Leather boots slap out in the darkness, striking against the stones; the noise diverging from that of the thousand little legs that are followed by a thousand more, as the thing that skitters laughs in the ink. I feel my arms grow light, as the burden that I carried removes itself from my grip, as the body of the thief that I had clutched so tightly simply vanishes. All I feel is a little tingle on the surface of my armor, as something skitters over me; off and away into the void to merge with the rest of itself. It tricked me. That wasn’t the thief, that was… whatever this thing is. This thing that skitters.

 

  I turn away from the hole in the wall, gods know what would have happened to me if I did jump down there into the abyss. What is this creature? Didn’t I solve the riddle? Wasn’t I allowed to leave now? Or was that the trap? The trick? Was it not that simple? Or did I get it wrong? My fists clench and I feel something in my palm. The little glass bauble of white-magic rests there still. Huh? I didn’t think about it then, but didn’t I… didn’t I have this in my hand the entire time? I didn’t set it down when I picked her up, yet it was simply gone for a while. Forgotten and out of my sight. Out of mind. But here it is again. As if it was something so obvious that I had forgotten, like my own face.

 

  The light streams all around me, as the darkness rushes in. Excited skitters, clicks and hisses make themselves heard from the shadows, together with the sound of a fight. The real thief is out there, right? I look down to my chest, to the arrow sticking through my breastplate. It feels real as I run my finger over the now blunted head that had pierced my empty shell, right where my heart would be. I hear a voice call me from the darkness.

 

  “Hoooney?” calls the voice. Shuddering just a little at the moniker, I walk towards the darkness once again with my hand out-stretched. I hear her. Just her. No other voices ring out to me from the darkness. No mocking tones to taunt me, no twisted expressions float around, staring at me with their haunting, hollow gazes. Something softly touches my back, I swing around and look, but there is nothing there. I guess we’re doing this again. I don’t like this floor. Shouldn’t the hero-party have cleared this one? So why is this thing still here? Why is it still alive? This thing that skitters.

 

  Unless this isn’t part of the dungeon anymore. My mind wanders. Something wet splotches out in the darkness around me and I look. The black hue of the void seems to be becoming permeated, tinged with a white. With a cold. Like moonlit snow falling at midnight, it builds a stark contrast to the darkness around us. It looks so cold. So wet. I hear it. I hear it coming. I hear it slopping and lurching and slapping as its many tendrils strike against the stones, as they slap against the ice. It’s coming for my eyes, it’s coming for my eyes! My fist tightens around the bauble, the glass straining with a creaking sound.

 

  The tinge of white light catches my eye, the little glow from the bauble and I look at it as I had done before. What do you have to show me? There’s nothing here but me. There’s nothing here but me…

 

But as I look down into the glass sphere in my hand, inside of which swirl the highly condensed magical energies, I see something. And it sees me.

 

  There is an eye that stares at me from the bauble. An eye. An eye. It squirms, its pupil dilates as our gazes meet. The darkness around me shifts, overpowering the crystal snow again, retaking control of its domain, and all around me I see them appear. The eyes. Eyes of all colors, of all shapes and sizes appear in the darkness and float around me. Some impossibly high as if they belonged to giants, others set so deeply low that they might as well have been part of the floor. But all of them look towards me. They’re all watching me. What is this floor? What are you? What are you?

 

“What are you?!” I ask the darkness, I ask the thing that skitters.

 

It laughs in a strange, clicking, hissing wheeze, as the eyes around me shift and I hear her voice. The thief’s.

 

“We’re here! See? See?! I found it for you! I do it for you! Because! You know? You know, I-,”

 

  The eyes grow larger as they stare at me, as they come into focus to press themselves closer and closer around me, surrounding me in all directions. The ten thousand pupils coalescing into a mass of eyes that are impossibly close together, it isn’t as if they are from separate faces. But as if I was standing inside of a single face, standing inside of a dome covered in ten thousand eyes and all of them stare at me. No. No. It’s not a dome. It’s a mouth. The inside of a mouth filled with eyes like tumors, growing wrong. They grow towards me. They reach.

 

“You know? You know?” calls the voice, unable to finish its sentence. I don’t know. I don’t know. What do you want me to know? What do you want me to see?!

