Everyone had taken the news of ghost-Nami surprisingly well after they’d talked it out. Logue was fascinated; Adamina was beside herself with haughty know-it-all knowledge about the sort of things that allowed Nami to be a spectre joining them in the dungeons; Ranger was secretly terribly relieved that it had been her wishes that brought Nami’s… figment… ghost… whatever, along with them. Nami herself seemed a little bummed at the fact that she wasn’t really there, but all things considered, she didn’t seem so dead. Which was definitely a win.

Also, they still hadn’t come across Terrence since the party was separated. Logue had sent his pet back to scout and reported seeing the other Courser scrambling for an exit. The eyeball had then returned to them, earned Nami’s curious questioning, and then Logue had sent it off ahead of them to keep looking for traps.

Not that it had worked very well so far. Thus the whole… being separated from Terrence thing.

But at least now they had Nami?

Nami, who was trying very, very hard to get them to make peace. She was making conversation with Adamina--Logue had made it pretty clear that he was a Courser of few to no words, and while he would answer if he was directly addressed, it was usually only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘mm, maybe’--and Ranger occupied her time by silently dissecting them both with her mind. Perhaps she could catch Adamina somewhere, see her slip up, make her look bad the way she always did to Ranger. 

“No,” the witch was saying, downright tame for her typical mannerisms. “I can’t say I have studied anything like that. Potions, herbs, none of that is really my… thing. I like the spell books and the ritual performances much better. They suit me more.”

“Suit you?” Nami asked, her ghostly hooves making no sound at all as she trotted alongside the party, the four (or was it three? No, definitely four, Ranger decided) of them slowly continuing their trek deeper and deeper into the dungeon. Ranger had lost count, by now, of how many steps and levels they’d climbed down, walked back up, and then gone back down again. 

“Yes,” Adamina said, blinking peacefully at Nami. Even as a ghostly outline that was see-through and arguably just a shared hallucination between the other three, it was easy to see Nami’s look of curiosity. She was clearly very interested in whatever Adamina had to say. 

When no elaboration followed, Nami’s head tilted quizzically to one side, pressing the matter. “How do you know what suits you? Sorry, that might be an ignorant question, but I don’t know very much about magic. They didn’t teach us much about it, where I came from.”

“No, that’s perfectly alright, dear.” Ah, there we go again. She was back to her antics. “Sometimes it’s difficult for me to remember that not everyone experienced my… unique upbringing.” Adamina sent Nami a gentle smile, almost ethereal in the half-light from their torches. “In my… House,” the way she put emphasis on it implied the capital letter, “foals were expected to learn magic from a very young age. If you showed no aptitude for it, you could make yourself useful some other way. Many of my favorite and most successful cousins became captains and lieutenants of the Guard, the Coursers that made sure the territory we occupied remained safe and sound. If they also didn’t show any particular talent or interest in that, they might be diplomats, or artists, or, stars forbid, simple laborers, but we tended to import much of what we needed from the neighboring kingdoms. 

“The point is,” Adamaina continued, “the highest honor you could get was to be both naturally talented and having a knack for learning the kind of magic the House specialized in. Blood magic,” she added, clarifying. 

“Blood magic? Is it necromancy?” Logue spoke up this time, wary eyes on Adamina. “You… the two of you mentioned before, when you were arguing. But I still don’t understand.”

“Not necromancy,” Adamina answered, and Nami looked more interested than ever. “Literally blood magic. We study it, you see. Its components. Its properties. From the time any Erythros foal is born to when they begin learning their first simple spells, we study our lifesblood, our heartspring, our font of life. When we understand the parts, then we can move on to the whole. Where it’s made. Where it goes. What it does. Then we can study the applications; that’s the hardest part. Many don’t make it past the initial studying of simple parts. It’s complicated even at a basic level.” She sighed. “For those that understand that, even the application can be beyond them. 

“It’s like a pyramid. Without understanding the first level, the components, then you can’t move up to the top of the pyramid, the behaviors and the applications, without the whole thing collapsing.” She frowned slightly. “If you try something like that, it can have terrible consequences for the spellcaster and its intended target. It’s dangerous. That’s why Erythros is always careful about going in a specific order.

“But if you master the pieces in order….” She shrugged. “Then you can build your pyramid as high as you want. That’s where specializing comes in.” Nami nodded, her question finally being addressed. “With enough practice, you’ll eventually find that some come easier than others. Some Coursers are better at reading from books; some at casting with their own hooves, grinding up parts and using them mechanically; some are best at brewing spells into edible forms; still others have other ways. It would take days to cover them all. Me?” She blinked, smiling innocently. “I prefer the ritualistic spells. They feel more… involved. Ancient. I feel like I’m taking after my ancestors when I combine elements I have to do with my own hooves, like drawing the sigils and seals myself, and then adding an element of something else. Perhaps burning special incense. Perhaps chanting. Perhaps a mental meditation. It depends on the ritual. It’s my own personal preference.”

