[i]No heat signatures. No life. Once Ruby had entered into the portion of the cave where it was possible to stand, she would be met with a simple cave tunnel easily big enough to walk along. There were many passages, but only one seemed to be used more. Seemed to stink worse. If she followed her nose, then it would be a mere half-hours walk through the rotting tunnels before she'd come upon a crevasse. Like the opening to the cave, it was not extraordinary. Only a black crack in the floor through which a big man may slip. Not a straight drop, but a jagged climb downwards for a few hundred feet. 

[b]*Farther and farther away from the world wherein lay all that was known...*[/b]

The one who claims finding monsters is easy has never met a true monster, and oftentimes the journey matters just as much as the goal. It gives one time to contemplate their life. Were Ruby to clamber down through the crevasse and into the inky depths, she would be able to notice the smell much, much more. A pungency that reeked of flesh rot. That special coppery aroma, melting and deep and sickly sweet, which arises only when the body of something that is still alive starts to die. At the bottom would be the main cavern. The ceiling would stretch out far, far above her. Further on was a black gulf even her night/thermal vision couldn't penetrate. Not because it was magic, no. It just seemed to stretch on forever, getting wider and wider the further one moved on. But there would be little need to look any further. The floor was a crunchy carpet, an endless nest of grime-caked bones that shrunk into the distance. Almost all of them were human, and most of the ones that were human looked small. They belonged to children. A hundred and twenty yards away was a blanched monument to death, almost touching the dripping stalactites. More bones. It was frigid this far down, but even so she could probably see it. Up there on the ceiling, halfway between her and the pyramid of skeletons. Moving so slowly. A bit at a time. Then stopping. A bit more, ever so sluggish. Then it stops again. A bulbous shape all bloated and wet. The pulpy layer of cold mucous surrounding its already cool and lightly pulsating body might have fooled a normal person. But it was just a shade different on the heat spectrum, a slightly brighter blue. If she watched long enough, intently enough, held still and gazed into...

Yes. Little by little, high above, it seemed to be moving towards her. The cruelest illusion that one could have at this point, one which had passed through the minds of countless others, would be that there was still hope for escape. The chance to leave that place and forget it all like a bad dream, to go back to warm homes and smiling faces. That something so far, so slow, that maybe *please oh gods please* had not yet noticed them, that perhaps that almost unseen thing may just be their *Shush... Shhhh...* imagination.[/i]