Sunspire Mountains the marauder's map

This is set somewhere between Blacktail Deer Plateau and Porcupine Ridge. I'm hoping to organically explore the tunnel with anyone from BDP (*wiggles eyebrows at @Saēna*), since only they would be able to realistically access the burrow... unless someone from the other end (in PR) meets her in the middle?!

This morning, young Osprey unknowingly passed by her very own grave, giving the recently disturbed dirt only a passing glance. She walked right past the site where Pied's actual remains still rested and explored along the rear wall of the territory. This was done out of sheer boredom, as well as the youth's desire to continue exploring the Outrider trade.

What she eventually found was a small hole leading down into an earthen burrow. She slipped inside and was greeted by the metallic scent of old, dried blood. If not for the darkness, she would've seen the brown stain on the den's floor. Idly, Junior nosed around the dark subterranean chamber, getting a feel for its contours by walking along its walls, her right flank scraping gently against them.

Near the back, there was a sharp curve in the wall and Osprey's hip struck against it, causing it to give way. She nearly stumbled. Whirling to face the even deeper darkness, she thrust her muzzle forward, expecting to stub her nose on the wall. There was nothing there now, though, which was wildly disorienting. She froze, inhaling air that was suddenly damp and musty. Her huge ears tipped forward, catching the distant sound of dripping water.

She inched forward, patting the ground with her feet and using her whiskers to feel out her surroundings. Osprey Jr. proceeded this way for perhaps ten minutes when when paused and looked over her shoulder. The very dim light seemed so far behind her. And only pitch black darkness lay ahead. Should she turn back... or keep going?

There had been a brief time where Saēna followed Junior everywhere she went, whether or not the larger, darker pup was aware of it. The rusty female understood that Junior was lucky to be alive and, being perhaps one of the most intelligent of their crew, also understood that severe harm could have come to the Redleaf-DiSarinno if some sixth sense hadn't led her (abd the adults) directly to the missing child. Although she no longer considered herself a true sibling in light of Kisu's discussion, she retained a sense of responsibility for Junior's life, and so she had become a stalker immediately following her return to the plateau.

In recent days, she had given up this pursuit in favour of relaxing and socializing. It was difficult to interact with the pack when you were preoccupied with stalking, and so she had given up on keeping tabs on Junior. Saēna also had a lot to think about, and had taken to visiting Pied's grave with increasing frequency, where she mulled over her thoughts constantly. That was where she could be found now, studying the packed earth at her feet whilst sprawling in the shade of a particularly tall oak. She couldn't imagine what her real mother looked like, so she imagined herself, only black instead of red, and enjoyed the thought of growing up with someone like herself, even though she could never have that.

She was lying there still when Junior passed by. Saēna lifted her head to observe the chunky pup's passing, then laid it carefully back on her forelegs as Junior disappeared along the mountainside. Yet a niggling curiosity eventually made Saēna rise and pad after her cousin, catching up just in time to see the taller adolescent disappear into a hole.

Sucking in a shocked breath, the Virtùte pup closed the distance between the hole and herself. Where once she would have shied away from it, she boldly plunged into it with a bizarre notion that nothing inside could possibly hurt her. The weird swan creature from her dream would protect her, just as it had from the cougar. She was met with suffocating darkness and, though she instinctively stretched her nose forward and began snuffling along the floor, she couldn't help but call out a soft, “Junior?” to her presently invisible leader.

When something moved in front of the light, blocking it, Osprey felt her heart leap into her throat. She began to turn around and scramble back that way when a soft, familiar voice gave her pause. "Saēna? What're you doin' here?" She couldn't quite discern the details of her sister's back-lit face but she could just make out the reddish tips of her ears. She was standing at the mouth of the newly formed hole, in the den where her mother had given birth, bled out and died. She might even be standing in Pied's dried blood, not that either pup knew anything about it.

"I think this tunnel goes somewhere..." Osprey Jr. whispered loudly. "Wanna explore it with me? You wanna be an Outrider too, don't you?" she questioned, certain that Saēna had expressed interest in the trade once upon a time, though she couldn't quite remember. "C'mon," she cajoled, bending her body again to face the total darkness ahead.

She physically halted when Junior hissed her name into the darkness, wondering for a moment whether or not following the larger adolescent was a good idea... But she stood her ground, and it paid off. Saēna had yet to fully embrace the idea that Junior was no longer going to grind her into the dirt, and so even though she suspected she was safe, her skittishness never left. She crept into the hole, pushing her shoulder against the side of it and answering with a hushed, “makin' sure you're all right.”

She squinted, trying to make out anything beyond the bright glow of Junior's eyes in the beam of light that slanted through the abandoned den, but there was only pitch blackness ahead. Yet there was a soft subterranean “breeze” carrying the scent of old things and mould, and it countered the tangy smell of blood in the den enough that Saēna believed there was something more, even though she couldn't see it.

