I turn to face the voice, but am unable to see it in the darkness around myself. Something lurches, I feel my body shift and for a moment I think that I have been grabbed. But instead, my palm meets something soft at my side. A leather bag, a gift from the dungeon-master. I haven’t been forsaken just yet, I suppose. Staring towards the darkness, I wait for the elf to approach me. To say something else, but nothing else happens. I only hear skittering. I only feel… uneasy. The metal gauntlet of my hand slides down towards the pouch and lifts up the flap of the bag, to reach inside. My thick, metal fingers wrap themselves around something small and I pull it out of the bag.
The darkness around myself is cast away by the frail aura, shining out from my hand. Radiating out from the glowing bauble I now hold. I look at it, it is a small glass sphere, like the one that was found in the wizard’s bag. But the inside, instead of being hollow, is filled with a glow. Filled with a sloshing, rainbow colored liquid that is sealed inside of the glass. It radiates a light from itself in all directions. Is this white-magic? As the light pierces the thick darkness around myself, I hear an angry hissing and I hear the skittering of many feet shifting further away from me, further away from the faintly glowing light I hold in my palm.
It’s not that bright, really. But even a tiny glow in this oppressive darkness shines as bright as the sun that symbolizes the hero. Turning my head, I look around myself, searching for the source of the voice.
“Hey. Hey!” calls out the thief and I turn to face the shadows from where the sound came, my arm outstretched to cast as much light out as I can manage. Something skitters around myself. “Hoooney!” calls a voice from just over my shoulder and I spin around to catch her this time. But as I face this darkness on the other side of me, I see nothing. What is this? Is she playing some game with me? I don’t have time for games, I have a dungeon to escape. Either come out here and walk with me, or let me do my job alone. I step forward, the skittering surrounding me takes a step back. I feel uneasy, but there’s no time for that. The dungeon-master is counting on me, I don’t want to let them down more. I don’t want to let anyone else down again.
It’s odd, I know, but visions of my sister slime return to my mind’s eye. That little slime from when I was one, so long ago. She’s gone now. Taken by the corruption because of me. Because of my idleness. I step forward into the darkness, swiping with my hand as the radiant light glows on around myself, illuminating far less than I had hoped it would. The glow is barely enough for me to see the stones beneath my feet. Something wet slaps around myself, the sound is close, as if just at my sides in the darkness. As if just outside of my reach. I hear it wiggle, the wet body, and I turn to face it, but not stopping my pacing now. Something tells me to keep walking.
It sploots again and I expect a slime to jump out of the darkness at me, but nothing does. Something skitters in the distance. With every step I take forward, I hear another ten, another twenty behind myself. Another hundred. I keep walking, it keeps walking. It skitters. Every time I look, every time my body snaps to the side to look, my ever more nervous gaze spinning through the darkness, I see nothing. It is always just out of sight, whatever is out there with me. I shake my head, it’s probably just some trick of the dungeon. Some strange entity made by the dungeon-master to torment any travelers. Right?
Right. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
I think…
My metal boots clank on further, I wonder where I’m going honestly. But I suppose that’s a metaphor in a sense. Where are any of us going really? Personally, I want to go up. I bet it’s nicer up there. It’s dark down here. I’m not afraid of the dark. But-
“You’re a lonely little thing, aren’t you?” whispers into my ear. I snap, swinging my arm out again, wishing dearly that I had taken my pole-axe with me. But it sits there, ironically high up, on the bridge. I stare out into the darkness, where something shifts as if water were flowing all around myself.
“Hey. Hey! Remember? Remember?! Remember how we always said we wanted a place like this?” laughs the thief from the shadows, but there is nobody there. I pick up the pace, now in a slight jog as the skittering rings out around myself. I hear the feet, the tiny little feet skittering all around myself. Like rats. Like rats! They scamper, no, they skitter. Skitter-skitter! Rats no skitter, they scamper, these aren’t rats. Rats? Rats…
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“STOP!” says a commanding voice in clear anger and dissatisfaction. I have upset queen. I have disobeyed. Disloyal. Bad! Bad! I stop and turn to face the darkness behind myself. What is this? What is this?!
Something looks at me.
I look at it.
A silhouette blends in from the shadows, a slender body clad in a long black dress. flowing, majestic hair adorns her head, an angry expression on her sharp face that has no eyes. “You have some nerve coming back here again, purple. RAT. SPY!”
I take a step back, as I see her hollow sockets. The rat-queen stands at the edge of the darkness, cut in twain so that I can only see the front of her form, the sockets of her eyes are empty and filled with the same shadow as there is all around myself. I pace to the side, but the silhouette always looks at me from the same angle, no matter how I move. As if I was looking at a flat picture of the rat-queen. What is this? “Look at you. Already causing trouble,” she smiles a toothy smile. “Lonely people tend to cause mischief, or so I’ve heard.”
