Thorne was used to dungeon and its ways, in a way it felt like it was alive, sapient, though not in the same way as a courser or even a bug. Slow, vast, barely conscious of the beings that lived and travelled there, at least on timescales that mattered to mortal things. Sometimes though Thorne felt a hint of a compulsion, not an instruction, more as if he walked through the dungeon’s dreams while its vast body of stone and earth slumbered and heard an echo of its thoughts.

Not a courser to ignore a stray thought, Thorne followed these little nonsensical urges when they appeared. Sometimes they called him in a certain direction, or urged him to avoid a path today, a few times they’d led him to treasure, and many more times into danger.

The walls fell away from him and Thorne stopped dead in his tracks as a breeze brushed his shoulders and tugged at his mane. This deep in the caverns the wind was lost, deadened by the twists and turns. It could have been a sign of an exit nearby or a vent to the outside cracking up through the stones above, but there was a problem with that theory. The breeze was only touching Thorne where his body protruded into the wider space, his hindquarters stood in calm dead air, undisturbed by any wind.

Creatures and plants native to the cavern could be cunning, but Thorne had never seen one that could make the wind blow. Breezes from the flutter of wings, sure, but there was no bat or birdlike flapping, no buzz of insect wings, just a creaking sound ahead of him. Thorne walked forward, keeping his eyes on where he put his hooves. He couldn’t even see the edges of this cavern and the ground underfoot felt… strange, uneven, almost buckled upward.

Thorne lost track of time; had he been traversing this cavern for moments? A whole day? In the gloom, focused on just one thing the creaking sound. A tree came into focus, roots twisting and diving into the earth, burrowing under stone and forcing it aside, branches twisting and clawing at the sunless sky they inherited. The breeze whipped around it, making the branches lash about, catching Thorne’s hair in its grasp.

The palomino courser stopped some distance from the tree and examined it as best he could. He’d seen trees on the surface, when he ventured up that far, but never underground. Moss, vines, mushrooms, and maybe a fern or two were the usual sort of flora down here. Was this what he’d been called to see? But then why the breeze? What made it? Thorne ventured closer to investigate.

Well, he tried, he really felt he should, but the breeze became stronger and stronger the closer Thorne came to the tree, first it came blowing right at him, sending his mane flying back to whip his shoulders and making his eyes stream. It shifted abruptly making Thorne stumble forward as the resistance vanished, but then drove into him from the side staggering him. This was no longer any mere breeze!

Thorne persisted, sidling, backing up, acting like he was about to walk away and then turning on his rear hooves to run at the tree. Each time he was deflected. Eventually he stopped to reconsider his options. “Why then?” he asked of the cavern, the wind, the tree. “Why call me if you don’t want me to come?” No answer, no breeze, no compulsion. Nothing but a dead tree rotting underground.

Not the strangest thing he’d ever seen, but the usually even tempered courser was irritated by it, he felt more like he’d failed a test than anything else.