The snow crunches beneath my boots as I walk over the metaphorical mountain. You might be wondering, guy, how can there be a mountain in the dungeon? Aren’t you underground?

It’s a small mountain, okay?

  It’s more of a… play-mountain, contained in a giant underground chamber. I press my way up the ledge, climbing past the dead undead yetis and ghouls that lay strewn about the ice and buried under fresh snow. Thankfully, the sub-boss here is dead, I guess? Otherwise I’d have a hell of a time getting through here. I’m pretty sure it’s dead at least… they had to have killed it to go through here, right?

Something roars in the distance. The wind, perhaps?

  My eyes catch a giant hole in the side of the rocky surface, where it must have tunneled its way through when the hero-party came down this way originally. A gust of winter snow obscures my vision, the fine-powder collecting on my shoulders as I stand there transfixed, staring at the giant, gaping hole.

Haha. Gross.

  Turning, I keep walking forward, pushing up the wrong side of the mountain, technically speaking. But that’s just what happens when you go backwards. The higher I climb, the stronger the wind seems to become and I feel it as it surges past me, as it rushes through the slits of my armor, as if it were rushing water from an underground current. My crusty, tattered cape billows wildly behind myself as I ascend further, my eyes transfixed on the path ahead, as snow pelts into my skull. As ice fills my armor and my bones. But what else is there to do?

It’s a good thing I’m a skeleton. Floor seventy is as cold as a witch’s elbows.

  Witches have cold elbows, you see. But I didn’t expect you to know that. But now you do, so next time I expect you to keep up, guy, okay? I can’t always explain everything to you. Sometimes, I feel like you just aren’t getting the obviousness of our entire situation, no matter how clearly I lay it out for you.

Here, let me help you. The seal is broken and you need eyes to see. Your name is guy and there’s no-one here but me. Ribbit!

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If you don’t know what to do with that, then even I can’t help you anymore, guy. Maybe you’re just a lost cause. But that’s okay, I don’t mind. It’s nice to have company, even if we’re on different wave-lengths sometimes. I suppose that’s just what friends are.

I think?

  I scratch my head, looking down the mountain, trying to decipher if any of the vague shapes I see down below are the hero-party. I don’t really know what it’s like to have friends. After all, you aren’t real, guy. But I don’t mind. You’re real to me and that’s all that matters. That I believe in you because you believe in me. I step forward. Sometimes that’s enough.

The wind howls, pressing against me harder, as if it doesn’t want me to climb further. As if it doesn’t want me to climb higher. Stop being a dick, wind. I thought we were cool. The wind howls on, uncaring for my sense of betrayal. What a jerk.

Something roars.

I press onward, further, higher. It’s really cold here. I hope the priestess and the monk have coats, I don’t want them to get sick.

Whatever it is that’s roaring does it again, almost obnoxiously loudly. It’s definitely not the wind.

  Reaching the summit of the mountain, with some sense of pride in my heart, I step foot onto the plateau. Icy winds surround me, snow and slush and hail obscuring my vision as I can’t see further than the tip of my lance. My actual lance, not my… well, you know. I’m a skeleton, guy, okay? There’s not much of that going on.

Anyways, you know, the mountain symbolizes struggle. It symbolizes great obstacles, barriers. Overcoming.

My eyes rise up to the foggy, nebulous sky above myself as I grip my lance tighter, as I see the giant silhouette swirling above.

  Not just overcoming new challenges. But overcoming old ones. Deeply buried things in our hearts. Old memories, old feelings. To scale the metaphorical mountain means overcoming the self. Overcoming the past. Overcoming those haunting shadows that dance in the corners of your eyes while you lay in bed at night, trying to sleep. It means listening to that rattle in your heart when your head presses itself into the pillow and not turning away, so that you can’t hear the beat of your heart anymore.

The great form lurches, flying low and fast, but never breaking the obscuring wall of the storm and I step forward to enter the sub-boss arena.

What’s there to be afraid of? That one day while you’re ready to sleep, that your heart will stop beating in that very second while you’re listening to it? Sounds fine to me. Then you’ll get to see what comes next.

The wind howls as my boots clank against the ice and the rock, as the great shadow above myself catches me in its sights. I guess they didn’t kill you, after all. I wonder why? I stare up to the great beast that surges down towards me in a rage at my intrusion. As it roars. As it howls.

I wonder why, the hero of all people would choose to let such a foe go. The arch-typical enemy of the very concept of a hero.

  The great, mindless, beast roars as its face breaks the veil, as its gargantuan maw opens wide and a foul, rotting breath comes out, together with a cry that booms like thunder. It crashes into the rocks before me, its massive, gray, lifeless claws digging into the stones. Rubble, ice, slush and dirt fly everywhere all at once from the impact that shakes the world, from the vibration that shakes my very bones as our eyes meet. The once red scales of his face stretch out, as his rotting, leathery skin pulls taut as he watches me, as the wind blows my cape to the side. He watches me, as I lift out my arm to hold my lance at the ready. Good. Good! Watch me, I want you to watch me.

I ready myself, as the great, undead-dragon lets out a hallow scream. As what remains of papa screams, rabid, feral and my scream hollers out to meet his, much the same. As I have come to put him to rest.

Even if only for now, even if only for today. Because it's the right thing to do.