Ankyra Sound took it all back

she turned back to inspect her charge, her eyes alight with the closest thing to happiness a sociopath could express. "oh - not just any underground." her voice sang off the walls and she cherished the way the echoes bounded through corridors deep and rarely trespassed.

"this -- this is The Grotto. this is where the nereides lived.." she paused and looked at arrille - he likely knew little about the nereides. "ah, before your time. big scary women. i lead them myself." the sylph smiled to herself as she continued down the mouth of one large, oft-traveled corridor. "it is a network - you could spend days down here and never resurface or cross your tracks. do you know what made these caverns?" she queried as they passed columns of ancient flowstone and ridges of bumpy, worn limestone. she didn't wait for an answer: "water. water has shaped this home over millenia, and now most of it is above sea-level. some of it is flooded, if you go past the cavern."

she took an abrupt turn as the tunnel split in two; by now very little natural light poured into the corridors and the going became quite dark. the air was surprisingly turbulent, for several hundred feet down sat the immense floor of the cavern, which was illuminated by small pools of the sound's water.

the tunnel slowly turned from darkness to a strange and eerie phosphorescent blue -- caiaphas expertly leapt from the ledge marking the end of the tunnel and jumped down into the immense cavern. the cavern spanned several hundred meters across and was largely smooth limestone -- stalagmites and stalactites rimed both the ceiling and the floor of the cavern, and in the center of it gurgled a large salt-water pool -- the source of the cavern's eerie haunting blue glow . "and this is The Cavern. this is where saltwinter wolves lived. it is where i raised Lycaon, who you will meet shortly." around them evidence of settlement was present -- some years old, and some more recent. there were bones, long since chewed clean -- and in a corner, a cowl of desiccated seaweed and strange stalks of kelp.

caiaphas bathed in the pale blue splendor of her home, waiting for arrille to say something. she remembered the first time she had witnessed the cavern -- she had been so struck with awe by its alien design, its strangeness from the upper world.