Suddenly, weightlessness.

I’m hoisted up by a pair of green tendrils made of a kind of rough plant matter. One’s got me turned upside down with a firm grasp on my leg, another is gradually tightening an iron grip around my midsection, fucking up my back and wound even more. I look up and glimpse it through the trees: I was so focused on catching that slime I failed to notice it, a high-level Roper disguised among a cluster of mangroves. Well now I’ll pay dearly for my mistake - you do not want to tussle with one of these things, not for a second. They’ve got a difficulty rating of about level 10, which isn’t the highest, but pretty respectable considering the fact that they’re totally immobile. Yes, that’s right, Ropers manage to score a level ten rating without a pair of legs. They’re as still as the trees they pretend to be. Which means they’re pretty damn tough up close, is what I’m getting at. Here’s an entry from the Monster Encyclopedia (paraphrased, of course, I don’t have the thing in front of me).

“The Roper sports a collection of about eight to ten tentacles. The compressive force of each is enough to bend metal, crush bone and sever ligaments. Getting squeezed by one of them is an experience not unlike being caught in the hydraulic press of a Steamtown factory, and therefore physical confrontation with Ropers is to be avoided. Ropers are theorized to be closely related to varieties of carnivorous plants and other plant-type monsters, such as Fly Traps. Only while the Fly Trap is mobile, Ropers live in a fixed position, firmly rooted in the ground. They are itinerant only at the larval stage of their development, when they travel through the air as lanuginous, pollen-like spores.

While Ropers may grow in areas with nutrient-rich soil the uptake of their roots is severely limited, meaning that while they can theoretically live without consuming live prey their development would be stunted as a result of vitamin deficiency. Therefore, their highly sensitive nervous system, which run from the tips of their tentacles straight to the fleshy nucleus at the center of their conical body, convey an almost constant feeling of hunger that isn’t sated by photosynthesis or minerals in the soil. It can only be appeased by consuming the flesh of animals. To that end, the Roper is equipped with several rows of teeth leading into their acid-filled digestive sac. These teeth are sharp, fine, and numerous, comparable to a highly effective grating utensil. They scrape away cloth, plate, and flesh as if it were wood pulp, thereby readying the stripped and softened body for slow digestion by stomach acid.

It is a subject of intense debate in taxonomic circles whether Ropers deserve the appellation of “Miniboss”. Those that argue for point to their relatively seldom spawn rate, high quality of dropped loot, and general difficulty in subduing. Those that argue against maintain that any enemy you can simply walk away from can’t be given such a commanding appellation.”

It’s a little late to walk away from this one, though. That’s alright. I’m not going to let a plant get me that easily. I fight through the pain as the tentacles crush me. I unsheath my sword and in a couple of even motions I liberate myself from the Roper’s clutches and fall into the muck. Unfortunately, my scroll is wasted. The ink and parchment is flowing together in a muddy slurry, now disintegrated and perfectly illegible. There’s bigger fish to fry, so whatever. The Roper doesn’t even turn out to be my number one concern in the end: like I mentioned before, enemies spawn in at the Ink Marshes based on proximity. Since I just speedrun half the instance running on water I’ve now generated a whole host of dangerous mobs. Swamp Things, Hobgoblins, Moor Cats, they’re plodding through the swamp in groups of twos and threes intent on finishing me off. The Roper makes grab after grab for me. I fight him off with my longsword, making calamari out of any tentacles that get too close. I’m still dancing around on the surface of the water - these sandals of swiftness are really putting in the work! Then it gets weird, however.

The Roper quits going after my torso and instead shoots straight for my feet. I manage to chop up one in time, but the other wraps around my leg, without pressing on it. It slides rapidly down and takes off the sandal I’m wearing! Before I realize what’s happened I’m one foot in the muck, the other still at the water’s surface, putting me in an awkward stance to be sure. Never in my life have I seen something like it. Monsters are tougher than nails, dumber than them too. Somehow it must’ve known that I was reaping some sort of benefit from the enchantment put on them, and sought to disenfranchise me of it, which I thought it incapable of. The tentacle rears back and flings the shoe way into the brush. There’s no getting it back, that much I’m sure of.

Now I’m stuck propelling myself halfway submerged, doing my best not to get captured by the tendrils again. If only I could get the second I need to ditch the other sandal, then I wouldn’t be in such an indefensible position! Alas, it’s all just a losing battle. One of its limbs is crashing into me and I feel a break somewhere in my body. I keel over, falling into the water. The wind is knocked out of me and when I try to retrieve it I suck in gobs of filthy swamp water.

No. Not yet. I don’t give up (I am writing in my journal, after all?). I start crawling - if I can just get far enough from the Roper, duck into the mud and hope the mobs don’t find me. If I could just get a moment to myself I could hearth back home. I haul ass: my upper body pulling the rest, made into dead weight by fatigue and injury. I drag myself into the bushes, when a tentacle grabs my foot! I kick and kick but it doesn’t come off. It clamps down, I feel the bone bending under the compression. The sensation is indescribable. I’m pretty spent already, but I speak the incantation of and make the requisite hand movements to cast a Judgement spell, just to get the thing off me. The ray of luminescence goes flying, flying right into my leg.. If it isn’t broken already it surely is now. I grit my teeth and ready another as the tendril yanks me out of the bush, and this time I manage a direct hit. It goes reeling backwards and I make the most out of the opportunity I’ve obtained. I practically heave myself into the foliage, now totally spent. My body hurts all over. I’ve really done it this time.

I rummage through my bag and retrieve the hearthstone, the white, metamorphic rock almost glows in the last traces of daylight. A blue inscription in the center lights up dully as I touch it. Words aren’t necessary with a hearthstone - they respond telepathically to transport the user where they believe their home to be. It starts charging. It doesn’t take more than a moment, but with the situation I’m in now it feels like an eternity. I take the time to shakily refill my repeater crossbow with bolts if I can’t make it out in time. Of course, just when I think I’m set to leave, something parts the layer of bushes I’m hiding beneath. I’m face to face with a gang of Hobgoblin Axe-Throwers. About four or five of them. They can’t believe their good fortune, they start gibbering to each other immediately in their mad, glossolalist tongue about (I assume) what they’re going to do to me. What kind of sharpened implements they’ll stick under my fingernails, how they’ll string me up till all the blood flows into my brain, maybe they’ll build a wicker effigy around me and burn it up in a sacrificial rite. They won’t get the chance. Shame on them for wearing scraps of wood as armor: the bolts of my crossbow go tunneling into their squamous bodies, punching through tabards and loincloths, taking out eyes and clipping limbs. It won’t bring them down like it did the bats, sure, but it gives me the moment I need to scramble up a tree and restart the hearthstone. Something about quick movements fucks with the teleportation process. (If only you could hearth away mid-sprint, the genius who figures that out would save thousands of luckless adventurers in over their heads).

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I scramble up a thick-trunked tree weeping a clear, viscid sap. I get it all over myself and it mixes with the sweat, mud and blood. I figure that from this vantage point a single bomb could finish them off, so I reach into my bag: I’m down to just two bombs. I hadn’t touched my stockpile for months and here I am using two in one go! All my money’s spent, I wasn’t going to catch the slime, and rent is due in a couple days while my body’s all bloody and broken. Of course I’m thinking about my rent when I’ve got a gang of Hobgoblins approaching, readying their stone hatchets, looking at me with bloodlust roiling in the irises of their beady, black eyes. An axe goes whizzing past me and digs deep into one of the tree’s branches. They laugh to each other as they aim their axes. They want to make a game out of this, do they? I ready a bomb, but as I get ready to throw another axe goes right into my arm! I drop the thing, and it goes rolling to the base of the tree, ready to blow in a matter of seconds.

