When he had been moving from street to street while disguised, slowly, so very agonizingly slowly, he had not noticed it. What he did notice was a very candid look at changeling society from the inside. They bought and traded, mostly tools, physical food, and furnishings, strange changeling creations he couldn't name that were made from that same strange material that now coated everything. Gone was the sepulchral beauty of the stark grey buildings built into the sides of mighty and impossibly ancient stalagmites, their squat, hard, and cunningly carved forms replaced by hard black formations. They were the same ones he remembered from his time in Chrysalis' palace when he had escaped his pod, and how starkly they had contrasted with the fine, ancient carved passageway that the secret switch had opened. It was like he was in some strange doppelganger of the city he had once seen emptied and stalked by an undead terror.