Canta hobbles down through the many pipes. His legs are still partially regenerating from last night, but the broken bones have healed enough to allow him to walk again, albeit only slowly. To say that this experience has shaped him in a way is clearly an understatement. Although, the shaping that has been done may have been more of a physical transformation than a spiritual one. He winces, touching the deep purple bruises on his hips, remembering the sensation of the bones being cracked in half.
She weighs a lot, being made mostly out of solid metal. A lot. But he isn’t brave enough to say that to her directly. It has been about three days since he had found Alleluia's chamber. They’re still waiting for the secret exit to open up, which it apparently only does once a week because of the way the mechanical dungeon was built back before everyone died. So in the meantime, he spends his days running through the pipe-forest, catching spiders that seem to have nested themselves here in between the many nooks and crannies. There is a little water to be found from a cracked pipe that drips a bit. But it tastes like metal. And as for his nights, he spends them, well -
Canta looks at one of the crude drawings etched into the pipes.
All that matters is that he’s going to escape soon. Tonight is the night when the wall should open up and the door should appear. Apparently it was designed so that only something ‘alive’ could open it, to prevent any of the machine monsters from escaping the dungeon, according to Alleluia’s explanation.
He’s also confused about their relationship, which is apparently what this is. He doesn’t exactly mind. He does like her, but he also wishes that the clockwork-girl would be a little less obsessive in her appearance and that she would blink a little more often. Although, she did settle down a tiny bit since that first night.
He’s been trying to teach her about that, the blinking, saying that people on the surface would think she’s weird if she never blinks. Although, in truth, they’re probably going to think that she’s weird no matter what. But every little bit helps. He still hasn’t gotten a clear answer about those skulls outside of the chamber, though, and he’s starting to doubt that he’s ever going to get one. Despite that, they get along great. When he isn’t hunting for food, they’re always talking about random stuff and making up odd stories and dreams. Sometimes he can even convince her to sing for him, but she always insists that he doesn’t watch her do it, ‘because it’s too embarrassing’.
He thinks they’re past that at this point, but apparently he doesn’t know a lot of things.
So he obliges, and they sit on two different sides of the pipes while she sings, just like in not-so-old times. Last night she even asked him to sing for her, which he shamelessly agreed to do. He didn’t get far, though, as after a certain point, she was unable to control her laughter, which he didn’t need the pipe to hear clearly.
Canta’s eyes suddenly shoot open wide as he sees the spider, and he quickly jumps, grabbing the little thing and shoving it inside of himself before it has a chance to escape. Somehow, he can’t help but feel like this was a metaphor for his own situation.
He spends the next few hours hunting spiders and suckling the rusty water from the leaking pipes. It’s barely worth the effort; the energy that he expends to find the spiders is only barely made up by the calories he gets back through eating them. But the process keeps him busy, and it keeps him alive and grounded, which are the two most important things.
After being crushed into a puddle of goo by the boss-monster outside the room, he can’t help but wonder if he can even be killed? Maybe if he gets burned into ash, or if he starves? Those both seem like reasonable assumptions to him – ones that he isn’t going to try out any time soon. He has enough healing to do as is.
Canta narrows his eyes. He needs to find more spiders, however, or he might actually die before the night comes. At least, this will be the case if Alleluia catches him.
He manages to find a few more, much to his joy. They are not particularly big or juicy ones, but they are just as crunchy as all the rest. He also manages to avoid the clockwork-girl in the pipe maze, at least until his broken bones have healed completely.
But then, while his attention is fixated on a large spider dangling above his head, a cold, hard, metal hand grabs his shoulder from out of the darkness of the pipes just behind him and drags him back into the maze. His fingers reach out for the spider in that last second before he himself is devoured, as if pleading for it to help him.
But the spider does no such thing. Its woven web simply shakes from the clanking vibrations that start to run through the pipes. Although, the creature does spare a momentary glance through the broken door, out towards the giant mechanical boss standing outside in the arena, with the many ringing pipes just above its head. Both entities share a momentary look of quiet solidarity with each other before returning to their non-speaking roles in life.
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“So, dungeon life, huh?” asks Canta, laying on his back on a pile of clothes.
“Dungeon life,” repeats Alleluia, staring up at the ceiling. Canta lays there, holding his hand up into the air, and she’s laying next to him on her side, so that her crank isn’t blocked. There isn’t any particular reason for him doing this with his arm; he’s just kind of holding it up into the air because it feels right.
Watching him for a moment, Alleluia lifts her hand up in the air too, holding it stiffly next to his.
