Gordon had waited until nightfall and shown Nyx around a bit of the surface but at dawn the spotted courser had almost fled underground again, Gordon had followed because the whole point of being here was to explore the dungeon. Now it was his turn to follow and this time he paid more attention to his surroundings than the last. He wasn’t going to end up lost again.

Gordon noted that his companion had stopped up ahead and trotted to catch up. He’d just discovered there were large red moths down here and they’d distracted him for a moment. The world below ground could be surprising and very beautiful, Gordon was starting to feel like he could write a hundred songs about it.

Nyx had stopped at the edge of a broad crack in the ground. It looked like it would be possible to jump, but why bother when there was a bridge right there? Gordon couldn’t fathom why Nyx had even stopped, unless she’d noticed him lagging. He stepped boldly onto the blackened material of the bridge. Odd, it must be one of those old materials you saw about occasionally, the builders long dead, but the creations persisting.

“Wait! That’s a-“ Nyx’s warning came too late as the ground started to shake under Gordon’s hooves and the supposed bridge grew legs, so many legs, and started to move. He snorted and shuffled up a few paces as Nyx bounded the short distance to the giant insect’s back. “-giant millipede.” Nyx finished her warning as they both shuffled for balance on the undulating back of the beast.

No wonder the floor felt odd, it was chitin. Gordon felt terrible about his choice of metal shoes as a weapon now and tried to move his feet as little as possible, even though the creature hadn’t slowed when Nyx jumped over to its back. The other side of the gap approached and Gordon jumped off onto blessedly solid ground. Nyx landed next to him a moment later. “Well, that was something.” Gordon commented. “Let’s not do it again.” He looked over his shoulder at the creature now scttling it’s way down the crack and out of sight. “You don’t think I hurt it with my shoes do you? I didn’t realise it was alive.”