I had finally managed to slip, trip, fall, flounder, and flop my way outside the cavity. I had bruises building up on my delicate flesh from the countless times I fell, and with each step (and fall) I made more. But, hey, a mimic had to learn somehow.
The years of staring out the door into this room had not prepared me for its grandeur. It was, I figured, nearly eight bodies wide! Cold, roughly cylindrical pillars of stone kindly guided me towards where the adventurers always came in. There were many other doors leading into many other hallways, but the door that caught my eye was the door with a faint warmth pouring from it that, I hoped, led to where the adventurers came from. There was no body radiating the warmth. It just seemed to march happily in from whatever lay beyond the door. Most oddly of all, the warmth glowed. Was this where the faint glowing all over came from?
As I tripped, slipped, and crawled forward, I even noticed a suit of armor. That was not the best part, though. I saw bones inside of it! More bones for me! I hastily (as hastily as I could manage) slithered over to the skeleton waiting for me beneath its metal shell. From the size of it, it looked like an adventurer without all the meat. A shame. Free calcium, though. As I flopped front-first on top of the armor, I reached for my stomach so I could open a cavity in my chest, drop my stomach into the armor, and digest the whole pile of bones, but I did not find my stomach. In the excitement of locomotion and greed for more nutrients, I had forgotten that I had digested my own stomach. What a stupid idea that was.
As I contemplated why I would ever digest my own stomach and how exactly I would go about digesting the organ that digests things, I finally managed to get back on my feet. I took one large-gaited step with my right leg and began tipping forward. I ejected my left foot back, digging the worn carapace shoe into the stone where it conveniently caught on the ridge between two stone bricks, and my legs began painfully stretching apart from each other. My muscles burned as I felt micro-tears growing on them. With no other escape, I shifted my hips to the right and quickly lost my balance. My legs freed, now on the cold, safe stone, I began rolling toward the light.
Rolling came much more naturally to me. All I had to do was twist my body and let my body tumble. The slight downward inclination of the whole room assisted my efforts. Now only one corpse-length from the spot of warm light, I grew excited in my rolling. Going faster now, I rolled and rolled. As I was approaching the door, I tried to stop myself, but I continued rolling forward, and my upper and lower body smashed against the walls adjacent to the door. As I sat paralyzed in pain, I wondered if it was possible to just remove the parts of my body that were now in searing agony. I did not need to be in excruciating agony to know that I made a mistake.
Sitting up slowly, I looked outside the door and was delighted to feel the hot beams of the light beyond. It was a welcome change from the years of dank coldness in this dungeon. The blinding golden brilliance burned my eye. Quickly, eager to see what was ahead, I pulled my eyeball back into my flesh and began picking it apart. I deliberately analyzed my eye, analyzing the blood vessels running through it, the small tube-like hairs on the inner surface that I instinctively knew allowed me to perceive light and color. Carefully, I fine-tuned my eye with slight alterations, each time surfacing the eyeball and testing it. Too dark. Excruciatingly bright. Too much color!
Surfacing my eyeball once more, expecting to have to fine tune it again, I saw, in less than perfect clarity, an overwhelming surge of colors. At either side of me, I saw cones with bodies of brown and hair of green which closely resembled blood vessels, with the brown trunks splitting off into smaller vessels. A passing draft tickled my exposed flesh, but, as it faded, the brilliant warmth enveloped me again. I saw black blurs flying through the air – could they be of flesh? The ground beneath me was a deep, rich brown of a rough, crumbly texture. So much variety! So many colors! The ceiling of this massive outer chamber was a very bright color resembling the fog that rolled into the dungeon occasionally – or the gems some adventurers brought. A cacophony of sounds shook my sensitive flesh. Shrill chirps punctuated gentle shaking of the green and brown towers. It was all so much!
For many moments, I lay on the ground, soaking in the springy roughness of the ground and the burning warmth of the light. This peace was interrupted by vibrations. I shot myself up and, overconfident in my balancing abilities, flopped forwards. With my flesh in a sad puddle on the ground, I felt the vibrations again. They had a chaotic rhythm. Several quick thumps alternated in pairs. Could it be…? I rearranged my body to shift the ear against the ground. In the wait, I grew long whiskers and antennae on the flesh that touched the air, and the vibration was now clear. It was close, but not horribly so. It had to have been over one hundred corpse-lengths away, maybe farther. Poking my eye stalk out of my flesh and raising it into the air, I saw a path of that coarse brown ground winding through and around a population of the green-haired brown cones that towered dozens of corpse-lengths high.
