I run. I run. The rat-queen continues to flail and to squirm and to say things that I quite frankly just won’t repeat to you, guy. The rats pursue us as a raging tide, but there is little that they can do. I’m made out of metal and bones after all. Something pops behind my skull as the cosmic forces that hold me together recompress my broken neck, snapping it back into place. She tries to kick me several times, but she isn’t nearly as flexible as the thief is. Or as light. But I’m not going to tell her that.

 

  I round the corner, my metal boots sliding and kicking up a cloud of dust as I drift around the bend to keep running. The metal of the foundry churns around us. A demon core pumping fresh blood through the dungeon, the heart of the beast striking with every spin of the gears, with every hiss of the pistons powering the machine tied to the body. It never stops. It never stops. I round the next corner, darting between two pistons that hiss closed just behind us as I run up the staircase, up towards floor ninety. The library.

 

“Where are we going?! What are you doing, you creep?!” shouts the rat-queen, flailing and kicking. It’s probably the nicest thing she’s said since I kidnapped her. But, well… it’s not really a kidnapping as far as I see it. It’s more of… an unrequested relocation.

 

“Look around you, what do you see?” I ask the rat-queen.

 

  “What?!” I can feel her moving around, squirming as she turns her head to look around the dark staircase we ascend. She growls in agitation, clearly not having seen the answer to my question. She has eyes like I do. She sees. But she’s in too deep. She doesn’t know. She’s been asleep for too long. “You purple fuck! You think I don’t know what you are?! You think I’m going to let you waltz through MY dungeon and just fuck it all up?!” I feel a pair of teeth gnawing on my cape and backplate. Which, while ultimately fruitless, is an impressive display of her CONVICTION.

 

  The staircase comes to an end above us and I barrel through the opening that should have never existed to begin with, rising up into the library and I pierce through with a leap, my boots thudding as they land on the wall to wall carpeting. The fairy-mother pokes the flailing rat-queen with the back end of the lance and the rat-queen flails, hissing and clawing towards her, both of them squirming like wiggly-jiggly worms as I carry them on my shoulders.

 

Talk about a hero’s burden.

 

  I run, the swarm of dark little scampering creatures at our heels. A single book flies around the corner, intercepting me. I narrow my eyes and look at him, my irises flaring with energy, with conviction as I open my mouth to scream, as I leap with my leg extended out in a forward kick. He looks at me in fear as I shout -

 

“JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMES!”

 

My metal boot makes contact and he spirals back, crashing through row after row of bookshelves, breaking through the wood of each shelf until he comes to a stop in the distance, a cloud of dust and paper flying up into the air. He knows what he did.

 

  I land and keep running, turning right towards the dungeon-master’s pit and there - There it is. Do you hear it too? In the dark gap between every book and shelf-wall. Between every fiber of the rug where the light from above doesn’t shine down through, in the gap between every heartbeat of the two on my shoulders. It’s there. That sound. That sound of skittering and I open my eyes, seeing, seeing, seeing.

 

  I round the bend, the pit is before me now but I don’t slow. I don’t stop. I run. I run. The books fly off of the shelves around us, anticipating my actions to form a bridge long before I even get there. The dungeon-master is standing on their chair, pointing towards me and yelling, but I can’t hear it over the sound of the rat-queen’s desperate animal cries. All of it mixes together, all of the noise, all of the color, all of the tiny little legs that skitter and scamper. All of it mixes together in a hallowed sound, a unified, singular ticking. Like the tap of a claw against a crystal bell. The pit is before me now and I leap.

 

Paper flutters in all directions, books flying past me above and below, to catch us should I fall.

 

But I don’t.

 

  My boots thud against the table that wobbles in the air, as I stand on top of the wooden surface. Pencils and pages scatter and fly all around, tumbling down into the darkness. The dungeon-master screams and grabs for as many as they can. Some are caught by the books. Some others fall into the darkness below.

