The mage's name is Elrys, an ancient figure bathed in the dappled subterranean light, standing at the entrance of the sprawling cavern system. Elrys' senses have been honed over decades, heightened far beyond the range of any normal human, aided by rigorous training and subtle magical enhancements. This is how it feels:
Elrys closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind instead of his sight. The soft, distant dripping of water was an obvious sign of stalactites and underground rivers; his enhanced hearing didn't merely pick up the sound, it allowed him to estimate the size of the caverns ahead and the water's mineral composition by the pitch and timbre of the droplets hitting the stone.
His ears picked up the whisper of an air current rustling over the jagged stone, each minute eddy and swirl drawing a three-dimensional map of the unseen passageways in his mind, illuminating hidden paths and chambers. Minute shifts in air pressure against his skin hinted at the scale of the underground system, the difference in pressure revealing areas of different altitude.
Faint warmth radiated from the stone beneath his feet, a telltale sign of geothermal activity, mapped out in intricate patterns of heat that ebbed and flowed around him. His thermoception, once a rudimentary sense, was now a powerful tool that allowed him to discern even slight variations in temperature, giving him a glimpse into the geological processes beneath the earth.
In the total darkness, his eyes were largely irrelevant. Instead, he relied on his senses of touch and proprioception, the innate awareness of his body in space. By adjusting his magic to vibrate at certain resonant frequencies, he could emit pulses and sense their echo – a type of magical echolocation that painted the world around him in waves of reverberation. His feet could feel the slightest tremors in the ground, detecting distant movement, while his fingertips traced the petroglyphs carved into the stone, feeling the residual energy left behind by their creators.
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His olfactory senses, too, had been honed. The damp, heavy scent of moss clung to the moist walls, while a sharper, metallic tang hinted at veins of ore threaded through the surrounding stone. The mildewed, old smell of decay suggested the presence of life forms – most likely colonies of fungi and maybe even some deep-dwelling, hardy animals.
As for taste, it was a seldom-used tool in this environment, but the air held a faint bitterness, a leftover of volcanic gases perhaps. The slight acidity of the rocks, the age of the air, even the faint taste of lingering magic was present on his tongue.
Even his perception of electromagnetic fields, a sense that humans normally lack but that he'd developed through his magical training, was on high alert. He could feel the gentle pull of the earth’s magnetic field, orienting him within the complex system of tunnels, acting as a primitive compass. He could detect the electric fields of subterranean creatures, sensing their life energy as a unique signature.
All these sensations amalgamated, coalescing into an intricate tapestry of understanding. Elrys was not merely 'seeing' the caverns in the typical sense – he was feeling them, hearing them, and understanding them at a depth only he, with his enhanced senses, could comprehend.
Open to the symphony of nature, Elrys advanced, stepping lightly into the darkness. The caverns held no fear for him; the darkness was not unknown, but an old friend, full of mysteries waiting to be understood.