Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Looking around the room, I find a nice looking mushroom to sit down on top of and stare at the woman, sitting in the center of the chamber so stiffly, that she might as well be a statue. I feel bad for her. The fairy-mother seems alright, all in all. The goblin-king though, boy he’s a piece of work. Goblins aren’t undead and well… Well… No, you know what? I won’t tell you. I need to save some things for when we get there to see them, honestly. Otherwise I’ll be done talking before I die today.

  I pseudo-sigh and lean back to lay on my own mushroom and wonder what my unlife is all about, really? I wake up, I get a coin, I die. I wake up, I do something else, I die. It sounds mundane, really. But it becomes pretty bearable once you look at it like it's just your profession, I guess. This is me. This is my place in the world. Down deep in the dungeon, right? I nod to myself and raise a hand lazily into the air. Stretching out my tiny pixie sized fingers. I watch as sparks of blue light dance between them. Dark-fairies use dark-magic. Who could have guessed? Actually almost all of the casters here use dark-magic, except for the one or two caster goblins who use fire. But honestly I like dark-magic more, anyways. It's just more satisfying to use, in a weird sense. Fire is so bright and loud and vibrant. I’m more of a laid back type at this point in my life and dark-magic fits better to that. It’s quieter, more subdued. The adventurers get all kinds of fun magic but… ah nevermind.

  A swirl leaves my fingers and flies through the air straight towards the spots that I point at. I clench my hand together and the shadow-bolt compresses and explodes. Silently, but exquisitely. Just a black hole in space that pulls itself together into a compressive crunch, leaving a sort of blue vapor in its wake. I took a few fingers with this once. The red haired girl, the wizard. And I mean red. Like 'somebody took a paintbrush to her head' red. Crazy red. She’s the wizard of the adventurer's group. Well one time I caught her off-guard when I was a skeleton mage and well, she lost a few fingers.

  Oh boy. The hero was not happy about that. He gets really obsessive about his group. It’s actually kind of creepy, really. It just seems unfair though. To get so mad about a few fingers, when he was just killing my friends left and right. Granted though, they weren’t actually my friends. They were skeletons and they couldn’t feel anything and had no minds or souls of their own. But still, you know? If you dish out, you gotta be able to take it too. That’s my philosophy.

  Magic is fun to use, when you aren’t fighting the hero. I cast another shadow-bolt and send it flying. Magic is pretty standard fare here. It drains the energy levels of the user to make something manifest in the world. If the user is low on energy, tired after a long fight for example, they can use their life-force instead. I would not recommend doing that, though. But I’m an undead. We have basically an infinite amount of magical energy, since we draw it from the dungeon itself. It would be unfair, if we ever actually did any damage to them. But even a thousand grains of sand only barely make a pebble. Pretty sure those fingers were the high-score in this dungeon. That gives me some pride. The hero and his group are just too strong for us, guy. It isn’t very balanced at all, tell you what.

  I send the shadow-bolt up into the air and uh… hmm… Uh oh. One of the other fairies flew into it. I watch as the ball-shaped void sucks the fairy inside of itself and shrinks, collapsing together from the size of a human head, to that of my own, in a second. A disgusting crunching sound fills the room. The shadow bolt dissipates and so does the fairy. I apologize and look around. The fairy-mother is looking towards me. Sorry mom, I didn’t mean to! She turns back away and I sigh in relief. I was worried that I had upset her.

Wait. What? Why do I care? None of this matters. I knock my head trying to keep myself present. To keep from becoming the fairy.

  I need something else to do. It will still be a while, until the fight begins. I need to keep my mind busy until the hero arrives. “Aaah” I groan like the undead that I am. I spring up to my feet, scratching my head, the mushroom platform wobbling as I upset its balance. I don’t feel anything while doing so, having no nerves after all inside of my rotten body. The coin rattles against my bag. I sigh. The last time I got an item it was a potion and I was a goblin, which was really cool, because it let me heal myself once, which was an unintended side-effect in my eyes really. The most important thing was I got to taste something. To drink something. Even if it was just a red potion from the bottom of the dungeon. Gods know what it was made out of. But just drinking and eating is rare as a trash-mob. They say if you kill an adventurer, you can eat them, but that has never happened before, so…

  Wait. They say? Who said that and when? I don’t recall ever hearing that, so why did I say it… Thinking about it, I don’t want to eat anybody either. Ah, it must be the fairy-brain talking. Got it. Undead. Hmm. I hold my own hand before my face and look at it and take a bite. Nothing happens. I’m not sure what I expected. The fairy-mother is looking at me again. I feel embarrassed. Am I disappointing her? No. I rise up, averting my gaze from the strange woman. I need to do something else, I’ll go stir-crazy here. Why is she looking at me? I fly away, doing my best not to look back at her. The fairy-mother is creeping me out.

As I fly across the room, I avoid my brothers and sisters, so that I don’t hurt any of them anymore. No. I avoid the other dark-fairies, I correct myself. I’m not one of them. I’m just pretending. An impostor. A fake.

