered their demands and risen to meet the challenges that the colony had devised to thwart her. More than anything else, Chaotic was worried about her fighting skills, and had muttered something about Irriari being glassbeak fodder. Irriari cringed as she remembered another Elder laughing at the assessment, and stating that he believed she deserved that and worse. Apparently, poisoning his son during the trials had been a mistake.

After a day of flying and scouting the land, Irriari was anxious, irritated, and sore. While she knew there were valuable plants hidden among the grasses, she had hoped that her journey would take her some place slightly more exotic. After years of training in the grasses outside of the colony, her heart yearned for an interesting place like those that Sevrai had spoken of in her stories. Snarling at nothing and no one in particular, Irriari flapped her wings hard, hoping to catch a thermal that would make flying easier. After a few chimes, she felt the familiar lift under her wings that signaled the air currents within the skies. Finally, a bit of luck.

Ever paranoid, she turned back enough to see the ground that she had covered. There were no akalak in either direction, but it never hurt to check. After a half bell, Irriari spotted a small speck of blackness at the edge of her vision. It was towards the east. Irriari tilted her wings just enough so that she would gently curve towards the dot. More than likely, it would prove to be an apparition. There was no sense tiring herself out before she found a place to rest. She repeated this in her mind as she approached, though she strained her wings as she neared the dark area. It took another six chimes of hard flight before she could detect the outline of rocks reaching towards the sky. Happy at her discovery, Irriari moved more slowly and gave her wings a chance to rest.

When she finally reached the cliffs, Irriari flew over the top of the rocky expanse before deciding to turn back and land at the area where the Sea of Grass intersected the cliffs. From the sky, the caverns seemed innocent enough. At the least, there were no loud noises or other signs that would make the zith fear trying to enter them. It took her a half bell of walking to find an entrance that was big enough to fit through. After the first fifteen bells, she considered leaving. After all, she could find plenty of mushrooms within the tunnels in the colony.

After a quick adjustment to the straps of the bag that was digging into her shoulders, Irriari moved her shortbow to the inner crook of her elbow and stepped into the dark caverns.

[Traverse]

It was dark, but it took but a moment for Irriari's eyes to adjust to the solid pitch of black that inhabited the long winding tunnels of the Hymnal Caverns. Though not at their peak of sound, the Zith could hear strange ghostly whispers as the wind currents off the sea whistled over coarse stone.

It was wet everywhere. There were dry patches, but these were few and far between. The damp, fairly warm conditions, however, made this an idyllic spot for the Zith's purpose.

The first signs of life she would find were bits of dark, black looking moss, thick with moisture that clung to the walls. A few tiny white mushrooms popped up here and there, but they were nothing significant, nor in big enough groupings to truly harvest...at least not yet.

Despite her short stature, Irriari would find herself having to stoop, bringing her wings in close to her body to avoid them getting battered in the claustrophobic tunnel system. The path that she had chosen to take was twisted, but downward sloping, taking her gradually down foot by foot, until suddenly she was completely encased in tunnels, with no hint of the sea breeze that had been at her back.

It took only a few chimes more for the cavern to open up, giving the Zith a bit more room to maneuver in...though not much. She could stand upright at least. A new variety of moss, this one dark, but definitely green in hue and slightly iridescent coated the walls as well, scaling the tall walls dripping with stalactites.

A high pitched keening trilled through the cavern, a sound that hung somewhere between the cry of a Zith and the screech of the wind.

And now the Zith was met with her first choice. The cavern continued to open up into a massive hole, her own tunnel stopping abruptly in a sheer drop. If she peered over the edge Irriari would see that the distance downward was significant, ending in black stagnant water that probably refreshed only rarely with the onset of a vicious storm in this particular corner of the sea. From here there were pathways a plenty to choose from. Most required the use of flight, preventing most any ground bound creatures from exploring the deeper caverns without a sizable amount of climbing equipment. A few sections of rock sprouting up from the dark water seemed to have some more fungus life growing from them that might meet her purposes, and dozens of holes provided ample opportunity to crawl into what were perhaps entirely unexplored depths...

