THERE’S A MEMORY IN KNOTS’ mind, of lurking in the shadows many years ago. He had been smaller, then – a yearling, he thinks. The dungeon’s secret paths were being routed and placed into the library of his mind, and he used them whenever he pleased. One of them led to a ledge that overlooked the top of a cavern, and in this cavern is where adventurers liked to rest. Too nervous to approach them, Knots had laid down on that high ledge, hung his nose over, and watched them with pricked ears.

    No one ever looked up high enough to notice him.

    Every kind of adventurer came through that cavern. It was one on a main path, and there was already a fire-pit made and a deep, cool pool of sweet water on the other side for drinking.

    His favorite kind of adventurers were those who were honed – the ones who had been diving for years and knew through experience and skill how to keep themselves and their party alive. And they were always the ones with the great, shiny weapons. Great swords and daggers and, memorably once, a javelin made from a metal so deep and black that it looked like the courser wielded a pointed sliver of shadow.

    They talked, the adventurers, and Knots listened. They told stories of what they fought, what they had seen, the loot they had collected. It seemed like a competition sometimes, especially when two groups rested together, bragging to horses that were both strangers and acquaintances alike.

    “It came at me,” one courser said, rising to his feet. He was as golden as the sun where it came dripping down like honey into the dark shadows of the dungeon, all the way down to his glinting hooves. “And knocked my sword from me, sending it spinning and skittering all the way to the very edge of the ledge.” The other coursers gasped and tensed, leaning forward. “It was so close to falling,” the courser continued, lowering his voice. “Most of the blade was teetering right over the edge. One wrong footfall and it would have tumbled down, end over end, into the dark and I never would have seen it again.”

    “Only for some young’un to show up with it a month later,” another courser said, voice colored with amusement. Her long, feline-like tail flicked against her dappled flank. “Braggin’ about the ‘old sword’ they found in such good shape.”

    The sun-colored courser snorted his laugh. “I would have had to wring their neck for it too. Send them wailing back to the surface.”

    “How did you get out of there?” Another courser, this one a shade of yellow lighter and creamier than the sun-colored one, interrupted.

    The sun-colored one pulled himself up tall and took a breath. “Well that beast had its claws in me.” He twisted in place, pointing his nose at his side. Knots, squinting, could just see the thick line of scars that crossed over the courser’s ribs. “But I’m a slippery fellow, and I bucked and twisted like a colt until it was loose. Kicked it right in the jaw for good measure but it didn’t do much. It was big, and tough, and I had really just pissed it off with all my fighting. But,” he paused, and silence fell over the cavern like a tangible thing, “I had given myself valuable time.”

    “I hurried to the ledge and fell to my knees next to my sword, but the vibrations sent it tipping down towards the darkness.” The listening coursers made wordless exclamations. “I was quick! I struck like a snake and caught the hilt between my lips and pulled it towards me. By then I could hear the monster coming closer. Its paw steps were quick, and then silent – I knew it was leaping for me.” Knots held his breath. “I finally managed to get my sword between my teeth and spun around, just in time. The end of my sword met the thing’s chest midleap and sunk all the way down to the hilt. I had pierced its heart. And as the weight pulled me down the ground, I watched the life leave its eyes.”

    The coursers below all erupted into exclamations and praise. Knots let out the breath he was holding, awed. Despite the chatter below, he was no longer listening. Instead, his mind was occupied with a revelation. He didn’t know how to fight beyond what was instinct. He knew how to kick and bite, but there were monsters lurking in the dungeon that were far too big for that sort of thing. But if he had a sword, just like that sun-colored courser did, he could be brave. He could fight. He could protect himself. Instead of shivering in fear, instead of running away, he could stand his ground. All he needed was something to give him the confidence to do it.

    With a mission in mind, he waited until the coursers below had fallen into a fitful rest before he creeped back into the twisting maze of the dungeon.

-

    It’s the muffled sound of a hammer on steel that has thrust him deep into his memories. The furnace is sweltering, and he’s long since found that the distraction of his own mind is one of the few things that keeps one foot in front of the other. Heat has a way of making time longer, stretching minutes into hours and hours into days.

