The fairy looks down at the coins that I have aligned before her and then back up to me.

 

She seems a little concerned, but she doesn’t seem to understand my message. But what is impossible to miss, is my frenzied behavior. I need to hurry, I need to find the secret passage before the hero catches up to me. I might not have long, I suppose the adventurers are fighting the trash-mobs that passed me earlier, the goblins and the fairy. Poor guys. If I hurry, if I rush down this way, then I can still find it before they catch up to me. If I can find the passage before I die, assuming there is one, then I can respawn on the next floor again, just like this one. Right?

 

But I don’t want to leave her behind. I know we just met and this is stupid, but I don’t want any other lives on my conscience than my own, okay? We are wasting time, the sounds of the battle behind us are growing louder. The sound of an explosion, which I recognize as a fireball, thunders down the path, the reverberation bouncing off of each and every wall.

 

She turns around, now understanding what my message was. “Ah, they’re fighting again,” she says, somewhat annoyed. Actually almost in a dull, bored tone. Looking back to my agitated, shaking mimic body she smiles as she walks towards me. “Is that what you were trying to warn me about? What a nice person you are. Thank you,” she says, as she pats my head again.

 

Snap shut. Snap shu -

 

I stop myself, fighting back against my mimic blood, the lid already having closed an inch. She isn’t holding it open this time, damn it.

 

“Sorry,” she says. “I won’t be able to carry you anymore.” Huh? “Once someone throws a coin into the fountain, the magic pulls me back,” she explains. “They always throw a coin into the fountain. One of them at least,” she sighs with a smile. “It’s kind of annoying. But it's nice to be needed, you know?” I don’t know.

 

She laughs for the first time. “It was nice meeting you, little mimic. Go do what you need to do and be safe, okay?” Getting up, she turns and walks back down the way that we just came. Damn it! We had a deal, fairy-woman, you were supposed to carry me! I am a little annoyed and a little frustrated. I don't really want her help, but I don’t want her to walk back and get got.

 

Wait. Wait. Wait. I’m freaking out for no reason, aren’t I?

 

The adventurers won’t kill the fairy of the fountain. She’s not a combat mob. They’ll throw in a coin. She’ll give them some junk from the bottom of her fountain and that’ll be it. They’ll walk right past her and make their way to the sub-boss, killing everything else on the way, including me. But she’ll be fine. Right? Yeah. Yeah. She’ll be fine.

 

As she walks back down the way that we have just come from, towards the sound of the fight, I myself turn away and begin to hop in the direction of the sub-boss room. I need to hurry, if I want to find the secret-stairs. I want to fight the hero too, but I can’t do it as a mimic. I won’t even get close!

 

The sound of my clanking chest barreling down the way echoes around together, like the hammering of a war-drum, giving credence to the sounds of the battle taking place behind me. I’m sure the goblins are trying their best. But realistically, they’re getting smashed to pieces right now. I’ll pour a drink out for them some other time, I need to find those stairs. They’re the only thing that matters, right? Yeah.

 

I can’t fight the hero like this anyways. He doesn’t matter.

 

The fairy will be fine, she doesn’t matter, right? Yeah. Yeah!

 

These are the things that I keep repeating in my mind, to convince myself to keep moving, to keep my eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. A lever. A crack in the walls. A brick sticking out of alignment.

 

As my eyes wander, I find them wandering too far backwards. I stop, leaning around the outside of my chest with my eye-stalks. The sounds of battle are dying down. They’ll be moving to the fairy-room soon.

 

I look back forward. I look back again behind me. Shit. Damn it. DAMN IT.

 

I shift my box around in a full turn and start hopping back towards the small room with the fountain, wondering why I care? Why? Why do I care? It’s not my problem. Hell, it’s not even a problem to begin with. I’m just making it one. I guess she had a point before, about causing trouble. Though, maybe I’m just causing it for myself.

 

My body thunks against the floor as I hobble back in full sprint again, it is exhausting work to move like this. My mimic muscles are soft and weak, not used to moving this much to begin with.

 

I see the corridor widen ahead of me, as the room opens up before me again. On the far side, down the other hallway, I see the hero-party fighting with two of the goblins, who tried to get away. They didn’t manage. Okay, this is my chance.

 

My chance?

 

My chance to do what, exactly? I’m a knee-high wooden box with teeth. There are… one, two, three, four, five adventurers there. Wait. Five? Hero, priestess, wizard, thief, uh… other one. Okay so there’s one more here, who I don’t remember, weird but… okay. Plan. I need a plan. A plan.

 

Uhh… plan!

 

I shout the word in my mind, as if doing so would conjure one into my vision. It doesn’t. I don’t have a plan. Shit! I look around the room in a frenzy, seeing if I can see my friend, but she’s already in the water, I think. My friend? No, I don’t have any friends. Well except demon-miasma, but that’s more of a benefits situation, you know?

