To any explorers visiting the new Reservoir, they may find that just a bit away from the sandy water are a set of caves. Some of these connect back to the lake, but others rapidly plunge into darkness. It wouldn't be hard to get lost in here, but thankfully there are some very odd lights to help guide you out. If you turn off your light down some of these dark paths, you may find yourself surrounded by glowing pastel lights. A closer inspection reveals that you seem to be looking at some sort of glowing caterpillars. An internet search will reveal that Destiny City scientists have been researching the strange, unnamed creatures, but the articles are very limited. If you take them out of the cave they seem to shrivel up almost immediately. They’re neat, but clearly meant to be stay in their natural habitat.
With the rifts opening up and reports of things and not people going missing, Acubens didn't want to risk any anomaly going uninvestigated. Some things she knew had nothing to do with Mirrorspace or her court. The heatwave was just a climate issue, and while a big one, not one on her wheelhouse. Tegmine had checked out the Fairy in the park and had reported back nothing unusual. The weird firework she knew had nothing to do with them either. But this was exactly the reason why, when she heard about glowing caterpillars down in the caves by the reservoir, she made a beeline to check it out.
She’d set out with a full length mirror in her arms, grunting and sweating in the summer heat. She was a bit of a scientist herself, and she knew that to get the most pure result possible, she would need to mirrorwalk from the place where the caterpillars were found straight into Mirrorspace. If they were from mirrorspace, she reasoned, then they’d react if they were brought back into it, right? Now, what she was going to do with that reaction was going to have to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants plan, but luckily, she specialized in those.
She’d mirrorwalked as close as possible, but aunty exertion at all in this weather was enough to knock someone out.
She should have enlisted Tegmine to help her with the heavy lifting.
The entrance to the cave was a short walk, but not short enough, and she stopped to pant heavily and lean on the cool and slightly damp rock wall that made up the entrance. Getting the mirror there was hard enough, but getting it down the steps…
It was dark, but not so bad that she couldn't make her way down. She had to feel her way a little, and was careful to not touch any of the strange caterpillars on the wall. She wasn't sure what they would do to her if whatever was making them glow got on her skin. And besides that, the idea of touching one with her bare hands sent chills down her spine. Caterpillars weren’t slimy but… sometimes they looked like they should be.
As Acubens descended, she could feel the air finally start to cool off. She hadn't noticed how hot it was outside until the chill and damp of the caves slid across her skin. The dankness, while supremely gross under any other circumstance, was a blessing and a boone now. Acubens allowed herself a moment to stop on the steps and finally breathe in air cool enough to not cook her lungs from the inside.
Just one moment of cool reprieve and Acubens began her descent once more. Once she was down far enough that she couldn't see daylight, the caterpillars began showing up. They moved much the same way one would expect: inching as their bodies undulated like water. It gave Acubens the heebie jeebies. But other than the fact that they were glowing, they seemed to be no different than any other caterpillar Acubens pulled the glass mason jar and pair of tweezers out of her subspace and began pulling a few off of the wall. They weren't stuck all that much, no more than any other cave insect, and they didn't seem to be leaving any residue on the tweezers nor in the jar.
