Valeria lifted her head with the last jeweled beetle held carefully in her teeth. She twisted to tuck it in her pack with the rest, when all of a sudden its chitin snapped open, its little wings going crazy to try and free itself. Snorting, Valeria dropped it, and the little beast buzzed off into the darkness.   Ah, well. What was one lost-   Valeria froze when the faded buzzing of the beetle returned with a vengeance. She whipped around just in time to see the d...

Valeria shouldered her pack and set out, setting newly rejuvenated hooves on the trail carved through the moss. The dungeon floor had started sloping up some time ago, after she’d taken the fork in the path that smelled liked fresh air.   Honestly, she was ready to get out. Unlike some, she didn’t live underground, and this dive must be days long already. It was impossible to tell the passage of days underground without a timepiece, which she didn’t care to bring with her...

By the time Valeria thundered to a stop, she was panting, and in an entirely different section of the dungeon. She’d left the rotten thing that dropped onto her back twitching and half-dead on the floor after smashing it off the wall to get it to release her, and she hadn’t looked back, knowing there could be more. The thing hadn’t even been large, but it’d thoroughly startled her by dropping out of nowhere in an otherwise quiet corridor.    She panted to catch her bre...