In all her imaginings, Odessa had never predicted the dungeons would be this boring.

The clicking of hooves on smooth stone echoed against the tunnel walls as she made her way down what had to be her fiftieth passageway that night. It had been a hopelessly uneventful day of diving, and she was sick and tired of having nothing to show for her efforts. What was the point of any of this if it was 95% walking?

Her ears bobbed with each step, pointed backward at the hawk who sat peacefully upon her hindquarters. Her companion was silent, perhaps even sleepier than she. At least one of them was getting some rest in this godforsaken place.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Odessa stopped short, searching in the dark for any sign of the noise’s source. She felt Tawny stand up and stretch her legs before hopping up to sit between her own pricked ears.

“Y’hear that?” she whispered, taking a cautious step forward. They had reached the mouth of a broader cavern, now. Perhaps there was treasure to be had after all.

A sliver of moonlight filtered through the cracked ceiling to their left, and her eyes followed it down, landing on an ornate chest ripe for the taking. Without a second thought, she began to approach, tail flagged in pompous self-satisfaction.

SQUAAAAAWK.

She pinned her ears against the noise, shaking her head to unseat the bird. Tawny flapped her wings indignantly as she took to the air, righting herself before she placed herself at Odessa’s feet.

Before them laid long-forgotten bones, bleached white and picked clean. In her eagerness, Odessa had not seen them, though it was beyond her capabilities to be honest about that fact.

“Yeah, yeah. I saw them. Obviously.”

Tawny looked about as unimpressed as a bird could look.

“So what? Just because they didn’t make it up there doesn’t mean we can’t. Look, I’ll be careful, alright?” She stepped past Tawny, daintily avoiding the piles of bone. The path up to the chest was uneven and chipped away, jutting out from the rest of the cavern as if the entire floor had plunged away from it at some point long ago.

Rather unceremoniously, she began her ascent. It was not a quiet task, and certainly not a graceful one, but after a clattering of hooves and a minor avalanche of chipped rock, she found herself perched precariously alongside the chest. She practically beamed at Tawny, who had taken up residence atop an equine skull nearby.

“See? Easy. These guys were probably just a bunch of scrawny colts who broke a leg trying to climb this thing and decided to just lay down and die about it. Now let’s see what we’ve got here..”

Odessa lipped at the edge of the box’s lid until she finally managed to wedge her nose into the gap. She flipped it open, eyes wide as saucers, to find.. nothing. A lone spider peered up at her from the corner of the dust-riddled box.

“For fuck’s sake, this place SUCKS!”