Spot was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, he had lost his mind down here in the dark. Had the hours turned into days? No, wait, not days. That made no sense, he’d be–

Bones, bones, bones.

Spot couldn’t help the full body shudder, almost stumbling over his own hooves at the memory of the bleached remains left in the moonlight. He had so many questions. Who? Why? How? And…why had they just been left there? Didn’t someone miss those coursers? Shouldn’t they be properly buried? Was it that difficult to remove someone’s re–

Whether he wanted to finish that thought or not, Spot did not get the chance. He had reached a dead end, except he hadn’t, because he was no more than five lengths away when the wall suddenly started moving, or spinning, or something. It groaned and dust began to fall, as if it hadn’t done this for a great long while, and the way suddenly became clear…or clearer, at any rate.

What luck, thought Spot, and then he cringed at once. He’d probably just cursed himself (if he hadn’t already, he had touched a bone under moonlight and there was probably something about that). “Sorry!” he muttered to whatever was listening, and he began to walk when he realized–

Voices?

“Hello?”

He pricked his ears and took another tentative step. “Is– Is someone in there?”

(If this was another mirror, why, he’d–)

(Well. Cry, probably.)

(But he’d be very angry about it!)

– 

“Tamsin, wait that’s  – “ 

Smudge hadn’t really been paying attention to the room they’d entered. He’d found since their encounter with an ancient primordial being, not once but twice, he hadn’t really had the same taste for the dungeon he’d once had. It felt perfunctory at best, pointless at worst. 

The only reason he had come at all is because Tamsin had looked at him with those bright goofy eyes and asked where they were going next.

And Frisk would probably have kicked him. 

He didn’t like it when Frisk kicked him.

So it was without his usual enthusiasm that he stood in the dusty workroom, littered with tools that were paradoxical. How would a courser ever operate a thing where the spinning mechanism was up against the part it moved. It was an exercise in frustration he suspected, a madman who enjoyed pain to himself or others.

It was only when the soft Thunk! of machinery broke him from his trance that Smudge realized he really ought to have been paying attention.

Dread might have flooded him once, with the thought that he would need to step forward and face whatever foe would be presented.

Instead he felt … relief? 

Hello?

Wait.

The voice tickled a strange memory, and confusion replaced the complex concoction that had been brewing in his heart, “Spot?” 

– 

She’d been in this workroom before, but the memory was slow in coming, a sluggish before that felt as though it mattered less now after the Skull.  There was something she was forgetting—

The click-thunk of the switch brought it back. 

“Dammit,” Frisk observed, more annoyed than frightened, as the room around them grated, ancient mechanisms grinding a stone-on-stone shift — she’d thrown a swift look back at the corridor they’d come through, watching it eclipse to wall, but it’d been halfhearted.  There was no getting Tamsin and Smudge and Faithful all back through there fast enough, and no splitting up, either. 

Instead she braced her hip against Tamsin, who was nearest, and narrowly avoided stepping on Faithful as the room ground to a long, slow halt. 

Vex lifted its tiny head from her mane, blinking pearly red eyes, parting fangs to draw in the stale air.  Frisk, too, lifted her head, expecting the same airless, empty corridors as last time, leading to darkness — and was instead met with a Courser. 

A Courser that Smudge recognized. 

“You know him?” Frisk said sharply, casting a suspicious stare at Spot.

– 

“Oops,” Tamsin said sheepishly, quickly glancing Smudge’s direction before looking around the room as it spun. Who hid their doorbell disguised as a statue anyway? You’d think that’d be pretty inconvenient to try and remember which one of the three it was when you were just trying to go to the bathroom.

And the spinning…You’d think that’d make you rather dizzy, right? Who designed this?

Planting his hooves, Tamsin lowered their head, idly prepared, in the way that all of them were really, for the dungeon to throw something at them. And more than willing, as he always would be, to brace Frisk in the speed of the spinning room. Mostly because she may need to push off of him or something to spring towards a new threat. Tamsin didn’t mind being used as a springboard either.

Once Smudge called out the name of the shadowed Courser, Tamsin didn’t hesitate to cross the distance. Completely without guile or the suspicion Frisk shared. Smudge knew them, so therefore they must be fine. Trotting forward on light feet, Tamsin stepped out of the now unspinning room, bearing grinning teeth at the newcomer.

“Hello Spot!”