 

What should I do? I don’t know. Why am I here?! I don’t know! I’m an idiot.

 

One of the goblins flies over a stack of coins dramatically, as the new adventurer smashes against his plate armor with her bare fists, he loses his shoe as he spirals wildly off through the air. That’s a tell-tale sign he’s dead for good. Poor guy. She’s a weird looking one, that new adventurer, but I don’t have time for that. I look around. I need a plan. The only things in the room are some coins, which I have the urge to stack in a pile and the water. The water? The water! That’s it!

 

I snap my lid tightly shut before they finish off the last goblin, it has the added bonus effect that I don’t have to watch him die or listen to his screams. A moment later, I shuffle towards the edge of the water and slide down into the fountain.

 

Now you might be wondering, guy, don’t you need to breathe as a mimic? Yes. Yes I do. Breathing is my passion, one could even say. However a mimic can snap its lid so tightly shut that I’m basically waterproof. The wood of my body is old and well treated, I could last a while down here, as long as I stayed shut. Getting out… well… I sink immediately, especially because of my metal bindings. Mimics aren’t light creatures at all, really. The bottom of the fountain is a curved slope that leads down to the center towards which I slide. The angle of the basin is fairly steep, but not steep enough to tip me over. Though it does take some effort on my part to keep my balance, while holding my lid shut so tightly.

 

Just as the momentum of my movement speeds up to its fastest point, which isn’t very fast underwater, I come to an abrupt halt, my chest hits something soft. My body bounces against the inside walls of the container.

 

What am I doing? I’m wasting a life, aren’t I? There isn’t a point to this, is there? Am I just causing trouble because I’m lonely and I want attention? Damn it! No. No. Don’t let her get to you. This is just one of those things that I tell myself. One of those things that I do. One of those little oddball things that I do on purpose, the things that keep me, me. I think of the many faces I’ve met so far, the ones who have made a connection to the first me. I think of the fairy-mother’s sad gaze, I think of sister, I think of my cape, my beautiful darling cape, I think of my goblin friends. The fairy of the fountain is just another face for that list. Another face I need to keep safe-kept in my mind. I’m a trash-mob, but I protect my own right?

 

Also, she can talk. Really talk. Not like goblin-speak and stuff, which is fine. But she can talk to me like a real, uh, person? A real voice. A real conversation. I wish I had a body that could hold a real conversation, but it was nice to listen to someone, even if it was only for like ten minutes. Yeah. Yeah that sounds good. I’m satisfied with that explanation.

 

Something moves me, I feel a lurch on the left side of the chest as something grabs the handle. I assume its her, I rotate a little and then come to a stop. I think she is holding me in front of her now. Raising my eye stalk, I knock twice against the top of the box. I wait, wondering if she is even there. Maybe some strange water-monster grabbed me instead of her?

 

A moment later though, I hear a clear two knocks on my lid come back down to me. I let them slide this time, I am glad to hear them. I hear a voice echo through the chest sarcastically asking a question.

 

“You’re a real troublemaker, huh?”

 

I knock back twice in response. Yeah.

 

“Okay, you can hide down here until they’re gone. I’ll keep you safe, little mimi-“ I knock back once, very hard. I assume it’s universal, one knock for ‘no’, two knocks for ‘yes’. Why do I think that? Dunno.

 

But she seems to be catching on. I’m not here to be kept safe. I’m a trash-mob, after all. I have a job to do. Watch me dungeon-master. I’ll do it for you.

 

“Are you sure?” she asks, knowingly. I knock back again twice in response. She knows what my plan is. Fairies are smart as all hell, tell you what. Well, maybe not book-smart. But perceptive, you dig? Real soul-gazers, those ones, if not a bit childish and air-headed. She seems okay, though. She doesn’t say anything else, she’s a weird one. She says she’s lonely but doesn’t want to talk that much, really. I guess living at the bottom of a fountain will do that to you after a few years.

 

It shouldn’t be much longer now. Any second now. I sit in my chest with bound breath, the air is actually getting a little thin in here, guy. Haha, it kind of smells a little grody too, honestly. I don’t think mimics are big on washing. That’s okay. I don’t have much time left in this life anyways. I’m going to get you, hero. Just you wait.

 

A plink reverberates around the room, I hear a tiny splash, even down here and I feel the form behind me rise upwards, leaving me sitting at the floor of the pool alone. I suppose my plan won’t work if the adventurers get greedy, but they usually don’t do that. So it should be okay. Right? I guess even if they do, I’ll just suffocate in a minute or two. Or just fade away when they kill the sub-boss down the hall. Oh man, we didn’t get to see him this time.

