It won’t be much longer now anyways, I think to myself as I march down the way. It won’t be much longer until it starts. I’m not dancing and skipping around anymore, I think I’m too tired for that. No, no it’s not that. It’s that I’ve come a little more into the forefront again. The first me. I’m running the show now that Mr. Unicorn is taking a breather. Besides, I think I’d be too embarrassed to be prancing and dancing around with the thief on my back. Not that that makes any sense. She’s literally seen my insides, so I don’t know how dancing would be less embarrassing. I just don’t dance, guy, okay? It’s not for me. I have two left feet. Though in this case, I literally do have two left feet. Uh, hooves. Same thing.
We breach the edge of the empty forest and return outside to the fields of multi-colored flowers. Off in the distance I see the signs of battle making themselves visible. Explosions, blasting lights and the usual stuff, as the hero-party has begun fighting the flowers. You might be wondering how flowers actually fight, well… well, let’s not get into that until we have to. Fighting isn’t beautiful. But through the incursion of the hero-party, we’re slowly getting past that point anyways. Past the point where beauty matters. If it ever did. I watch the unsightly smoke rise in the distance, listen to the sounds of death make themselves heard between the quiet lulls in the thief’s happy-go-lucky humming. As we walk, one of her arms holds itself around my neck. The other points from time to time, but we just seem to be following the way for the most part.
I guess she knows where the stairs all are, which is useful to say the least. But I also wonder how? Has the dungeon-master told her? If so, her memory is certainly better than mine. I doubt I would remember where the next two or three were, let alone all of them. But I’ll take her word for it. I guess it sounds weird, I know she’s not the type you would leave your puppy alone with, because she’d probably kill it out of jealousy, but I still feel like I can trust her about stuff like this. Then again, what’s the worst that can happen? I’ll die? Haha, I wish.
Not much longer now. I hope we can leave before it starts. But I don’t think we will.
I begin to trot faster, feeling a little more reinvigorated at the hopeful thought, nonetheless. We round the next bend, the foot of the rainbow making itself seen here as it spans out across from the miller’s mill and arches over the river like a bridge. For a moment I think, aha! Is this it? Is the rainbow a secret bridge to a secret passage on the side of the mill? But the thief doesn’t say anything and we just keep walking instead. I guess that was a dumb idea. The further we walk, the stranger the ground seems to become however. The lush, blue-green grasses of the meadow seem different now than before. It’s because of the fight. Because of them.
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The ripples of the skirmish shoot out over from the distance, flowing over the ground like disturbances over the surface of crystal-clear water. Ripples in a pond. With each strike of the hero’s blade against some creature, with each explosion and fireball and thunderous punch a new ripple of energy is cast out from their midst. A new wave of unseen force, a new vibration that flies around the entire floor. A new disruption disturbing tranquility. Creating imperfections. No. No… Each burst of energy is simply scrubbing off the surface. Each blow is simply wiping another layer of thickly caked make-up and paint off of the ground. It’s not changing it or making anything new, the brute force of their assault is just revealing the floor for what it is. Scrubbing it raw. Show that it is imperfect. Disgusting. Wet.
Screams begin to make themselves heard. Not from the hero or from his party, but from the flowers. They are screaming, but I understand why. The charade is breaking, the spell is becoming undone. The thief just keeps humming and she rubs her cheek against the side of my neck, saying something I can’t understand. Somehow it makes me feel better though. We round the next bend and I stare at what I see laid out before us, in the twilight of this perfect spring day. A single flower looks up to me from below, turning around from just ahead.
“Why hello, Mr. Unicorn!” says Missus Sunflower. All the flowers are women, you see. They’re all ‘missus’. I don’t know why they are, that’s just what it is. Another one of those arbitrary rules of the dungeon. Ask the dungeon-master, okay? I’m sure they have a reason. Well, actually, I’m not sure anymore, now that I’ve met them. But let’s just have faith in the system today, okay?
“Hey,” I mutter back, somewhat disinterested now, truth be told.
“Isn’t it just a lovely day, today?!” she asks, her eyes growing familiarly wide, as she is dancing from side to side with sharp, snappy movements. Something is wrong with her though. The green stem of her body is chipping and peeling off at the surface like so much bubbling, flaking paint. The yellow of her blossom is wilting and fading away, revealing a strange rusty tone just below.
“It’s alright, could be better. Actually, it kind of sucks,” I say, breaking the rules.
She gasps. “Why! Mr. Unicorn! That’s most unsightly!” she gasps, some of her petals falling off to the ground below. The strangely, mushy, soft ground that seems to be wobbling ever so slightly, like a gelatinous mass. Like goo. Like ooze. Like black-water. It’s changing.
“And what is that you have on your back?!” she asks, following up in shock. “Mr. Unicorn! I do believe you have parasites! I’ll have to tell the miller about this!” says the flower. “Let me help you, dear. Let me make you beautiful again!” barks Missus Sunflower. Her body convulses and twitches, the dance stops. Her movements turn into some kind of sickly spasm, as her mouth twitches and dribbles, as her petals all fall off. As they drop down to the mushy, wobbly ground that is peeling back inch by inch like dead skin, revealing the disgusting, quivering black mass made out of rotting meat and puss below.
The inside of her blossom rips itself open wide, a row of inward facing razor teeth, lining the edge of the wet hole that was her face. A deep, long red tunnel going down through the length of her body like a throat. Sickly, white strings of spittle span across the inside of her mouth in all directions, as if a spider had made a wet web inside of her stinking maw. The smell of old meat permeates from her spasming, gaping orifice as she lunges towards us.