Chapter 167: Chapter 167

Hallow, hallow! I am blessed, truly by the divine. Truly I have been chosen. I walk towards the edge of the pit and look down at the hole that so much sand cascades down into. There, deep down below I see the sand that falls down the edges of the pit, leaking away, down into a tiny hole in the very center; down towards a hidden passage. How? How did they know this was here? I don’t know. But I am grateful. I am grateful. I would have never found this here on my own. Never in a million years.

 

I sigh, realizing a lot of things.

 

  I’ve been a bad friend, that’s why I feel lonely. I should. I’ve been working so hard to climb out of the dungeon, that I’ve lost sight of what’s around me. Nobody wants to be friends with an obsessed, selfish workaholic like me. Sure. There is a virtue in it. A purity. To working hard, to doing my best, to wanting to escape to this new, brighter dawn. But what good is it, if I get there and then I open my eyes at the precipice of the dungeon and I see the sun for the first time alone. What good is it, if I’m standing there alone, with nobody to see it with me? I suppose that’s rather selfish of me too though. Hallow. I bend my legs and lean forward to look deeper into the pit. They’ve been working hard too.

 

  Something touches my back and I look, my skeleton friend has placed his palm on my spine. He nods to me and before I can respond, his hand presses me down and I fall, only barely managing to land on my feet. As I slide down towards the darkness, just barely managing to keep my balance upright, I wave to my skeleton friends and they wave back to me. Good night friends, sleep tight. I’ll wake you when the morning comes. Promise.

 

  I release the magic and they all fall down into a pile of bones in an instant, as they return to the place that I stole them from. Each and every skull adorned with a bright, wide smile. The same smile that they’ve always had, because they know the truth. They knew it all along. All the lessons the desert had to teach me were already in-front of my face. I just didn’t want to use my eyes. I blink, and fall into the hole.

 

I’ve got places to go and people to be.

 

  My feet press against the stones below, sand crunching beneath me as I slow my fall just in time with a flap of my wings. Another tunnel. Getting up, I walk forward and down it until eventually; I see the single staircase built into the rock. With a sigh of relief, I press my foot down against it, stepping down extra hard for emphasis, as I look up towards the low ceiling above me, from which I know the dungeon-master is watching. My foot slaps down with a loud, audible slap as I raise a single finger to point upwards at the nothing above from which I feel their constant, scornful gaze.

 

“I’m getting out of this messed up dungeon and I’m taking you with me too!”

 

  My voice reverberates around me, before being swallowed up by the silence and dissipating like a ghost into the night. There is no response, but I expected none. I lower my gaze and narrow my eyes and begin to climb the stairs, filled with hallow determination. I wonder where the hero-party is right now? I hope they don’t clear the dungeon soon. I want to keep going a little longer. I’m not ready to sleep just yet. Just a little more.

 

  The pace of my strides increases, as I climb and I think about those people the desert showed me. Was that real? Or did I flip my lid? Was the desert some emergent property of the dungeon itself, or was it just my frazzled brain going loopy under the sun? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. My steps ring out. It doesn’t matter. Because I’m going to do better this time. It doesn’t matter what’s above me. Floor eighty-one. It doesn’t matter what’s below me. I’m getting out of here. I’m getting us all out of here.

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A light makes itself visible ahead of me, just above, just near the edge of my sight and I cross through, as it envelops me whole. Its strange, greenish glow fills my eyes with a sickly radiance that I feel should unease me greatly. But it doesn’t. I don’t let it.

 

My foot reaches the next floor as I feel the heavy, foul wind surge against my body immediately. No. It isn’t wind. It’s breath. Crinkling my nose, I step forward and look at the great thing before me that stares down at me in return, having already sensed my comparatively minuscule presence long ago.

 

  It’s giant. Grand. A dragon, beyond the scale of even papa, sitting on a great mound of indiscriminate mass. Rubble. Coins. Dead trees. Old armor. Bones. Corpses. Jewels. Broken furniture. Anything, everything is all jumbled together into a literal mountain, as I raise my head, my eyes still following the mass of the leviathan, my neck straining all the way back as I finally reach the top and see its giant, yellow eyes, staring down at me from above.

 

It breathes out once. A single, short exhale from its nostril powering against me with rank odor. I raise my hands to block my face as the gale surges through my wings and hair.

 

  Something shifts, as if a new mountain itself were emerging. My eyes grow wide as a second dragon appears behind it. No. No. A second head of the same body. Each massive skull alone the size of papa and then some. What is this? This monstrosity. A third head rises up from the pile and now all three lower themselves towards me to look. Each eye of the six alone bigger than my entire body is.

 

I feel a fear, my legs feel weak.

 

No. I clench my fists. It doesn’t matter how big it is, how monstrous. I step forward towards the titanic hydra, towards the largest, most monstrous creature I have ever seen and raise a single hand towards it to wave.

 

“Hey, guy. How’s it going?” I ask the colossal hydra. Its lizard eyes flick and turn thin as they watch me.

 

 

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