Ecco's near-frozen fluke was instantly filled with a renewed energy as he entered the cavern with hesitance. A shiver was sent as a silent tremor through his nerves as he made the rapid transaction from bitter cold to enveloping warmth.
By this time, the dolphin wasn't surprised that he could find something strange. That happened when it was heard that creatures from beyond the stars were feeding from Earth's oceans.
He sighed at the memory. It was still so vivid...the flash of red...the feeling of weightlessness he endured as he heard his pod's surprised calls...the long journey over miles of ocean and above the Earth itself...
Then his encounter with the Foe, deadly cousins of the Vortex, whose planet orbited the same sun...
He blinked, and used his blasts of sonar again through the blinding darkness of the arctic cavern. Ecco wasn't too worried...the Foe were long gone, as were the Vortex. Both creatures nothing but a harsh memory.
But now what has he to deal with? Something stronger than either race? Something that gave the great Orcas, the most feared hunters in all oceans, fear?
The cavern's strange warmth was an amazing feeling to Ecco. It reminded him of how he felt as a calf when his mother was there to comfort and sing to him. For a moment, all feelings of foreboding left him, questioning as he swam whether or not he was indeed facing a new threat.
The swim along the cavern was getting fiercely long...he silently thanked the Asterite for his immortality. Could it really have been whale song replying to him?
It sounded as ancient, thoughtful, and somehow lost. Whalesong was always somewhat tough to interpret, even to the most skilled of the smaller singers.
Suddenly, he stopped, confused. His sonar was showing something ahead in the darkness...a wall of stone, the end of the cavern.
He searched every inch, listening to the complex notes of echoes that rang back to him. He saw smooth and jagged outcroppings, stone that seemingly made a thick barrier.
With a small chirp in confusion, he looked around again for even a tiny hole. "What have I stumbled into now...?" he asked himself aloud, just to break the eerie silence.
He found not even a tiny niche. With a sigh, he turned back. He didn't want to leave this warm water, but he had to endure the freezing cold again. Something...an instinct, a vague feeling, whatever it was...once again was calling him with a message of wrong.
He aimed his sonar where he came from...but his eyes widened.
The tunnel that was behind him...it wasn't there...
Just another impenetrable wall of stone. Frantically his song's echoes moved from every angle of the cavern until he rotated in a full circle.
"Impossible! I'm sure I swam here through a tunnel! How can I be trapped?" he asked the empty space. Each time he tried, he was only sure that his sonar returned with barriers.
The darkness, so absolute, began to close on him. His song stopped. Then, once more, he sent out another wave of sonar, to see if he missed something.
But what returned to him was something completely different...
It looked like teeth...closing around him...
