You wake from a short rest to find all of your equipment… Erm…. Bedazzled. Pixies are known to steal Coursers’ belongings and decorate them to their own tastes, which aren’t always the most practical in the dungeon. How fabulously inconvenient.

One step, two steps. The storm was finally moving away as he galloped down the long and open road deeper into the dungeon. The rhythmic clopping of hooves on stone was a sharp, open cracking  sound, a warning pounding on the dungeon floor that Seep took pride in. Parade-style stepping was something guards were trained in immediately after their initiation. A tradition of his surface town, his barrack being one of the best. But it should have been done with others, ideally, and the lack of the presence that should have been there hurt, stung like an open wound filled with salt.

Water dripped on his muzzle. Seep grimaced, ears twitching back. Fat drops of water still fell from the moss on the ceiling, creating a rhythmic pattern on the stone floor, but the worst of the rain had passed. In the distance, a faint rumble of thunder echoed- a final protest as the storm on the surface begrudgingly released its hold on the land, and the dungeon in turn.

Leaning on the wall, Seep blinked back to awareness from his light doze. He had been galloping for a while now and was desperately in need of a short rest. Heading deeper into the caverns until he found a crevice big enough, he shone his light inside. Nothing. Shuffling his way in, he folded his legs up to his chest and continued staring at the dripping ceiling. Stalagmites dripped water, moss dropped it too, and he matched that rhythm with his breathing. Watching his breath steam in the air, he turned his lantern off, and the dungeon grew dark.

A giggle. A high-pitched snort and the buzz of wings.

Seep startled awake, feeling uneasy and on guard. But this time, he wasn’t sure why. The concussion should have faded by now. It started with a prickle in the back left corner of his brain. The warning was a vague but certain awareness that something was wrong. At first, it was hard to pinpoint the exact source of that awareness. Instinct combined with experience and paranoia often had interesting results, and while Seep was primed to recognize patterns, read crowds, and pick up on the tiniest cues- he was not made for this kind of diving.

Then he remembered the giggle.

So all of Seep’s ideas and realizations coalesced into impressions before they turned into a problem and a plan, even while he still kept his eyes closed. Thinking about his state led the nausea to briefly overtake his senses for the third time in what he assumed was an hour. A sudden wave of dizziness followed as he stood up. Dehydration, he remembered. It barely caught Seep off guard. But aside from a sudden infection or a concussion, it was the only explainable cause of his symptoms. Or how quickly they appeared, for time was hard to measure below a hidden sky he couldn’t see- a stone sky that never changed.

Drawing his waterskin Seep drained the last dregs. Planning with a head that no longer throbbed with dehydration, sleep deprivation, and general aches and pains was easier to his high-strung senses. He walked over to the moss to open his bag for a filtering system. A crude thing he fashioned himself but it would replenish his water stories far quicker then going back up just to find a wall would.

While the water collected itself, Seep withdrew his map to cross off the section of the dungeon he was in. The paranoia, however, was suddenly justified when he saw what had happened to his gear. Shiny. Pixies. That was what his mind latched onto. Of course, it would be pixies. If he lit his lantern, he would shine like a beacon for any monsters or Courser. Like a walking mirror, and that thought hurt. For Dune would often look in mirrors whenever he could to make sure his gear sat perfectly on his flank and oh, there went his fears again.

Snorting, Seep shook his head and sank back down to the floor. He needed far more sleep to deal with this. He could try to un-dazzle his gear in the morning. At least the pixies would leave him alone now. And he would have water. A fine night, but he could not shake the feeling he was running out of time.