It was night already and halbert had just finished helping some of the sprites make it to the afterlife, but what he was noticing this night, that right before he was able to send them to the afterlife, that they all were saying the same word over and over, like a charm as they got sent away. The word was Galatea, Galatea, Galatea. This didn’t happen all the other nights, so he was definitely curious as to why this was happening. He started on his journey back to the entrance of the dungeon, where he knew the Harvester could be and he started to waddle with Shadow sleeping on his back. The grass was wet, and the moon was high in the sky as it provided a small amount of light for him to see a small distance in front of his eyes. He had to squint his light brown eyes just to be able to see a few feet in front of him. As he made his way through the open field he could see the forest's edge from a distance, and unfortunately for him, that is where he needed to go. Already the courser was getting spooked by his own shadow, so now having to go through the forest, which was full of shadows was going to be difficult. The field had a nice cool breeze, but as soon as he passed the ridgeline, the breeze instantly went away, and the air was still. The scared courser could hear sticks breaking, leaves rustling all around as he traversed through the endless trees. Normally the trees would be full of leaves on them, but as the seasons started to change, so had the forest, the trees' leaves falling to the ground, causing crunching sounds to echo. Behind one of the trees, he could see a dim light coming from it and at first he felt relieved, that he would be able to see in the darkness, but as he drew closer, that relief turned into distress as it appeared that one of the trees started to move on its own, the glowing was coming from the apparent eyes that it had. The courser stood frozen in his tracks, as the tree started to get closer. It appeared to be a tree ent that had orange eyes, and two distinct branches that appeared to be its arms. One of the arms started reaching out to the shaking courser, but it seemed to not want to harm the courser luckily. As it just wanted to pet him, then it started to make his way away through the dark forest. Halbert stood there for a moment, making sure the tree ent wouldn’t turn back around and attack him, then sighed a relief. “That was a close call wasn’t it Shadow” the courser spoke to his companion, but he seemed to just roll over on his back, still snoring and sleeping. After gaining his courage again to walk, he started to waddle again through the forest praying that nothing would happen again. He swore that he could see shadows moving off in the distance as he traversed the thick trees, but nothing ever came of them. Once he finally made it through to the end, he happily took a break at the edge of town and pulled out one of his trail snacks and sat down to eat it. Shadow must have heard the bag rustling and he instantly woke up, and started purring and rubbing along Halbert's leg, wanting some of his food. “Alright alright, i'll let you have some little guy” with that, he broke off a small chunk of his sandwich and gave it to him. Shadow gobbled up the piece instantly and then went back to sleeping next to him, curling up into a ball. “Now it's my turn to eat my comfort food!” The stallion quickly gobbled up the sandwich as quickly as Shadow at his piece and he sighed in satisfaction as it tasted delicious. Now that break time was over, he scanned the town, seeing the moonlight reflecting off the roofs and windows, as all the town was asleep that night. Once he made it into town, he made sure to stay far away from the well that had the spooky spirit before, as his hooves clacked along the brick roads. As he made his way through, all the houses seemed like they were abandoned, and he couldn’t hear a sound coming from anything but himself. After the long trek, he finally made it to the front of the dungeons, where the harvester was waiting it seemed. The harvester appeared to have a huge scythe and a skeletal figure that was hidden by a cloak and hood, with red glowing eyes. “Harvester I have come to ask what Galatea means? The spirits have been saying it this night, so I was curious as to what it was” the harvester looked up into the sky, watching the moon for a moment as he spoke. “I can not tell you that at this time” the courser was a bit upset  that he made his way all the way here to get an answer and got nothing. “I'm going to have a look around and see if I can find anything that will help me figure it out then.” The harvester visibly didn’t like that idea, but nodded his head giving the young courser his approval then pointed down into the overgrown cavern dungeon.  