They say that in life-and-death scenarios your life flashes before your eyes. I think that’s probably true for people who have lived decently. With a house, a wife, children by their side. I never had any of that. The opportunities in my life I squandered, one after the other. I realized in that instant that no one would be waiting for me back at my two-room shack in the bad part of town, still the same place as when I first started adventuring. All my old friends are scattered to the wind, would anyone even visit my grave? Maybe I’d get an obituary in the newspaper, “World’s Oldest Adventurer Perishes after Making Series of Rookie Mistakes”. That would be nice.

The tree blows up.

-

I’m drifting through space. The gash in my side, my broken leg, the axe in my arm, none of it could be more remote. I simply feel nothing, not even pain in my back. In this realm it's as if I lack a corporeal body entirely. My eyes open up and I see a long, interminable hallway paved with fragments of stained glass. If I train my vision on them I notice that they weave and melt into each other, like a living mass, like a Gray Slime. I step onto it and it gives, as if it were rotten, mossy ground. I notice my steps don’t make a sound.

There’s soft, sweet music playing from somewhere. I try to pick it out and it's difficult to sense what direction it's coming from, though the hall is strangely mute. It seems to draw sound into itself like a snowy day. I can just barely recognize it. It’s the famous aria from one of Percival’s favorite operas - The Odalisque. If I remember correctly it's about the brother of a powerful foreign king, who becomes enamored with a slave girl tasked with constructing his sibling’s burial chamber, an enormous pyramid covered in a limestone sheet. The brother asks the king to set her free, but he needs every hand he can get, and refuses. He wants to approach the girl to ask her hand in marriage, to ask her to run away with him, but he’s terribly shy and too afraid of his brother to go against his wishes. He desires to be a new man. A big shot like his brother, not some spineless dandy squandering his better’s riches. He visits the enemy god Set, who promises him all he desires in the form of a magic potion. All he has to do is drink it deep, then he will have the machismo to win the slave girl’s heart and to gainsay the king! The offer is irresistible. He gulps it all down, but is met with a terrible fate: his skin peels off and is replaced by scales. His hair falls out and in its place grows a bright scarlet, a rooster's comb. He has been turned into a terrible monster, the Cockatrice of old!

So overcome with despair he decides to use his newfound strength to topple his brother’s pyramid. He breathes a terrible gout of flame, which is so hot it melts all the bricks and warps the limestone sheet. The slaves are suddenly free of their dreaded task and rush the monster with cries of adulation. Now in this twisted manner he has one the affections of his beloved odalisque, who wreathes his head with a chain of river lotuses. The wicked king realizes the error of his ways, the plan of Set is a success, the slaves are freed, and the Cockatrice is loved. All the characters of the opera have a happy ending, surprisingly, though it is under strange, and kind of sad circumstances.

There’s an epilogue to the story in the form of a harvest holiday. The low-borns are free to tend their fields now that the pyramid is gone, and are singing an effervescent folk melody to express their joy. Known colloquially as the Chorus of Unbound Slaves.

This was the song being sung now. It’s sounding through the walls, I realize it coming from every direction. No, it's playing inside my head. The clear and lilting tone of the slave girl starts off the tune following the string-section’s introduction, then it's joined by a basso voice, resulting in a contrasting duet of male and female tones. Where one stops the other picks up, until the two come together to finish the aria. After a warbling crescendo the melody is echoed by a fully orchestrated coda: reassuring strings and sparkling brass blaring.

While the music is seeping through me and I’m walking down the hall I see it again. The specter at the other end of the corridor. I turn around. I start to run. But I find I’m kicking up the floor like it’s all just a throw rug on waxed hardwood. It’s flying up behind me and I make no headway. I’m exhausted, and all the pain is coming back to me. The music gets louder. The odalisque and the basso voice are screaming maledictions into my ear. I keep trying to run as everything slows down. I look up and see the specter above me. Standing there, waiting for me to finish. I see nothing in its face.