Operating a multi-layered hyper-realistic cardboard courser suit with seven pairs of raccoon hands and feet is a strenuous task at best.

At worst—like today—it's a tango with death itself.

It starts with a topple into a pretty sizable puddle, drenching every inch of cardboard and creating a colorful, bleeding mess. 

Which, on its own, wouldn’t be particularly out of the norm. Ruining the suit is a bi-weekly occurrence, especially during encounters with its mortal enemy—water. But the water and paint and oil and wax dripping off of the cardboard and its residents makes the bare stone beneath their feet slippery, and their adventure in the Dungeon becomes much more precarious.

And then, well.

Then the not-courser and all of its inhabitants are slipping while trying to take a turn too quickly, plummeting off a small cliff they hadn’t noticed until it was too late. They land with several squeals and startled chittering, frantically reassembling their costume to the best of their abilities even as it crumbles and sags in their hands. The paint has almost entirely bled out, leaving behind dark, damp cardboard and turning their once-green not-courser a hideously plain chestnut with the faintest yellow streaks in its otherwise white mane and tail.

Several of the raccoons shriek at the loss of their beautiful display, but without their coloring supplies that they left on the Surface, they’re helpless to the mundanity of their new appearance.

By some great miracle, the ensemble is able to stand upright again, although not without significant effort from the raccoons inside. Slowly, they heave their way on, swinging each leg forward in rhythm to carry them through the Dungeon on their quest to find an alternative route back to the Surface. 

It takes far, far too long for the impatient procyonids, but eventually they manage to shuffle into a massive cavern with a steep (and, hopefully, scaleable) cliff face at the opposite end. At the peak is a distinct tunnel, just barely illuminated by courser-placed torches as if to encourage the not-courser that it’s the correct path to follow.

Excited chittering echoes through the cavern as the cardboard suit begins to haphazardly climb, but the moment its entire body weight is on the first large, mossy stone, the ground begins to shift beneath it.

Horse struggles to maintain its footing, but it somehow manages—realizing with an undeserved irritation that it’s currently standing on the calf of a large golem sitting criss-cross, freshly awoken by cardboard boxes and raccoon feet clambering onto it. On either side of the stone beast, multiple other golems begin to shift and turn toward the intruder. The suit clumsily scrambles backwards and off of the golem.

“Um,” Horse says unintelligently from somewhere in its throat, voice definitely equine and not-at-all that of a juvenile raccoon. “We— ah! I have to, um. Well, you see, funny story…”

There’s inexplicable chittering from the flank of the ensemble, clearly communicating something to the raccoon in the throat. “I have to get up there,” the original speaker adds once the chittering stops. And then, in a much quieter tone, there's a hushed, “Ned, tilt the head up to point at the tunnel.”

The very realistic head jerkily turns upward with a concerning amount of scratching, overshooting its cavern target by quite a bit, but if the golems notice, they disregard it.

“Ah, young… creature,” a hollow voice rumbles through the cavern, disembodied but somehow innately recognizable as belonging to one of the golems. A startled squeal erupts from the head of the not-courser at the way the ground almost shakes with the words, immediately followed by a chorus of frantic shushing. 

“Yep, that's me! Young creature—I mean—courser!” the throat of the cardboard statue announces, tone laced with unwarranted pride.

There's a loud scraping of stone on stone as the cavern trembles, the golems rising to their feet in slow, practiced unison. They tower over Horse at full height, arms outstretched in offering.

“Please, step up,” several gravelly voices reverberate.

The not-courser hesitates, distrustful of such massive creatures, but after a series of hissing and whining from various parts within the cardboard, it finally begins to move forward by means of a voting system. Cautiously, it climbs onto the closest hand, palm-up and knuckles almost brushing the cavern floor. 

“So, um, what— ah! Hey!” Horse exclaims, cut off by the hand lifting away from the ground and slowly elevating them up to the tunnel above. The not-courser is frozen still, too terrified of its own clumsiness to risk taking any steps closer to the edge of the palm. 

And then the back of the hand is resting against the peak of the cliff, landing its passenger directly in the mouth of its target.

“Go. Careful, now. Careful,” the golems mumble, in what could almost be construed as a threat despite the neutrality of their voices.

Horse stumbles off the palm, face-planting into the mossy ground with a string of grunts and squeals. As it slowly rights itself, large chunks of cardboard slough off, too damp to last any longer. There’s a sharp cry from deep in the tunnel it had come from, and panic starts to set in as the raccoons realize that their bird predator is closing in on them again.

Their shelter has overstayed its welcome, tattered and sagging and unusable beyond recognition now thanks to the abuse it’s endured over the months. 

The raccoons crawl out of it individually, casting the once-realistic parody of a courser varying sneers and scoffs for its disappointing death. 

And then, when the eagle’s next cry is much closer than the last, they skitter down the corridor and away from the corpse of their loyal mount without a final glance.