"Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes." ― H.P. Lovecraft, The Rats in the Walls

With Hakdrilda begging off for at least the day, I suddenly had free time in my schedule. I'd had enough of books for the day, and I'd already spent time expanding down the access tunnel. That had felt productive, if not particularly interesting. The Redcrests weren't expecting anything from me today, so that left my primary options as continuing to work on my dungeon by filling in gaps I'd created during my various explorations or pursuing one of my hobbies.

I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to go observe nature at the moment, though I was kind of tempted to send out exploratory parties – maybe towards the interesting, wooded section to the north, or possibly towards the next closest locations that May had pointed out as mana nodes. She hadn't really given me precise directions for those, though, and had explicitly said that they weren't visible on the surface.

That left me feeling mostly like I should pursue some subterranean explorations. That could mean more archaeological work in the gnomish city, but I decided that, spoilers notwithstanding, I should probably try to get at least a loose map of some of the tunnels I'd encountered – both in the cross-corridor I'd run across in the access tunnel and back where I'd encountered the dracolisk scale. I'd been carefully securing the various doors behind me, but I did want to know if the two sets of tunnels connected. I'd want to claim them eventually, I'm sure, but mapping them out first seemed a bit more pressing.

I pondered my options for what creature or creatures to send out exploring. The badger had been a reasonable choice, but I did have additional options these days, some of which would be slightly better prepared for hostile encounters or difficult terrain obstacles. In the end, I decided that the nomadic fruit bat might be my best choice, but it wasn't until I'd spawned it in that I realized that fruit bats don't have echolocation, so it wasn't exactly a great choice for cave exploration. Now I had additional questions about how that particular specimen had ended up where it did. More pertinently, I had to decide what to do with a fruit bat this far underground. It had decent night vision, though it was still reliant on ambient light, which was in short supply. Feeling bad for the creature, I spawned in some fruit for it to eat, and simply left it waiting for instructions, since trying to navigate it back out to the orchard area was going to take substantially longer.

In the end, having decided that I wanted a flying creature with some defensive capabilities and at least some ability to see in the dark, I narrowed my choices down to a cave wyvern, a shade owl, or one of my tier 3 options. I'd added enough to my dungeon over the last few days that another tier 3 option didn't seem like a real stretch, so I selected a Wizard's Cat. To be honest, I was kind of curious about what it would be like, and I mostly just went with the urge.

To be honest, it was very cool looking, if not immediately impressive in its might. The one I created was the size of a good-sized domestic cat – not a Maine coon, or anything, but pushing 7 kg and none of it fat. He was a solid, dark grey in coloration, with the wings folded along his back an even darker shade, making his dimly glowing green eyes stand out rather dramatically. For the first time, I kind of wanted to name one of my dungeon creatures, but since I was about to send him off to explore potentially dangerous subterraneous tunnels, I decided against getting too attached. If he survived for a couple of weeks, maybe I'd reconsider. And again, he was a dungeon-spawned creature and able to function on basic instincts, but not really a true individual, even to the extent of the assimilated bears on the first level. I tried to convince myself that he was basically a more advanced and adaptable version of a Roomba, but I still kind of wanted to pet it, and I'm not really sure why.

In any event, he possessed some stealth capabilities, as Norfoth had described, and a thin veil of shadow-aspected mana swept over him. He wasn't concealed from my mana sight, obviously, and the tunnel where I'd spawned him in was dark anyways, but it was aware enough to conceal itself from other forms of vision. Norfoth had mentioned it possessed the ability to see through most forms of invisibility, but that seemed to be on top of at least a basic form of darkvision, as I could tell it was making out the tunnel's form in basic shades of grey, supplemented by excellent senses of hearing and smell.

I sent him off to explore the hallway that had crossed above the mana conduit, heading him to the left, back in the general direction of the tunnels with the dracolisk. He didn't hurry but slowly sauntered along the left wall of the tunnel, sense extended for traps. I knew that he COULD fly, but it would be trickier in the narrow tunnel and more costly to his energy reserves.

While he wasn't hurrying, he was significantly faster than I'd been while claiming territory, even though he was pausing regularly to listen and scent for trouble. Either he was advanced enough, or I'd advanced in my skills enough, that I could use him as a perception anchor – not needing to actually descend and take control of him directly to make use of his senses. It was less of a strain on me, and I think on him, than I'd experienced trying to use the bronze hawk-eagle to scout the surface of the island. It was still an odd sensation, though, as the wizard cat's senses weren't exactly like those I was accustomed to when I was human. Smell, in particular, was much more prominent for the cat and the staleness of the air seemed to bother him a bit. His night vision was quite exceptional, though I think his glowing eyes actually were being used to allow him to see where no other light was available. The overall color palette was muted, though. Not black and white, but not a lot better than seeing in shades of grey. The other bit of sensory freakiness was with the whiskers, which were oddly sensitive to any vibrations. There wasn't much to sense, currently, but even the gentle movement of air through the tunnel was registering.

