Chapter 4: Chapter 4

I bend down and place both my hands beneath the coin. It’s light and I lift it up onto its side and brace it in my hands wondering what I will do now? My eyes raise up to the surface which I can no longer see. Everything is black. It’s dark down here. I hold on to the coin for mama. No. Shut up fairy-brain. I’m holding on to the coin because I want to hold on to it. I try to swim but I don’t budge. I try to jump, but I barely leave the ground. I’m not buoyant in the least. I know how to swim but my body won’t. Can it even? Maybe just the way it’s made up out of bones and zombie-meat and rags makes it impossible to swim. Hmm, unfortunate. Will I die down here?

  I’ve gotten stuck before. I used to spend a lot of time trying all sorts of nooks and crevices out to find a way. A secret path. A secret room. But none of them ever led anywhere and I got stuck a lot. Thankfully usually something found me and ate me. I think spiders for the most part. They like to go through the cracks of the place and keep things tidy. I doubt there will be any down here though. I look around myself. A mushroom stem is before me sprouting out of the water. Can I climb it? I am unsure. I feel my way towards it and dig my hands into the stem. The material is soft and pliant and gives way beneath my poking, bony fingers. This can work. Letting go I take the coin in both hands and very awkwardly shift to put it back into my bag. It isn’t easy. I think I broke a chip off my right shoulder blade trying to bend my arm. Oh well. I have the coin again now though I say with pride. Nothing escapes my mouth.

  I grasp onto the mushroom stem again and pull myself upward. I don’t get as far as I had hoped. My body lacks the strength. Undead are physically weak you see. Having no muscle density will do that to you. I try again and pull myself up a little higher than before. I fall. One of my fingers is stuck in the mushroom. Oh no. Mama I’m sorry I think to myself as I look around at the black ink surrounding me. Wait. An idea hits me. I raise my hand towards the mushroom that stole my finger and make the gesture with those that remain. It’s hard to tell, but a shadow-bolt forms before me and I guide it to the base of the mushroom. I release and it snaps tightly shut like a sprung trap. The mushroom crunches together on its trunk, with frightening force honestly, and it falls over like a felled tree in the forest. Though maybe a bit slower. Actually it just kind of gently drifts down sideways. Tree? There’s that word again. Also a forest? I guess that has something to do with trees? Mama will know, I’ll ask her. No. I shake my head. She’s not my mom and she can’t talk. I climb up onto the tipped over mushroom victorious and walk up its long body. I stop to take my finger back with me on the way and slip it into the bag with the coin. I don’t know why. It just seems like the right thing to do.

  As I walk along the slanted mushroom I feel my body growing lighter as I rise higher and higher. As I come ever closer to the surface above. I am careful not to slip and fall. Soon I see the lights grow above me from the luminescent fungus on the surface. Once I reach the head of the mushroom I grasp onto the side and pull myself up onto the rim of the pale white flat cap. My head pokes out of the water as I stand on the tips of my toes. I look around. It was just the usual room, everything was the same. I jump hoping my wings would work once I raised them out of the water. But they don’t. Maybe I was still in too deep I wondered. Or maybe they didn’t work at all if they got wet. It was hard to say since I’ve never done it before.

  Ah man. Being a dark-fairy is really awkward. The constant change in perspectives is a real throw around you know? As a goblin you’re small compared to a human and as a fairy you’re tiny. But then maybe tomorrow you’re a zombie or even one of the minotaurs. They were huge. It was always really awkward to get used to at first. But I’ve done it so often that I feel pretty at home in most of these guys at this point. I used to have a favorite, but I don’t remember what it was and I don’t get to be it anymore since it was up on a higher floor. I’d really love to give the hero a spin if I could. But I guess that’s not in the cards. Haha man, imagine if I could be the fairy-mother, or the dungeon-master. Oh boy what a ride that would be. Though I’m sure I’d blow it. No, now that I think about it being a trash mob is better. They just kill you and get it over with. No long prolonged fights and all of that stress.

  Besides, I would have no idea how to be them. What kind of body does the dungeon-master even have? I shake my head which still sticks out of the water. I am rambling again. How am I going to get out of here? The shore is too far away for me to jump to from here, I would just sink back down to the bottom if I tried to do that. Ah man, note to self; avoid water next time I’m a dark-fairy. My rags are soaked through with grimy muck and stick to my dead skin. I bet it would be a really gross sensation and smell. Good thing I don’t have any senses.

  Should I kill myself? A shadow-bolt would be a pretty quick way to go out honestly. I wonder, thinking about the idea and its merits. It would be an easy respawn and hell, maybe I’d get something better than this body. I long for the leisure of skeleton life. Skull and bones all day baby. But no, I can’t do that. I’m not allowed to kill myself. It’s one of my rules. Another one of those vague oddball ideas I try to keep hold of so that it doesn’t all slip away. Suicide would allow me an easy way to get a better life, but I can’t go down that rabbit-hole. I need the variety. If I spend all of my life just being a skeleton then I’ll fade away. I need to keep it mixed up. It’s important that I don’t fall in a rut. So I need to find a way out of this nasty water.

