With a bloodied moon hanging heavy in the night sky, tonight certainly wasn’t a night Mortis thought he’d find himself in the dungeon, let alone the Moors of Sleep. It’d been a restless night for the stallion, a threatening whisper on the cold wind that nipped at his skin, an unnatural hum in the air that felt like it had no real origin but still managed to bar him from sleep.

Perhaps it was trying to sleep under the harvest moon that cursed him to that fate, perhaps it was something far beyond that, but as he stepped cautiously past the harsh red rays filtering through the cracks in the ceiling, he thought it best not to question it too much.

Beckoned deep into the dungeon, the horse found himself gathering the company of a similarly dungeon born mare. 

Fetch wandered through the tombstones alongside him, their ghostly hand meandering about at their side as they did so. For as strange as she was, Mortis felt a bit of a kinship with the other courser. He certainly couldn’t speak for normalcy, not when he was made the way he was, unlife running through his veins in a way only those creatures brought back from the brink could understand… At the very least, Fetch knew what it was like to be odd, in a way separate from him, but understandable all the same. 

Mortis, head held low, slipped up alongside the pale horse, huffing at them softly as the two went along. There was little direction at hand. Mortis was simply going where his hooves lead him, and presumably, Fetch was doing much the same. His hooves dragged through crackly leaves, clicking awkwardly over little stones and the occasional piece of bone from another adventurer's encounter with some sort of skeletal beast, simply…

Walking.

His mind was hazy, eyes half lidded as he moved. That chill had followed him all the way down here, sinking deep into his bones in a way that just kept urging him forward with a desire to escape it; though every time he seemed to mistakenly dance through the red light of the harvest moon, it would just sink deeper and deeper.

“Where’d you go?”

Fetch’s eerie voice jerked Mortis out of his mind, making the stallion pause, head craning backwards as he turned his eyes to stare into his companions. Where’d… he go?

“I… I’m here, I’m just-”

“No,” Fetch tilts her head at him one way, then the other “You’re distant.”

Mortis’ nose scrunches up a bit at her. What’d she mean by that? “I’m… no, no I’m here, just occupied. Why do you ask…?” 

Seemingly temporarily satisfied with that answer, Fetch doesn’t grace Mortis with a proper answer, merely humming out a mimicry of “Just occupied.” before striding off once again with her spectral hand gliding along at her side. Mortis really should’ve known better. Fetch was a peculiar sort, part of why he felt he understood them to an extent, but that understanding didn’t make him immune to their notable quirks.

No matter, Mortis had greater issues to tangle with than Fetch’s odd musings. 

Red fingers of light stretched across the landscape before the two of them, the foggy-headed stallion finding himself directed squarely toward the center of the lot where they intertwined into a single beam. 

There was a draw to it, almost magnetic in nature, drawing him into the epicenter. It was strange. As he stood there before the glowing red light, he couldn’t help but feel like this was where he was meant to be. This was why he couldn’t sleep, this was why his mind was plagued with an unsettling, impenetrable fog… or at the very least, that’s how he was interpreting it.

“Maybe not wise.”

Fetch’s voice once more drags him back into his own mind, his gaze snapping away from the entrancing red light and over to them, eyes wide with a sheepish expression.

“Sorry?”

“Will you find what you’re looking for?”

Mortis frowns immediately, glancing back over toward the beam of light. He catches a small glimpse of something shimmering on the ground, giving him a new sense of pause.

“Maybe. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But I could.”

Fetch moves forward silently, lingering in the darkness just past the beam of light, her cold eyes like beacons beyond the warm glow emanating from the cracks in the roof. Though Fetch kept their distance, the little hand that followed alongside them took a new interest in Mortis. It slunk beside him as he crept forward, his head held low as he moved into the light fully.

His dark pelt shone harshly under the crimson glow, though under this concentrated beam of light, he didn’t find that chill he’d just begun to grow accustomed to. No, he found warmth. A familial sort, a more metaphorical sense of warmth than the physical temperature. Mortis actually found a smile beginning to form on his face as he grew closer and closer to the shimmering little object laid out on the ground.

It was just so familiar. So tantalizingly close to a feeling he hadn’t felt in countless moons, not since…

He trips over his own hooves, gasping sharply as he finds himself nearly nose to nose with a little silver amulet. Grimacing after the slight tumble, he decides to spare himself the trouble of rising back to his feet, laying down before the object instead as he inspects it. The image on it was hauntingly familiar. It was something he felt drawn to, not only in his heart, but his soul as well… a rose, what looked to be either icicles or stalactites dripping off it’s petals, thorns criss-crossing the background, but much of the image actually scratched out in its entirety. Just enough not to ring a bell to its fullest, just enough to bring a sense of unease along with that notable comfort.

Gingerly, he bows his head to pick it up, but that damn hand seems to lurch forward first, picking it up in its spectral mitt. Mortis immediately rears back up to his feet, a frustrated gasp leaving his lips as he stares at the necklace dangling from its fingers, shaking his head.

“Fetch, control your… hand. That’s not-”

“Maybe it’s best to let it hold it.”

“What?”

“There’s a way out for you up this way.”

“That’s not- Alright…” 

Fetch turns her back, slowly wandering away and leaving Mortis in the light. She was right. This didn’t feel natural. The light's unnatural hue, the sensation it left him with, the cold chill that now readily swallowed him back up now that the hand had begun to drag the amulet over toward its master… It was too strange. But Fetch knew this dungeon better than most, and while they were both born in its halls, she was truly molded by them in a way he hadn’t been. He trusted Fetch to know what was smart to do and what was not, it didn’t matter if he was agitated that his amulet had been snatched out from under his nose, for he didn’t know the consequences of what’d happen if he had.

Drawing in a deep breath, Mortis slowly exits the red light of the Harvesters moon. He turns his eyes back on it just long enough to catch sight of something blocking out the light above for just a moment before returning to normal, and though it was for just a moment, it was enough to kick him into gear. 

Hair standing up on end, he made a mental note to ask Fetch to let him borrow that hand so he could ask someone about that familiar amulet, and took off after his companion.

He had little explanation still, but like most of the things tonight, perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing.