Samantha awoke to find herself in complete and utter darkness.

Not Again.

She… said? She knew she thought the words and tried to say them but couldn’t feel her lips move nor hear any sound exit her mouth. Matter of fact she wasn’t sure she still had a mouth as she couldn’t feel anything, all her senses were gone. So how did she wake up? Was sleep a sense? What were senses? Did she ever have senses or was it her senses telling her they were senses? Did she simply believe she could sense something so her mind created the sensation of sense? Sense seemed to have gone out the window as Samantha wasn’t making any. All that mattered right now was that she was not dead, probably, and was safe, probably, for the moment. Picking herself up or at least thinking she did, she tried to look around the black nothingness that encapsulated her. It was much darker than anything she had ever seen before, more than the mine or when she got her class or some third occasion where it was particularly dark. Okay she was probably VERY dazed right now, give her a minute and she’ll think of something. And so everyone waited patiently for Samantha to come up with an idea or make a statement that was profound or wise beyond her years.

Yup, totally black.

Amazing work Samantha, so glad you had everyone wait for that. She tried to sigh; how could she be snarky if she couldn’t even snark? Huffing out a breath, that never appeared, she imagined resting her hands on her hips and adopting an upset posture. If this was death it was absolutely mind bogglingly boring and she would like to speak to death’s manager about the poor conditions or reach out to Death’s CEO with a strongly worded letter of complaint.

This is getting me nowhere.

Distracting herself with nonsense wasn’t really working, she used to be so good at it too. She had to face facts, she fought Harry the Hammer, formerly the Smasher, and lost, but she was fairly sure she didn’t die. There was no last overwhelming rush of pain or flash as her life passed before her eyes. She was under Harry’s hammer and then she was here, wherever here was. Was it the great beyond? Purgatory? A waiting room before she was to meet the divine and receive judgement for how she lived her life? Would they be disappointed she never made it to her scheduled death appointment? Something to think about as she walked, which she hoped she was doing. It felt appropriate to think and walk, helped to keep both the mind and body active.

The lack of senses had its drawbacks but silver linings too as it kept her from feeling the torturous pain her body endured prior to coming here. She wondered if she might have died anyway from shock if Harry hadn’t sent her here. Maybe that was giving the man too much credit, he likely didn’t mean to send her to this barren place. Or did he? Is this part of a class, or an aspect, a curse or some fourth thing her rattled mind couldn’t think of? If he could do this surely, he would advertise it with some cool name or a light show. Harry the Hammer Smasher didn’t really give the impression he could teleport people to dank and depressing holes in the universe. Ruling out her killer, then how did she get here? Death was the obvious answer but was too easy, too convenient for Samantha’s liking. It had to be something, something she was forgetting or hadn’t considered. If only there was someone else here like an onlooker or audience that could scream the answer to her, and she would pretend she didn’t hear for comedic effect.

I am going to go insane here.

She fake said. What happened to her? She didn’t use to talk to herself this much in the mine or think about ridiculous scenarios. She thought about outrageous scenarios like a normal person. Had interacting with people made her more crazy than isolation ever could have? Was it… was it because she lived in a society? If she hadn’t felt justified for wanting the end of the world before she did now.

Samantha continued to babble incessantly to herself and think about inane things as she imagined herself walking. The lack of sight and sound bothered her more than any other missing sense. While she despised the forest she met Valerie and James in there was at least something to look at. An unimaginably boring something but something at the very least. This place however was just nothing, endless nothing. What would it even look like if it did have anything? Boring was Samantha’s conclusion. If she was in charge of giving this place form and function, she would give it cool black marble walkways, the kind that would clack under foot. Or would it scrape? She tried walking back and forth to tell if her shoes clacked or scraped along the ground.

“Definitely clack.”

Satisfied her first assumption was right she kept on while deliberately clacking her shoes against the marble floor. She walked along the walkway for several more minutes enjoying the rhythmic sounds of her footsteps until she realized something was wrong. Backing up, she confirmed exactly what she was hearing: sound, real sound. Not just from her feet but from her clothes, her breathing and her own heartbeat.

“I can hear? I can hear!”

And her voice it seemed. She was able to make sounds and hear them again. How and why she suddenly could was the current mystery of the day. What did she do different? What changed to allow her to perceive noises again. Snapping her fingers, which strangely made no sound as her senses must have turned off again, she figured out what was different.

“My perspiration!”

Close enough, she meant her perception. She believed she was walking along marble that would make a clacking sound, so she began to hear a clacking sound on marble. She also wanted to affirm what she was hearing so her voice reached her ears. Through sheer dumb luck she could hear again and if it could work for one sense, then why not others? Samantha shut her eyes tight imaging herself in all her glory, splendour and maybe a couple inches taller. She didn’t feel any ripples of magic or hear a distinct pop that anything had come into being but when she looked again, she was standing in her full adventurer gear, ripped in some places due to her earlier scuffle and still unfortunately short. Not only could she see herself, but she could also feel the fabric against her skin, the taste of saliva in her mouth and ruffle the hair on her head. No smells though bar her own but not like she smelled like anything to begin with. Her cloak wasn’t present which was disappointing but not unexpected considering how careless she was with it. With her senses taken care of she wondered what to do about the world around her. She changed it earlier or at the very least revealed something about it due to her perception. Could she due it again? She looked down and saw the onyx black marble floor beneath her, had it already been there before she came here or did she conjure it through her newfound power?

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“My power…”

Was this part of being the Deep Jailer? Was this… the Deep Jail? It held some modicum of logic, if you thought of the idea of a prison incredibly loosely it could be considered a dark hole where senses didn’t exist. And she was stuck in it.

“Rats!”

She cursed, realizing she was trapped yet again. How many times was she going to get stuck somewhere? Maybe it was a good thing she never approached that well in the village otherwise she probably would have found herself at the bottom of it. Still a jail was new, like an upgrade to every constrained situation she had been in so far. Oh well, as the old saying goes: where there’s a prison there’s an exit. With a spring in her step, Samantha marched onward along the surprisingly accommodating path. It was curious how perfectly straight it was without a single deviation or bump while also matching her tastes perfectly like it was made for her alone. She wondered if she might not be following the marble walkway but that it was following her, appearing where she stepped. Samantha tested her theory by walking back several paces and then angling herself left. The result was two diverging pathways, one that ended abruptly while the other continued onward beneath her feet. With not much else to do, she started to get crazy with the path as her only form of entertainment. She leaned to the side as she walked which the path compensated for twisting into a horizontal spiral. She placed one foot into the air and then climbed atop it turning the path into stairs. She was able to force the walkway to curve into a complete circle creating a huge loop de loop. No matter what way she orientated herself she was always perfectly balanced with no risk of tripping. Whoever, if anyone, oversaw this place was probably dissatisfied with how she decorated but that was there problem because right now Samantha was top dog around here. Or so she thought, her grandiose attitude quickly shattering as a massive figure appeared flying through the loop de loop.

Samantha jumped back at the sight of a huge fish of some kind as it flew past her avant-garde street. Its smooth black skin shimmered in the nothingness around them, and it opened its giant maw to release a soundless wail as it swam away. Although Samantha had never seen one before, she was suddenly aware she was staring at the retreating form of a whale gliding through a black sea of nothingness. As it disappeared into the distance, the shadow user caught sight of a curious piece of jewellery attached to the mammal’s tail. It had a ball and chain fastened around its hind appendage which it dragged along through the empty space. Samantha stared in amazement and smacked her head remembering the most important feature that made prisons prisons: prisoners. She hadn’t seen any so far but then again, she hadn’t been looking for them. Why the whale appeared she couldn’t say, maybe it was the last vestige of a long-forgotten dream that miraculously popped into her head. Tapping her foot against the marble path, she pondered exactly how she could meet more prisoners. As with almost all of her previous demands, the malleable space around Samantha responded to her desire as the marble path extended outward, winding and twisting into the black void, taking her deeper into the jail.

“Neat.”

She exclaimed, undermining the significance of the sight completely. Skipping along the path before her she felt excitement build in her chest for what sights awaited. It wasn’t long before she encountered her first inmate, a multi-horned rhinoceros looking beast that was half sunk into the void. The rhino saw Samantha too and raged against the abyss causing ripples to surge out as it tried desperately to free itself and skewer her despite the vast distance between them. Samantha waved at the creature trapped in tar before moving on to her next exhibit. There was a collection of bats caught mid swarm with needle like threads stitching them in place. Samantha could swear the outline of the swarm vaguely resembled a man with a high collar. She also thought she could hear the echo of the swarms last words, some thickly accented version of ‘have atchoo’. The next item up for grabs was a lovely stone statue of a topless woman with a cobra’s tail and snakes for hair. Her face was full of shocked horror, stuck staring into a mirror for eternity. Samantha felt she could stand there and watch the statue forever but that would be rude so she walked on.

