DUMPLING LEARNS TO SURVIVE

This is the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my life bar none. This epiphany comes to me as I run frantically though the deceptively easy to get lost in, 11th floor. It’s filled to the brim with massive mushrooms the size of trees, and the air is heavy with a dense purple fog, that I swear is messing with my head. This floor is very different from the 12th, for starters, the monsters are giant mushrooms instead of undead, giant mushrooms the size of a person that wave hair-thin wires through the air with enough speed to take off a finger. I would know, I’ve lost six since coming to this floor. The ultra-thin threads are also damn hard to see in the fog and the mushrooms from which they originate look just like any other mushroom around us. So, every time Dumpling, who can somehow tell when one of those fuckers is around, tells me to stop before I run into a nigh invisible wall of whirling death, the next step is to either turn back, try to go around, or play everyone’s favorite game: which of the fifty mushrooms in the given vicinity is trying to kill us? This alone wouldn’t be so bad, a mushroom forest filled with trap mushrooms is manageable, all we’d need to do is take it slow. That is, unfortunately, not an option. The reason why is the massive fungal abomination loudly charging after me and the baby lich I’m pulling along behind me. I haven’t gotten a good look at it, but I know for a fact that it is at least seven or eight meters tall and has a mouth large enough to swallow me whole. Beyond that, I have no clue what it looks like, I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I can hear it smashing down mushroom-trees behind us as we scamper as quickly as we can without running into the aforementioned whirling mycelium. This place is a special brand of cruelty. Move too slow, and you get eaten. Move to fast and you get diced, and that’s without mentioning out third conundrum. The small mushrooms, well small relative to the tree shrooms; they are still halfway to my knee, are quick little buggers that run up to you on legs of whisper thin mycelium and leap at you, when they land, I’m not sure what exactly they do, but my leg is still both numb and hurting something fierce from the last time one got its mycelium on me. I am probably not going to be comfortable looking at mushrooms again for a month after this.

Dumpling breaks me from my internal complaining, with a tug on my sleeve. “Stairs!” she says, pointing. I look in the direction her finger indicates and see nothing but fog and fungi. “I don’t see anything!” I call over the sound of giant mushrooms being torn apart behind us growing ever closer. She doesn’t say anything else, just gives me an imploring look. I groan and pull her in the direction she indicated, It’s not like I was running in the previous direction for any particular reason anyways. Another small mushroom leaps at me, cap facing away, presumably aiming its mycelium at me. I whip the axe at it. Having had absolutely no training with such a weapon, and swinging one-handed while running, the blow connects about at poorly as one might expect. The only reason why it hits is probably that I’ve had enough training with a sword to have familiarity with swinging an object with the intent to hit something. That said, the bit slams into the mushroom at a bad angle, carving a chunk off the edge of the mushroom, while the cheek makes enough of an impact to send it skittering off course. Even so, I feel its nearly invisible tendrils brush my arm, leaving a trail of ice cold burning in their wake. “Hoomin!” Dumpling calls. “Spit it out!” I call over the destruction behind us. “Stairs!” she points… off to the left. “What about the stairs we’re heading towards?” I call, not slowing. “You turned; stairs aren’t this way!” she says. “I didn’t turn!” I shout. “Stop!” she shouts, and I immediately dig my heels in. I hear the chasing monstrosity, and immediately turn right. “No! not that way!” she shouts, pulling left. “Damn it Dumpling! We don’t have time for this!” “You’re the one who keeps going away from the stairs! And my name is Dumpling the Despondylator not Dumpling!” Dumpling shouts back. Hearing the massive horror getting far too close for comfort, I growl and relent following the direction she indicated. “NO! This way!” she says, pulling in a different direction from where she previously pointed. “What? You said it was this way!” I said. “No, I didn’t!” I kick a small mushroom into the whirling mass of mycelium and… nothing. I narrow my eyes, and reach out a hand, the big monster, that I’m certain is fungal in nature, is getting uncomfortably close, but this is important. I wave my hand around me in a circle, and eventually, my fingers encounter the whirling mass and are diced in the air. It hurts like hell but confirms something. This mist is absolutely fucking with my sense of direction, and it’s doing it very well.

