“Prothero, darling, come look at this.” Cold flame danced in the reflections in the Courser’s eyes, blue on blue. His soft muzzle was tipped toward the cruel wrought iron of the brazier where it jutted from the wall like a beastly claw. One pale hoof remained poised just above the ground. It was a wonderful kiss of freshness—the crinkle of magic in his nose, the coolness on his lathered chest. Ever the Dungeon...

Fire burned sullenly in the center of the coursers’ camp. The vaulted cavern high overhead was misted, indistinct, swallowing the meagre light before it made it too far. In a world of buried fortresses and crumbling battlements, Howell felt incredibly small indeed, and sleep did not come easy. He enjoyed his companion’s silence. Moritz was a cryptic courser, but good at his work. Effective. Measured. Howell never ...

Heat enables sound to travel fast. The energetic buzz in the air, swirling in thermal currents, passes soundwaves at breakneck speed. Everything sounds deathly close. This fact burns at the forefront of Howell’s mind when he hears the dread yipping begin. It is playful at first—a pack calling to one another. He is inclined, at first, to enjoy it. To delight in the vocal...

Ears pricked forward, Howell listened to the whispers. They were soft, indistinct, yet persistent. As he picked his way forward in the vaulted cavern, they stayed with him, echoed from every smooth, damp stone surface. The courser wanted to heard words—to make meaning out of long vowels and sliding consonants—but each set of letters he tried to ascribe to sound were a stretch. Wishful thinking. It could have been ...

“Howell. Be careful.” Turning his head, the swarf speckles across his face catching the moonlight, Howell dipped his nose to Prothero. “As always, darling.” And he was careful—sometimes too much so, often beset with nerves and misgivings. This was a different case. In the centre of an auxiliary room, in buried ruins that he suspected, with generous evidence, to be...

Howell had seen many crabs in the Overgrown Caverns before, but never one wearing a courser’s chanfron. The tarnished metal scraped on the ground as it stalked in his direction, leaving streaks of rust on the flagstones. Its small, invertebrate eyes gleamed only dully in the gloom. There was hardly any intelligence in them. Ever cautious, Howell merely stepped out of the crustacean’s way. Surely it wasn’t ...