  I look over to the fairy-mother, she doesn’t notice me. I don’t think she would help me even if she did though. Sub-bosses never left their trigger-points. She was basically glued to that mushroom until the adventurers arrived at which point everything would go to hell in a hand-basket pretty quickly. She’s pretty cool to watch actually in the fight. Lots of magic and lights and flying. You know, fairy stuff. It’s a very dynamic spectacle when you aren’t being shredded apart. But the dozens of spells and the people jumping around like the possessed dead, it’s a good show. At least until they kill her or you. Sorry mom. I look away searching for something else.

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  I find nothing of interest however. There are more mushrooms around me, maybe I can knock one of them over too? One of the bigger ones? I may as well try. I spend the next several minutes using my shadow magic to knock the mushrooms around me down. However none of them manage to stick the landing quite right. All of them either fall over limply and sink away beneath the water or tilt to the wrong side despite my best efforts to have them fall towards myself. Damn it. How long have I been here now? I’m out of mushrooms and ideas. I look up towards the distant ceiling. Vague shadows are cast around the jagged top layer sealing this floor. I suppose there is another floor above this one just beyond that. But as far as I can tell from here I’m just in any old cave. Wait, the stalagmites. Or was it stalactites? Whatever. Maybe I can use one of them. They are everywhere hanging from the ceiling.

  Usually during the middle of her fight the fairy-mother will cast a spell that knocks a whole bunch of them down. It looks pretty scary, but they never kill anybody honestly. I saw the hero take one directly onto his shoulder once. It just kind of bounced off. You’d think a sharp, jagged spear of a rock falling from that height would do something to the guy. But nope. Just dinged off his oversized shoulder pads and that was that. What’s up with those anyways? They’re huge. Like seriously huge. Who makes things like that? I’d say it seems kind of pointless but I suppose I just explained that they for sure saved him once.

  Well saved may be a generous word honestly. I get the feeling that even if the guy was in the buff not much would have happened to him. I shake my head. I’m rambling again, lost in my thoughts. The stalagmites. If I get one of them above me to fall down I could maybe climb up it. But it’s dangerous. I need one to fall next to me. Not on me. On me would be sub-optimal to say the least. This is a terrible plan really now that I think about it. But it’s the only plan I have at this point. It’s either that or wait here for the adventurers to show up and squish either me or mother. This is all because of that damned coin I sigh. This was a bad day.

  Obviously all of your days can’t be good when you’re a trash-mob at the bottom of the dungeon and you could expect to die maybe every so often. That was just part and parcel of the whole experience. But still. The bad days put the good ones in context so I would have to just grin and bare it. Just grin and bare it. I raise my hand which is still missing a finger and form a shadow-bolt which I carefully guide to the ceiling above. Looking closely I try my best to decide which stalagmite would be the right one. It’s hard to say. They all look the same and I can’t really judge their angle from down here. Will they fall straight on me or a foot to the right? It’s a mystery. There is one that looks promising though now that I think about it a little. I guide the shadow-bolt towards it and let it sever the base of the rock formation.

  It hurtles down towards me with frightening speed. In that second it takes to descend I realize I have messed up and accept my death, holding my arms open wide. There is a loud crash, water and sediment fly everywhere around me and I fly off back down into the water. There is a large rock on my chest, I am sinking. I can’t get it off. Oh no. I drift down to the bottom of the pool again where I started. The rock is on top of me now. I am pinned. I can’t move. Damn. This sucks. I really did it this time.

  I turn my head looking around. I am lying on my back at the very bottom. I can’t see my body, the rock is on my chest. I think I have been crushed. Let me just say that right now I am very grateful that I can’t feel anything because boy, this would smart, tell you what. Death doesn’t come to me however. Well, maybe it’s more apt to say that undeath doesn’t leave me. I am sad. This makes me sad. I try my best to stay optimistic but this is just depressing. I notice that my emotions have begun to shift very rapidly lately. The fluidity of the experience of being alive seems to be ebbing away bit by bit as I spend more time being one of the less ah… aware creatures. It seems to be leaving a stain on me, a blemish that is touching what is left of my original self, rubbing its gunk off on my soul each time just a little more. Shoo-shoo soul gunk, shoo shoo.

  I let my head fall back and hit the floor beneath me. I am trapped beneath the rock, it is too heavy for me to move and I suspect that I have no body left to leave with even if I did. I suppose this is the rest of my life now. Man. Well, at least I got to fly a little, I say to cheer myself up. Sorry I didn’t live up to your expectations for me mama. I tried.

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