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This tunnel appeared to have a gentle curve to it; I assumed it probably mimicked the curvature of the island itself, though I couldn't be entirely sure. It also sloped downwards, gently, though at this rate, I thought it would still pass above the tunnels I'd dropped on my way to the gnomish city. If nothing else, that exploratory tunnel had been quite small, so it would have been easy to miss. It made me wonder how many other tunnels I'd missed; Eventually, I'd want to fill in the space around those tunnels, so whatever ones I missed now, I'd probably find later. I had a mental vision of the tunnels below any old city and had the sudden realization that, between the extended occupation of the island and the presence of entirely subterranean settlements, that the whole sky island was likely shot through with tunnels of varying ages, sizes, and extents. That led me to a whole other realization that, aside from the catacombs below the gnomish cathedral, I hadn't actually looked to see if the city extended to levels above or below the one I'd explored. I was, at least, fairly confident that it was the MAIN floor, but additional levels hosting residential, industrial, or agricultural endeavors certainly could be possible. I heaved a sigh at my short sightedness and added vertical explorations of the gnomish city to my to-do list. I might be overthinking this, of course, as I hadn't noticed any obvious indicators in the form of comparatively large staircases or other openings to additional floors.

I refocused on the wizard's cat, as it had paused to sniff and then scratch at the wall. It had detected a slight variation in the airflow, which I interpreted as a potential secret door in the wall here. There was no obvious trigger to open it, though, and I couldn't extend my domain to this point without claiming the intervening ground. My dungeon instincts didn't like the uneven expansion I had been pursuing, but they absolutely forbade me from trying for a wholly disjunct subsidiary territory. I wasn't sure if it was even possible, but my instincts were screaming that it would be tremendously painful, likely severely damaging, and even more likely to get me destroyed, if I survived the attempt. **Oh, yeah. A dungeon that can expand to wherever it wants would be a security nightmare for any one paying attention.** I supposed even the gods might have some objections to that level of growth.

I let the secret door go, regretfully, tacking on yet another task to come back to at some point. The cat, ignoring my gentle urgings, continued its investigation until it was satisfied no likely food source lay behind the hidden door, then proceeded to groom its whiskers until I stopped with the gentle urgings – cats not really liking to follow orders, even dungeon created ones. I could, of course, take control of the creature directly, but that would only make things harder – in the short term, and almost certainly in the long term. No, I could be patient and the cat eventually continued on its way.

He'd followed the tunnel perhaps 250 meters in a generally northward direction, curving towards the northeast before stopping again, this time to doublecheck his stealth. He was heading "upwind", if you could call the very slow movement of air through the tunnel that. That air current had brought a smell. Neither he nor I recognized it, but it triggered some sort of primal reaction from the Wizard's cat – caution at a potential hazard, if I was interpreting it correctly. It was a dry, kind of musty smell overlaying a faint scent of organic decay, and a sharp urea scent, and my mind went to the time I had encountered a rattlesnake hibernaculum on a mountain ridge near my home. The cat and I both rather assumed the presence of either a number of reptiles or at least one that was quite large. It could certainly be a den of the Lesser Deep Dracolisk, but neither of us could be certain without continuing.

The cat was visibly hesitant to continue, though it was also curious to check out the hazard. I didn't push it one way or the other, as from personal experience, cats are contrary things that refuse to be forced. In the end, it gathered its courage, acted as though that was never in doubt, and silently crept forward as the smell grew stronger. As it neared an opening in the wall that appeared to have been either excavated or widened by the action of large claws, a quiet noise was audible, reminiscent of a knife being pulled along a whetstone. The cat twitched its ears to help better place the source of the noise, and the results must have been at least moderately acceptable, as it lowered its body and crept forward into the mouth of the opening.

Peering into the darkness of the cavern, the source of the smell and the sound were immediately clear – this was, indeed, at least one lair of the Lesser Deep Dracolisk. The creature was coiled loosely atop a pile of bones of indeterminate nature. Largely serpentine in appearance, it did possess legs – though only two sets, rather than the three sets I recalled from images in my old world – though they were rather stubby and low slung. As with the scale I'd found earlier, its armor was largely black with some yellow edging picking up an interesting scale pattern. It was a bit difficult to tell from the quick peek the cat had taken before backing out of the doorway, but I'd estimate its length at perhaps 18 meters from nose to tail tip, It had a set of matte-black wings, as well, though they were rather tattered and held close to its side. I doubted they saw much use, as the discussion with Mayphesselth certainly suggested it remained underground to avoid her.

From the quick glimpse, it appeared to be resting, if not actually asleep, though with the cat's sharp hearing, it could be heard shifting and I even heard what I thought sounded like the hissing noise I associated with snakes 'tasting' the air. I wondered if it possessed a vomeronasal organ like that of snakes; the wizard's cat wondered if it had scented it and moved rapidly past the lair's entrance down the continuing corridor.

I didn't push. While I absolutely coveted the pile of bones the dracolisk was lying on as a source of blueprints, there was more advantage in knowing where to find it than in driving it off to roam randomly. I wasn't actually sure if expanding my domain to this point would drive it off, in any event. It clearly didn't like being in my domain, but I wasn't sure that would be enough to make it leave an established lair.

The cat wasn't conflicted at all; it wanted to be elsewhere. It took off, rather more expeditiously, though it did at least continue along the tunnel, furthering its goal of determining where the path might lead while maintaining its magical concealment. The tunnel continued in its gently curving course, though I did start to note remnants of bone – mostly small fragments – that suggested the dracolisk was deliberately bringing bones to its lair, rather than the bones simply being the byproduct of its dining habits. While I had more time to inspect these pieces, they were mostly too fragmentary for me to put much faith in a potential ID. We were outside of my domain, so simply absorbing them wasn't an option. I did ask the Wizard's Cat to secure any interesting samples it came across, but without pockets or a dimensional storage ability, it wasn't going to be able to bring back much. It didn't seem worth the mana expenditure to give it a bag of holding, but it was something to consider for later expeditions. in any event, the cat simply ignored my request for the time being, but I was reasonably confident it meant to grab an interesting bone on its way back to the main dungeon.

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