 

Ah. Well. That’s dungeon life, guy. It’s short and fast. I feel excited, though. A thrill. I suppose ever since my skeleton life went so wrong, I have been a little… dull. Depressed. But I feel a new spark, a reinvigoration at the thought of getting one of them this time. This time it will work. This time. This time…

 

My tiny, pebble sized mimic-brain is starting to ache. There is just about no air left now, my grip is weakening as well. I won’t be able to hold the lid for much longer. Not this tightly at least.

 

Please, pick me. Pick me. Pick me, hero! No. No! Thief-girl! I almost cackle, the sound of my voice bouncing around my mind, if not my ears. I want the thief-girl. I said I won’t hold a grudge, but guy, I feel like I’m holding a grudge. She ruined my duel with the hero and I want t-

 

A tug, my chest is grabbed on the handles. “I hope I see you again soon,” she says. Before I have time to ponder her words, I feel the weight around me shift, the dampening of sounds lifted, that strange underwater roar you hear down in the dungeon, even when there’s no current. I am out of the water. I get ready.

 

This is it.

 

Leaning my sore, little, gooey body back inside of the chest, I ready myself for the final battle. My grand triumph. My trap. I finally set one! I cack- NO! No cackling. I stop myself from cackling just in time, as I hear the fairy’s voice ring out.

 

“Dear adventurer, you are honest and true. So I bestow this gift upon you.” Hey, that rhymed. Nice one fairy-lady. Dang. I wish I had asked her name, oh well. My little mimic body is shaking. It knows we’re about to die, so it is fearful. But it is also hungry. Mischievous. Greedy. It wants the snare to pull tight. It is willing to die for it. So am I. This is what a trash-mob does, right? You and me, mimic. You and me.

 

I feel myself being handed over, the balance of my body shifting, as I try to hold myself stable. This is it. I hear voices around me. Curious voices. Happy voices. I hear the priestess and the hero, I hear a voice I don’t remember, I hear the wizard-girl. They are happy. I hear them laughing.

 

As they laugh, I think about the goblins who tried to hold them off just now, I think of the two who tried to run away. I think of the mimics I saw dead all around me in my last life and of my two goblin friends who just… faded away. I think of the fairy-mother and sister. I hear them laughing, the adventurers. Laughing. Laughing. They’re happy. I feel an anger unknown to me, something I don’t usually keep in my heart, but it has found its way to me now. Come on! Open me. Open me! OPEN ME, YOU F-

 

My lid shifts, a hand is placed on top of me and I hear the telltale squeak of the happening.

 

In an instant, I lash out like the whip of a striking viper, a blood curdling scream fills the air, followed by another and then another. Jumbled words and vowels. Red fills my eyes. Red fills my heart. I see nothing but red, as fresh blood streams into my chest, coating my tiny mimic-body. I rage. I hunt. As I fall to the floor, dropped by a failed grip, I pounce forward immediately again in quick succession and clamp down on the leg I see before myself. It breaks. I hear the snap, the crunch of the bone clamped between the sharp edges of my lid digging through the meat. Screams. SCREAMS.

 

I let go and shift my weight lunging to the next person, the thief-girl. I see her. I see her. I SEE HER. I HUNT. I HAT-

 

Something smashes against my body, it is heavy. It hurts. In that instant, I fly, tumbling wildly across the room. My chest falling apart piece by piece in that moment of impact as it is flung with incredible force across the empty room, spiraling out of control like a clipped hawk, falling from the air. No. No… I’m not done yet. I’m not done yet!

 

My body comes to a sudden halt, as what is left of my box crashes against the stone-wall of the dungeon. My mangled, dying mimic form flops down to the ground, broken and maimed. There are chunks of jagged wood sticking out of my body, impaling my flesh. I can’t see out of my right eye anymore. It hurts. I think the stalk is missing entirely. Everything hurts.

 

I don’t care. I raise my good eye and crawl forward, no box, I don’t need the box. I’m not done yet! My conviction isn’t extinguished just yet!

 

I stop, as I see the delicate, severed hand laying before me, the skin supple and soft. My vision is fading, but with my remaining eye, I follow the trail of blood leading back to the pool, which is quite a distance away now. I see the priestess laying there, her leg is going in a direction that it shouldn’t be going in. Her beautiful white robe covered in blood, the ornate threads beneath, glistening with a sheen that I don’t want to remember after this.

 

What have I done? I lie there, dying alone. I watch as her friends surround her, they look worried. Sad. Terrified. Angry. Scared. I’m jealous. They are crying. They hate me, I understand. I’m sorry, priestess. I hope you don’t die. As my broken form lays in that dark, dusty corner of the dungeon I can’t help but think of what a fitting place this is for me to die, alone as always. As everything goes black and I feel that oppressive weight bearing back down on me once again, I silently hope that this time when I leave this body, that I will finally sleep.

 

But I don’t. I’m too jealous, I wish I had people that cared like that about me.