The stone underhoof is growing disconcertingly… crunchy. Sunlight that slips through cracks in the rock ceiling far above Nami reveals that it’s white, a powdery, dusty sort of gravel that clings to her hooves every time she takes a crumbly step. She’s not sure what it is, but it doesn’t have a smell that she can determine, nor does it seem like it’s toxic. In fact, it seems rather harmless.

Or, that is, until she catches a glimpse of white looming ahead of her in the caverns. She’s been following a narrow passageway, but just ahead, she can see the walls widen and expand. It’s almost like a room. She steps inside cautiously, ears perked and ready for something to jump out at her, but to her surprise, the air is as still and dusty as the gravel beneath her. She breathes a sigh of relief when nothing immediately bites her head off for having the audacity to stick it into the room, then steps inside so she can get a better look at what’s waiting for her.

It feels creepy here. That’s the best way she can describe it. The hair along her spine stands straight up, and she gets the strangest feeling that she’s being watched. She heard noise earlier, movement; it frightens her to think that there might be some creature lurking in the dim corners of this place, waiting for her to get close enough to strike.

The ground gets more and more crumbled as she moves further into the space. It’s really quite large, larger than she thought, and she can see what looks like a doorway ahead of her. To her left: rock and vines. To her right: rock and vines. And one small sliver of sunlit ground, where she can see more of the strange white dust. To her surprise, it seems to be in larger pieces as she moves through the room. It goes from dusty, crumbly little fragments that basically disappear once she steps on them, to smallish, rocky chunks that audibly creak and snap when she puts her full weight on them.

Not that that’s even creepier. Or anything.

She moves to the next room, hesitating in the doorway, sticking her nose through only far enough to get a line of sight on whatever’s in here.

And then she screams.

There’s a monster! A creature! It’s--

--dead. It’s dead. They're all dead.

Piles upon piles of bones litter this room, from one wall to the other, covering the floor, and Nami realizes with a sinking feeling that they look a lot like courser bones. Skeletons. Some are whole. Some partial. Some cracked and fractured like they were torn limb from limb before being thrown haphazardly into this room and forgotten.

And right in the middle of the largest pile, on top of a mossy, slightly overgrown but very purposeful-looking pedestal, is a chest.

It’s a test. It’s so obviously a test. Something that all of these others that came before her failed. Nami, well, Nami’s not too fond of this whole ‘dying’ thing, so she backs away another step until she’s standing in the doorway again.

She can’t quite rip her eyes away from the chest, though. It’s beautiful, finely crafted wood engraved with filigreed patterns she can see glinting in the light, realizing as she stares at this thing that it’s sitting perfectly in a spot illuminated by the moon. Wait, the moon? When did it become night time?

Does it matter? The chest… it draws her in, like it’s speaking to her. It surely has precious treasure for it to be so decorated. And surely it must be sought-after if this many others have died attempting to retrieve it. It could be an ancient artifact, or a treasure, or something else terribly valuable that Nami just knows she needs. She doesn’t know what’s in that chest, but it’s hers!

She takes a step, then another, then another. The crumbly rocks---no, bones---underhoof snap and break, adding to the chaos of the shattered skeletal parts, but she doesn’t care. She. Needs. That. Chest.

She needs it!

She moves from a walk to a trot, then to a gallop. She’s so close, scrambling over the bodies of her fellow adventurers, taking no care at all to avoid disrespecting their final resting sites, scattering bones everywhere as she begins to climb through the piles with a single-minded focus that blocks out every detail of the world except for the chest.

The chest. The chest. The chest! It’s so close now, she could almost reach out and touch it, but the second she lifts a triumphant hoof to touch the pedestal at last:

“Hey! That’s MINE!”

She’s slammed into so hard it takes her breath away, tossed aside like a ragdoll, dead weight falling into the bone piles as she can hear them shatter like glass underneath her. Wheezing for breath, she can only just lift her head while she tries to gather her legs under her and stand, a blind rage overtaking her mind. 