 

  “There’s nothing here but me…” calls the darkness out, echoing my first wrong answer to its question and I listen to the words calling out around me. I listen to them. “At least we tried, right?” cries my own voice from the shadows.

 

  I listen to the voice, my own, as the eyes begin to move in a circle, as they ring around me, parroting my own words back to me. I don’t like it. I don’t like hearing them. There’s something there. Something I only notice now that I hear it myself. A tone. I look up to the eyes that all stare at me, some with judgment, others with pity, some with fear and some with a kindness and a warmth that makes me feel unworthy. I look towards them, towards them all. It speaks in many voices, repeating itself over and over.

 

“Look around you Miika, what do you see?” asks the dungeon-master.

 

“There’s nothing here but me,” says the thief, but something is wrong with her voice. It sounds… unhappy.

 

“Look around you Miika, what do you see?” asks the fairy of the fountain, sounding as if her lungs were full of water.

 

“There’s nothing here but me,” proclaims sister proudly, the wet sound of her wiggling triumphantly ringing out.

 

“Looooook around yoooou Miika, what do you seeee?” asks the miller, cooing in his long, high-toned voice.

 

“There’s nothing here but me!” proclaims Gil’Zil, the only trash-mob to ever strike the hero.

 

  With each repetition of the statement, the eyes bulge and widen further, their expressions changing maddeningly quick with every repetition, but all of them growing towards a shared look of agitation. As if it were running out of patience for me. As if it were getting tired of playing this game.

 

“I don’t understand,” I say, knowing that I am pushing my luck. “What are you?! What do you want?!” I shout out into the darkness that torments me. The eyes shut themselves, all at once.

 

“You don’t see anything,” says Piotr.

 

The darkness comes to surround me, swallowing the little bauble bit by bit as the skittering becomes louder. A whisper sings into my ear.

 

“I do it for you! Because! You know? You know, I-,”

 

“I-“

 

“I-“

 

  The thief’s voice rings out in my head and I can see her wide eyes in my mind. I can see her flushed expression. I can feel her presence. I can… I can… I get it. I get it now. I spin around, as something gently strokes the front of my breastplate, a soft hand made out of skittering darkness, ready to take me into it. With all of the strength I have, I lurch and I throw the bauble as hard as I can towards the distant darkness. Towards the spot where I saw her before. Please. The thing in the darkness skitters in excitement, as it sees my sudden movements, I see shadows shifting around, as the bauble flies, sailing through the air like a full moon at midnight. And I watch as it sinks lower and lower and for a moment, I fear having missed my shot.

 

The bauble stops in midair, as if suspended. But as the glow of the magical light begins to emanate outwards again, I see her. I see her gloved hand holding it up into the air, the thief.

 

I get it now.

 

  I turn towards the darkness that has now consumed me entirely, my only protection cast away. Given to someone else who had none, someone else who I let stand in the darkness this entire time because of my… distractedness? Indifference? Inability to focus? Is that what a hero would have done?

 

“I get it,” I tell the darkness and it hisses excitedly, the thing that skitters listening intently to see if I passed its lesson.

 

  “Everyone is watching me, everyone is here with me. The thief, the hero-party, the trash-mobs, the dead, the living, the entire dungeon, you,” I look out to the darkness, holding out a hand to my fellow dungeon-dweller, to the sub-boss of this floor, who knows of my curse of rebirth. “I’m going to get us all out of here, I’m going to show you all the way, because everyone is here with me,” something grabs my hand, holding it tenderly. “Watch me,” I tell it with fresh resolve.

 

  “I always have,” says the thing that skitters, as it vanishes now entirely, the darkness dispelled in truth this time, as the light returns to the room; a true light that reveals the staircases adorned against the far walls. A true light that reveals the face of the elf running towards me, her expression worried and fearful, as her slender frame makes its way towards me in a full sprint. Her eyes are wet. I hold my arms open to embrace her. Her boot, which soars my way in a flying kick, is covered in dust and grime. Huh?

 

  My helmet goes flying into the distance, rattling as I spiral over the ground, the last thing I see before I strike the wall are the jealously raging, angry eyes of the elf who is busy punching my headless body with frightening intensity, putting dents into my breastplate.

 

Ah.

 

 

---