Experiencing sudden moisture on one’s foot is never a pleasant discovery. But on inspecting her forehoof, Kyoga is able to allay her initial fear (that she had trod in the leavings of some dungeon monster). This, however, does nothing for the confusion. The sudden stretch of water in front of her sends scattered light dancing against the painted walls, and she cranes her head back to see the ceiling widen and rise almost dizzyingly out of sight.

“Strange change of scenery,” she mutters. The coursers reproduced in miniature along the wall immediately have her attention; they’re the first equine face she’s seen in days. She follows them in a trance-like state, wondering at the craftsmanship. When she spots one of her painted kin with a bipedal creature atop it’s back, she stops in her tracks, sits her rump in the water and asks it aloud:

“There you are again! What are you?”

Neither the fresco courser – nor it’s muzzle-less backpacking creature -- sees fit to answer. Perhaps, thinks Kyoga, I've been underground for a little too long.

Kyoga touches a hoof to the wall. It isn’t her first encounter with the strange bipedal thing – it keeps appearing again and again, in long-forgotten halls and out of the way corners. Her best running theory had before now been the the creatures are a sort of bird – perhaps an owl of some kind, but this newest depiction has ruined that branch of thought. This creature has no beak, but instead a muzzle. One so squashed and mutant that it might not even be there at all.

New theory: this is a cat. A very elongated, short-eared, tail-less cat.