“YOUR chest! I think you mean MY chest! Finders keepers!”

“Then that makes it MY chest! I saw it first while you were too busy standing over there making a fool of yourself.” The strange horse huffs right at Nami, her tail flagging high in the air and her nostrils flare with every breath, clearly agitated, too. 

Well, she’s in for a surprise, because Nami won’t just roll over for this nonsense! “Oh, you mean being careful, so I won’t get myself killed in this place?” she demands, finally finding the breath to pick herself up from the newly present hollow among the bone litter, crushed beneath heer weight, more of the shards crumbling beneath her as she squares herself, ready for a confrontation. Maybe even a real fight. That would show her.

The mare responds to her words with a scornful snort, stamping one hoof straight through the skull it lands on. Nami would find it sacrilegious, if she wasn’t too busy being angry with her. “No! I mean being a coward. I said what I said. You really are dull, aren’t you?”

Somehow Nami didn’t think she meant dull colored. No. She thought she was stupid. How insulting! This witch was going to get what was coming to her for trying to claim all of this nonsense! First the chest, and now her own intelligence insulted? She would not stand for this. Not at all.

“You are the rudest courser I have ever met,” Nami declares. “Hooves off the chest. It’s mine.”

“And if I won’t?” Her tri-tone face, red, black, and white, contorts in a rage similar to the one Nami feels. She’s standing right in the way, just between Nami and the chest. If she would just move!

“Then… then….”

She was going to say, Then I’ll make you, but all of a sudden she can’t make herself say the words. Who would say such a dreadful thing? It’s not like her at all!

In fact, none of this is like her at all! What’s gotten into her? She’s never been the type to fight like this! Never! She would much rather step aside than clash hooves with someone else. Or maybe they could agree peacefully to split whatever the treasure is. She’s not sure what's going on here, but the feeling of being watched is getting stronger and stronger.

“What’s the matter?” The mare across from her spits, cutting into her thoughts. “Lose your nerve? See! I told you that you were just a stupid, scared little creature.” The laugh that follows her words is cruel and cutting, and Nami tries to gather her thoughts so she won’t feel the sting so deeply. 

Think, Nami, think. What’s going on here? I’m not evil! I don’t even want the chest that badly! But the moment I started staring at it….

That’s it! It must be the chest! It must have drawn her here, just like all the coursers that have now become skeletons. She’s not sure what happened to them---perhaps they all killed each other for sport, the way she and this mare would have---or perhaps something worse is here, just waiting for them to steal its treasure so it has a reason to kill them.

“Wait,” Nami says, dropping her shoulders in a gesture for peace. “Please, wait, listen to me. We need to leave. It’s imperative that--”

“Oh, blah, blah, blah.” The red mare rolls her eyes, clearly not even taking Nami seriously anymore. She’s no longer standing like she’s ready for a fight, but like a parent entertaining a petulant child. “Go on, get out of here. If you want to go so bad, just run away. I won’t even tell anyone. I’m nice like that.”

 “Nice?” Nami says before she can stop herself, but before she can lose her nerve again, she pushes forward. “No, you’re not! But… I don’t think this is actually you.” 

“What?” Her muzzle wrinkles up in protest, or perhaps confusion, and Nami almost breathes a sigh of relief. An opening. She can work with this. At least now she’s listening to her.

“The attitude,” she says, slower, putting the pieces together in a way she hopes makes sense to the other mare, too. “The anger, and the rage. It’s not you. It’s that.” She gestures past her, where the chest still sits, gleaming on the pedestal. Both of them begin to turn, and she remembers just in time not to actually set her eyes on it.

“Wait!” The desperation in her tone stops the mare in her tracks. “Wait. Don’t look at it. That’s how it drew me in, and I bet that’s how it got you, too. Please, believe me. I think it’s cursed.”