“What was that like?” he asks. “Living in one?”
“It was fun,” she replies. “Dungeon life used to be very, very active, you know?” she asks. “There was always something to do.”
“Neat,” he replies.
“Mm,” replies Alleluia. Their hands, held up in the air, meet in the middle. “There are a lot of dungeons all over the world, and they all have their own way of doing things,” she says. “I wonder though, if they all didn’t run out of dungeon-magic too?” she ponders. “Or if it was just us.”
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Canta shrugs, squeezing her fingers. “I couldn’t tell you,” he replies.
“There used to be some really crazy dungeons,” she says. “Before we lost contact with the outside world. We were pretty normal here, I think,” explains the clockwork-woman. “You know? Just monsters and traps and big scary boss entities and some treasure. Day in, day out.”
Canta nods. “But there were some really abstract dungeon-masters out in the world. Ours liked things more… reality-driven. But some of them, well…”
“Well what?” asks Canta.
Alleluia shrugs. “I think if you take someone and lock them underground for their whole life, it makes you a little, uh… extra after a while.”
– Canta turns his head, looking at her. She doesn’t seem to have even noticed that what she just said applies to herself.
“Extra?” he asks.
“Sure. They will do stuff that other dungeons don’t do because they just get really kooky with time,” explains Alleluia.
“Ah, right,” replies Canta, turning his head the other way to look at the pipes, covered in sketches and drawings of the two of them.
“Like, there’s this story of a whole fake dungeon,” she explains. “They built the entire place as if it were one big theater stage, so that they could fake being a dungeon. The monsters and everyone were in on it, just playing along.”
“That just sounds exactly like being a dungeon with extra steps,” suggests Canta, lowering his hand down to wrap it over her body. “Why the hell would they do that?”
“Like I said,” says Alleluia. “Things got weird. It was educational.”
“Ah… right,” he says, looking at her, not quite understanding, but also not quite caring too much. It’s just random pillow talk.
He stares at her, feeling her staring at him.
– She doesn’t blink.
Canta clears his throat, lifting his hands towards her mechanical eyelids to pull them down. “You gotta blink,” he explains. “Otherwise people will think you’re weird.”
He lets go and her eyelids shoot straight open again.
“Okay,” she replies, staring into his soul.
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Hours later, Canta sits on the ‘bedroom’ side of the pipes, staring at the blank wall ahead of himself. Alleluia runs around, humming excitedly as she puts on her dress, and then starts folding many of the clothes together, disassembling the nest that was the bed.
“Do you want to try any of these on?” asks Alleluia, holding out a shirt for him. “People might think you’re odd if you just have a gross old blanket.”
He blinks, staring at her somewhat baffled for a moment, realizing that there wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Uh, sure. What do you got?”
“I have a lot of things,” says Alleluia, throwing some of the shirts and other things his way. “Lots of people used to die here back in the past. I kept all of the nice things without blood and holes on them.”
“You know. You could have let me have some of these three days ago,” replies Canta, holding up a shirt that clearly has old blood all over it, before turning to look back at Alleluia, who is looking back his way, her hands still digging through the bed.
“No,” is all that she says as she returns to her work. Canta sighs, wincing as his broken lower ribs pop back into place. “Would you like a dress?” she asks, holding up a frilly, yellow dress that, from a distance, looks to be around his size.
“No, thanks,” replies Canta this time, pointing at her. Now she sighs. She sounds almost a little let down.
“So, what’s the first thing you want to do?” asks Canta, picking up a light-gray button-up shirt with long sleeves.
“I want to see everything!” says Alleluia excitedly, her voice becoming chipper again. “I want to see a town, and then I want to see a city, and then I want to see a village, and then -”
“Aren’t those all the same things?” interrupts Canta.
“No, they’re very different,” explains Alleluia, apparently not mad about being interrupted. “What about you?”
“I want to eat something,” says Canta, adjusting his new shirt. It’s a little too big for him, but it’s better than a dress as far as he sees it.
“You really only ever think about food,” laughs Alleluia.
“I can’t help it. I am what the world made me,” he replies, standing up. The shirt billows down past his bare legs. His eyes twitch in agitation. It might as well be a dress, reaching down almost to his knees. He frowns. “Anyways, I don’t remember what it’s like up there,” he explains. “So don’t get your hopes up too much. It might suck.”
Walking over to his side, she sets a small bundle down next to him and bends down to roll up the bottom of his too-long shirt up to his waist before handing him a pair of trousers, which are also clearly too large. “I’m sure it will be great, as long as we’re together,” she says, staring up at him with wide, obsessed eyes.
