A great many heeded the call of the dungeons. As if something sang right to their heart, or perhaps their soul, and it lured them in with seductive arias. Others described the feeling as a burn, a need to dive into the darkness and face any foe hoof-on to find the treasures that surely must be down there somewhere… So many others had different situations that had them dependent upon the coin it would surely earn them to bring back any bit of bits and bobs, just like any other job.

Then, there was Rustica.

She was walking the same steps as her predecessors, of her ma and pa, and their pas and mas. She’d grown up hearing the stories as a filly from the lot of them, and she knew one day that it would be her turn to go into the dungeons to see what it had to offer her. So far she'd done so little that she barely had anything to show for her eager jaunts. Still, that didn't mean that there wasn't something down there for her. The idea of treasure was tantalizing, so much so that it prickled her dorsal with goose pimples at the idea of coming across something valuable and shiny!

Then, of course, there was the idea that she’d come across a monster of some sort. The thought paused her mid-stride, her umber eyes roving about the moss and shroom-riddled tunnel she so traipsed. There was a special inspection of the roof... She didn’t hear or see anything, at least, not right now…

But still!

The very thought was so interesting.

“What?” Diadem inquired beside her.

“Oh, nothing, was just thinking.” Rustica’s voice trailed with a dreamlike quality, her forever wandering eyes slipping towards a surface she couldn’t see from so far underground. Then she added, unprompted, “Imagining all the amazing adventures awaiting us.”

The spotted appaloosa she’d met near the entrance of the dungeons seemed to pique with interest. “Yea?” Before the question even lilted long enough for an answer she added, “Of course. We’ll be to the Earthen Furnace without help in no time - trust me!”

"I do." Rustica smiled, slipping beneath a curtain of verdant, leafy vines. One caught on the latch of a saddlebag, and she had to yank herself free and pull the poor, delicate thing from the stone overhead. A pebble or two tumbled down with a small whisper of debris, leaving a haze between the two coursers.

“Sooo... Why did you want to come down here, uh-?”

“Rustica.”

“Rustica. Yea, so… The adventures or?” Diadem finished as she passed through the lingering dust and dirt in the air, shaking the vines away with a sharp shake of her mane.

The deep-roan girl tilted her head as she readied at the edge of a small ridge - a pillar rested upon its side, offering an easy passage to the next floor down, and so long rested there an overgrowth of foliage had claimed it, and the rest of the rubble it slept within. “Uuh…” She started, then took the small jump to the cantilevered pillar.

It held strong, didn’t even budge, and she could have sworn that even the vines clung with a resolve unmatched by any Courser she’d yet met. Diadem jumped down beside her as she tried her best to articulate the answer, led by the soft blue light cascading from the ceiling (from what exactly, Rustica didn’t stop to consider).

“Nice job! But uh, well… my whole family are or were dungeon divers. Made their own way through these hallowed tunnels. I remember when I was but a slip of a filly when my grand-da told me about his first time in the dungeons. He came across a whole score of bats! He had thought that they were after him, and he bolted, chased by their frantic cries. Turns out, they were just afraid of him as he had been of them - and that was his first lesson as a diver. That story always stuck with me, and I always wondered what my first dive would be like. Would I find bats? Treasure? Some other sort of monster? I just had to know, had to see what was down here for me.”

There was a pungent silence as the two stepped carefully down the pillar, mindful of their steps on the potentially slippery moss and greenery.

Finally, Diadem asked, “He was afraid of bats?” Rustica could hear that Diadem was chewing on a giggle as the two leapt from the bottom of the pillar and onto the lower floor, back onto hard and trustworthy cobblestone, albeit cracked.

It was difficult to answer through the guffaw that followed. “Yea, he was.”