Chapter 138: Chapter 138

As my friend and I walk together along towards the same direction, the paths of our lives coinciding yet again for another stretch of the journey, I begin to wonder; how? How is this possible? Our bodies had been turned undead, how can it be that they are here? That they have been burnt? Hasn’t Miika been erased from the dungeon, his eyes now some place wet and cold? How can I be him again? But as I watch my friend’s strange, smoldering body move and shift through the coals beneath us I think I understand.

 

  He isn’t really Piotr. I’m not really Miika. This floor must have been at a later stage in the dungeon’s original order. Maybe somewhere near the bottom, maybe somewhere near the end of our story. After we had died the first time in the village. And then after, when the dead-light had been extinguished and our bodies were laid to rest a second time, in the best case forever; the graveyard keeper must have burnt us. Perhaps he no longer trusted the deafening silence of the earth to keep us quiet, perhaps he thought fire would do the job. Jokes on him. It did it too well.

 

  Our bodies are burnt. Miika is no more, but Piotr has moved on to some place that can only be better than here. Ah, I’m a little jealous. This… thing. This shifting silhouette that I see walking next to me is like Piotr, but it’s not really him. It’s not his soul. It’s what was left behind. Like the sliver of Nichodemus left in his bones, it is a remnant. Like the scratch on the plane of existence that was demon-miasma, the lance hero. It is a smear of the paint of his existence, a final puff of smoke in the cloud that is life. That’s all we are. Just extra murk. Just a final dripping trickle of black-water seeping out after the stream has already ended. Forgotten. Left behind. Angry. Angry. I look down to my smoldering hands made up of ash and fire. They look so empty. They look like I should be holding something in them, or maybe someone. But there is nothing. Just ash. Just ash. Where are we?

 

  I look around at the blazing floor we walk through and wonder, how are the adventurers supposed to cross through here? Everything is fire. The stone, cave floors of this level are scorched and blemished with a thick layer of ash that rains down from a fire that never seems to stop burning. I see no fuel or any reason for it to be burning at all really, but it burns nonetheless. I suppose we aren’t so different. It just wants to burn things too. It just wants everything to be ash. To smolder. So we walk together. But we both turn our heads as we pass another pair of fire elementals, both red like the dancer, they hold each other in an embrace and sway to the tune of some rhythm-less melody. Some sound only they can hear. I suppose love is a fire too. A motivation. A drive.

 

  Passing them by, we both turn our heads straight forward. Perhaps to avert our eyes before we become jealous. Perhaps because we both know that there is work to be done and that it is up to us to do it, since the others have better ways to live than we do. It is up to us to do it so that the others can burn on. It’s selfish I suppose, this hero syndrome, this primal, masculine urge to kill to protect, even now. But at the same time, isn’t it a indulgence that can be allowed here? Sometimes for those you love to be safe, sometimes for them to be happy, you need to kill. You need to burn things. Burn people. Burn. Burn. The hero-party. I want to immolate them. I think about their eyes, you know? I think about what they would look like burning. Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that finally make us even? Wouldn’t it erase them from this world, like they had done to us?

 

  We failed in our first lives in the village. Then we failed in our second lives in the graveyard. Perhaps, this third time, perhaps this is our chance. What a fate it is, even in death we may not rest. Is it our fault? Is it because we’re so obsessed with revenge? Maybe. But aren’t we right to be? Aren’t we justified? Are we just supposed to let them go? Why? By whose cosmic authority? What twisted gods gave sanction to this chain of events? What deific malignancy chose to create such a monstrosity as that man and then grant him the title of hero? Hero to who?

 

Not to us. It’s a joke. This is all a joke. It’s not even a metaphor or anything interesting like that. It’s just a great cosmic glob of spit.

 

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  Piotr stops and so do I, and I follow his gaze as he stares upwards at the thing above us. Smoke rises from below, high up to the ceiling where it vanishes into pipes far above, long metal tubes covered in grates that take the smoke and deliver it to some place else. This floor is another part of the great mechanism, like the foundry, it is a cog in the machine. But through the puffs of smoke is visible the silhouette of the single, long bridge. A long, straight-forward construction made out of bricks and stones. Covered in ornate, time-worn sculptures of creatures of fire. There are other trash-mobs up there, things other than us elementals who inhabit the lowest level of this floor.

 

But it’s far away. Really far away. Really high.

 

“How are we going to get up there, Piotr?” I ask.

 

  Without answering me, my friend dissolves. The clump of condensed ash and vapor that make up his body shifting into a loose cloud, that is propelled up higher simply by the winds generated by the intense heat that never stops burning down here. I watch as he is carried up higher, and then following his example, I loosen my body and let myself rise up as well with the current.

 

  As I float, I am reminded of that hot breeze I felt so often before. When I found the first set of secret stairs, it was there. The warm wind pushing me from behind, the blown hellfire kiss always nudging me just a little further forward. Like a blessing, I carry the sensation with me now again as it envelops me. As it carries me up higher once more like a mother’s cradling arms. I know I don’t need to, but once I am close enough to the bridge, I reach out myself and grab hold of the ledge with my own hands. I grab hold of the side of the bridge to pull myself up with my own strength the rest of the way. I know it’s just wind. I know it’s just a strange, twisted thought that I am attributing some sense of sentience to for no reason, other than my own poesy perhaps.

 

But if the wind is as real as I am, as alive, I want her to know that I can do it on my own now. I want her to watch me.

 

 

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