And so I run, I run and the sole sound accompanying me is the clanking of my metal boots against the stone floors of the dungeon. I run. Sweltering heat washes over me as I run up the staircase and leave the giant’s skull. Broken suits of armor lay scattered around the ash-strewn bridge of floor eighty-six, together with vague piles of cinder here and there. Good night Piotr, sorry we couldn’t meet up today.

  Spinning around, a cloud of glowing scorch kicking up as I turn, I lift my lance and with everything I have, slam it down into the bridge. The dungeon shakes, as the shock-wave rings out from around myself. Turning, I keep running as the bridge begins to collapse. That won’t slow it down, but it will slow the hero down. You gotta take life step by step, you know, guy? Yeah, you know.

I step onto the next staircase, just as I begin to hear the giant’s tongue collapse down into the inferno below. Ignoring it, I run.

  The thing that skitters lets me pass without event, for which I am quietly thankful and soon enough I run through the place that hums, yet nothing happens here either. I only falter for a moment, as I pass through the hidden-village, as I feel a particularly strong pang in my heart that I can’t explain. But I ignore it and I run.

Soon enough I am back to the corrupted wastes and I run.

I run, feeling the watching eyes of the dungeon-master on me. This is the last floor I unlocked. Floor seventy-six. From here on, I should technically only take the secret-stairs, to keep within the confines of the rules of the game. I narrow my eyes.

As if I have time for that.

I can feel the dungeon-master watching me in suspicion as I run. They’re waiting to see what I will do. If I will listen, if I will behave. But if they had real eyes, they’d see that I can’t do that. That I won’t do that.

  My tattered cape billows behind myself as I run and through the thudding, dull vibration of my boots against the wastes below, I feel it. A gentle vibration. A gentle hum. A gentle cry of the thing that reaches, as it pursues me. As it encroaches into domains not meant for it to exist in. In domains neither of us are meant to exist in. Yet here we are.

  As I run, I feel dozens of hands reaching up for me. Dozens of wretched, rotting bodies, polluted and befouled by the green-water. Their bones are broken and mended incorrectly, causing their limbs to turn in all sorts of contorted angles. Their eyes hungry, but vacant. They yearn for something, but they don’t know what it is. It’s not meat that they want. It’s not water either. They’re reaching.

They don’t even want my eyes.

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I run.

  No, they want something else. Something purer. Something more… real. Something more tangible, if not for the hands, then at least for the heart. A broken figure, hardly half my size reaches up, reaches for me and I leap, flying towards the stairs. I don’t look at its eyes, because they ask for something that not even I can give them, something not even the ‘hero’ could give them.

  My boots and gauntlets slap against the real stone stair-case that the dungeon-master has explicitly forbidden me from going up. This is where I died as her, as the priestess. This is where that single thing that they yearned for, those wretched bodies, where the single treasure I had carried in my heart in that old life was. This is where it all comes together, to form that single, strong feeling. That single want that each and every one of us down here holds in our hearts, with only a faint twinkle in our eyes.

Salvation.

My eyes lock themselves up towards the darkness above and with determination, with conviction, I run.

My body lurches as the bags come. The dungeon shakes as the dungeon-master screams. I can picture them now, sitting there, flailing and hammering against the table in rage. I bet it’s pretty awkward for them now, throwing a tantrum, when they’re surrounded by so many people.

I really do hope they make friends though. They’re so angry. I bet it’s because they’re lonely. Loneliness and desperation have twisted the dungeon-master into what they are now and I can’t help but feel like it’s just a tiny-bit my fault.

My body lurches as more bags spawn, glass clinks around myself as the wine-bottles come together.

That’s not going to work this time though.

  Hands reach for me, thin, witchy fingers reach around myself, embracing me, feeling me. It’s rather inappropriate and embarrassing, honestly. But I’ll put that aside for now. They grab hold of the leather straps that I am unable to remove, and they tear at them. The dungeon itself, the force that holds this broken body together with such burning desire, with such CONVICTION rips the bags off. It’s had enough. It’s fighting back against the dungeon-master’s will just like I am.

Shoo-shoo dungeon-master, shoo-shoo!

  I leap, bounding up the staircase and throwing a load of bags off of me and the collection of glass shatters to the ground, singing out like a thousand shattering crystals and I run. I run. I run as more bags spawn, as my body lurches from left to right as I climb towards the apex of the world. I run, as I listen to the sound of a thousand stars falling down to the world below, just as they had so many aeons ago. But each time a new bag spawns, it simply lets go of my body a moment later, cut free. The weight leaving my shoulders. The proverbial weight off my back.

Thanks dungeon. It might be a metaphor, but it still feels good to not be crushed to death. I nod to the dungeon, the dungeon nods back. It’s not anything born out of friendship, it’s more of a quiet understanding. We’re both just doing what needs to be done.

A stream of light shines out from above myself, seeping through a tiny pin-prick hole in the distance above and I leap, holding my lance out to break through the barrier.

Crashing through, I am surrounded by light. Enveloped by it. Embraced by a radiating warmth and heat, embraced by that rushing sound, by that calm energy by…

Salt-water?

I claw my way out of the hole, looking around at the…

Uh… the beach?

  Shaking the wet sand off of my armor, I raise a hand to scratch my head in confusion. Didn’t I have a dream about something like this? I tilt my head, looking around curiously. White sands streak from one end of the floor to the next, the sheen surface occasionally swallowed by the blue-water tide that rolls in with a gentle calm, only to pull back out again moments later, as it draws back into the blue expanse.

Weird.

I look down to my hands and then down to my body. I don’t think I can swim though. Besides -

I flex the metal fingers of my gauntlets.

- I don’t have a beach figure anyways. I’d die if anyone saw me like this, could you imagine? If I let the monk see my pale, bony body in swimming attire? I’d die. It would be so embarrassing! I clutch the cheeks of my skull and swoon.

Wait.

What am I doing?

I look around, scratching my head. Oh. Right. Escape.

Turning, I run down the beach, listening to the rushing water surging at my side. Listening to the sound that goes

Fwishshshshss-

Haha!