Illene did not quite understand how she had ended up amongst this particular group of Coursers. Most were at least as experienced as she, despite their… disparate upbringings. The bay Tamsin, although he seemed to be the most useful, had been entirely free with his story. A nobody from nothing, Illene had deduced. Tamsin’s longwinded explanation had been in much politer terms that still didn’t change the reality of his situation.

On the surface, Illene would not have looked twice in their direction. The place where he had been raised from a foal wouldn’t have appeared on any of the maps gracing the large hexagonal chamber in her home. Even if she had strolled the long, stone shelving units that housed a long courser history. The town they’d mentioned, that had already skipped away from her memory due to unimportance, had always been nowhere.

It didn’t seem to matter to the bay, of course. Tamsin, somehow, had managed to find themself a rather well-regarded team of adventurers under the surface here. The cleaver strapped haphazardly to homemade striping over their back was evidence of that. The stories that featured every one of them even more. For all that Illene did not enjoy his homespun charm, she would not insult him so openly.

Even now, when he finished another loud story, pushing his way forward at the head of their group (better he to go face first into the unknown than the rest of them), Illene chuckled politely, giving him a graceful toss of her head. Empty platitudes that seemed to please him all the same.

Grimacing when he turned his back, Illene met the near-empty eyes of the black. Augury’s words, few and far between as they had been, did not ingratiate himself to Illene either. He was just… Spooky. She couldn’t see why he would not just speak normally. Not everything had to be some dark portent.

Apparently, Augury did not think so.

Its head tilted to one side, the dark orbs behind the glazed finish of his oracle shifting slightly from side to side. It was difficult to tell exactly where he looked between. “Desire and circumstance do not serve you, Lady Illene,” he murmured quietly. Its voice low enough that neither bay, nor the puck that wandered behind them (they would have been next in Illene’s musings) would hear the comment.

Turning her muzzle forward, Illene didn’t bother to refrain from grimacing at them. “I do not know what you mean,” she said primly. And truthfully. Its words too veiled to mean anything at all.

Augury did not respond, and Illene ground her teeth. At her feet, Marshal growled, as the hallway gave way into a narrow passage that dripped with a sticky, slime-like substance. Turning her head, Illene looked to see if their pathway could turn into another direction, away from goo.

Alas, Tamsin continued forward without hesitation, Augury following close behind. Moss, the puck, brushed against her, looking up at her with a cheerful expression. “Don’t mind the dungeon. It just likes to touch sometimes.”

If that wasn’t the most disgusting thing the puck could’ve possibly said in this moment. But her eyes caught on the snail perched in their forelock, slick with its own slime. Illene could have sworn it was looking at her, turning its head to watch her as the puck pushed pass to take third position. What had Moss called the snail? Its antennae wiggled and wobbled, as the puck bounced along happily. Moss was not the guideline for ‘gross’ that Illene would have preferred.

With a sigh, she followed behind, careful to keep her head low, so that the sticky substance did not tangle entirely in her mane. It pulled, however. Wherever it touched. Awkward and uncomfortable. Moss’ words echoed in her head, so the tendrils felt like pulling hands.

Marshal pulled tighter against her, stepping between her two front hooves.

A cry from up ahead. But the passage had narrowed, the line of coursers between her and Tamsin to see what they had been crowing about, disturbing her view. As one, they all pushed forward to see. And as one, their hooves slid on the slick floor, sending them tumbling down the steep incline that had been hiding on the other side.

Marshal yelped, and Illene tucked him close against her chest as the dungeon whipped past, not wanting him caught up in flailing hooves… Not that the puck ahead of her seemed to be at all disturbed. Moss and Tamsin whooped loudly, laughing as they spiralled downward, the slide curving around and around, taking them lower.

Augury, of course, was silent.

They piled in a heap when the slide finally gave way into the next chamber. Illene was proud to say she ended up on top of the embarrassing tangle of limbs, thank you very much.