“Okay, lead the way!” I say, as my blessing repairs my fingers. And dumpling pulls me in yet another new direction. We go as fast as we possibly can. I’m constantly batting away mini mushrooms as dumping pulls us in a seemingly random path, zig zagging through the fungal forest. I hear the charging monster suddenly begin approaching faster and faster. In a second it plows through the mushroom trees behind us, and I can see a mouth filled with rotting teeth. I pull dumpling perpendicularly to the charge and dive out of the way, barely clearing its maw. We crash into the side of its head and are sent sprawling. A mini shroom latches onto me, and I feel pain blossom in my side. I scream, as I drop the axe and sink my fingers into its spongey cap, I rip and tear until it’s dead, sending gooey chunks of it to the ground. Another one leaps at me, and Dumpling swings the axe at it, her hit is horrible, the bit doesn’t make contact at all, but the wooden shaft acts like a baseball bat and that’s good enough. I scramble to my feet. Hearing the giant monster skidding to a halt, crashing through the forest of mushrooms behind me. How did it catch up so fast? I wonder this as Dumpling pulls me in yet another direction. This time almost towards the monster. We resume our winding path, my mind whirling as we move in directions that make no sense, seemingly at random. I just battered off yet another mini mushroom, when it hit me. How fast is the giant monster anyways? Clearly, it’s much faster than we are if it was able to catch up so quickly. So, why didn’t it? Is it trying to prevent us from reaching the stairs? I almost miss it when Dumpling Pulls me off to one side, somehow more unexpectedly than all her other twists and turns. I run with her, as the monster comes hurtling past us like a runaway locomotive. Its skin is thick and white, covered in wrinkles and protrusions. I can hear it skidding to a stop, desperately trying to arrest the massive amount of inertia behind is titanic form. That’s when it really hits me. It’s not that the monster is trying to prevent us from reaching the stairs, or even that it’s slow. What was keeping it at bay was my nonsensical wandering, constant changes in direction throwing off its charge. Now that Dumpling is leading us in a straight line, it can properly accelerate. “Which way are we supposed to go?” I shout. Dumpling points. And I run in that direction. “No, you’re going the wrong way!” she says. “It’s fine! Just keep pointing. Now that I’m looking at dumpling’s hand, I can feel it more clearly. Her arm remains extended in a single direction, even as she adjusts her arm to maintain it. But the whole world around me seems to slide off her, like she was added in, in post, and doesn’t quite match up with the movement around her yet she also does. It is horribly disorientating to look at… so I don’t I only check back in on Dumpling every second or two, adjusting my direction accordingly. With this method I can’t hear the monster catching up quite as fast, and soon enough I can see them. A set of stairs carved into the side of a massive mushroom, spiraling high beyond the point the mist becomes impenetrable to my vision. Now seeing the stairs, I gun it. Sprinting full tilt towards them. I can feel the spores in the air trying to bend the world around me now. And it’s so dizzying it makes me want to vomit, even so, I lock myself into the familiar motions of running. Vision locked in on one single thing. The bottom step. I crash into it, even as I hear the monstrosity hot on our heels and begin running up them, Dumpling stumbles to I yank her into my arms, I her a pop and I think her arm has dislocated but it doesn’t matter. Baby lich in my arms, I sprint up the stairs, two at a time, as the monster comes charging in, I leap up as many steps as I can as I feel the giant mushroom we’re on rock with the force of a heavy impact. I titanic boom rings out behind us, as the monster impacts the stairs, instantly pulverizing them. Unpleasantly close to us. I Immediately begin ascending, in a rush until I am absolutely certain we’re out of it’s reach. Finally, I collapse onto the slightly squishy stairs, gasping for air. “Gods above,” I say, looking down at the thing that had been chasing us all this time. It is truly monstrous. It’s deformed and lumpy, its skin is a pale off white, its back covered in fuzzy patches of mold, pitted where it appears the mold has been eating away at its flesh. It has six legs and a large flat tail. Its mouth is wide and filled with decay. There are patches of mushrooms growing from its back and the sentient mini mushrooms crawl from the deeper holes in its body. I vomit over the edge. Dumpling, the absolute sweetheart, grabs my hair, and holds it back. Okay… I guess we’re on to floor ten. The only thing preventing me from feeling utterly cheated, is that the tenth floor should, in theory, be easier than the eleventh.