[Irriari]

OOCI hope this isn't too boring for you.
Irriari found herself crouching, hugging her leathery wings tight to her body. The colony tunnels had accustomed her to tight places, but these caverns were far from home, and there was no slave to push ahead of her to test for obstacles and obstructions. The zith proceeded slowly, allowing herself ample time for her eyes to adjust to the inky interior of the caverns. Gooseflesh covered her furred skin and her shoulders shook as the tips of her fingers brushed against the damp walls of the cavern. She continued dragging her fingers across the walls, pausing as they trailed across a patch of slimy moss. The black fibers of the fungus were tinged with hints of white around the edges. She paused for a moment, considering taking some of the mysterious material, but decided against it after surveying it for a moment longer. The thought of peeling it off the walls was an unpleasant one, and Sevrai had never mentioned moss being useful in poisoncrafting.

The zith continued deeper into the tunnels, crouching until her knees ached with the effort it took to move forward on her bent legs. Grimacing, she ignored the small grouping of white mushrooms at her feet. Short of sitting down, there was no way to harvest them, and Irriari was far more interested at what lay deeper in the tunnels. She kept moving, ignoring the pain that came when her urgency led to her scraping her knee on the cavern wall. Blood welled on the surface of the wound and trickled down her leg as the tunnels opened up slightly. Irriari stood up, stretching her arms to the stalactite covered walls at her sides. She pivoted slightly to the left, eyeing the green moss that snaked its way up the rocky wall. Irriari reached out and touched it, noting that it was far drier than the black variety that she had seen ten chimes prior. The moss was springy and rebounded as she withdrew her fingers. She placed her pack on the ground and withdrew a large mouth vial with a glass top. It only took a moment to scrape the moss from the wall with her clawed nails. It fell into jar quickly, and she forced as much of it as she could into the jar before corking it and replacing it in her pack.

She stretched her legs out slowly, knowing that a few more bells in the caverns would leave her tired and sore. Suddenly, she was jolted from her stretching by a shrill noise that reverberated through the tunnels. The shriek was almost sad, and reminiscent or the noises that humans had made when they were sad and crying. The zith paused, trying to locate the source of the noise, but there were too many tunnels for it to echo off of. Irriari stood up and walked to the edge of the precipice, curious as to what lay at the bottom. The dark water that lay at the bottom of the cavern held no interest to the zith, so she focused her attention on the caverns that were ahead. She chose one to the left, thankful that there was enough room to spread her wings and glide downward to the edge of the outcropping. Irriari proceeded slowly, with one arm extended forward and her other against the wall to her left.

[Traverse]

Warm, stagnant air greeted the Zith as she made her way down what seemed to be a fairly level pathway. It was still cramped, not allowing her to completely stand, but there was enough space to let one's wings hang loose without too much worry of them brushing off of the sharp edges that sometimes protruded from the walls of caverns such as these.

The tunnel she had chosen, slightly elevated above its brethren, was much drier, and had no moss to speak of, unlike the entrance she had chosen into the cave. It meandered back and forth like a serpent, but didn't alter her altitude much as she moved slowly forward. It was in a word...dull and uninteresting.

In fact...it could have been chimes, perhaps even bells that she had been occupying this particular path, it was so non-descript, until...suddenly jutting out of a crack in the wall an ivory colored protrustion (a root perhaps?) appeared in front of the Zith. It curled like a tree root out of the cavern wall and into the floor in front of her, and there was no evidence to explain what it was, or fellow roots to perhaps elude to its identity or size.

Perhaps worth an investigation, or something to simply leave and see if this bloody tunnel ever ended?

oocDark caves filled with potentially poisonous plants and mysteries are anything but boring!!