The underground is full of treasure, full of riches. Maybe that’s why Callahan likes it down here. It’s an easy job for a thief.

She has burgled her worth in golds and jewels and old leather tack that has turned hard with the ages from these ancient dungeons. Though, she’d never been one to wear her glittering treasures herself. She always found someone to pass it off to, her brother or merchants or whoever else was willing to trade a warm meal for the inedible garbage she had dredged up. Callahan preferred a good bowl of oats to any of the gems she found.

The stones before her were raised in a cairn, a marker. The room was a dead end, round walls of stone bricks, undecorated. Nothing but the rocks haphazardly stacked in the center. If she were a more religious individual she might call it an altar. But Callahan does not recognize any authority, let alone that of stone.

She shoves the stones aside, one after the other. They are so heavy, she has to lean down to push them aside with her shoulder. There is nothing in the room to imply there is something of worth, but still she moves the stones. She is certain there is something down there, she can feel in under her skin. There is something down there that wants out.

Callahan pulls aside the final stone, and it scraps across the floor with a cloud of dust. Deep beneath the cairn is a chest, an old wooden one that creaks and threatens to fall t dust at the slightest touch. Instead of seeking a latch or opening the lid, Callahan stomps down with both her hooves to shatter it. The sound of cracking wood is loud and it echoes in the silence.

There is the something that wants out. A glittering, golden crown, shining the shadows of the crushed chest. Its peaks are sharp yet thin golden filigree curls around it like ivy on a dagger. It’s beautiful.

Callahan leans down, her head in the hole to get a closer look at the glitzy gemstones. Rubies and sapphires and a thousand tiny cut diamonds that shimmered like ice in the darkness. She’d never been one to wear the treasure she found, but this one begged to be the exception. The space between her ears itched, as if the lack of a crown on her head made her skin crawl.

She opened her teeth to pick to crown up. It was rightfully hers, wasn’t it? It begged her to show it the daylight, when those little tiny diamond would sparking like the dust of fae. The daylight where it belonged. She had found it. Or, had it found her? It had reached out through the abandoned halls to draw her in. Draw anyone in. Someone free to it from its stone grave.

Callahan crushed the thing between her teeth.

The pieces fell to the bottom of the chest, the whispering call silenced.

“Cursed thing.” She said, mostly to herself. A fae-dust crown wasn’t going to fill her belly. She picked up the centerpiece though, a bluish ruby with a streak like a dragons-pupil in the center. It must be worth at least a week’s rations.