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The ninth floor of the Lomari labyrinth presented a new and unique sort of challenge. This one being the smell. The entirety of the floor reeked of sulfur. The illumination came from luminescent deposits in walls of the solutional style cave. The rock looking like a flowing liquid frozen in time. This, in addition to the geo-thermal pools filled with what looked like water but burned my nostrils when I got close, confirmed the general hostility of the environment. The monsters, unlike the eleventh and tenth floors, were sparce. The eleventh constantly hounded us with mushrooms while the tenth was just darkness and spiders. The few monsters here were bulky, waist-high, golems made of the same liquid looking rock, except the rock actually flowed on their bodies as they moved making them look like clay. Even so, it was still stone and while the axe could chip it, actually killing the golems was beyond our capabilities. So, we simply avoided them. They weren’t too fast, but if they got close, they would charge and attempt to ram into us, causing us to slip on the slick rock and possibly into one of the pools which I dearly did not want to enter. Even so, the ground was littered with them, we would often need to single file walk across a narrow, slippery line between two steaming hot, foul smelling pools. The last point of irritation was the temperature. It was horribly hot here, but not just that, it was humid as well. it was like an overheated sauna. Rivulets of sweat ran down my face and soaked into my, mostly drenched, shirt. I could feel parts of myself rubbing past each other unpleasantly on a sheet of sweat. This was absolutely miserable. I almost missed the mushrooms… but not the spiders. The spiders were worse. Sure, the mushrooms posed more of a threat, but you don’t know true terror until you’ve felt half-a-dozen little spiders crawling around in your underwear looking for something to bite.

“Hooman,” Dumpling says. “Yes, Dumpling?” She puffs her little cheeks annoyedly but doesn’t complain. “Are we there yet?” I stop, look around the smelly, sweaty cavern as if contemplating. “You know what, I think we are,” I say sarcastically. She’s been asking this question again and again for the past hour, and I am absolutely tired of it. “How much longer until we make it?” she asks. I sigh. “I don’t know. This is the ninth floor, so… nine more floors.” “How long until we make it to the staircase? This place is smelly,” she said. “I don’t know, you’re the one who knows where it is. Actually, how do you know where the staircase is anyways?” Dumpling shrugs. “I’m not sure, I kind of remember. Like I’ve been here before. But not really, everything just seems familiar.” “Like Déjà vu?” I ask. “What’s Déjà vu?” “Never mind.” I lightly slip on the slick rock, before catching my balance again. “Dumpling,” I say. “You know it’s Dumpling the Despondylator, but you keep saying Dumpling.” “Yeah, well Dumpling the Despondylator is way too long, so my lazy mouth just shortens it to Dumpling.” “But it's rude, it would be like if I called you….” Dumpling trails off. “Hooman.” She says. “Hmm?” “What is your name?” I reel though my mind for a few seconds, Huh… I’ve never actually told Dumpling my name. I haven’t told Shinome either now that I think about it. “Mary. My name is Mary Baker.” “Okay, then how do you feel about me calling you Mary, instead of Mary Baker?” “Fine, actually. Most people just use first names anyways.” Dumpling grumbles. I sigh. “Look it’s kind of true that it’s rude for someone to call you by your first name, but only if you don’t know them, otherwise referring to someone by their first name is just something that people do if they are familiar with the person they are talking to. With that said, I’ve known you your entire life, so I’m calling you Dumpling.” Dumpling cocked her head, considering. Then looked sad. “I miss Mama,” she said. I remained silent. “If she were here, I could just ask her if you were telling the truth, but I can’t.” she said, looking down at her feet. I stopped walking and crouched down, getting eye level with the small girl. Only now realizing how little she really is. “Look, Dumpling. I know you miss your mom, but we are going to go and rescue her, alright? And no matter what, if you have any questions that you want to ask, I promise to answer as honestly as I can, so you don’t have to worry alright?” “But what if I have to leave you too?” she said, voice small. “I’m not going anywhere, not anytime soon.” “Promise?” “I promise.” Dumpling looked up at me, a small smile returning to her face. Followed quickly by concern. “There are monsters!” she said, pointing.