“I don't think so,” she admitted, having lost her interest in Outriding the second that Junior had gotten swept downriver. She didn't want to share her cousin's fate, nor worry her family the way they'd worried about Junior. There were also carefully hidden doubts in her head that they would care as much as they had when Junior disappeared if it was her, and that part scared Saēna the most. No, she decided, Outriding was not her thing, but... “I'll come with you though,” confirmed her interest in this particular exploration.

Junior took the lead, and Saēna gladly followed behind, flaring her nostrils to follow the scent of her cousin and taking careful, slow steps so as not to hit anything.

I'm 'bout to get all creative up in hurr... feel free to do the same through the course of this thread! :)

Saēna's honest answer made Osprey's ears tilt backward, then prick again when her sister appeased her by saying she'd come along anyhow. "How come?" she wondered. "How come you don't want to be an Outrider?" She sounded perhaps a smidgen defensive, as if everyone should want the same things as her. There was also blatant curiosity in her tone. Had something happened to make Saēna suddenly lose interest in the trade?

Even as she waited on answers to questions spoken and unspoken, Junior began to creep forward again. She swore the air grew danker and colder with every foot. She was also certain that the ground was tilting subtly downward. Since she could hardly see a thing, the only way she could tell this was because she felt the sensation of gravity tugging her forward into the strange darkness. It made her belly flutter slightly.

"Do you smell that?" Junior questioned after a few moments of silence as the two girls shuffled further into the subterranean chute. "Do you hear that?" she added, stopping to silence the noise of her paws and belly shuffling along the dirty ground. She shushed Saēna to get her to freeze too, then cocked her head.

By now, there was nearly no light whatsoever, so it was like her nose and ears had become more sensitive to compensate for the lost sense. The odor was too strange for her to describe, even inwardly, but the sound was definitely dripping water. It was echoing strangely, somewhere in the distance. The distance? Osprey wondered how that was possible. She felt like she was in a small tunnel, yet it sounded like some sort of vast cavern in here...

Crawling again now, she felt the ground dip much more noticeably and suddenly she sensed the walls on either side as the tunnel narrowing on either side. Heart beating rapidly in her chest—partly out of fear, partly out of adventurous excitement—she scooted forward with sudden rapidity and suddenly found herself free-falling. The blackness became total as she tumbled, her surprised scream sounding hollow in her own gigantic ears.

She didn't fall for long, though she landed on a very hard surface that knocked the wind out of her. Choking and gasping, she pushed herself into an upright position. Only then did she suddenly gasp quietly as she realized there was a dim light up ahead in the darkness. She was totally disoriented otherwise, yet the grainy light gave her surroundings some dimension. She appeared to be in another corridor, one made entirely of stone, with the tiny pinprick of light at its further end. The sound of dripping water was louder now.

"Saēna?!" Osprey whispered as soon as she could manage, wondering if her sister was still somewhere above her. Intrigue called her onward... yet the thought of proceeding alone was slightly terrifying.

Gah sorry. I'll try to be quicker from now on.

“Dunno,” she said, though if she thought hard about it, she really did know. “Don't like leavin', I guess.” She had once explored the plateau diligently, but the thought of crossing that river frequently put a cold chill in her heart. Before she could backtrack over her ambiguity and clarify, however, Junior changed the subject.

She poked her nose forward, sniffing the air lightly. The smell was foreign and odd to her, and too deep a sniff coaxed a sneeze out of the younger adolescent. The steady drip of water seemed booming in the tunnel, but Saēna didn't have the same spatial orientation that Junior did, so when her sister screamed suddenly somewhere that wasn't directly ahead of her, a jolt of fear and adrenaline sent the cave-blind child running right over the edge as well.

She screamed loud and girlish all the way down, and her scream was cut off as her body thudded onto the ground. Had she been any older than she was, it was likely Saēna would have sustained a sprain or broken ankle from the way she fell. Instead, her spongy bones absorbed the impact, though she cried out at the sudden shock of pain nonetheless. The cry transformed into a quiet groan that silenced when Junior whispered her name.

“'m here,” she wheezed, forcing herself to sit up. She squinted, trying to see many details in the thin light, but its scarcity made everything look black and white and low definition. “Where are we?” she abruptly asked, looking to the Alpha pup for answers neither of them had.

No worries. ^_^

Her sister's name had scarcely left her lips before a girlish scream, followed by a soft thump and a quiet groan, answered her. "You okay?!" young Osprey questioned, squinting at the grainy image of her fallen sister. At least Saēna's white fur made her slightly easier to see in the dimness. She touched her nose to Saēna's neck, relieved when she felt like a small wolf and not a pile of crushed bones and pulpy internal organs.

