Shafts of light. Delicate beams of radiant rays that trickled across quartz and limestone like water rolled over jagged edges and sharp points until finally they trickled upon a vine.

"See Wormtail, do you see it there?"

"Yes, Master!"

It lay brown and bare upon the stone, like a frayed coil of rope left to weather on the deck of a ship that had last sailed many eons ago.

"Ah, one of the Great Beasts of old Wormtail, spoken of by the pen of Salazar Slytherin himself! But I prattle! Dig Wormtail, dig!"

"Yes Master!"

Suddenly, a consciousness.

Voices...such unfamiliar ones.

Recollections started to come to the forefront of Carro's mind, images, flashes of thought. The pain of containment, the dazed insanity bred within from the darkness of forced hibernation.

Slumber hath left me weak and pained. Sleep hath drained me. How long hath I been in slumber? Days? Nay, longer than days it would take to weaken me so!

But the voices brought with them brighter points of light upon which Carro could draw strength from. He could feel the beating of wizard hearts, the throb of their brains in simple schisms of thought. The pale man was speaking to him in the Language of Serpents. Carro could understand it, but couldn't fathom what could have convinced this pathetic creature and its even more pathetic servant that he would simply obey their whims.

No matter, life was flowing into Carro now from the light, and he could feel the warmth of their magic, the life force of these two, trickling unconsciously into him just from their closeness.

Just a touch of them, life shall flow...the Magic...

With sudden motion, Carro reached out physically for sustenance. Brown dead ropes sprung to desperate life, wrapping tightly around the faceless wizard, who had pulled out his wand in shock and defense to cast some sort of spell. A flash of green light, and Carro felt the wizard in his grasp stiffen with shock.

Pathetic...Yet, what be this?

Carro rose bodily to stare at the sniveling wizard wrapped within his clutches, who was demanding with false authority to be released. The other had transformed into a rat and skittered off into the darkness in terror like the vermin it was. Carro could feel something in the wizard's brain that was disconnected, disjointed, something that was not a part of this wizard.

He had it! A line! A thread of soul connected from this sniveling creature to another, a youth by the feel of the thread, a young strong life force who was the source of such great power that Carro hesitated momentarily in his feasting to carefully remove that last line of life from the body and claim it for himself.

Who be this youth? In he hath I found a great Source indeed! The thought settled upon Carro like dust upon the surface of the ancient stones around him. Strong enough to support even one of Us? I must find this child at all costs!

Carro threw the corpse of Lord Voldemort from himself like a rag doll before stretching tenuous vines outwards, breaking apart the cavern he had been trapped within for ages, before crawling spider-like on thin fragile limbs out into the crimson dawn to begin his quest.

Somewhere out in the vast expanse before him, another consciousness patiently waited for contact.