With that the tall figure disappeared into the darkness and Halbert started on his way down into the dungeons' depths. The dark black soul vines seemed to be swarming the place now as they have grown even larger and more in numbers. The courser slowly made his way down, through the tunnel that led to the main chambers of the dungeon and could hear the sounds of water dripping and creatures making sounds off in the distances. Even though they didn’t sound friendly, he was glad that the dungeon was at least seeming normal, compared to the land above the surface. He had come into an open cavern that seemed to be a shallow underground lake, with lily pads all over it, and small glowing flowers in its shallow depths. The sides of the open cavern seemed more symmetrical than the rest of the caves, and were overgrown with grass everywhere. It seemed that the only way through it however was going through the lake that had an opening on the other side of it. He started his way through the water and all seemed find at first, but then he could start to hear small splashes coming from behind him. As he turned around quickly however, he saw nothing that was there so he turned back and started to make his way again. After a few steps, he heard again the splashes that seemed to be getting closer, but when he turned around again there was still nothing there. He decided to try and trick whatever was following him, so he took a few steps further into the water and then quickie turned around preemptively and saw the water splash like a step was being taken. At that the courser went ahead and started running through the water, and in an instant he could hear the loud splashing coming up right behind him getting closer and closer with every step. He started to panic a little bit, thinking that he wasn’t going to make it to the other side, but then in a last bit ditch effort he tried his hardest and made it to the landmass that was on the other side of the lake, then the splashes behind him stopped. Panting and heaving as he turned around, still seeing nothing was a bit shaken up by this water monster that was trying to get him. He took a moment to collect himself before heading through the cave entrance that he barely made it to. Once he walked down the path a bit, there was something off that Halbert noticed that sent a chill down his spine. All the sounds and creatures that he was hearing before at the entrance to the dungeon , seemed to have stopped. He stood there, listening intently, yet he could not hear anything at all that wasn’t coming from him. He thought it to be odd, but he knew that there was no turning back now, so he kept on going down deeper and deeper into the dungeon. Eventually he finally came to a giant open cavern which seemed to have a castle in its depths. It was old and crumbling, but it appeared to still be intact for the most part. As he came to what used to be a courtyard, there was a statue in its center. Once he got close, he could see that there was a few different races on it and on the inscription of the bottom it had the one word that all the spirits were saying. Galatea. It seemed that this old castle could have the secrets that Halbert was looking for, but right before he went to enter a dark mass came jumping off the roof of the castle and landed right in front of the courser, causing him to stumble back. His eyes widened, as it was similar to the figure that he had been seeing the past few nights, but it wasn’t quite the same. This once didn’t seem to be as old so to speak, like it was newer. It appeared to have some type of corruption growing along it and it twitched unusually. The creature was saying the word that was on the statue. Galatea. It appeared to be a corrupted spirit that might have lived in this castle. Right as the creature was just about to pounce on him, in a flash of darkness the harvester showed up in a blink of an I and sliced his weapon through the enemy and quickly dealt with the creature. The spirit came to its senses and then was sent to the afterlife quickly. For now, the harvester took the courser and teleported him out of the dungeon quickly, before the main target appeared. Halbert was in a daze for a moment, before getting his bearings on his surroundings. “This is back at the entrance to the dungeon, how did we get here?” the courser asked and was confused as to what was going on as he was just about to get to the answer that he was looking for. “All I can tell you, is that there was a great war in the past, and that thing, that corruption is taking over these spirits and using their hatred as a tool. I let you go, so you could see for yourself what the enemy looked like.” Halbert nodded and was still piecing together what was said. “How are we supposed to stop that thing then?” he looked up at the harvester, a bit scared as to what was going to come. “We are going to have to fight it… and I am going to need your help.” with that, the harvester turned to look into the depths of the dungeon, and halberd did the same, nodding as he was going to see this adventure through to the end. “You gave me the chance to be a true adventurer, so I won’t let you down” halbert strengthened his resolve and waddled his way through the town, as the sun started to rise in the distance. It gave a small amount of comfort, but knowing what lay ahead, he knew that he was going to have to prepare much for this encounter that was going to happen. He finally made it to his house, after a long night he went inside and plopped down onto his bed, and shadow fell to the side and the courser fell asleep.