"I dunno," Osprey answered Saēna's question, "but there's only one way to go..." She motioned toward the distant keyhole of light, then realized there was no way Saēna could see her. "See the light up there? There's only one thing that makes light: the sun. That must be the end of the tunnel," the would-be Outrider said optimistically.

Moving ahead, Junior encouraged Saēna to, "Hold onto my tail if you want," and began to pad slowly forward. The small bead of light grew in size and it surprised her when Osprey eventually realized that it wasn't white or yellow, like sunlight, but a strange greenish color. She wetted her dried lips, feeling intrigued but wary, and continued creeping closer. In addition to the dripping, she swore she also heard a faint sloshing, not unlike the waves on a beach. It seemed to be... echoing.

At length, the pinprick of light became a halo, then took on more detail. Junior eventually made it out: a doorway. It was roughly shaped like a triangle. When they finally reached it, it proved to be narrow. An adult would have trouble squeezing through such a narrow slit, yet Junior and Saēna easily slipped through.

The sight that greeted them on the otherside utterly flabbergasted the little Outrider. "Whoa! Holy crap!" she said, her voice echoing loudly in the enormous natural grotto. "How the heck did this get here?!" she asked excitedly, looking at Saēna, who often knew things she didn't. "It's like an underground lake. Hey, look!" She thrust her black muzzle toward the ceiling, which was covered in wicked stalactites. "This is sooo coooool! We found the coolest place on earth, Saēna!"

Junior's logic was sound, prompting Saēna to turn her attention wholly on the light at the end of the dark cavern. When Junior offered her tail, Saēna had to work her jaws in the darkness for a while before the tip of it caught her in the nose. Wriggling it to work away the ticklish sensation, the pale Virtúte carefully closed her jaws over the fur and began following the elder adolescent like some kind of circus elephant in an act.

They moved slowly toward the light, and the closer they got, the more concerned Saēna became. It was a disc of greenish light, nothing at all like the sun's bright and cheery white. She almost let go of Junior's tail and begged them to go back, but remembered they had fallen through a hole in the floor and couldn't possibly return that way.

Close inspection when they neared it revealed it was a space to pass through. Junior went first, and Saēna followed easily, being the smaller of the two. She was assaulted with much brighter light, which she squinted against while Junior began to excitedly chatter. She remained as quiet as she could for a little while, her ears twitching as her cousin's voice bounced off the sides of the grotto, but after a while she supplied a possible answer: “It must have sunk.”

When Junior called it the "coolest place on earth", Saēna grinned widely. “It's like a secret clubhouse,” she brightly agreed while beaming, her face taking the aspect of some weird imp in the odd light. “D'you think anyone else knows it's here?”

Junior accepted Saēna's explanation as gospel truth. She didn't question the physics of it, simply marveling at the natural wonder of it. The only thing she did question was the source of light. It appeared to be filtering down from the spiky ceiling, yet Junior couldn't see any holes. For that matter, she didn't see a way out, either...

For now, she didn't worry about it... or the fact that, if they didn't find an exit, they would be stuck and perish here under the mountains. Instead, she began to creep forward toward the water's edge. She sniffed. It smelled like earth and minerals. Although she didn't taste it, she stuck a paw in it. It was slightly warmer than she expected. She shook off her paw and looked over at Saēna.

"I bet not. I don't think the adults would fit through that hole," she said, eyeing the doorway. "It can be our top secret hideout! We could tell Ty and Pura about it if we want." She grinned at Saēna, then turned back toward the water, pausing only a second or two before hopping into the small, sunken lake.

The two young explorers enjoyed their new, secret playground for a couple of hours before Saēna suggested they try to find a way out before it got too late (although it was difficult to tell time down here, the strange light was starting to fade). Fortunately for them, there was an exit, which led them on another trek through dark subterranean tunnels. It eventually deposited them in a strange cleft between several craggy spires. It took all of Junior's smarts as an aspiring Outrider to orient themselves and find their way back to the plateau. It was nearly nightfall when they finally came home, though nobody seemed to have noticed their absence.

Junior exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Saēna. Most adventures she liked to share with her family, as part of her apprenticeship. This particular discovery would stay a secret between sisters.

She fidgeted lightly at the water's edge when Junior jumped in—fearful visions of the girl melting in acid filled her mind—but when it became clear that the water was just water, the patchy pup relaxed and joined her cousin in a swim. They spent the rest of that afternoon exploring the wide cavern, even finding a salamander slithering along a wall, but eventually she knew they had to leave, and the pair managed to find their way back to the surface.

She dutifully followed Junior home, trusting in the older cub's ability to lead. Although Junior had been the one to get lost once, Saēna never once questioned her sense of direction. She was right to put faith in the dark pup, for they did arrive at the Plateau just as darkness was falling, and snuck back into the territory with quiet giggles and hushed promises never to tell a soul (except maybe the aforementioned Ty and Pura).