*Zaeryl nods.*
"Agreed, we will not be that lucky. Still, it would have been nice."
*The pair head back to the intersection where they heard the Afflicted before, and they still hear the sound of Afflicted ahead. They move forward as quietly as they can, which, oddly, seems surprisingly quieter than usual--perhaps it is the absence of Michael's usual heavy armour that does it. Whatever the case, they are apparently not heard before their tunnel opens up and overlooks a huge cavern complex, where makeshift filthy homes and barred cells have been set up. In the cavern and the filthy holes, large numbers of feral naked Afflicted are living--fighting, sleeping, copulating, devouring raw meat. There are a small number of the larger, meaner Afflicted that Michael and Zaeryl had seen only once before, in that final rush before they brought the cavern down. In the areas with cells, each cell has a small pedestal, plinth, or other setup with a pure black crystal. The cells seem to contain...people...but...they are in various states of the Affliction. In one cell, a huddled woman shivers with fear and foreboding about her fate, seeming fairly normal, in another a man and a woman look fairly normal--at least no claws or slavering cannibal glint in their eyes, but they have torn off their clothes and made themselves at home in their cell, copulating with no regard or aversion to the presence of the Afflicted. In a third, a young mother screams in abject horror as her sweet little children, fully in the throes of the Affliction, pin her to the ground and begin to gnaw off her fingers with their sharp teeth, feeding a sadistic animalistic hunger.*
*Zaeryl motions Michael back to a safer location to talk.*
