Styx was gone before anyone could hope to act. The chains on the box shattered like sugar-glass, and the living, writhing shadow contained therein swallowed him in barely an instant. That, at least, was what Mouse could make of his charges' frantic babbling. For his part, all their guardian had heard was a muffled gasp-- all he sensed the cloying, grasping malice of whatever sat at the center of the grand throne-room. Kelpie remembered grasping skeletal hands, and Daybreak described countless...

Daybreak glows. Not metaphorically, with courage or in the throes of victory-- literally glows. Suffuse with the light of a small sun. He is grown, of course, broad-chested and proud-necked and crowned. A pair of massive eagle's wings stretch from his shoulders. The crystalline walls of the caverns refract his brilliance a thousandfold, blinding the throngs of delvers no watching him in wonder. He is a King, to them. He is as a god.  Kelpie has always been most at home in th...

Over time they all became accustomed to the flickering of phantom shadows against the old stone walls. Everywhere they went, those sourceless, dancing lights seemed to follow. After three or four days the foals had stopped commenting on them. Started chattering endlessly about other things-- the stories Mouse told them when they curled up to rest each night, of the countless haunting things they had witnessed while wandering in their guardian's wake. From what Mouse gathered they had glimpsed...

"There iS alwAYs rOoM for More."  The creature spoke with the scratching of old paper and the falling of dust on stone. It spoke without moving its jaws, which gaped uselessly under hollow black eyesockets. Surely it could see nothing, and yet Daybreak felt certain its gazed bored under the pelt, behind the bones, into the very soul. The colt shuddered and took an extra step away, behind his sightless, fearless guardian.  "Not here, friend," Mouse answered, ...

"But even I could jump that," Daybreak complained, and Mouse heard the scraping of a tiny hoof on rotten old wood. "Here-- touch here." Mouse did so, brushing his sensitive muzzle over the top edge of a door barely as high as his shoulders more in an effort to placate his demanding charge than out of any actual interest. "But even I could jump that," Daybreak complained, and Mouse heard the scraping of a tiny hoof on rotten old wood. "Here-- touch here." Mous...

Mouse had a terrible habit of collecting strays. Sometimes they were grown-- greenhorn delvers who had no business wandering as deep into the caverns as they had, risking their lives in the bid for ancient treasure which Mouse considered altogether commonplace. It glittered, he had been told. What glittering must look like he could not say. Cavedwellers like him had little and less use for baubles which trapped the light. They made good fodder for trade, but that was all.  ...

Where by day the pumpkins grew, by moonlight the restless dead returned to war. Styx stood above that familiar field expressionless. Silent. The clattering bones of his wretched pets faded to the background, here, no longer intimidating when played alongside the bitter shrieks of memories. Styx spent half his life-- all of his foalhood-- wandering these moors. He knew the sides of that ancient war. Understood, he thought, the tenuous alliances, the bitter betrayals which had lead them to exti...

"What do you think, Rattles?"  In the company of others, Styx would never deign to use the nickname for the heap of rattling, disorganized bones which shuffled in his wake. It wasn't dignified. It wasn't frightening, which his skeletons needed to be in order to be of any help. The creatures, after all, made little mark on a real battle. Strung together by magic and only loosely bound, they could crumble to pieces at a glance. Wretched, useless things. And little good for co...

"You could always have Rattles try to squeeze underneath." The dead-eyed glare Styx offered Polaris for her suggestion left no questions to be asked about his feelings. He did not appreciate her, for one thing. He did not appreciate the flippant nickname she had given to the gaggle of clattering skeletons which followed Styx wherever he went, serving his every whim. He did not appreciate empty-headed pointless suggestions that any great fool could tell at a glance ...

Pythia knew the moment Veda left that they had made a rotten choice, but there was no unmaking it. Veda was a bleeding heart. She would never stand for the suggestion that the fate of straying Delvers was none of the Sisters' business, and neither Pythia nor Polaris was inclined to abandon their own pursuits to rescue a bunch of fools. Still, Pythia knew beneath her bones that they would not see Veda again for quite some time. An premonition which she kept to herself. Polaris might...