As you can see, I’ve started getting fewer and fewer skill level-ups, for some reason. But that isn’t important right now.

A black sootflake just fell on my forehead.

Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it…

I need to act fast. Just running won’t help right now. I need shelter, but I know for a fact there are no caves until I get to the round mountain. I need to find some sort of solution, some way of doing this, some kind of…

My eyes fall on the woolly drake’s corpse. Doing a Tauntaun is out of the question since the sootfall will cake us in completely, but that doesn’t mean it can’t serve as some other form of cover.

I approach the head of it. I need to act fast, faster than ever before. With near frantic movements, I cut off the head and neck before splitting the neck into two thick flabs and tearing off the lower jaw of the head. And then just a bit here, and with some time and creativity, we have ourselves a coat! I can’t wear it with Simel on my back, so while desperately shielding him from the falling flakes of burning soot, I angle him again to place him against my chest, with the heavy head and neck of the drake atop us, shielding us enough so that I can move at least a little bit.

And it works. At least for a few minutes, until the ashfall turns into a true sootstorm.

I don’t have any choice but to remove every hide I can get and wrap them around Simel. I have no idea where I am, I can’t see anything anymore, but I can follow the scent. It smells like home. Everything is black. I hope Simel is okay. The soot has burned off a lot of my things now. I had to wrap the stuff I took from the drake around Simel because otherwise the soot would get to him but it’s left a bit of me exposed, and it’s burning and it hurts but I need to get there. Fast. I think the winds or the soot or something stripped off something on my back because I can feel the soot eating and gnawing into my flesh and my ribs and my lungs. My skeleton creaks in ways it shouldn’t.

But the smell is getting stronger. Home. Home. It’s close. Soon. Soon.

Soo—

My foot breaks off and I go down into the soot, but I can’t fall, I can’t fall with Simel beneath me, so I twist, I twist myself as I fall, and the soot goes into my back, burning, tearing, biting, like millions of tiny spiders, nibbling bites off of me, but Simel is still okay, and that’s all that matters. It hurts. It hurts a lot. But I’m still able to pull myself back up, to get onto the one foot I have left. That’s all I need. And I hop and I hobble because home is close now.

The big round mountain presents a brief moment of solace as the soot lets up and the winds aren’t quite so harsh anymore.

I put my hand to the cold flesh of the mountain and pull open the door and I enter inside. Passing through the slowly breathing lungs, I move into the room, the room where I can live and exist.

Carefully, I place Simel onto my bed and unwrap the hides and the flesh and everything else that he’s surrounded in. I press the side of my head against his chest, and even though my ears got scorched off, I can still hear that he is alive, that his heart still beats, and that his chest still rises, gently, so gently. And that’s all I need to hear.

Since he’s alive, I don’t have to fear anymore. I turn my back to him, stumble away, and fall face-first onto the floor, my remaining leg breaking off like a dropped gingerbread man and both of my arms following suit.

I’m not sure if what I enter at this moment is some kind of sleep, or if I just meditate so deeply I might as well have been in a coma, but everything goes dark and calm and I don’t worry so much anymore.

It was probably just a dream of some sort—that’s all I can imagine it being—but during my time in limbo lite, I thought I could hear someone stand up and walk over to me, carefully, quietly, like they were on their tip-toes and didn’t want to wake me. Then, they just stood over me. I almost thought that they had gone away again, but then I felt a nice warmth and my body didn’t hurt so much anymore.

And then they walked away again, as softly as a cat would, and I slept—if sleeping is what I did—much better.

When I woke up, or snapped out of my meditative trance, my limbs were all back, and so was my hair. It’s a funny thing, but for some reason, the regeneration things all see my hair as a living part of me, so even when it gets cut off or burnt off or melted off or otherwise destroyed, it always grows back alongside everything else. Weird, huh?

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Carefully, still a bit unsure of my limbs, I get back onto my feet. Since the place is illuminated through the thin bit of skin I carved up on top, I can ascertain that the storm has thankfully passed, and the sun is now out and about. In here, you can’t really feel the burning heat of the sun, though. Another one of the perks of this roomy, centralised penthouse; available in three different exotic colours! Another one of the features is the combined living room, bedroom, kitchen and—

My eyes fall on Simel. He’s sitting up, as still as a stone statue, and looking at me.

I look down. I’m butt-naked. Th—that, uh, that’s…

I pull a skin from my inventory at random—a leopard hide by the feel of it—and wrap myself in it faster than I probably ever have before. Man, do I feel embarrassed. Here I am, with a guest over for tea and biscuits, and I just go and flash them! Very rude of me. I ought to be executed for that!

Now, this seems like the perfect moment to say something.

He’s looking at me, I’m looking at him…

…Wow, uh, erm… This got awkward really fast, didn’t it? Oh, wait, I know why he isn’t saying anything! It must be because I’m still covered in soot and blood. Boy, that’s a real mistake on my part.

