Basilisk had taken Ignita back to their den and set her up as comfortably as he could. She wasn’t in any position to be moving about, heavily pregnant and vulnerable as she was. He left his companions at her side, and came back to investigate what she had found. It would have been a low priority in the scheme of things, but they were stretched tight. If this was a weak point in their warrens, in a place that was supposed to be secure, they were in trouble.

He found the glow worms that had interested Ignita. He remembered her warning not to disturb them, and did his best as he slipped through. Finding the open tunnel beyond. He scented the air, and tasted something in the wind. Something beyond the stale of the musky walls.


"Basilisk"

this death will be art Long, spindly limbs pulled him as quietly as possible along the corridors, trailing in the wake of his captor. Something about investigating a new tunnel system, he thought. Eavesdropping was strange in the caves, he was still gathering his bearings and adjusting to the way sound moved through the tunnels and bounced off the stone. The lady of the house was relegated to resting in the den, burdened as she was with her growing pups. It sounded interesting, and despite his tired and worn body protesting the very notion of activity, he'd followed Basilisk. Into a tunnel that carried the strange mustiness of ancient earth, while also bearing the freshness of newly broken stone and overturned earth. Definitely a recent inclusion, old stone worn away until it crumpled beneath its own bulk. The pinprick lights of wriggling glow worms turned the surrounding stone into a facsimile of constellations that had never been mapped, which gradually shifted with each moment. When the colossus paused to scent the air, surrounded by these little wriggling forms, so too did the songbird. Pulling in small samples of the air that flowed out from the unexplored chambers beyond. The strange sweetness of worm castings, the bare stone, and something he could almost identify. It was somewhere in the deepest corners of his mind- or perhaps there was something similar that he was recalling. Squinting in the low light, tipping his skull to better align the shadowed figure of the giant male within his vision, he crept a few paces forwards. "Is there anything I can do to assist, sir?" he questioned, vocals whisper soft in the close confines of the darkened tunnel. He didn't need to raise his voice to be heard here, though some part of him wished there were more light sources to aid his movements. "speaking" -- "in another language"

Basilisk glanced back in surprise at a voice. He wasn’t accustomed to being startled so easily, but the sickness had played with his sensors. He struggled with it sometimes as he slowly recovered. He gave the man a thoughtful frown, and then nodded his head. “You can come with me, we need to figure out where this leads. If it's a point where intruders can slip into the Armada.” He explained, nodding for the gold wolf to follow him.

They had decided to keep Pluto in their den instead of giving the Songbird his own. Ignita was swollen with pups, and an extra pair of paws around would be useful for her. It didn’t bother him that he was choking Pluto’s freedom. The boy would grow and learn, or struggle beneath the Armada’s rules.

He moved through the opening, and into the corridor. The stone was dark, though he could pick up a small pinprick of light in the distance. “Where does this lead… North, North I believe.” he muttered, more to himself than the wolf he commanded.


"Basilisk"