She was nearly done with the cellar when her claws broke through into open space. She paused, curious, and sniffed at the opening. She expected to smell only dirt, but instead she smelled a bizarre scent, faint and alien. She shifted from the dragon's shape to her own natural form and sniffed again. Her nose was slightly more sensitive, but she still had no idea what she was smelling. She was, however, quite certain that this was no small pocket. There was space back there, and lots of it.

Curious, and not really having anything better to do, she widened the opening. She squeezed herself through and stood on the other side. It was very dark, only the faintest hint of light filtering down this far, but she could sense space all around her. She stood back on her hind legs and reached up. Her paws encountered solid dirt again at the very limit of her reach. A few more minutes was enough to be sure that she stood at the end of a large tunnel that went back who knows how far.

Perhaps it goes to Coppertop, and this is an abandoned dwarven mine shaft, she thought. But no, this is through dirt. Dwarves don't dig in dirt, they only work in stone. Their tunnels go south into the mountains. If any of them came out this way, they would be much further under, in the bedrock below the permafrost layer.

Puzzled, but still curious, Flame padded slowly down the tunnel. She couldn't see, but her nose and whiskers worked just fine, and the floor seemed to be quite level. There was just a hint of a breeze, wafting from ahead of her and no doubt going out now through the exit provided by her digging.

She tested the air again. The scent was mostly still alien, but she detected one familiar note in it, a faint trace of sulfur. The next thing she noticed was a sound. Very, very faint, it was a low, regular thudding. A drumbeat, perhaps. Or a heartbeat. She continued on a little more warily.

Up ahead she gradually saw the faintest possible hint of light. It was dull and reddish, but it was light all the same. Flame crept forward one step at a time now. The light grew until it was strong enough for her sensitive eyes to see by as she went. She began to pass the open mouths of other tunnels here and there, and once the tunnel forked. She followed the direction of the light at the branching. Though oddly the source of the light seemed much further away than it should have been, given how it was illuminating the tunnels. The scent was stronger now, tracked along the tunnel floor as well as born on the breeze. Whatever had made it had passed this way. She crept on silent paws, not wanting to give away her own presence here if she could help it. She got the feeling that whatever had made these tunnels was something dangerous. She could be wrong, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Of course being truly safe would mean retreating back the way she had come, but her curiosity wouldn't allow it. As she crept along she heard something other than the distant drumming. She froze, then darted down a side tunnel, hoping that whatever it was, it wasn't going that way. She crouched against the irregular tunnel wall, flattening herself as much as possible. Her white fur wasn't the best camouflage in this setting, but the light was still dim enough that she might remain unseen.

The sound reminded her of voices. But they were not human voices, nor anything remotely like them. They were even more alien than the strange scent Flame had picked up. They hissed and clicked and muttered hollowly. She couldn't tell if it was one creature or many making the sound. It grew louder as the source drew near and Flame held utterly still, though her back fur was all on end, her tail bushed out. There was something wrong with the sound. The scent had merely been strange, but the sound... It made Flame shiver all the way through, and she suddenly felt cold, cold as she had seldom felt in her life. Then the creatures passed in front of her, and the cold seemed to settle into her very bones as they did. She wasn't even sure "creature" was the right term for the things. There were two of them, and they moved along on shifting shadows that sometimes seemed to be a mass of crawling tentacles, sometimes seemed to be hundreds of scuttling insectoid legs, and sometimes seemed to simply flow along the ground. Their upper bodies were every bit as changeable, shifting constantly as they moved. They seemed to be made of nothing but blackness, as though shadows had been made three-dimensional and brought to life. The dim red glow behind them didn't illuminate them at all, it just vanished into their utter black. She couldn't see their eyes, if they had any, and she was very glad to leave it that way. She stayed plastered to the floor, her fur on end, for quite a while after they passed, until the chill slowly faded from her bones.

Flame Song suddenly wanted nothing more than to retreat the way she had come and fill in her cellar and maybe even move somewhere else entirely and re-dig her home. But the things had gone in the direction she needed to go in, and she did not want to go after them. She also no longer had any urge to see what the light source was. Whatever it was it was very likely to have more of those things around it, and she wanted to stay as far away from them as possible. So with no better idea, she turned and started moving, even more cautiously than before, down the side tunnel. She went quite a ways before she saw a hint of reddish light up ahead. She stopped and crouched in the middle of the tunnel. Behind was the choice of the things or the light, ahead was also the light. Then she narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. This light seemed subtly different from the light she'd followed earlier. She crept forward a few more yards. Definitely different. It was less red, and it flickered. In fact it looked like firelight. Belly to the floor, tail still bushed out, and with utmost care to keep utterly silent she crept down the tunnel. It curved slightly, and she was tensed, expecting that at any moment she would come around the curve to find more of those things ahead of her. But the tunnel remained blessedly empty, the only movement the flickering of the firelight on the rough earthen walls. Before long Flame Song came to the source of the light. An opening in the tunnel's wall, smaller than the cross passages she'd seen before, spilled a fan of firelight out onto the tunnel floor, painting the opposite wall with a shifting golden-red glow.