It’s all been a lot.

 

I run up the staircase towards whatever lies beyond, my tattered cape billowing behind me as a symbol of my conviction, the soft fabric blowing so gently in the winds that I myself create by movement. Movement. Climbing. Struggle.

 

It’s beautiful, you know?

 

I clutch my lance tighter as I ascend through the darkness.

 

The hatchling striking against its shell to break free from the binds of the egg constraining it. It’s beautiful.

 

Light forms above me, offering a familiar sight. A familiar day-glow sensation of a warm hand reaching down towards me, offering me salvation.

 

A butterfly ripping itself free from a web-woven cocoon to fly free into the wide world beyond. It’s beautiful.

 

I breach the precipice, looking at the new floor before me.

 

The cicada, digging itself free from the deep dirt, pulling itself out of the grave to be born. It’s beautiful.

 

  I scan the strange metal constructions before me. Pipes. Thousands of them. A forest of them. Vertical protrusions that fill the entire floor, rising from the broken-brickwork ground below, as they ascend into the ceiling above, the pump of the foul liquid flowing through them and their many branching, off-shooting arms.

 

A new born baby, ripping itself free from its mothers womb. Tearing. Clawing its way into the bloody world. Screaming. It’s beautiful.

 

And you know what? It should be screaming. It would be weird if it didn’t.

 

I make my way through the dense pipes, tilting my large body sideways to fit through the smaller gaps as I begin moving. Some of them are scorching hot and would burn me instantly, if my body wasn’t as fortunately composed of metal and bones as it is.

 

  But getting back to my point, imagine, imagine the fresh soul that is formed when a new life is born or even an old soul thrust into a new body, which is my personal belief. An emergence torn from the quiet, deep sleep of the void and thrust into a wet, bloody meat-suit that it can’t control. A body full of bile, emotions, pain, fear, confusion, all mixed in under the warmth of the embrace of a mother’s unconditional love. Why wouldn’t you be screaming? It’s too much, it’s all too much. The purity of the existence of the soul in its cleanest, simplest form is dirtied and muddied through the filter of our perception of the world.

 

Through our eyes.

 

  They stain it, our soul. When we look into someone’s eyes, we don’t just see their true character deep down beneath the shimmering reflection of the surfaces of those crystal bodies. They also see us and by seeing us, whatever shape it is that we take today, their eyes take that image into them and it gets sent to their brains where it is further filtered down and the experiences of which are painted on their souls. But it all starts with the eyes. It all starts with seeing. After all, seeing is believing. So if you see, if you see that you exist -

 

I squeeze through a large pipe, bending a smaller offshoot out of the way with a strong, vice-like grip.

 

- If you see that you exist, you should be screaming.

 

I narrow my eyes.

 

  Why aren’t you screaming, guy? Why aren’t you yelling and crying and shouting and flailing and tearing at everything your hands can reach? Grasping for everything that you can feel the beat of your own heart echo off of? What are you afraid of, guy? Why don’t you feel that strong feeling in your heart? That self-belief? That CONVICTION? Why don’t you have that TWINKLE in your eye, that you know you should have?

 

Your soul, deep down, it shines, whether you like it or not. So why have you let your eyes get muddy?

 

I leverage the back of my lance to push a small, dead, metal-golem aside.

 

So what if you got some char on your face? Some scars on your body. Some grime in your eyes that obscures the light of your soul? Just cry a little. Why do you think your body lets you do that? Just cry a little and it’ll wash all of that goo, all of that black-water right off in a snap.

 

  That’s what’s beautiful. The struggle. That’s what life should be. You shouldn’t be… idle. Asleep. You shouldn’t be quiet. You shouldn’t behave and listen. You shouldn’t follow the path that others have set out for you. You should dig your fingers into your brain and your heart and you should claw at yourself like a rabid animal, at your spirit and flesh to tear off all of the disgusting growths that have infected the purest essence of you. You should dig your heels into the mud and scream.

 

You should widen your eyes and scream and cry and claw and climb and rip and stab and howl. You should howl, because you’re alive now, whether you like it or not.

 

  And when it’s all over? When it’s all said and done? When the clock strikes midnight and the sun sets one last time, the light of the next dawn never to reach your eyes? At least then, you can go knowing that you tried. That you broke the shell. That you clawed your way out. That you took the gift of life and you cherished it, because you’re going to go back, one day. We all are.

 

But you don’t have to go back alone.

 

I break free from the pipe-forest and set my lance down against the real staircase leading upwards just before me. Grasping my right hand with my left, I twist the purple-metal gauntlet off of my arm and look at my bony, skeleton hand below. I look at the single, shimmering thing left on my body. My armor is befouled and scorched and charred and dirty, covered in the muck of my birth. My cape is tattered and ripped. My bones are stained and fractured. My lance is covered in soot and grime.

 

But as I look at the single metal ring on my finger, a tiny purple stone shining on-top of it, I see but one clean thing as I look into the reflection on the stone, into the reflection of a pair of eyes, shining out of a hollow skull.

 

  We all go back, we all fade and return to the void eventually. But you don’t have to go back alone. Claw. Fight. Scream. Break. Do whatever it takes. But when the hands rise from the river styxx to drag you back to whence you once came, take something with you. Not in your hands, not in your pockets. But take something with you that you can keep in that single bit of residue that persists through all of our existences.

 

Let it shine in through your eyes, let it paint your soul so that next time you come by -

 

I rise up the staircase, putting my glove back on and taking my lance back in my hand,

 

- So that next time, if not this time, you shine just a little brighter.

 

Even if you might not remember why.

 

I climb up further, towards floor seventy-three.

 

 

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