"Guess we're just leaving the ladybugs here for our mysterious wizard to collect?" Shrug. "This way." 

The pair of them start walking, arm in arm, down a tunnel leaving the cave and descending. The only light comes from little fairy-light type circlets that both of them are wearing, and toggle on when they walk out of range of the cave lighting. This doesn't seem to bother them; the floor is uneven but they clearly know it very well. 

Rastax does, after a bit, slow down. "Do you need a hand?" he asks Thorn. 

Hannah follows along gamely. She's not in the best of shape but she's a hiker. In sneakers at the moment, but...

"I think I can manage, but thank you."

After a few minutes of walking, they reach a larger, more smooth-walled corridor, much better lit by LED lights strung along the ceiling, the walls completely covered in artistic graffiti. 

Nightengale sings to herself, quietly. She has an amazing voice; she can make herself sound like half a dozen different people, alternating styles every phrase. 

... She'll never know if she doesn't ask. 

"Incidentally... are you plural?"

Nightengale stops singing. 

"- Not so much these days. I'm that old stereotype about artists, you know, I was seven different people when I was nineteen and then in my boring middle age I went for more integrated." 

"Heh. Not all the way. You still pull out Lienna when you need to go topside." 

"Yes, okay, for Law, but when's the last time I went up there? Last year?" 

"As for me, I've always been med– well, let's say undifferentiated, at least," Rastax says dryly. "I'm pretty firmly stuck at one person in here, but I never did manage well up on the Surface, did I." 

"Obligate-Chaos since you were a tot." She kisses him, before turning back to Thorn. "And you?" 

"There's a half-dozen of us here. You're talking to Hannah right now. Aside from me there's Thorn - the hypnotist - Lily - the one who keeps worrying about supplies - Audrey - she's little - and Kumi and Liath, who are... let's just say of a more personal nature. It's rarer where I come from, maybe 1% of the population. Thorn made herself shell personalities with hypnosis about a decade ago, and, well... we proved a bit of a handful."

"Fascinating! It's...hard to imagine a world where it's that rare, I have to say." 

"Not having a Surface and Underworld separated would simplify things, I reckon." 

"Or make them even more confusing! I don't - it's not just those, right, even the folks who never go deeper than the top few levels have to - switch facets, at least, even if they're more like masks than other people, and - how would you be able to talk about it, if there weren't words for - that...?" 

Fond smile. "She's a poet. Loves her words." 

"I compose some doggerel. I don't think I have anything about being plural specifically but I spoke to - the distance between me and ordinary people - quite a bit. Perhaps I can share later?"

"We'd be delighted, honey!" 

The corridor they're in angles, slopes downward; the bedrock around them shifts to a different colour and texture, more basalt-like than the previous layered sedimentary rock. There are support-struts visible in the corners of the ceiling and, at intervals, struts sort of crisscrossed down the walls, in a clearly thought-out pattern. 

Nightengale starts singing again, this time a wordless tune that seems to be imitating birdsong. 

Hannah listens intently with a smile on her face, and keeps an eye out for the camp.

They reach a nexus of corridors - all of which seem to slope in at different angles - and the entrance to a descending shaft, eight feet across or so, with a tight-wound spiral staircase hung inside it. It's dark, but proves to contain a string of lights around the stair-treads that can be flicked on for the descent. 

They go down. And down. 

It's really just about thirty feet, and then the staircase leads down into...a really big cavern, with a high arching ceiling, one that looks at least partly natural - though quite a lot of supporting struts have been added. There's a pump setup buzzing quietly in a corner, apparently draining groundwater from a pit sink into the floor, keeping the floor itself dry. 

It's very well-lit, almost as bright as day and a bit dazzling after the stairs, especially since the ceiling seems to be thoroughly decorated with disco-ball style glittery outcroppings. 

The floor is - not carpeted, exactly, but there's a sort of spongy-rubbery mat laid down across most of it, a little like the flooring in a gym or martial arts dojo. 

Some mostly-naked people are wrestling off to the side. 

Nightengale is beaming. "We're here!" 

"Dazzling."

"Can you show us around a little, meet some people? We'd like to get a better sense of how things work around here."

"Perfect - well, let's go introduce you to Adder, first..." 

In the direct that Nightengale gestures, a tall, muscular, very athletic-looking woman is sparring - against two other men, both larger than her, but she seems to be holding her own just fine.