Take a Chance, Take This Dance

This new, barbarian land seemed plagued with ills. Perhaps that was one reason they were so uncivilized, apart from mere distance from the Center of the World. Regardless, he'd found himself woken in the middle of a strange, eerie night by the shaking of the earth, and waited in grim anticipation of morning to investigate the damages. Rumors of strange spikes rising from the ground in a place that had not seemed to exist before that day, blood red skies, starless nights... if he had not witnessed the last two himself he'd have dismissed it as hysterical superstitions. Now he could see, also with his own eyes, the strange tunnels that had appeared during what seemed to be another earthquake. He had been travelling nearby, and had not seen signs of these tunnels when he had last been this way. That alone troubled him more than he'd admit, and his autocratic muzzle was tight with simmering irritation as he surveyed the tunnel entrances from a slight distance. Some of his countrymen had a tendency to give control over their fates to the gods, some sort of fatalistic "oh well, nothing we can do about any of it, it's all in the gods' hands" nonsense - Lucius found it a ludicrous and frankly infantile way of washing one's paws of all responsibility. So when something like this, something seemingly godlike in origin, appeared in his life, Lucius refused to do as they would have done and just accepted it as unknowable and unavoidable. He would investigate the tunnels himself, however they had originated, and learn what he could of them. Without any real concern for his own safety - he was no fool, but who could avoid danger and still lead? no leader he'd wish to follow - he stalked down towards the tunnels without further delay.