Nuada was not about to begin his quest alone.

It might have been more romantic that way—the legends were always a solitary hero's journey into a peril, never a hero and his guide—but it would have been foolish. Nuada, he thought haughtily, was no fool. His comfortable life in the cold vales across the continent had not prepared him for this sort of danger. Charging in ignorant of the terrain would only leave him moldering with all the other skeletons the dungeon had claimed.

He stepped tenderly after his hired mercenary, surprised at the heat underfoot whenever he landed on stone instead of the cavern's mossy overgrowth. "Is that the Furnace?" he asked, feeling stupid even as he did. "Are we close?"

"Nearly there." Phoebe was not unpleasant, but she wasted no time. She did not even take her eyes from the treacherous path to answer his idiot question. Nuada liked her, and was confident his coin had been well spent on her services, even if she hadn't been what he'd first expected. Phoebe looked plain to Nuada's eye, not like the Coursers of the dungeon that he'd heard about. He'd expected the mercenaries to be golden-hooved and mirror-eyed, marked as many said by their proximity to old magic.

Nuada had not yet seen evidence of any such beings. The Coursers of this place looked like Coursers to him. Whenever he doubted his purpose in traveling here, this was a fact that nagged him; had he not come all this way to see the dungeon's power? He was not sure what he'd do if that power was not as great as he'd come to believe.

And if the dungeon did not truly give Coursers life inside its chambers? He felt another pang of foolishness at the very notion. Perhaps he should make certain before he lost his life to this place.

"Phoebe, can I ask you something?" He could feel the dungeon's hot breath now. It blew flaxen strands back from his face. "About the dungeon."

"Now would be a good time." They were both still for a moment as the rocky descent into the Earthen Furnace became unmistakeable. A passage glowed like an ember floating in the darkness ahead.

A traveler had told Nuada foals could spring to life from the stagnant waters in this place, that they could pull themselves spontaneously from the clay. The very halls here gave life, another had said. He'd even met a Courser who claimed to have been one such foal, to have leaped from the fires of the Furnace fully formed. They couldn't have all been lying.

His nostrils flared. He'd already come this far. "Nevermind. Let's carry on."

Before they continued on their way, Nuada checked his pack. The small bones inside, each carefully wrapped in silk, didn't make a sound.