    He carries no weapons now except for a simple dagger tucked away into his gear, and even that is a last-ditch effort. Knots is not a fighter, even if he knows how to, now. Fear runs too deeply in him to make him as brave as the sun-colored courser he listened to so long ago. Sometimes (often times), he worries that he’s something truly useless to his fellow divers. Duskwalker won’t hear it when he brings these fears up, insisting that he has his place. Not everyone who walks the dungeon is a warrior, she tells him. Some of us are collectors or merchants or healers. Some of us, this said with a pointed look at him, are navigators and trackers.

    Knots shakes himself and refocuses on the path ahead. The forge clangs in three rapid beats, and then goes silent. In the same moment, Knots trips over one of the many soul vines colonizing the path. It snaps under the tension of his hoof yanking it, and in front of him appears someone humanoid. He freezes, nostrils flaring wide. He can smell nothing but the sulfurous stench of the furnace.

    They’re shorter than the human spirits Knots has encountered before. The art on their clothes is not that of two coursers, but instead a bearded goat. They have a beard, too. One that would make any heraldic jealous: it goes down to their knees, thick and decorated in braids and jewelry. In their hands they clutch a broken stick, and their expression is twisted into distress. “The forge,” they beg, shaking their stick at him. Knots leans back, snorting.

    “What?”

    He leans forward again, close enough to investigate the stick. The dwarf holds it up higher for him. “The forge?” The stick is snapped right at the end where it’s thickest and wrapped in leather binding. It looks like it might have been special, and the dwarf certainly acts like it is. “I’m sorry,” he tells the dwarf. “I don’t understand.”

    The dwarf looks around, swinging their head so fast that their long beard doesn’t have time to catch up before snapping back the other way. Tilting their head back to look at Knots again, they fidget with their stick. “The forge?”

    “You need to fix your stick?” Knots says dubiously. The dwarf’s face lights up. They shake their stick more enthusiastically. “The forge!” Suddenly, they flicker in-and-out. Knots realizes he can see the rocky ground through them. Before he can say anything, the dwarf vanishes completely.

    “Wait,” Knots cries. “I heard it. I heard the forge. We could find it together.”

    Silence. Far below, he can hear the rolling burble of magma. He can’t find it in himself to move, nosing the soul vine in the hopes that he can disturb the poor, desperate dwarf into coalescing again. They don’t reappear, and he sighs. “I hope you find it,” he murmurs to the blackened vines.

    As if on cue, the clang of metal reverberates through the furnace again, vibrating up his hooves and into his legs. It makes his skin itch, and he dances from foot to foot, rubbing one leg against the other to alleviate the feeling.

    Clang!

    He eyes the soul vines again.

    Clang!

    Nothing happens.

    Knots stands there for a little longer. He wonders if he should still try and find the forge. Some childish part of him still believes that a good weapon would make him brave.

    It didn’t, back then. After sneaking off, he had searched high and low for a sword. His search had been single-minded, and he still cringes thinking back on it. There were jewels and books and herbs he has never seen again since that he passed over. He did find his sword, eventually. It wasn’t gleaming and sharp like the sun-colored courser’s, but it was a sword and it was his.

    He practiced with it on his own, fighting invisible monsters and flickering shadows. In his mind, he was a natural. He swung it with finesse and rhythm and danced a perfect dance. He came up with his own moves, working through them slow and then quicker and quicker.

    And then had come the test.

    There was a spot that he knew to get food at. The problem: very large, very ferocious rats had recently taken it over and weren’t keen on sharing. For a still growing and skittish horse, it was utterly terrifying. But for a still growing and skittish horse with a sword… he had newfound confidence.

    Once there, however –

    A snort, head high, had brought the rats’ attention to him. They had paused, and then they swarmed him.

    In the end, Knots never even got to try his moves. Fear coursed through him in hot-cold waves, heart pounding and blood roaring in his ears. He thinks he may have swung the sword once, maybe, and then dropped it to turn and flee. His hooves did the work in the end, flying out behind him to kick the rats away.

    He hadn’t picked up a weapon again after that, not until Suncatcher became his mentor and quietly insisted that he learn how to use one. Just the basics, he said. And then he tucked the dagger into Knots’ packs. Even if you don’t fight, it might come in handy for something else.

    Still, Knots has long since left the weapons to Duskwalker and Duskwalker only. She, at least, can siphon the confidence from a blade that he never could.