Bad! Bad! I swipe at the darkness, to mock the queen is to forfeit your life! Bad!
Before my rat-brain fueled hand reaches the silhouette to strike it, the body is pulled back into the shadows, where I hear skittering. The bauble falls from my quick movement, slipping out of my metal hand and I only just manage to fall down to catch it a second before it strikes the floor. My gaze stares into the light that shines so bright, like a single flame in the darkness it illuminates the void. Like a single ember, it bur-
“Look around you Miika, what do you see?”
Raising my head as I still lay on the ground, bauble outstretched, I look up to see his face staring at me from the darkness. He has no eyes.
“I don’t see anything!” I yell out to Piotr, not sure what he wants from me.
Something laughs behind myself and I jump to my feet, to see the other face beside me. The thief. Her eyes are hollow, but her expression is giddy and joyful as she speaks. “I liked that. It hurt when you cut me. I liked that. I thought that was really cute how you saved me from the red-caps, even if it didn’t matter. None of it matters! But you saved me anyways, so that’s how I know-!”
“Look around you Miika, what do you see?”
I place a foot behind myself and swipe at the new apparitions. Something skitters in the darkness. What is this?! Turning I run, not knowing which direction I am going in anymore. I run. Something skitters behind myself. But the bodies, their disembodied halves float alongside me. Not as if they were running, but as if they were standing perfectly still and I were running in place. I feel my legs moving, I feel my body heaving as I sprint, but nothing seems to change. I feel the wind on me, but the darkness stays the same. The bodies stay the same.
“You just have to promise to never leave! You can never leave! You can never try to leave again!” she laughs happily, her expression wildly inconsistent with her sharp tone of voice.
I run, but no matter how fast I run I hear her voice in my head.
“I wish you had stayed dead, Miika,” grunts the surly man.
Leave me alone!
“That’s really mean of you. You’re always so mean to me!” she whispers into my mind; her fingernails pressing deeper into my body. I swipe. No. Nobody is touching me. Nothing is touching me. But I felt it. I felt her. Something skitters. What is this?!
“You always were a light-weight, Georg!” he laughs. “How can you be part of a real hero’s guild if you can’t even hold your liquor?”
I swipe at the darkness, the face of the old man vanishes together with the other two, leaving me standing there alone again. Alone, as something skitters in the darkness. I see the face of the priestess of the hero-party emerge and I feel sick looking at the corruption of the pure thing. Her eyes are missing. She speaks, but I can’t understand her words. They’re gibberish. But I see her face change, it looks so soft, so worried. So caring. For who? For me? Don’t. Don’t, I’m not worth it. The wizard stares at me from the side, her hollow gaze is wide and joyful as she stares at me, black ooze seeping out of her mouth, seeping out of her hollow sockets. Stop.
I see the monk staring at me from the other side, she looks so worried, so frightened not of me, but for me. Why?! Stop! I swipe out at the shadows that are babbling, their words flowing out of their mouths sending trickles of black-water out in all directions. Sending shadows out in all directions as they melt, as they turn into a thick, black goo that simply merges into the darkness and I run. I run. I run! It skitters. It still follows me! It skitters! Stop. Stop!
“I’M PUTTING AN END TO THIS WHOLE THING!” shouts the rat-queen, her face right in front of mine. “Say! You wouldn’t be happening to be on your way to the miller, would you?” she asks, snapping her head from side to side, her hair billowing around, droplets of goo spraying from her face as she moves, the composition of her face changing to that of someone else's. I reach forward with the glowing bauble and she vanishes into the darkness. Dissipating like an apparition into the night. A new voice comes from behind myself, I don’t turn to face it, I know it as the dungeon-master’s. I don’t want to stop anymore. I don’t want to look at any faces anymore. I want it to stop. I want it to-
“I. Hate. You.”
- Stop.
They wave me off. “You’ll be fine, don’t be a baby.”
Stop! I swipe away the face of the scornful dungeon-master, revealing a single, strangely purple blob behind it. What? I know this thing. This… this shapeless soul.
“It’s you! But now I added eyes and a mouth, duh? Can’t you see that?” cries the dungeon-master’s voice from the darkness behind myself.
The shapeless mass, the purple blob that floats through the darkness with no eyes, with no face at all, turns towards me.
“Well at least we tried, right?” it asks.
“Right?”
“Right?”
“Right?”
The voices surround me. The black-water surrounds me. Stop. STOP!
“Look around you Miika, what do you see?”
It skitters.