I leap into action, making Simel jerk back in fear, but instead of running at him for some odd reason, I sprint at one of my many walls, burying my face into the moist flesh. After rolling around in it a bit, I pull out a goblin hide and wipe off the soot and blood before sticking it back into my inventory. There we go. I can’t see myself or anything, but with this, I ought to look more, well, normal.

I turn back to Simel. He’s gone a shade paler, which is impressive every time I see it. I wonder if he can do it on command?

Casually leaning myself against the fleshy wall, I try to make an expression that would to most people come across as friendly and polite. I’m not sure whether it worked or not though, because for some reason, Simel just looks even more uncomfortable.

“So, um,” I say after a long while of skin-crawling silence. “What’s up?”

He stares at me. I can feel myself start to sweat again. Wow, with how much I’m sweating, I bet I could dry myself up again to get even cleaner. I think. I gulp. Suddenly, I really wish I had a mirror. Maybe I’m still too covered in blood and everything? Simel sure is looking at me as though I was covered in fifteen pints of blood, but that could be because of something completely unrelated to the physical presence of said blood.

I try to clear the air by chuckling. “Heh, um… Been a while, huh?” His expression doesn’t change even a twitch. Not sure if that is a good sign or not. “Haha, yeah, uh, maybe you can’t recognize me because of the, erm… But…” I swallow. “It’s me, Simel!” Smiling, I do a little pose. The movement does nothing but make him twitch again, which does not bode well. I laugh awkwardly. “Not—not that I’m Simel, just—you’re Simel, so, I just… It’s me. Ho-Jae!”

His teeth grind together so hard I can actually hear it from across the room. That’s… not good. Isn’t this the moment when he’s supposed to fly to his feet and go Oh, my good friend Ho-Jae, it’s you! and then run into my arms?

Then again, that might be a bit too cliched, and Simel has always been a bit more… original in his expressions. I guess.

A cold, slimy feeling drags its way up my spine. “You—you do remember me, right? It, heh… It hasn’t been that long, has it? We met in that forest, and you got my feet cut off, and then I was in a cage, and you took me out to see the stars, and then we got to the city of Acheron, and…” I chuckle self-deprecatingly. “And after that—hoo, boy! But it’s not important, right? We both did some weird and wacky things, and then the floor closed, so…”

I stare at him, expecting him to pipe in with some reply, or maybe a short anecdote from his side, or a funny story, but… nothing. He just stares at me. I’m starting to wonder if he’s blinked even once since I woke up.

A little realisation hits me. “—Oh! You must be wondering how I can speak your language! Well, that’s, um… Funny story, but after… After I… You know, last time we met? Yeah, uh, the gods didn’t really like it, so they gave me this language skill as a, you know… punishment or whatever. It—it really isn’t all that important, though. What matters is that you understand me, and I can understand you, so…” I try to muster a smile. “If you talk, I’ll be able to understand you.”

He stares at me. I stare at him.

Doubt seeps in. Maybe he really doesn’t recognise me? “Um, hang on a second…” I pull out one of my many goblin skins at random and try to wipe at my face again, but as soon as I put it to my face, I feel something grab at it. Startled, I remove the goblin skin from my eyes. There, below me, stands Simel, one hand clutching the arm of my goblin skin. His face twisted in pale desperation and fear. “—Simel?”

At my word—at my gaze—his entire body jerks and he lets go of the skin, practically leaping away from me and back to where he was mere seconds ago. But instead of sitting down calmly and nicely, he stands half crouched down, hands trembling and his eyes likewise—as though expecting me to attack or something. But, for once, he doesn’t look only at me with his staring, blinkless eyes, but rather, his eyes periodically twitch down to look at the skin still in my hands.

I blink at him. “—Oh! Ohhh, you want the…” I look down at the skin in my hands. Kind of a weird thing to want, but… “I mean, I don’t see why, but…” Tentatively, I hold out the skin to him. His gaze flickers between the skin and myself.

Slowly, carefully, as though he’s expecting me to try to bite him or something, he steps closer. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anyone this tense before. If he moved any stiffer, he’d be doing a total robot walk. The thought makes me smile in its absurdity, but apparently, Simel didn’t like that, because he draws back slightly, body still trembling like an aspen leaf.

I let the smile drop off my face. No emotion, got it. Is my smile that ugly? I’m pretty sure one of my classmates once told me I smile like an ugly bastard character, but I have no idea what she meant by it. Sure, I’m no looker, but I was decidedly not the product of any extra-marital affair. At least, I think so…

As I sink into uncertainty, Simel finally comes close enough to snatch the skin from my hands, which he does with the ferocious desperation of an animal. Much like an animal, he then scurries back to where he first started out, clutching the skin to his chest.

Hm. Now that I look closer, isn’t that the princess hide I got earlier?