Welcome to Gaia! ::

The walls were definitely nicer when they were visible - the flames showed a few details that Shehk hadn't pointed out, however. First of all was that there were paintings on the wall. They were worn, looking to be like a story that was told progressively as they walked along. It detailed at least four characters, three male and one female, who at the point in the hallway they were standing in were beginning to build something - a building, perhaps?

"Hope so.

Well, it seems like there's some wall paintings happening, I'm not exactly sure to what end, but from what I've gathered there was a chamber in the middle of the tunnels that was used as a meeting ground.

Nobody has been able to figure out exactly what for, but I've heard that it's rather neat to look at." she explained. Part of her wished she'd had her camera.

Jericho peered at the paint curiously but soon glanced back at the scratches Mal had accidentally left behind. Well, there was no way they could have really known the walls were painted like this.

"Ah... nothing.. a little touchup can't fix," he offered before looking at the image, moving the torch to get better views at various areas.

"It kinda looks like a story."

Malodore edged further down the hallway, as far as the torch's light reached. "I think there's more down here, perhaps... the air smells slightly fresher. There must be some connection to the surface somewhere; it would be fetid and still, otherwise..." But it seemed like there was a thread of a breeze, something damp but not foul... hmm. An underground water source, perhaps?

She'd been so focused on seeing ahead of them that she hadn't really been paying too much attention to the scents of things. Tilting her head back a bit, she scented the air. As Malodore had pointed out, the air did smell somewhat fresher - earthy. There were some sort of natural processes going on under ground, and it wasn't of the rotting variety. She would have picked that up ages ago if it had been.

"Deciduous trees, moss, grass, and freshwater." she finally answered. "Probably about a ten minute venture from where we are now."

Now this was intriguing for sure. There definitely weren't any underground forests back at home due to the volcanic nature of the caverns Jericho tended to reside in. This should be interesting.

"I've never seen an underground forest before," he said before turning to Mal, "What was the story about?"

Eager to see what was ahead, the dragon picked up the pace.

"A young plagueling, Tonino, traveling far below his Casa to find a rare variety of leech - the only thing capable of purifying the blood of a cave elemental that had come in for healing," Malodore said, with a happy, nostalgic sigh. "Every plagueling in my class spent hours in the lower levels looking for a way down... there never was one, though. Tonino must not have been a Cirurgien."

The plague doctor sped up easily - while it wasn't designed for endurance running, it could certainly trot at a sustainable pace, and the idea of seeing an actual subterranean forest (maybe) made it almost childishly excited, something almost nobody other than Riley had had much experience with. "Do you suppose there are leeches there, too? Do you smell them?"

... What would leeches smell like to a canine nose, anyway? It had no idea.

"Mmm, that sounds like it was an interesting book. If I could read the language it was published in, I'd like to sometime." She wasn't a scareling so that appeal would be gone, but...Shehk's taste in books was considered strange sometimes.

The faint increase in light was curious - but it would have made sense that there was enough sun to allow an underground forest to grow, if there was one. But it was nice - it helped her ability to see by tenfold. Faint light was much easier to work with than pure darkness, after all.

"I actually have not had enough contact with leeches to know what they smell like." she answered with a small frown. "But there's definitely something living down here - sounds smaller than we are, though, so most likely a minipet of some variety." She couldn't pinpoint what kind it was, however.

Still, she passed another look back at the pair before she suddenly went tearing ahead of them - unlike Malodore, Shehk was built for endurance running and was quite a speedy little beast, leaving behind a glowing image of herself as she bolted ahead, barely out of sight past the next doorway where some streams of light passed through before the sound of another swear-and-tumble followed her.

Shehk was doing good at finding things using an equal distribution of bruises across her body.

"Oh?" Jericho said, about to ask something else, but Shehk had suddenly burst forth.

"Wait!" he shouted as he broke off into a run with Malodore, holding the torch out before him so that they could see where they were going. It was lighter in here, but an extra bit of visibility couldn't hurt.

"Where are you going?!"