Gordon had never been hunted before, the hounds had come off far worse than the two coursers, but the experience had left him nervous, jumpy. Every sound in the halls of the furnace could be another hound scouting for the pack. Nyx, by contrast seemed cool, confident and determined, even though her blue and white coat was now spotted with drying hound gore. Gordon’s eye shied away from looking at his own lower legs, which undoubtedly looked just as bad.

It didn’t help that he was uncomfortable with the leather armour Nyx had insisted on strapping over his neck and rump under the harness carrying his usual equipment. The stuff was old, though carefully treated to restore it as well as Nyx could, but it made him itch and sweat more than he thought the furnace itself would. He dared not complain though, knowing that if it hadn’t saved his life, it had at least kept him from worse damage than a few claw marks.

Distracted as he was by his nerves and his armour, Gordon never noticed that something in the floor looked a little different, a stone darker and less worn than the others, as if many, many hooves had skipped over it across the endless years. It sank under his hoof, even as he tried to shift his weight back, Oh dear.

There was a click, and Nyx’s head shot up, the taller courser seemed to go from a slow walk to a full gallop in one step. Gordon saw flames spring up from the floor, snapping on and off. Against his back, Claude flattened his body against Gordon’s seeking protection from the sudden blast of heat.

Gordon had frozen in place, his body bunched up, errant hoof still sunken, but he saw Nyx at the end of the corridor as the flames went out again, she looked annoyed, but unburnt. Gordon came to realise, after staring down the corridor for long moments that the flames came from jets set into the floor, hardly visible when they were inactive, and they snapped on and off in a pattern. He, too, could outrun them if he was quick. The next time the flame in front of him went out the bard plunged forward, running by each flame as it went out. Was this corridor longer than it seemed? He made it! He made it. Gordon skidded to a halt beside Nyx, who snapped her teeth it him to express her disapproval, and poked at Claude to make sure the cat wasn’t on fire. “You singed your tail.” She observed, Gordon looked around in alarm to see that she was right. A few hairs had been blackened along the edges, luckily his headlong run must have put out the flames before they took hold.