Time lost all meaning there, in the dark. Those fateful few steps he’d taken into that accursed chasm felt like hours ago — seconds seemed to stretch on forever as he slid down the invisible slope further into the dark. No matter how hard he struggled, his hooves could find no purchase on the wet rock beneath him, and he wondered, for a brief, terrifying moment, if this was how he’d die.

Why the hell had he ever thought going into that dark chasm was a good idea?

The moment his hoof met nothing but air, instead of the step he’d felt so sure was there, he knew he made a grave mistake. It was like a fog was lifted from his mind — a sheet pulled back that had smothered his instincts that told him to run —

Only danger waited him there —

Stay away from the cavern, it isn’t safe, don’t go in, don’t go in, don’t go in —

But by then it was too late. Far, far too late. Duke had wandered naively into the mouth of some terrible creature wrought from darkness and fear, and let it swallow him whole. Down its gullet he slid, down,

down,

down,

until he crashed against a rock wall with a dull, painful fwump. It stunned him, briefly, before he tried to right himself with a groan. The rock beneath him felt wet with something he didn’t want to think about too much, and it was pitch black down in the belly of the beast — so he struggled to push through the stinging and aching of however many injuries he’d sustained on his slide down, and somehow managed to push himself up onto unsteady hooves on the hill that wanted nothing more than to swallow him further down. Pressing himself against the wall he’d struck, Duke gingerly shifted a hoof out, then another, and another, soft nose pressed against the rock to his side, until he managed to find a marginally more stable path through the darkness.

If only he could see where he was going — but no, the darkness had swallowed his lantern, too, and left him with nothing but regret and terrible decisions. With a snort, his ears flicked back against his skull in his irritation — at this situation, at the accursed darkness, at himself — ugh. What was he thinking?

But griping about the dark wouldn’t free him from its clutches, unfortunately, and like hell he’d let it swallow him again. So Duke kept himself pressed against the rock wall, nose out, and tried to slowly, blindly fumble his way through the pitch black corridor. This one, at least, did not feel like a slope, and allowed him to keep his footing as he gingerly made his way along the wall. Progress was slow, and steady, and dark, until he finally, finally spotted the softest glow of light ahead of him — a mushroom, tiny and shining a pale blue, growing out of the ground beneath his hooves.

And not just one mushroom, either, but a plethora of them dotted across the ground before him, each one a tiny beacon leading him towards what he sincerely hoped was a safer, brighter part of the dungeon.