She witnessed a multitude of similar displays as she walked, always of some monster caught in a trap and unable to move, forced to float freely in the abyss enduring a sentence that would not end. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she was keenly aware every single inmate had been here for years, some centuries old. The oldest she came across so far was a knight, clad in rusted armour with a sword pierced through his chest and pinning him to a stone slab. He looked like a warrior from myth and legend entombed in the abyss as his final resting place. His eyeless helmet caught sight of Samantha, and he reached out an arm like he was begging for something, release perhaps, but Samantha wasn’t sure. Unlike the previous inmates this one didn’t appear hostile, and the desperately outstretched hand gave her the impression of a starving man begging for a scrap of food. It tugged at Samantha’s heart as she remembered the numerous people in the mine in similar positions. She looked at her hands with nothing to offer, but did she have the power to release him or the rest of these creatures from their eternal imprisonment? Should she? Someone put them here for a reason and who was she to undo their work on a whim. Well, the answer was obvious, she was the Deep Jailer, it was her responsibility to lock up evils that were too rotten to deserve death, or so her class’s description had said. Right now, however, she was also a prisoner and inmates should help each other out from time to time.

She willed the knight closer, the abyss heeding her call with not a hint of resistance. The two prisoners were drawn to one another until the slab stopped next the marble walkway. When the knight was within arms-length Samantha gripped onto the impaling sword and easily pulled it free, the hefty weapon surprisingly light in her hands. She held the sword up and watched it crumble into dust as the knight fell to the marble floor. It knelt before Samantha, silently reverent and thankful to have been rid of its burden although he still wasn’t free quite just yet. Something stirred within the Deep Jailer, a ripple in the pit of her soul, and before she knew it Samantha was speaking words she hadn’t known in a commanding voice.

“Brave Knight Dantes, you have served your sentence and have been rightly punished. I release you from confinement, you are free to join your brothers in arms at the table of champions once more.”

The knight looked up at Samantha as his armour crumpled falling away to expose a gaunt half decayed face beneath that looked hopeful. The zombie knight broke apart into dust that flew high into the abyss, a gleaming light emanating from the ashes like a nebula in the night sky. Samantha felt warmth from the dust cloud and knew she had done the right thing. With her one good deed for the day done she made another announcement.

“Samantha Trapper, you have served your sentence and are free to go!”

Nothing happened, the girl drooped until she was nearly falling over. It was worth a try but clearly, she was not getting off that easy. Maybe inspecting more of the other inmates would help her learn about what exactly she had to do to get out of here. So, she walked and looked over the prisoners, each more horrifying and nastier than the last. By the end of the first day, she had seen hundreds upon thousands of inmates but not another sorry excuse for a criminal worth releasing. By the second she was growing bored of the depressing atmosphere. If she had to walk by another terrifying abomination from the deep locked tight with only their humungous eye able to move, she would scream. On the morning of the third day, she lay in the middle of the marble path refusing to take another step. She wasn’t tired, or hungry or thirsty she was just completely bored at the same sights again and again. This place was full of countless trapped creatures and while she had seen many of the same type, she had never seen the same prisoner twice. She also never found another detainee worth releasing, they all gnashed their teeth, spit silent vitriol or made rude gestures at their jailer. What a bunch of losers, Samantha was somewhat glad they were locked up, the longer the better.

“But who is the biggest loser of them all?”

By which she meant who had been here the longest. That knight was here a long time, and he got out so maybe the oldest deserved the chance as well. It was worth investigating, and if nothing else surely the oldest among them had gleamed something on how she could escape? Rising to a sitting position, she looked around at the overwhelming number of monsters trying to figure out which was older than the rest. No matter what though, she couldn’t see any that were ancient enough. Even the gargantuan leviathans with unpronounceable names were at best a few thousand years. She wanted older, the first inmate, the one this place was built to contain. Her unfortunately specific request was granted as the marble path shifted, lowering to a steep incline that descended into a darkness blacker than all the rest. A shudder ran through all the inmates who froze in terror at the sight, there shackles and bindings falling silent all at once. Samantha witnessed the phenomenon and against all logic concluded it was a good sign. Hopping to her feet, she began to descend, her footsteps uneven and clumsy like the path tried to resist or warn her off proceeding. She did not heed the advice and continued on, sinking ever deeper into damnation.