Canta takes two fingers, pressing one against each of her eye-lids and pulls them down himself. “Blink,” he explains. “Easy there, you know we just met like a week and a half ago, right?”
Alleluia nods, her eyes popping back open immediately as his fingers pull away. “You said you liked me.”
Canta crosses his arms. “Well yeah, I do.”
“Good, then it’s settled,” says Alleluia. “We’re getting married.”
“Uh… What? That doesn’t even make sense,” barks Canta, as the clockwork-girl lifts his leg to put on his pants for him. He’d argue with her about that too, but with her metal fingers wrapped around his shin, he is too afraid to fight against her and end up with a broken bone by accident.
“You have to take responsibility,” explains Alleluia. “It’s the least you can do after defiling me.”
“Huh?!” he asks, pointing down at the torn, deeply bruised skin all over his own midriff, wondering how he isn’t the victim here. “In that case, you should be marrying me!” yells Canta, annoyed at the clingy, obsessive girl. He stops, only realizing as the words leave his mouth that he fell right into her trap.
“I agree to your proposal,” says Alleluia, dusting her hands, as she gets up and stares down at him with a cold, hard, lightless, mechanical gaze. Canta freezes, realizing that this is it, the end of his life. His true death has come earlier than he had expected it to, but here it is.
Suddenly, she blinks and starts laughing. “I’m just joking, stupid,” she says, punching his arm, as she goes to pack the rest of the stuff that she wanted to take with her. Canta sighs in relief. That was maybe the scariest thing he has experienced down here so far.
The dungeon starts to rumble. At first, Canta thinks there’s some sort of tremor running through the world, or maybe that the boss outside of the room is making an attempt to break in. But Alleluia, seeing his worried expression, explains. “It’s just the door showing up. Look,” she says, pointing back towards the small, flat-topped pipe-end, which she uses as a table.
The stones behind it grind loudly against each other as they pull back into the wall, revealing a small metal door behind itself. The door has many, hundreds, if not thousands, of deep indents where something metal had hit against it over and over with strong force, but never managed to break through.
Canta gets up, walking towards it. He doesn’t see a handle or anything like that. It might as well just be a flat metal extension of the wall. “Huh, so uh… how am I supposed to open this?”
“Honey or darling?” she asks. Although, he isn’t sure she is asking him.
“Huh?”
“Sweetie?” she guesses, planting her cloth bundle down next to the flat pipe as she flexes her fingers open and closed. He can’t help but notice that the small dress she wanted him to wear is in there. “Or maybe something more eloquent… my beloved?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” asks Canta, rolling up the legs of his too long trousers.
“I’m picking out the pet-name that you’re supposed to call me,” says Alleluia.
Canta blinks. “Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s what people in relationships do,” she explains. “I’ve seen it.”
“Uh huh,” says Canta. “Let’s put that to the side for now, okay? How do we open the door? I want to get out of here.”
She frowns and looks away from the door and then down to him. “Close your eyes, okay?” she asks, her frown turning into a smile.
“What? Not now! We should get out of here before the door goes away. Besides, I’m still healing.”
“Not for that!” scolds Alleluia, her expression shifting sharply to one of indignation as she crosses her arms. “You need to close your eyes so that we can open the door.”
“Uh… okay?” replies Canta suspiciously, obliging however, and closing his eyes. She walks over to him and bends down forward, pressing her lips against his forehead and planting a kiss there. “Not sure how this makes any sense though.”
“You’re a good boy,” she whispers into his ear.
Canta fidgets uncomfortably. “Okay, no, let’s not do that. That’s super creep-IEEA -” He shouts as she suddenly grabs his arm and spins him around, her other hand on the back of his skull, as she slams his head onto the top of the flat-headed podium by the door.
The light leaves his eyes as his crushed brain sends signals out to his body to convulse and spasm. The last thing he sees before it all goes dark is blood spraying out in all directions.
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Eventually, as the light returns to his eyes a while later, he feels that he is being carried up a flight of stairs, and he hears the humming of a chipper voice just above him, as he is cradled in two cold, metal arms.
“You got my dress all dirty again!” laughs Alleluia, looking down at him, as she notices that he’s woken up. Canta blinks, feeling his flattened right eye regrow back into a sphere. “But I don’t mind. I like you a lot, Canta!” beams Alleluia, her face covered in his blood.
She doesn’t blink.
“A whole lot!”