The room we were in was large, with a huge pool to our left and a wall to our right. Just after Dumpling pointed them out, A golem came around from the front and two from behind. I swear. “Come on, we need to get by,” I said, pulling Dumpling forward into a half-run as fast as we could somewhat safely manage on the slippery terrain. The golem in front of us readied for a charge, and at the last second, we skittered out of the way, the rock monster, crashing into its companions behind us with the sound of a rockslide. “Quick, let’s go!” I said. “Wait!” Dumpling called out, pulling on my arm. “There’s a monster in that….” The next moments seemed to happen in slow motion. There was a small cave in the wall, one that I couldn’t see before running out in front of it. I looked in and saw a golem, already charging. I realized that without intervention, the golem would hit Dumpling and send her into the lake. So, I dug my heels into the ground, my boots splashing into a pool of liquid. The sheer heat of it began burning into my boot, but I ignored it. I arrested my momentum, and pushed back, plowing into Dumpling, sending her backwards, as I slipped in the pool. Then, I felt the rock monster hit. It slammed into my ribs, and I felt them crack under the sheer force. I heard Dumpling screaming, as me and the golem were sent careening into the large lake. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before I plunged into the water. It wasn’t water. It was far, far too hot. I could feel my skin fusing together and burning. The liquid was eating away at my flesh, I reflexively screamed, but that just let it into my mouth. It wasn’t like scalding hot water, it was like touching a tray from an oven. But sustained, and burning in a different way, was this some sort of acid? I could feel it pitting my skin, soaking my clothes, and getting into my eyes. Then blessedly, I lost consciousness and never woke again.

I returned to the throne. It had been several hours since I had left Dumpling the Des… my daughter…. To move along on her own. Occasionally I could still feel her reaching out to our network, with little queries as she often did. It warmed my heart even as it tore it apart. I sat down on the throne, resuming my vigil over an empty room that now seemed all the emptier now that I knew that my time sitting on this chair and feeling Dumpling the Despondylator crawling up into my lap would be postponed indefinitely. I had never had any qualms with the passage of time. It was merely another of the myriad of goings on that happened alongside the focus on my task. Now, it crawled by like an old slug, dragging its foot on its way to the gallows. Every few seconds my mind wandered back to the absence of my daughter. I knew all it would take for us to communicate would be my reaching out, but that was a bad idea. If I did, the necromancer would notice… and it might make it harder for her to let go. Again, I heard her wail from beyond the collapsed passage. Calling out in distress at my abandonment…. It was for the best. But it still hurt. “Shino,” came the voice of the necromancer. I looked at her, meeting her gaze. Her face had dark pits where her eyes used to be, long tracks of stained red running down her face like tears. “Yes,” I said. “Where were you? You’ve been gone for a while.” “I was merely removing all life from the floor,” I said. “I see. Just your job huh?” I let out a hum, acknowledging her statement. “I see,” she said. “Would you like to hear about someone I used to know?” This is strange, the necromancer usually never talks about her past. “I suppose.” “There was once this woman, clever as a fox, and tricky as one as well. (The necromancer began pacing in front of me.) When we met, the first thing she did was scam me out of fifty dollars. I was furious when I found out, but it was a week later so I supposed I would never see her again, but I never forgot. Fast forward several years and I met her once again. She didn’t remember me, but I remembered her. I wasn’t even angry, because the way she got that money from me was so… diabolically clever I could barely even fault her. We stuck around each other for a while, and I learned a few things. Namely, that whenever she’s trying to be deceitful, she does something very specific with her lips. It’s quite hard to notice, but when you know someone, you know someone.” With that she stops, standing directly in front of me. I feel a cold chill run up my back. “Tell me what you’re hiding, Shinome,” she said, voice cold and commanding. I feel her power take hold of me, and… I speak.