The other mare’s eyes slowly drift back to Nami, something deeper than the rage finally coloring them. They’re a pretty brown, Nami can see now, when she’s not blinded by the same mind-numbing anger. “This better be good.”

“I don’t think it is good at all.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Nami sighs, and starts over. “Fine. Let’s not argue. The chest, I think it has a spell on it. It’s cursed. Whenever you look at it, you can think of nothing else but opening it. Why would that be?”

“Cursed? Spelled?” The mare blinks, and Nami begins to gain hope that they might even walk away from this conversation unharmed. Both of them. How terrible to think that, without the mare standing between Nami and the chest, blocking her view of it, they may have not stopped until they’d hacked each other apart.

“Yes,” she says, dropping her head. “Think. Why else would it be in a place like this? All of these other coursers….”

“Oh, stars.” The red mare freezes, taking in her surroundings for what must be the first time. Her expression goes from bad to worse, and Nami thinks, even, that she might be about to cry. It’s definitely not what she intended, so she backtracks quickly, trying to spare her feelings.

“I’m sorry, I… I don’t like it, either. There’s no telling how many have perished here, or how many more will die without a proper burial, a send-off, anything. But we’re not making it any better by disrespecting them like this, squabbling over a chest that we don’t even know is valuable or not, scattering their bones around, breaking them, or worse.”

The other mare says nothing. She lifts the hoof she’d stamped earlier gingerly, taking care not to shatter the poor skull it had snapped earlier, and sets it down in a spot that looks more clear of anything except fragments. 

“I’m sorry,” Nami repeats. “I wish I had known.”

The mare is silent for several long moments, her eyes still taking in the graveyard around them. It’s awful. Nami won’t deny that. Something terrible lurks in this room, and though whoever put it there must be long gone, she doesn’t want to stick around just to make sure.

“I’m sorry, too,” she finally says. “I don’t know what got into me. It must have been that chest. I’m Ranger, by the way. And still really, really, sorry.”

“Ranger,” Nami repeats, committing it to memory. It strikes her as terribly accurate: she does look like a ranger, all thin, lithe lines, smallish but strong-looking, just like the archers in the fairytales. “I’m Nami. It’s a pleasure to meet you, now that we’re not, you know, trying to kill each other. Let’s consider it even? Truce?” she suggests, hopeful. Could it really be? Could she have found a friend down here in the depths? Someone to join her on her solo adventures?

“Nami. Like a tsunami,” Ranger says, and nods. “I can get behind that. Truce.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” Nami lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, holding out a hoof in front of her. Ranger taps it with her own, and both mares nod to each other. An agreement, sealed with a hoofshake. It’s deathly rude to go back on one of those.

Ranger looks around the room again, and Nami can see on her face that she’s starting to get creeped out, too. “Hey, while this is nice and all, can we maybe…” And she makes a little gesture with her head. Get out.

“Oh, please.” Nami’s all too happy to lead the way back out of the room, and as the two walk side-by-side, the conversation flows on.

“So, are you here all alone, or?” Ranger asks, clearly not afraid to ask questions that might have delicate answers. 

Nami can admire that. She laughs, then answers. “Yeah. Left home not too long ago to make something of myself. How about you?”

Ranger shakes her head. “Me, too. I couldn’t stay put a moment longer. I don’t do so good standing still, you know? I don’t usually attack others, though.”

“Neither do I. Hey,” Nami says, trying to act like she’d only just had the thought, “you’re alone, and I’m alone. What do you say we team up from now on?”

“With the only horse in this whole place who’s been able to step away from that death cave? Yes, please.” Ranger snorts, and Nami can hear the release of adrenaline in it somewhere. The two of them are silent for a moment, then both laugh.

The conversation moves on from there, but the moment still sticks with the both of them. They could have died, but instead they were able to save each other from certain doom. Both feel indebted to the other, and from then on, they were each other’s closest friend, no matter how mismatched.