Walking through the door led Yuzu into an open cavern. The handmade entrance of before is a far cry from the rough hewn natural stone tjat surrounded her now. She wrinkled her nose, only just resisting the urge to sneeze, as a cloud of dust wafted up from the door closing behind her. It creaked on its hinges once more, the sound harsh and grating, but once it was settled back into place, Yuzu could take a moment to look at what was around her.

Little mushrooms covered the edges of the room. They glowed, letting off the faintest of light for her to see by. It wasn't wholly unusual for a dungeon, at least from what she'd read, but it did make the lightning taste from before that much stronger.

Those fungi were infused with a powerful earthen magic. Something old and ancient, even more ancient than the dungeon in which they made their home. If she breathed deep enough, she could almost taste the loam and wet dirt that fed them. If it weren't for the hint of magic prickling over her skin, she could have mistaken the mushrooms for just being bioluminescent. That was a common enough phenomena in the overworld. She'd seen it in bugs and fish and flowers already.

Yet there was something about these delicate, glowing heads that made her pause.

She kept close to the door behind her, just for a moment, sizing up the mushrooms. Glowing and magical usually meant bad things. Well, bad things or wonderful things but she'd put money on bad over good any time. Especially here where magic and time played tricks on a courser.

Yuzu looked down, nudging a pebble with one hoof. Yes. That would work. She could test a theory.

If she knocked a pebble into the mushroom and it released a cloud of some kind then she would leave and come back with a gas mask. But if it didn't and there was no immediate magical kickback, then she could continue forward.

She was also going to make a note to bring a gas mask with her next time anyway.

Carefully, precisely, she kicked the pebble over to one of the glowing mushrooms and held her breath.

There was no cloud of dust, no magical flare of an alarm going off, no visual warning of any kind. Yet the mushroom played a clear, high note; like birdsong in the spring.

She blinked and cocked her head to the side before kicking another pebble at a different mushroom. It played a different note, this one low and bass heavy. A third rang with a medium tenor.

Music. Of course. So much magic was based in visuals and sound, of course someone would combine the two. And a ward like this, of this complexity meant that there was something in this puzzle worth solving for. Which, if she took a moment to look at the rest of the room, she reckoned it was the way forward since the only exit was the door she'd come through.

Right. Perhaps there was a clue somewhere? Or was it just trial and error?

Yuzu shook her head, her braided mane smacking against the side of her neck, and paced around the room. There was nothing on the walls to help her, and the natural floor gave away nothing either. The door was weathered and old; whatever secrets it once held had long been lost to time. So perhaps it was something to do with the courser art from the last room?

If the mushrooms played high-middle-low, she could arbitrarily assign the size of the horses on the wall to a note—high would be small, low would be large—and then just… play the melody that was painted?

Well, it was certainly worth a shot anyway.

She'd just spent at least an hour sketching those horses in her book. She could easily recall the order they were placed in on the wall. And so she walked the perimeter of the room again, but this time she nudged at the mushrooms in the order of the courser size.

High, high, low, middle. Low, low, middle, low. High, middle, middle, high.

The ground underhoof rumbled and she backed up a few steps, her ears pinning back against her head as she turned. There, a few feet to the right of the door, a rock slowly rolled away from the wall. Behind it loomed a dark path that slowly began to glow in pale blue light. A wisp danced in the corner of her vision, giggling as it ducked through the opening and sped down the pathway.

Yuzu made a curious sound, flicking her tail, and trotted after it. As long as the path was lit and she could see the ground in front of her, she may as well see where the wisp and dungeon was taking her.