I didn’t see the hero party again as I escaped the palace. I’m not sure where they went, or where it is that they’re going. Did they turn around and try to clear the dungeon? Did they give up the chase? Or are they taking a different route somewhere to intercept me? If I know the hero-party, they should have run down my way, if not to chase me down, then at the very least, to find the monk again who split off from the rest of them.

He’s a little possessive after all, the hero.

I barrel through the archway and escape out into the world beyond the palace, my boots stepping out into the soft, green grasses of the oasis on the other end. It was a metaphor, you know?

I look back at the palace that I have just stepped outside of. At the gigantic structure that sits atop the high plateau and as my head cracks, as my neck turns around to look at the place that I was just in -

I see nothing.

It’s simply gone. There is nothing behind myself but the wastes of a desert that has always been there.

My head turns back forward towards the oasis.

It’s still there.

“Splash!”

I shake my head. No splash. We don’t have time for splash. But I do bend down to stick my gauntlet into the water, if only to let her take a drink and while she slides down into my arm, seeping through the metal of my gauntlets to drink of the water of the oasis, my head lowers and I stare into the hollow face I see looking up at my own.

Tilting my head, I watch as the water bubbles, as she absorbs great quantities of it, filling my armor with a little extra that sloshes around inside of my boots.

To my surprise, she doesn’t argue with me and simply drinks enough to sustain herself for a while longer, before retreating back into the armor to hide herself from the heat of the world. I suppose she didn’t like the king with no name either. He was a jerk.

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  Looking at the reflection in the water, I stare at the empty eyes that reveal nothing back to me. No soul is mirrored back to me as I gaze deeply into the quivering water. No core to fill this body, all there is, is me. This thing that I am. I narrow my eyes, looking at the thing in the water. My finger pulls free from the pool of crystal wet, a gentle ripple spreading out over the surface, the disturbance spreading far and wide, shaking the visage. Shaking the pristine world of the quiet pool. Shaking the thing, the person that looks back up to me from the mirror’s surface.

He’s a jerk too. No better than the king with no name. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, after all.

  Pushing my lance into the dirt, I press myself back up and turn to the left and head towards the end of the plateau, where the staircase sits to bring me up one floor higher. Just me and the slime and the dust of the desert sticking to my back, the warm winds tossing my cape as I wander over the wastes. The fabric of which is tattered and torn beyond repair.

My boot thuds out onto the stairs, as I continue my journey to escape the dungeon, feeling a little heavier than usual.

Soon enough, after a surprisingly quiet, calm ascent, I find myself on floor sixty-four.

My eyes scan the strange, water-laden twilight plane before me.

  But it’s not an ocean or a lake, it’s simply… flat. An endless expanse, with a dark, red, looming horizon in the distance. The fake light that engulfs the cave walls, painting the water red, almost giving off the impression that we are on the surface. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t even know that I am deep underground, buried alive in the recesses of the world, as if locked into a tomb years before my death.

Stepping out into the shallow water that rises up to my ankles at most, a ripple breaks out from my form and travels down towards the distance.

Sloshing forward, I push through the strange red-water as the only disturbance. It is entirely quiet, nothing moves, nothing stirs, nothing makes noise except for myself and the water I tread.

Floor sixty-four is a quiet floor, even before the hero-party ‘cleared’ it. I don’t know if there are any trash-mobs, or even a sub-boss. I think it might just be this.

I think it might just be the water.

  My boots slosh forward as I walk, my eyes locked straight ahead as I am determined not to look at my reflection again, because I am slowly growing to dislike it. That look in its eyes is starting to piss me off. The slime grips my lance tighter for me, sensing that that was going to be my next move. I nod, thanks. She bubbles. I bubble. The water bubbles. Yay!

Wait.

I narrow my eyes, looking at the bubbling water ahead of us. Why is the water bubbling? There’s not supposed to be anything here.

  Looking ahead, I watch as ripples begin to crash out one after the other from the red-water. Small waves crash against my ankles, as something burrows its way out of the dirt, out of the rock, out of the wet. As something sloshes and reaches and slaps around, feeling for me. As the encroacher burrows out ahead of me, still not having given up the chase. Why?

Why does it want me so badly?!

The encroacher lurches, its wet, maggoty meat displacing great amounts of the water as it shifts. Its long tendrils slapping around wildly, flailing against the red-water as it feels for my movements, as it feels for my heartbeat.

It had the chance to eat the hero, it had a chance to eat his party. Yet it wants me. It simply wants me. It only has eyes for me.

A tendril slaps against the water, sending a small, cresting wave out my way that splashes against my shin. The encroacher twitches, lurching around in an instant as it feels the disturbance of my presence, and it lurches towards me. Sloshing, hungry.

It wants my eyes and I don’t know why.

Bolting to the left, I opt to run a ring around it and simply escape to the other side of the empty floor.