Chapter 123: Chapter 123

The troubling groan of the horrible monstrosity, down below in the distance, fades out of my ears and my mind as we rise upward. Higher up the spiral staircase towards the top of the mill. She has climbed back up on my back, but is leaned forward over my front, rubbing the broken stump of my horn, all the while she’s talking in an annoyed tone. I bet she’s scolding me or something. Oh well, not my problem. I can’t speak worry-wart today.

 

I’m glad I didn’t have to see it though. The sub-boss of floor eighty-nine. I’m glad that we managed to avoid that. Things got pretty wild for a bit there, but in the end of it all, we managed to get out more or less unscathed in body and soul. She slouches back and leans against me, as I rise further up the stairs. I’m glad that these tooth-stairs are unicorn conform, very attentive of the dungeon-master to make sure that they’re quadruped accessible. I don’t remember the mill being this high though. But we just seem to keep rising higher and higher.

 

At this point we must certainly be past the roof of the mill, but I see no end in sight in the strange darkness above and before us. It just stretches on further and further, I stop and turn around to look down behind us. But there too is nothing, nothing but the same mystifying darkness. It surrounds us on all sides now. I keep walking. There are no walls anymore, no floor to be seen below and no escape to be seen above. All there is around us is this void. All there is to see is a single staircase and nothing else. I hear a quiet, tired sigh from behind me, but I keep walking ahead instead of turning to look at her. What else is there to do?

 

What a strange journey this is turning out to be. Floor eighty-eight is the next one, huh? I hope its something nice. My hooves echo out in the ether. The stairs shifting slowly in a gradient, as the brittle bone-like material of the teeth begins to fade away, the steps after are made out of the usual dark-stone that makes up the bulk of the dungeon. Oddly enough, these new steps are still shaped like teeth though, as if someone had gone through the effort to shape them like this. I look down, each tooth spires down below for as far as I can see, like a great pillar holding a temple aloft. But I know that’s impossible. I was just down there, but now from up here it looks like this stair I am standing on now stretches all the way to the bottom. All the way down to the chamber of the calliope that is now silent.

 

I suppose the hero-party has dealt with the sub-boss there by now. I know it sounds weird, but it’s comforting to me in a way that they’re here. The hero-party. I mean, I’m a part of the dungeon obviously, but that thing… that creature, there are many such things like it in the dungeon. Things that are, but don’t belong. They don’t belong to the natural order of things. To the natural world. They’re horrible, disgusting monstrosities and I don’t know what the dungeon-master was thinking when they made them, if they even made them to begin with. And the truth is, I am glad the hero is here to put an end to things like that. To destroy those horrible, twisted abominations before I have to see them.

 

Maybe that’s why the hero-party, no, maybe that’s why the adventurers hate the dungeon? Maybe they just don’t see the good in it that I do. Something snores on my back. I keep walking forward. They just come from the surface where everything is perfect and bright and beautiful and then they come down here and they see… they see those wretched, malignant machinations of meat and sinew that scream for death and for an end of light. It’s no wonder they want to destroy it all. They don’t see the good things that I see in the dungeon. They don’t see the people and emotions that I see and feel, they don’t realize how much more tart and sweet the air becomes with every step I take towards the top. They just see meat. Writhing, screaming, flailing meat. And I don’t think I can blame them for wanting to put a stop to it, for wanting to burn it all down.

 

They’re blind. They have no eyes, metaphoricialy speaking. It’s not their fault, they just don’t know any better. Right?

 

Yeah…

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Yeah. I think that’s what I want to believe.

 

Turning around, I look back to the sleeping elf. Ah, I’m a little jealous. But then again… the last time I slept I don’t think it turned out well. Looking at her sleeping form, I realize she reminds me of someone else I know. But I can’t remember who. The picture in my mind is vague and blurry, shifting as if it were floating beneath the surface of some brackish water. She murmurs something unintelligible and I turn back forward to watch where I’m going.

 

Light breaches in from above, a strange, multi-colored shine as if a ray were piercing through a colored bauble. It is mystifying to look at, as it streams in from above. At first it is just reds and oranges, but then greens and soft ocean blues shine down afterward, each in a separate ray that tinges a segment of stairs or darkness. Each beam casting away the shade of the emptiness that is all around us down here. Not like the rainbow from the floor below, but rather each beam is a singular shaft of light. Focused in a sense, but separate and soft in its luminescence as they flare together in a coalescence, as we rise higher and the angle slowly changes. One of them must have gotten in her eyes because I hear her grunt and shift upright, apparently awake again as she looks up and out ahead, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

 

I can’t help but look at the strange creature on my back. How times change, not that long ago she was gutting me.

 

We reach the precipice, the world growing brighter, as the hollow shine of the light surrounds us entirely now. It feels… warm. I feel warm. My hooves touch new stone and I rise up out of the pit. I stare out ahead of us, down the long stone-tiled floor, past row after row of wooden benches facing our way. The sound of grinding stone gets my attention and I move to the side, as the stone altar next to us shifts back into place to cover the hole to below.

 

Looking around I see that the light I saw from before is born of rays of floating glow, which shine in through several stained-glass windows high above us, all around the round section of the large space we’re in. All of them depict various creatures and monsters in their artistry. Is this some kind of temple? It reminds me of the cultists' fortress.

 

 

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