Ranger couldn’t remember Adamina ever saying more than a few words in a row, and now here was an entire lecture on how her magic worked. How strange! How… how darkly fascinating! Perhaps, she thought, with this sort of knowledge, she might even be able to strip the witch of this freaky ‘blood magic’ nonsense.

“How did you do the mind control, then?” Ranger sneered, looking down her nose at Adamina. This was not particularly difficult; Adamina was somewhat petite, and Ranger had always been very squareish and largeish. 

“The mind is nothing more than a very complex bag of blood.” Ew. Eww, ew. Ranger did not want to think about it. “It’s… difficult to explain when you don’t know all about it. Not like me. There’s blood, vessels, flesh, and even electricity - oh, I bet they never taught you about that, did they.”

Ranger was this close to swearing at her.

“Anyways, dearest,” Adamina said, “it was a very complex ritual, and I am sorry it targeted your friend, but I’m not sorry it happened at all. I was defending myself rightfully, and it’s not my fault that you intruded on my home and attempted to kill me.”

“We tried to kill you after you mind-controlled Nami!”

“And you intruded before that. Fully within my right to interfere.”

“Guys,” said Nami, sounding rather hopeless. Even she couldn’t exactly hold up to the grudge now held between the other two Coursers. “I’m not dead or anything. Can we just drop it?”

Ranger huffed. “You’re not dead, but you’re in a coma, and now we’re wandering around this star-forsaken place trying to fix you. We need that flower--”

“Herb.”

“--to make you better.”

“It’s still an herb. And it still won’t be a miracle cure,” Adamina pointed out. “My intention was not to kill, but sometimes intentions cannot fix ritual spells. Sometimes the only thing you can do is hold your breath and pray that it works at all. That one was unusually strong because I felt threatened and because it contained some very powerful, very ancient components that I had been saving for quite some time. It’s a shame that it didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to, but if I was trying to kill you, my love,” she turned to look at Nami’s half-visible shape in the dusky light, “I’m sorry to say it, but you would already be very dead.”

“That’s okay,” Nami said, sounding unusually small for herself. “I’m glad you did not kill me.”

“I am also glad. You seem very intelligent and not like you would use that for something unpleasant. It would be a shame to waste a mind like yours.”

Was Nami smiling? Ranger really was going to lose it one of these days. 

“Thank you,” the ghostly Courser said. “I appreciate that. I would also rather not waste it, if I get a choice.”

“Then let’s move on.”

“Let’s.”

Their foursome, or three plus one ghost, continued moving through the dungeons, much faster now that they had stopped the infighting. Ranger’s temper was still simmering, but a watched pot never boils, and with Nami here, she wouldn’t react so aggressively towards everything Adamina did or said. They, plus Logue, dodged traps his pet pointed out, took detours Adamina seemed to divine out of thin air, and solved their way through puzzles only Nami understood. Ranger was the strongest and most physically capable of the four, and she had excellent stamina besides; while Nami was generally allowed to lead them forward, her spectral form shimmery in the dim light of their torches and light spells, when it came down to it, Ranger was usually only half a step behind her. 

The hours stretched on. Ranger had lost track of how long they’d spent down here, spaced out and lost deep in her own head, when suddenly she realized there was one less set of hooves echoing on the stone path. She stopped, ears perked as she turned her head, and saw it was Logue who had stopped. He had his head lifted, clearly also listening to something they couldn’t see, and while this wasn’t unusual (Ranger was pretty sure he and his pet had some sort of telepathy thing going on, which is how they avoided the worst traps and detours), it was unusual to see him standing so stock-still while listening.

“Logue?” Ranger said, and beside her, Adamina stopped, too. Nami probably did, but Ranger could neither see nor hear her. 

“Do you hear that?” Logue asked, his head still raised. “I think… it sounds like water.”

“Water? This deep in the dungeon?” Nami asked from somewhere behind Ranger and to her left. 

“No, I hear it, too,” Adamina said, and she stepped forward. She and Ranger exchanged a not insignificant glance. 

“The waterfall,” Ranger said, a hint of awe in her voice. “Part of the healer’s instructions! She said we would need to find an underground waterfall, and then we’d be very close! Move!” Without waiting for the others to catch up, she turned on her heels and lept into a dead sprint, the only thing running through her mind being Nami, Nami, Nami. 

They were so close. So, so close. 

And then a weight slammed into her left shoulder, pushing her off balance and nearly sending her tumbling to the ground. She had to slide to a stop in order to keep from tripping over her own hooves, turning with anger already on the tip of her tongue to reprimand whoever it was that had stopped her.

To her surprise, it wasn’t Adamina like she’d expected. It was Logue, who wasn’t even breathing hard. He only looked…. Was that disappointment in his eyes? He was disappointed in her? It was a shock to her system; she hadn’t realized how much she valued the opinion of the mostly-mute Courser until she found that his opinion of her was less than favorable. 

The others weren’t far behind, Nami’s ghastly form bounding into view a moment before her voice did. “Ranger! Do you know how reckless that was!” she panted, like even a specter could be out of breath. “Did you forget about the rest of what you’ve been reciting this whole time? There’s a guardian somewhere nearby, and if we just go charging in, it’ll eat us for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner.”

