Logue had been down to the Furnace too often now not to recognize the way that the eternal groan of the dungeon changed when the corridors moved — the rasp of stone on stone becoming thunder.  The hiss of venting magma.  The shiver of cobblestone beneath his hooves. 

This time, he wasn’t worried for himself.  He picked up his pace along the high walkway through the cavern, though — better to be on solid ground before the Furnace grew more restless. 

As he leapt across the final stretch of unsteady corridor, far below him in the magma fields, something moved. 

Logue paused, nostrils flaring wide, turning to look. 

A Courser.  Perhaps—?

Its strange midnight skin shone in the neon glow of the Furnace.  The hollow sockets of its eyes were cast into shadow, and then into relief.  Beneath its hooves, the crumbling furnace dissolved, piece by piece, earth spiderwebbing and consumed by the hungry magma.  Something round and ghostly bobbed around it, its flickering blue flame licking upward and then gone. 

“Get out of there!” Logue called down at it.  “The whole place is gonna go under!” 

The Courser’s ears seemed to prick towards him, but its pace did not change.  Unhurried, it leapt from one floe to the next, its mouth parted as if to scent the sulfur air; the crossing was so effortless that Logue barely realized when its hooves touched solid ground again. 

Ahead of it, the ghostly thing flicked and danced and then vanished. 

“Hey!” 

The Courser did not answer.  Its whiskers quivered as it tilted its head upward.  Then it turned inward towards the shadowy crevasse of the wall behind it — was there a passageway there?  Logue did not recall it on his maps — and it, too, vanished.