Chapter 150 (Patreon)

I’m running blindly through the murk, the metal of my boots ringing out around me as the only noise that is audible, apart from the tapping of a thousand sharp legs in the darkness, that are then followed after by a thousand more, as the thing skitters around me. As it skitters after me. I don’t have a beating heart that can strike in my chest. I don’t have any skin that can turn cold, as a damp, clammy sweat leaks out over it. I don’t have any physical eyes that shift nervously around to scan the darkness. Yet I feel all of these things.

There’s something in the unseen void here with me. There’s something in the water. Ooh! Ooh! Bad thing! Bad! It reaches! It reaches towards me with long, clawing fingers that I can’t see. With long, clawing fingers that reach and poke and prod and touch me. I feel them on my body, on my skin. Stop! I swipe all around me, the shadows that have coalesced dissipating, as if I were swinging through a puff of smoke. The tendrils dissipate like the rays of light, shimmering above me on the surface of the water, as I float down deeply beneath it.

A soft woman’s voice speaks. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but if you see it, then just let me know okay? Uh… Just knock, like this.” Something knocks out in the darkness around me twice, as a little leg taps the stone floor. Where are the stairs? Where are the stairs?! Wait. Wait! I open my menu, hoping that my map will guide me to safety. The purple screen appears before me, self-illuminating in the void as it floats alone in the darkness, disembodied.

“Look around you Miika, what do you see?”

“Shut up!” I yell at Piotr’s floating voice. Something soft speaks to me from the distance, from out behind my menu, which appears to be useless.

“It’s a melancholic color. Not like a bright, rich tone but more… mellow. Moody. You should get some sleep, you’ll feel better,” it says in that woman’s voice, which I recognize, but can’t quite place a face to anymore. The memory is too foggy. It’s too far gone. The faster I run, the faster the skittering behind me becomes. It never leaves my side. It never leaves my ears. Stop. Stop…

Stop?

I stop.

“Stop,” says the voice coming from a purple splotch. I tell myself to shut up, so that I can think. I need to think. I need a plan. There’s something to this floor that I’m missing. I need to calm down. I need to be rational about this. It’s just another floor of the dungeon. Just another trick of the dungeon-master. I look at the white bauble glowing in my hand, the only source of refuge that I have in the darkness around me. A single light that I am so thankful to have. It’s the only thing that I have that lets me keep going.

The white-magic swirls around inside of the fragile crystal ball. It seems like such a small thing, so breakable and weak. A few millimeters of glass is all that separates me from the void. Darkness is all around me, it is ever present. But this little light that I hold onto so tightly? It is precious. Small. A single glimmer in the ocean of black-water. I look at it, at the white-magic swirling around in my cold, heatless hands.

“Look around you Miika. What do you see?”

I don’t see anything. There is nothing here. There is darkness. There is empty. It is cold. I see nobody. I feel alone. I feel lonely. I feel hunted, hated, pursued and unwanted. Unwanted by the dungeon-master, unwanted by the hero-party, unwanted by the rat-queen and by even the lance-hero who left me behind, who didn’t even tell me how to escape like he did. The darkness encroaches and the skittering grows louder. The thief, I wonder where she is? Did she already lose interest in helping me? That didn’t last long, but I guess I can’t blame her. I suppose I just cause trouble wherever I go, right?

“It must be hard, living alone hidden away in the dark for all of your life,” says the woman’s voice into my ear. It sounds wet, like its speaking to me from below the ocean. I’m not sure why, but her pity annoys me. I feel like I am annoyed at her presence. The darkness grows around me, drawing in closer, as my eyes now ignore it. I am fixated on the bauble. What is it, Piotr? What do I see? I don’t have eyes, so what do I see?

I see a glass bauble sitting in the palm of a hollow suit of armor. I see a swirl of white, multi-colored magic floating around inside of the glass sphere. I see it swirl and spin around calmly, gently. Indifferent to the darkness around us. I see…

I see reds, shifting inside of the glass. Greens. Blues. Purples. I see every color swirling around in the mix. Colors that represent hopefulness and warmth and all of the good things. Colors that represent sadness and loss and all of the bad things. It all comes together into the white-magic. It feels… warm. Complete. Whole.

“Miika-“

“Shut up, Piotr! I’m looking!” I yell into the darkness, frustrated. Turning back to the bauble, the shadows wrapping themselves around my legs, around my wrists, I stare. Spellbound. What do I see?

A blob of pink slides through the bauble as the light randomly shifts inside. I see sister and I can’t help but smile at the happy coincidence. A swirl of green slides through the sphere as the color shifts and I see the thief chasing after me, dagger in hand, hellbent on keeping me here forever. It sounds odd, but I smile at that too. It’s nice to be wanted, I guess. A flash of silver and I see Madison, floating through the library together with me in my mind's eye. I see myself watching her, as she dreamily floats around lost in her own thoughts, oblivious to my staring. The color shifts to yellow and I see thirteen pairs of eyes stare at me up from the bespeckled bauble. I feel an odd sense of… of stoicism, of determination.

The glow turns into a blue and I see it shift into the sad image of a lonely hooded, winged woman sitting atop a toadstool in the darkness, a spire of the light lifts up from its form, as if it were raising a single hand up high, before the blob inside of the sphere shifts into a purple. My arm is at this point consumed by the darkness, my legs wrapped in the shade as well. The light of the bauble doing little now to repress it as I stand here, unmoving. As I sink into the black-water. Something skitters, drawing very close now. But I am determined. Piotr wouldn’t lead me astray.

I stare into the bauble. As the blue light shifts to a purple, a long, elongated purple streak that slides through the multitude of colors like a lance boring itself forward through the core of a dragon, burrowing straight towards its heart. What do I see? As the colors shift and change, bringing all of these illusions to my mind’s eye, there is only one constant between all of them. Between all of the faceted shapes and images that my heart and mind construct, there is only one, single thing that all of them share on their exterior.

The reflection of a hollow suit of armor, standing in the darkness. The slit of an empty helm, staring down at the lustrous glass.

“Look around you, Miika. What do you see?” asks the voice, and I am sure it is the last time it is willing to ask me the question before my time runs out.

I look up towards it. Towards the thing that skitters in the darkness and I speak.

“There’s nothing here but me.”

The skittering stops. The darkness recedes. The pitch black room snaps to a dull, empty white color in an instant, as if a switch had been pressed. I look around me at the gigantic, empty, white expanse of the floor.

“There’s nothing here but me,” whispers the darkness, before it fades away into nothingness. Leaving me standing there on my own. No, that’s not true.

I turn my head and look down into the distance, where I see a green silhouette waving excitedly as it runs towards me.