 

I turn my head, to look down towards the dungeon-master who returns their gaze to stare up at me with fists clenched like iron vices. With eyes that shine with hallow fury.

 

“YOU-“

 

They grind their teeth, not even able to finish their sentence.

 

“YOU!”

 

  Their fists slam against the table and I look down, seeing a drawing of some contorted body from the corrupted wastes. But the sketch is scribbled over, covered by a series of scrawls. Next to it, filling the entire page is the depiction of a suit of purple armor, holding a lance. The scrawls come out of the lance, as if the drawing itself had marked out its predecessor. I kneel down, setting down the fairy-mother and the rat-queen onto the table. The rat-queen drops to all fours and tries to scamper away, but the books have long since left. She can’t jump that far and so she crawls around the table like a feral animal on all fours, looking for an escape. The fairy-mother simply sits there on the edge.

 

Thelma floats in, carrying two books for them to read. I nod to her. “Thanks, Thelma.” She doesn’t say anything, but nods back and flies away before she gets caught up any further.

 

  “WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO?!” asks the dungeon-master, climbing up onto their chair and grasping my breastplate with their small hands. They wrench me down forward. Pressing their face close to mine and I watch as they contort it with venom, with anger. I watch as red leaks from their mouth as they bite their tongue. “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST PLAY THE GAME?!” They shake me, rattling my armor. “WHY?! WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!”

 

  A hand leaves my collar and slaps across my skull that doesn’t flinch. “WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO DO THIS?!” The dungeon-master hits me again. “WHY ARE YOU SO DETERMINED TO BREAK EVERYTHING?!” A hand hits me again, I don’t move. “WHY?!” The hand hits me again, but my skull doesn’t budge. The library is quiet, even the rat-queen, who was nibbling on the corner of her book, is staring up and watching us with narrowed eyes. “EVERY TIME! EVERY TIME YOU COME BACK, YOU FIND A NEW WAY TO FUCK UP!”

 

The hand hits me again.

 

  “NOTHING’S CHANGED! NOTHING!” The hand punches against my breastplate, but it doesn’t budge. “YOU HAVEN’T LEARNED SHIT! ALL OF THESE YEARS! FOR ALL THIS TIME!” The dungeon-master pulls me closer, their eyes shining with a fire that I have never thought possible amongst the living. “HOW CAN YOU KEEP DOING THIS?! HOW CAN YOU BE SO FULL OF YOURSELF THAT YOU KEEP GOING?! YOU EGOISTIC SHIT!”

 

The hand slaps me again. “WHY-“ Again. “WON’T-“ A fist strikes my gut. “YOU-“ A backhand strikes my face. “DIE?!” They shake me. “WHY WON’T YOU SLEEP?!”

 

The dungeon-master shouts a wordless, feral scream that I hear deep down in my resolute core, it rattles me, it travels through me like a vibration. Like an electric hum.

 

  My head tilts as the bones in my neck crack. I saw. I saw. I saw this a long time ago. I lift a metal gauntlet and grab the dungeon-master by their collar, pulling them close to me now, so that they can see me. So that they can hear me. So that they can smell me. So that they can watch me. Watch me. Watch me. The dungeon-master looks into my eyes with such determined anger and hate, as I press my face against theirs, our foreheads touching. I whisper back with such conviction -

 

“I’ve got to believe in something.”

 

My hand grabs the lance from the fairy-mother who lifts it up towards me, my other one still holding the dungeon-master firm as I drop down into the hole below.

 

  The table budges beneath us, shaking and swaying above the pit, sending drawing implements and papers flying everywhere together with us. “YOU FUUUUUU-“ The dungeon-master’s screams are cut off as we fly down into the abyss together. All I hear is humming. All I hear is skittering. All I hear is the ringing of a crystal bell. The tap coming once every second.

 

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

 

My eyes open wide as I see. My eyes open wide, as the black-water below consumes us both and we both fall towards the ice. As we both fall towards the reaching tendrils stemming from the darkness below.

 

 

---