I don't wanna talk, I wanna be alone

The heat that emanated from beneath the ground was felt long before she located the actual source of it. Admittedly, Tethys was intrigued by the phenomena - it wasn't like she went far from home often, after all. Everything she needed was basically within her grasp within the Armada's lands, so why stray far? That was her line of reasoning at least. Maybe if she left home more often she'd have a leg up on her siblings though. Maybe she'd be smarter, maybe her training would've advanced faster, maybe she'd be just overall better at whatever she tried to do. It wasn't like she had a whole lot of wanderlust though, but she'd take the opportunity to head out a bit further from home while she was able.

As she went further south from home, the lands seemed much more forgiving than what she was used to, the jagged terrain growing more flat and predictable. Well, at least that's what she thought until she found a strange crack in the earth's surface. As she first entered the winding abyss she couldn't have anticipated just how far these tunnels would go. They were mostly uninteresting, though the darkness grew in an eerie way the further she went.

Her eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness, and the silence - which grew stronger with each step. She was acutely aware of the sound of her claws scraping against stone, and finally of the heat that seemed to be pumping up from the very ground. At first it was subtle, something she could easily mistake for simply overthinking her surroundings, but it became more and more obvious as she trekked further down. Something down here was producing heat... but Tethys didn't have the faintest idea what could be causing it.