This was not the triumphant return Astoria had hoped for. A year older now, a year stronger, and a year wiser. So she’d thought. She would heed the call of the dungeon once more, and this time, she would conquer it. She would not get lost. She would not fall in a pit.

No literal pitfalls so far. She could take pride in that. There was still a pitfall though: she was horribly, mortifyingly lost.

Like before, the first level of the dungeon provided no challenge for her. Moss and monstrous slimes alike simply cushioned the fall of her heavy hooves as she careened through the overgrown channels. The ease of this earlier leg of her journey gave her confidence, and in trade, robbed her of her caution. Out of the forest, into the fire.

Astoria’s strength had never failed her, but her sense of direction certainly did. The depths of the infernal furnace twisted and bent like half-melted wrought iron, and as magma pooled and smoke billowed, even familiar passages reformed themselves around her. There was no sun save the embossed one on her clothing, no way to tell the passage of time beyond the growing hunger in the depths of her belly. Gods, she may die of hunger before any monster got the chance to fell her. Worse, the servant Unferth may have to rescue her again. Then she’d die of humiliation instead.

Fate smiles upon you, Lady Astoria. She could just imagine Unferth’s voice creeping into her ears, the sickle smile upon the servant’s muzzle. Unferth had said it to her after her first misadventure in the furnace. It was a sycophant’s way of saying you got lucky this time. Surely, she could not expect luck to save her once again.

“Far from home, lady fair?”

Then again, maybe she could. A clear voice rang out around Astoria, like it was coming from the furnace itself. Another courser, she hoped. Another chance at escaping with hide intact (if not her ego).

“It seems I am.” Astoria replied, stepping forwards, ears perked. “And I imagine you are as well.”

“Not I, lady fair. Not I.”

Looking like if fog had muscle, a courser emerged from the smoke and cinders. The strange horse pranced along the uneven crags as though drifting through the air, more settling upon the ground then landing. She regarded Astoria with an expression of dreamy curiosity, a slight smile on her face, gaze focused on her and yet also miles away.

“A damsel in distress?” The stranger asked, each word lilting and cool.

“What?”

“You’re sweating.”

“It’s hot.”

The foggy courser laughed, though at what joke, Astoria couldn’t tell. Her head tilted one way, then the other, and it tilted so far Astoria wondered if the courser would fall, but instead her legs twisted about so that she began to prance, or drift, in a curve towards her and then away like a leaf on the wind.

“Up we go!” Her cool voice sang as she drifted away along the edge of a cliff as though gravity was not a force she needed to fear, flanked by plumes of smoke. Up? Did she mean to the surface?

“I’ve heard a courser’s first time in the dungeons can be mystifying.” The stranger said without looking back, continuing to trot along on a path only she knew. It dawned on Astoria that she was meant to follow, and she galloped to make up the gap that had formed between them, lest the unusual horse dissipate into the smoke once more.

“It is not my first, it is my second,” Astoria responded, once she reached the courser’s side, hiding the wince of wounded pride in her voice behind its volume.

“Oh yes, that’s right. I remember now,” the foggy courser nodded slowly, like her head was pushing through water to move instead of the searing air.

Astoria squinted at the stranger – a stranger stranger than she’d ever met, to be sure. There were stories of coursers who had gone too far, delved too deep, and came back with some piece of their minds lost forever in the dungeon. Perhaps that had happened to this one. Perhaps she was someone else’s lost piece. A shudder trickled its way down Astoria’s neck.

“Who are you, stranger?” Astoria asked. Who were you? She thought.

“I am what I am.”

“Understood,” Astoria replied. She did not.