Saavin said. French stood next to her, stricken with the kind of commonplace awe they’d experienced on a daily, and even hourly, basis. Before them sprawled a series of tubular openings spanning nearly a mile of open cavern. The rims were fouled with detritus, a noxious cloud hanging in the air. Low mushrooms bloomed across the slimy swamp covering a cave floor of moist, unseen composition. The city lay behind them, and the companionate presence of the still sea was gone from their sight, lost to the downward curve of their descent. A pulsation wafted past all of their senses, like the earth itself was breathing. “Do you feel it?” French asked. His shoulders were tense with preparation. Saavin nodded with grim admission. There was something in the tubes. Something alive, they decided, and the potential sense of death pushed past the periphery of their senses to blare in open warning. “I count four major openings .