  I fly down lower, skirting over the pool of water, darting between the smaller mushrooms and letting my feet run across the surface of the grimy liquid. I’m sure it would be a great experience, if I could feel the wind on my face or the water on my feet. But like this, it's like sitting in a shell with no sensations. I can move it and control it, but I feel nothing. I sigh once again and then realize, once more, how impressive that is, sighing, since I likely don’t have lungs anymore to begin with. Though did fairies even ever have lungs? I’ll admit I’m not an expert on the matter. Fairies are magical beings, but also humanoid at the same time. It's a gray area and I will have to defer to more learned minds than my own.

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  I sink down a little lower, as I lose my balance mid-flight. The bag with the coin on my back is awkwardly sliding around beneath my wings and… Oh no! Ah!

  The coin. It slipped out of the bag and fell into the water. I wince at the sight, as I watch it sink beneath the murky surface, deep down into the pool. It might be shallow for a human, but for this body, it's impressively deep. I need to get the coin. The dungeon-master gave it to me for a reason. I need to get it, or mama will be upset with me. No! Damn it. I shake my head again, ridding myself of the nonsense entering my undead brain. It doesn’t matter if I have the coin or not. It isn’t a useful item and I'm not even sure why the dungeon-master has given it to me to begin with. Besides it isn’t like we're going to survive anyways, coin or no coin. We’ve never survived. I don’t know how long it’s been. But we’ve never survived. It used to be different, you know?

  We used to be on the top floors. I used to be able to see real light. I think? Like from the sun and stuff. But each time we died, I sank lower and lower and now I guess this is the bottom. The very pits. Nowhere but up from here. I hover above the spot, just over the water where the coin had sunk. I don’t get to be a lot of different trash-mobs anymore. They only lived up top. But I can’t remember what it was like honestly, being them. I turn to fly onward, to keep moving. It doesn’t matter if I have the coin or not.

  After a minute however, I notice that I have a guilty conscience. Why? It was just a stupid, worthless trash-item. There was literally no sense to it even being here, since there are no shops. Or are there? Well, not down here at the bottom, at least. How did coins even find their way down here to begin with? I ponder. From the undead, I suppose? Ugh. I look over my shoulder at the spot between the two mushrooms that I have just left.

  I go back. I have to go back. It isn’t my fairy brain or my trash-mob brain telling me that. Though I’m sure they play a part. It's myself. My own voice in my head. The dungeon-master has a plan. He entrusted me with this, so I need to honor that trust and take care of whatever he gave me to hold. Even if it's pointless. The point is that it is pointless. It's just another exercise in keeping my own sanity. Every bit helps. I can’t afford to ignore my own voice, even if it is inconvenient. If I did, then maybe I would start ignoring it other times too. Can dark-fairies swim? I've never tried. I know some undead can’t really cross flowing water, but this is more of a stagnant pool. You know, given the fungus and all.

  Hmm. I lower myself towards the surface, flat on my belly, just an inch above the water. It's dark, but I see my own reflection. It’s rather ghastly, guy. I suppose I look like all the others, twisted and rotten. I’ll spare you the details. Oh… would you look at that. I can see my own glow in the water. Neat. Never noticed that before. Coin. Coin. Where's the coin? I scan the pool beneath me, but it's too dark and murky and the reflection of my glow isn’t enough to pierce through the bleak veil. What should I do? I touch the surface of the water with my finger. Nothing happens. I see a ripple emanate from where I made contact. I pull my hand back and it is still okay. Well, as okay as it could be, all things considered.

  I mean, I know how to swim, I think? So I guess I can swim as a dark-fairy too? Makes sense to me. I look through the gaps of the mushrooms, over towards the fairy-mother. She isn’t watching anymore. I nod to myself. I’m doing it for you, mom.

  No! Gods damn it. I lunge into the water head first. Everything is black. I can’t fly anymore obviously, my wings don’t move underwater. They are thin and frail and can’t displace liquid. The muscle simply won’t twitch at all when I am submerged. I realize I am going through the motions of holding my breath. But that’s obviously not necessary.

  I am sinking. I suppose I don’t have any air in me, so I sink naturally. Hmm. How deep is this? I have seen the adventurers stand in it here and there, but I am still sinking. Are some spots deeper than others? I suppose so. I don’t know for how long I sink. I don’t think it's long though. Ten, fifteen seconds maybe? My feet touch the bottom. There is a great pressure on my small body, but it doesn’t hurt. It can’t hurt. But moving is very awkward. It’s dark. Mom. I’m scared. Mama?

No! Snap out of it. Coin. Where’s the coin? It’s too dark to see. My faint aura barely illuminates an inch before me. I kick around the muck below with my feet, shuffling awkwardly, as I search for a disturbance in the rocky grime. There is something hard beneath my foot. Ah, there. That was easy. I found the coin.

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