In the dungeons, it’s easy, sometimes, to forget that this place is not made to be inviting. It is not made to welcome you with open arms, to say hello and take your coat for you at the door, then sit you down at the table as the guest of honor while serving you your favorite meal.

It might pretend, sure.

It’ll lure you in with sweet promises of whatever you want most. Some desire treasure, resources, tangible items that can be sourced from within its depths. Others search for more conceptual things: fame, glory, a good adventure. A bonding experience with friends. A few notches on their belts. Still others search only for the community they will have in the dungeon. They live there, or they end up there, or they find themselves so hopelessly lost that they give in to its comforting murmurs and stay in its embrace forever.

Adamina is not like those. She did not come here for an item, or for a feeling, or for a friend or many of them. She did not come here because she was lost or because she was looking for something.

She came here because she was fleeing something: her perilous life aboveground. 

Which is ironic, really, when you consider it. The dungeon is no safer than the war she had been standing in the middle of, watching her family fall one by one on the swords of their enemies, literally or not. To flee the same fate, she decided to run where no one would follow: the depths of the same dungeons she lived in now, for this was before ever meeting Nami and Ranger and the rest, before ever being dragged back to search for a flower, and before the aftermath of her own actions ever played out.

The dungeon became her safe house, her home; she knew nothing but its overgrown stone walls and flourishing plant life; she had no company but the beetles and small creatures that called it home, too. 

But it was not always safe. And she was not always, not quite, fast enough to recognize its traps.

Like this one.

A click. A snap. Her breath leaving her lungs in one big rush as she realized her mistake.

Then the groan of the floor beneath her as it gave way and tumbled her down into one of its expertly-hidden traps, able to glimpse the metal spikes just before she landed amongst them.

And on them.

She would complain more about the metal spike stuck between her ribs, but she was more irritated that she had fallen for it and wasn’t more careful. That, and it burned with pain so fiercely that, for a second, she was speechless with the gnawing sensation of it burrowing into one side and out the other, impaled.

She would not die. She had not been able to do that for quite some time. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been afraid instead of irritated by the concept, except perhaps the very battle that drove her down here. But, she would still hurt, and burn, and ache. She would have to tug herself free from the trap so her body could mend itself. She would have to be immeasurably careful until she could heal. She would have to rest for days or weeks, her lungs burning and her skin itching as it stitched itself back together. How bothersome.

Curse this dungeon. Once in a while, it still got her, too.