“So… you live in the Dungeon, yeah?”

“Live in the Dungeon, yeah.”

“Wow, okay.”

“Okay.”

“Can you stop that?”

Silence. Fetch seems to be completely unbothered as they respect Luc’s wishes, skipping ahead and ignoring the occasional burst of lava from the hellish pool beside the walkway. 

‘Good riddance,’ Luc thinks to herself, watching the enigmatic courser disappear through a narrow corridor several courser-lengths ahead. ‘And Esquire Occidere has the nerve to call me irritating. That old man would throw himself into the lava if he had to listen to Fetch for more than a second.’

It takes several moments of Luc walking in content solitude before she realizes that she’s being left behind. 

“Wait! We still haven’t found any phoenix feathers!” she shouts, her voice immediately drowned out by a massive plume of lava bursting from the pool far too close for comfort. Realizing that verbal communication is futile down here in the Earthen Furnace, Luc gallops after Fetch. Verdant tightens around her as he awakens. He’d been the most relaxed she had ever seen him due to the warmth of the Furnace, dozing in the much-appreciated heat until his mount began to jostle him too much.

Luc is—for lack of a better term—a bumbling idiot in the Dungeon. She doesn’t have the experience nor the aptitude to keep up with the keener Dungeon-dwellers like Esquire Occidere and Fetch, which has never been a concern of hers before. But now, as her hoof kicks a loose stone and a wall of fire blasts in front of her and singes her mane and hooves, she realizes she greatly underestimated the threats that lie down here.

Flames dance in and out of view from small vents in the floor, the heat uncomfortable—no, unbearable—for her and Verdant alike. She spends several long moments assessing the corridor, plotting how to get through it, trying to decide whether the phoenix feathers are even worth the risk of burning her thick fur, thinking about—

Ah, fuck it. Esquire Occidere can find a more competent mercenary to collect the feathers without needing Luc to tag along as well.

Another flame surges up with a violent hiss, but Luc is already galloping back to the safety of the Overgrown Caverns, giving up on her quest with barely any hesitation at all.