Walking through the treasury is a weird feeling, I spent a lot of time here, but now I’m just kind of passing through, doing my best not to touch any of the gold piles around me.

 

You might be wondering, guy, how did you get past all the stuff on the way here? The red dragon? The valkyrie battlefield? The zombies and the dead-light? You might be asking, guy, why isn’t the dungeon-master stopping you from going the wrong way?

 

  The answer is that I’m a professional. Have some faith, would you? Sheesh. The answer to your other question is that they’re sitting knocked out on their chair, surrounded by a tower of empty glass bottles that even the hydra would be impressed with. I didn’t see Madison, I guess she’s playing along. I bet the two of them came up with this little trick to fool me, haha! They almost got me for a second. But I have too many eyes to fall for something like that.

 

I descend down the real staircase, leading down towards floor ninety-seven. The moonlight-arena and as I walk, I wonder.

 

Hasn’t the moonlight-arena always been filled with glowing fungus?

 

I don’t really remember the last time I was a dark-fairy, but I’m pretty sure it was always here.

 

Wasn’t it?

 

  My clattering, scuttling feet reach the stone surface below. Blue light surrounds me, together with a cool, dewy, damp air and an equally as old and wet smell. Little glowing lights flicker and dart all around the space, the dark-fairies. In the center of the room sits a single silhouette, high atop of a large, flat-brimmed toadstool.

 

  Two eyes turn my way as I approach her, the fairy-mother. There’s that strange expression of hers again. Mama isn’t content with her life like papa is with his. Papa is happy as a clam, sitting on his pile of gold, basking in the radiating heat of the magma pools. I click my pincers excitedly as I approach. The fairies filling the room begin to swarm around in some agitation, but then relent a moment later, returning to their usual bumbling meandering in all directions as they see that there’s nobody here but me.

 

Poor guys have eyes for days, but not a brain between the bunch of em.

 

Standing before the toadstool, I look up to her. She looks down to me. Neither of us say anything, but that’s normal. We have a very non-verbal connection, you know? You kno- Huh…? What?

 

Yeah, I know that you don’t know, iyoume. It was a rhetorical question. Sheesh. Can’t you take a back-seat like, guy? Just let me handle th- What? No, you shut up! I’m the hero of this party, so go take a nap until I need your eyes.

 

Unbelievable.

 

*tskskskskt*

 

Getting back to the business at hand, I return my gaze to the haunted eyes of the fairy-mother. “So… how’s life?” I ask her, trying to make small-talk. Her expression doesn’t change much. I don’t think she can speak scorpiod. That’s fine. She’s not big on words anyways.

 

I look around behind her, gesturing a claw up to her as I walk past the toadstool towards the other side of the room, to the real staircase that leads down to further below. Did we ever find the secret stairs on this floor? I guess not, but I guess it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t…

 

Wait. Do you feel that?

 

  I stop as a cool wind drifts over my chitin, as a witchy finger wraps itself around my body, pulling us closer towards the path down. The current rises up from below, rises up from the haunting depths that lay down in the darkness. I stare down the staircase, towards what was once the goblin-outpost and I stare into the void with my many eyes. There is simply nothing there anymore. The staircase just stops, cut off by a wall of sheer black. Of empty. Of nothingness. Not rock, not dirt, not sediment. There simply is no more anything. Everything below is gone. Everything below is dead.

 

The goblin-king. My two goblin friends who dreamed of adventure. My thirteen goblin students who yearned for more. Silenced, as if the mold itself had crept down their lungs and suffocated them.

 

All that remains is this strange, dark-borne current of a cool, damp wind that rises upwards and envelops me. It’s reaching for me. It’s coming for my eyes. It’s coming for our eyes. Even down there in the nothing, it survives, it doesn’t need a physical space to spread. It can do so without it.

 

I look around myself, at the moonlight-arena that is filled with the blue glow, that always has been and I realize that this has been happening for far longer than we knew. The spread. How long has it been going on? How far off is it?

 

Mushroom roots are invisible, they spread far and wide. The only thing that we see is the fruiting body on top, and by then, it’s far too late. It has already spread everywhere. Remember? Remember when I was a book? The first time. I told you. I told you.

 

*tskskskskt*

 

  This is bad. What can I do though? This floor is going to be cut soon too. It will cease to be and so will everything in it… I can’t let that happen to anyone else. I can’t let it take anyone else. My eyes buzz and shake with energy, with electricity as my pincers click in excitement. What do we do? What would the hero do?

 

Something stupid. Something stupid, but it would work. He’d do something brutish and stupid, but it would work, because the universe has chosen him and so it turns a blind eye to his nonsense.

 

So what do I do?

 

My pincers click excitedly and I look at them, before turning my gaze around to look back at the fairy-mother sitting atop the toadstool, her head turned over her shoulder to watch me. Her eyes buzz with electricity. With energy. With CONVICTION.

 

My legs spasm as we turn around and scuttle towards the mushroom. I know what we have to do.

 

My pincers snap into the stem of the toadstool. It’s thick, like a tree from the spider forest. But my pincers are sharp, they are strong. They- Guy! Can you two be quiet?! I’m trying to do something here!

 

*tskskskskt*

 

Annoyed, I tear out a chunk of the mushroom stem and toss it to the side, before digging in again. Then again. Then again. All the while I have to listen to their incessant chatter, to them going BMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM-

 

But that’s fine. That’s fine. My eyes go wide as I stab into the body again. That’s fine! I tear out another piece. It’s fine!

 

The toadstool tips, not able to support itself anymore and it begins to fall. Using my stinger, I push it forward and watch it fall with some clamber. The fairy-mother flies up into the air, before floating downward gently towards the broken stump that I stand in front of.

 

She looks at me and raises a single hand into the air, as if to lift me up.

 

I look back at her, finally understanding her pleading message. Finally getting what that gesture of hers means. She was never telling me to do better. To go higher. To ascend.

 

She can see me with her eyes, the first me. She was asking me for help. She has been sitting here, watching it happen the entire time and has been asking me to get her out of here.

 

I raise a single claw up into the air, mimicking her motion and then carefully grab her with the other one, placing her on my back as we scuttle up and away, back up the real-staircase. A swarm of dark-fairies follows us, lighting up the passage behind me like fireflies in the night.

 

Boy, I bet the dungeon-master is going to be mad if they see this. That’s fine. That’s fine. I laugh. Maybe having someone to talk to in the library will help them settle down. I don’t care if they get mad.

 

A hand presses itself down against the top of my head.

 

This is all the confirmation I need. This is all I need to prove that it is hallow and good. My CONVICTION!

 

*tskskskskt*

 

 

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