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A phantom hunger pang shook me. Yes, it was very likely something living. Those vibrations resembled footfalls. The vibrations fluctuated in several alternating bursts against the ground. They had the tempo and intensity of adventurer footfalls, for sure. Perhaps I was too impatient when I digested my own stomach and ventured out here. Perhaps the adventurers were just late! I reached for the hinges on my lid, the carapace surrounding me, and I was reminded again that I was not a chest anymore. It certainly was odd to break that familiar form.
If these adventurers were like the last ones, they would put up a fight. That was a problem considering I had neither carapace, tooth, nor tentacles. All I had was a puddle of meat and bones. I had energy then to grow a stomach to digest them, but I did not want to gamble on still having that energy after fighting them. Some adventurers can put on a good fight, especially the magical ones. They could defy seemingly any fact about the world that I had gotten to comfortable with.
A sudden fear enveloped me, a fear stronger than even the fears I had of starvation. The air above me seemed to crush me, every part of my body straining, my heart beating far faster than it should.
Before I knew it, I was in the familiar coldness of the dungeon. That was when my thoughts regained some composure. That fear still crushed me, but I could think. I knew adventurers were coming, maybe to kill me. Maybe, somehow, they learned a terrible mimic that has deceived and devoured countless adventurers called this dungeon its home. Maybe they were strong. In the same instinctive way I knew I had to eat, I also had a similar instinct screaming at me to run away. Every part of my body told me the same thing: those adventurers would kill me.
I needed a plan; I needed any form of leverage I could use to devour those adventurers, or at least flee before they realized it. I snaked my eye stalk toward the door just to the left of me, and I did not see any adventurers. However, their footfalls rumbled louder. I gazed at the green-haired brown towers again. There was plenty of room between the thick, brown tower arteries, but I was not certain I could even roll down there. If those adventurers saw a skinless travesty of an adventurer rolling down the hill, they certainly would not ignore it. Betting that I could cover the distance between here and cover was too much of a gamble.
My best option was in here, in my territory. I did not have the first clue what to expect outside, but this dungeon was my home. I reeled my eye stalk back in, snaking it against the cold stone. My gaze dodged around the room in a frantic search for something to use. I looked up the pillars to the high arched ceiling. Perhaps I could crawl up the pillars, hide on the ceiling, and drop on the adventurers when they came in? It was an option, but with my current dexterity at these new limbs, it was not a good gamble. So what else could I use? My eye gazed to the many other doors and hallways in this room. I could try to hide past one of the doors. That was a better option, but I had no clue what lay beyond them. For all I knew, there could have been monsters worse than I. Besides, the adventurers often swept the whole dungeon before realizing the “treasure” lay in a room behind a small door in the corner of the vestibule.
Their footfalls were louder, and I began to hear echoes of their voices which echoed down the path. My heart raced again, the folds in my flesh struggling to keep up with my rapid breaths. They were approaching quickly. I did not have time to contemplate the best strategy to devour them. If I did not start preparing, they would devour me.
My eye stalk scanned around the room again, and my eye settled on something. I began to hear the adventurers talking. I needed a plan. Their footfalls grew closer, very close. I gazed at the suit of armor against the rough stone pillar, and I had a plan. I began creeping toward the suit of armor as their footfalls were just outside the door. With as much speed as I could muster, I slithered up to the armor and flopped my flesh on top of it. Painfully, I tore apart the ligaments, tendons, and muscles which connected my bones to the rest of my body. As a terrifying form just behind the doorway blocked beams of light from entering the dungeon, my liquefying flesh seeped in through every nook and cranny in the armor. With a prolonged wet squelching, my flesh molded itself around the bones of the adventurer unfortunate enough to have worn that suit of armor. If the adventurers were not entering the dungeon at that very moment, I would have been overjoyed by the marvelous shape and design of the new bones which I claimed as my own.
One by one, the adventurers funneled in, and terror overcame me. I could not move, my body frozen in terror. They advanced, their heads turning around the room, speaking words I was too terrified to process.
Then one of them looked at me.