Nobody gets out alive, you know?

Where am I?

“I’m floating,” says the slime, dangling outside of my body as we hang, suspended in whatever abstract space this is. Looking up, I see a ledge and grab hold of it, pulling myself back up onto the floating rock. I don’t really remember what I was doing a second ago. Uh… I feel like it was something important though. Wasn’t it…?

Uh…

  I feel like there are holes in my memory. I can’t really… uh… I run my fingers along my body, feeling the many holes and dents in the armor. Sharp edges, sliced apart by white-magic. Rough patches of scorched metal, eaten through by boiling lava. My body is full of holes. My mind is full of holes.

“What were we doing?” I ask the slime. I’m glad she’s around, if I didn’t have her, then how would I remember what it is that I’m supposed to be doing?

  “Sssss-“ she hisses at me like a snake and I turn my head, looking at her goopy face. It’s nice to have a friend, you know? I never had a friend before. I think. Scratching my head, I look around the space we find ourselves in. Floor… uh…

“Fifty-two,” says the slime.

Wow, fifty-two? This has been going really fast. Wasn’t I just on… uh… mama’s floor? What floor was that? Hmm…

  My eyes scan the space around us. Small islands fill the void. Suspended chunks of stone, floating in the abyss, their surfaces dotted with colorful trees and rocks and flowing water that trickles under the glowing blue light that fills this floor with a subtle tinge. The floor is full of holes too. She scratches the inside of my skull for me, just before I am about to complain about an itch. What a good friend. She bubbles excitedly, feeling my praise.

  A large tree sits next to me, rooted into the stone of the floating island. The lush grass beneath my feet billows, blowing around in the current of a soft wind that moves through the dungeon, filling it with an ever present presence. It’s like feeling that someone is in the same room as you, even if you haven’t seen them yet. Running my fingers along the bark of the tree, I plop down, falling onto my rear and leaning back against it. Why? Because I feel like sitting down. Is that so wrong? I never get to sit down, guy, okay?

“Do you ever wonder what it’s all about?” I ask the slime, who trickles out of my armor. Two large, yellow eyes look at me and then around the void.

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“It’s about you me and I,” says the slime and I tilt my head, not sure how that makes sense. I think she’s just spouting nonsense.

  “Huh…” I look back up and stare at the void as the island we sit on drifts and floats through the empty, pushed by whatever gentle cosmic breeze blows towards us, pressed out of the tightly pursed lips of the godhead that keeps me alive. The breath of the dungeon, it blows over me, rustling the grass and the leaves of the single tree on the island.

  Something is bothering me. Something is nagging at me, clawing at me, reaching for me. But I can’t figure it out. There’s a sharp voice in my head that I can’t really hear right anymore. There’s a face with sharp features in front of my eyes that is… foggy. It’s adrift, as if someone were standing on that island over there. The slime raises a finger, pointing for me. And the longer I sit here, the further it drifts away and the less I am able to see it.

  It’s cruel, you know? The dungeon. I kind of hate it here. But that’s okay. I’m not trying to complain. I know I complain a lot. But this is just how I think, guy. I need to talk things out with myself, so that I can sort of… make a construct of my own world-view.

The lance clinks against the ground, as I lean it against the tree and lean back myself, taking a deep breath. Sitting down is nice. It’s quiet. Even someone like me needs a little quiet once in a while.

I just wish that I didn’t have to see.

The slime bubbles around, climbing up the lance if only out of idle curiosity.

  I can see too much. I can feel too much. Even if I can’t remember it. I still remember the smells. The tastes. The… sensations of all of my past lives. Even if I don’t remember the moments themselves, the people themselves. I remember their smells. I remember the feelings of their skin. But it’s nothing. It’s full of holes. It’s like… forgetting someone but remembering the shape of their shadow. All I can see is a vague silhouette in the distance and at this point, I’d rather not see anything at all because it bothers me.

  Nobody gets out alive. The person who comes into the dungeon can never leave again. Once it swallows you, it has you forever in some sense. Even if you get back outside somehow, the person who escapes the dungeon isn’t the person who came into the dungeon. That thing, that particular incarnation is dead. Crushed. Ground down. Consumed and all that’s left is… empty. A shell.

The wind whistles as it runs through the holes in my armor. Lifting a hand, I try to catch one of the leaves that is falling down from above, spiraling down from the tree.

It slips through my fingers.

Following it with my eyes, I watch as it spirals and is carried away, taken into the darkness from where it can never return again.

  I’ve been in this body for too long. I need to be frantic. I need to be manic. I need to scream and howl and cry like an animal. Because that’s the only way I can stay afloat. That’s the only way the first me can keep on holding on, clinging to the driftwood floating on the surface of the black-water ocean. I need to fight to do that. I need someone to fight to do that. I need a reason to fight to do that.

I want to escape the dungeon.

But for what? What was I doing this for? I don’t remember.

Feeling unusually heavy, I press myself back up onto my legs. I grab the lance, pulling both it and the slime back to myself. It’s nice to have something to hold onto, if nothing else.

“What are we going to do?” I ask her. “If we escape?”

She tilts her head, hanging upside down from the blade of the lance as she trickles down, seeping back towards my gauntlet.

“I wanna see the ocean!” she says, bubbling excitedly.

The ocean? Huh… I mean, that sounds okay I guess. I guess I want to see the sun. The real sun. That’d be nice. Making sure that she’s holding on tight, I leap, making my way to the next platform.

I want to see the sun. I think that’s a good reason to escape the dungeon. I’m not sure what I’m going to do after that, honestly. But one step at a time. I’m almost half-way there.

It’s been a long journey so far. It’s been a lot.

  But I’m almost half-way there and I’m going to get out. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t do this anymore. I need to move. I need to flow. The rot is coming and soon there’s not going to be anything left. It’s going to swallow us all, it’s going to eat us all.

Before that happens. I want to see the sun, or at least let whatever is left of me see it once, just once, before I die a final death whenever that day is to come.

Nobody gets out alive, after all.