“But--”

“No! No buts!” Nami huffed, gathering herself. “I make allowance after allowance for you, but really! I’ve about had enough. The childish bickering with Adamina is one thing,” this stung, but in a way that made her feel very numb about it, “and I can excuse it because I know you’re only trying to defend me, but this is not like you. Use your head and think. I know you have it in you.”

Ouch. Would it be so bad to not have a brain at all right about now? Then at least she would have an excuse to not be scolded by her best friend. 

“I just wanted to get there faster,” Ranger said, but even to her ears it sounded like a flimsy excuse. 

“I know you only want to help,” Nami said, “but you’re going to get yourself killed.” Logue was nodding. Adamina was looking less gleeful than Ranger would have expected. But it was clear that she was the one in the wrong here.

She inhaled, exhaled, and tried not to sigh like a petulant teen. “Fine,” she said. “I overreacted. Next time I will think it through. Better?”

Nods all around.

“Okay. Fine. Then someone else needs to lead, and we’ll get there sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.”

This time it was careful Logue who took the reins from her, and much to Ranger’s relief, the subject was dropped without further consideration.

The waterfall truly was beautiful. It made sense: a rainbow, magical-looking water source would feed the plants down here that had no way of receiving rainwater or sunlight. And if they bloomed only in complete darkness, like the herb they were after, they truly had no way of surviving with non-magical means. 

The water itself looked almost oily at first glance. The surface shimmered and oozed the way an oil spill would, rainbow colors reflecting off of it in every which way. They weren’t bright, but they were almost holographic in nature, changing every moment and never staying the same long enough to memorize any kind of pattern. Perhaps it was just magical water and no trick. Perhaps not.

There was also, Ranger noted, a bridge. 

And on the other side of that bridge? Their fated guardian. Huge, hulking, and grotesquely hairless, it rested on the other side of the bridge, blocking the way past it. Its hulking form shuddered and shivered with what Ranger could imagine were breaths and perhaps the twitchy effects of dreaming vividly. At this angle, curled up into a ball-like shape, they could not make out the head, nor could they really discern anything about its form except that it was larger than anything they’d come across so far. It took up the entire bridge, which was wide enough for two Coursers to comfortably walk across side by side, and then some.

So, you know, they weren’t too fond of that.

“What is it?” Adamina was asking while Ranger was trying to figure the same out herself, staring at it from their safe spot across the way.

“I don’t know,” Nami replied, her honesty refreshing but not reassuring. If she didn’t know, no one did. “It almost looks like a bear. But if a bear had no skin and was twice as large.”

“It’s ghastly, whatever it is,” the other Courser said, and Ranger could hear the snooty pout in her voice that she could tell had spread to her face without even looking at her. “Ugly, and terrible, besides. What kind of hairless creature would live down here? It’s got to get cold on the stones.”

“I don’t know, but keep your voice down,” Nami answered, plunging them back into silence.

Ranger shuffled a few steps to the side as Logue moved to join her at her vantage point, studying the creature. His pet had found this place and come right back to him, and was now hovering somewhere nearby. Frankly, it freaked Ranger out a little (okay, a lot), so she was more than happy to ignore its minimal presence. 

The darker Courser hummed, and Ranger waited impatiently for him to come to his conclusions. She still trusted his opinion, especially after everything they’d been through now, but she was never all that patient to begin with before and surely wasn’t now, either.

“I think,” he said, at length, “we may be able to sneak past it. There’s a little space to the right; maybe enough to squeeze through if we’re careful not to touch it and wake it up.”

“So we’re on a stealth mission now?” Ranger asked, looking at Logue, then at the beast blocking their way. He was right, actually. There was a little space beside it they might be able to squeeze through if they could avoid waking it.

“We’re on a mission to do whatever we can to avoid fighting it,” he answered, turning to look at Nami and Adamina, both of which were listening intently. “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want to find out when it gets a hold of us.”

There were no objections, only grim nods of agreement. No one else wanted to find out the hard way what they were facing, either.

“Then we cross,” he said, and that seemed to be his piece.

“Who’s going first?” Adamina asked, and the other three all looked at each other like they were wondering the same.

“I’ll go.” Nami stepped forward. “Look at me. I’m practically invisible! And if it wakes up and takes a swing at me, it won’t hurt.”

“No,” Ranger said, shaking her head already, “you should be last. That way, if we wake it up and it tries to chase us, you can be a buffer.”

“Then I should be first,” Adamina said. “I’m small. And light. And used to living down there.”

“I’ll go third,” Ranger said. “Let me be a lookout. Logue, would you mind going second? You know what you’re doing.”

Logue nodded.

That seemed to settle it. All four of them looked from one to the other, and without discussing, got in a line, one after the other. Adamina, Logue, Ranger, Nami. They would go one right after the other to minimize the amount of time spent crossing and near the guardian, starting now.

“On three,” Adamina said.

“One. Two…. Three!”

“Run!”