“Once upon a time, there was you and me.”
I tilt my head, looking at the storybook that is placed onto a pedestal at the very start of floor fifty-six, which isn’t much of a floor at all. It’s a closet. I lift my arm, touching the surface of the wall to my left. The other walls are just as far away. The staircase literally leads to a tiny room with a single book. That’s all there is. That’s floor fifty-six. There isn’t even an exit. It’s just this stupid book and eyeyoume.
“Once upon a time, there was you and me!” bubbles the slime excitedly, tapping against the pages. I groan, rolling my eyes. Do I have to? She bends down, picking the storybook up off of the pedestal and presses it against me, looking up to me with wide, curious eyes. I sigh. I’d love to say no to a face like that, but look at those eyes. How can I say no?
It’s a good thing I can read in this body, though it looks like there are pictures too.
She squishes herself out onto the now empty pedestal and gloops over it, her face up atop of it watching me excitedly, as I flip back through the now gooey book.
“Once upon a time there was you and me. It was summer and the world was filled with warmth. Life was bright and simple, as if our days themselves shared the kind radiance of the outside world. But you were bored. You didn’t like summer like I did, you liked the creepy, cold winter. But that’s okay.” I turn the book around, showing her the drawings of two people sitting in a room. One of them is doing a handstand for some reason and the other one is drooped over a chair, as if melting from the heat. She bubbles and lets her body melt further apart, as if mimicking the picture she sees.
“We had a lot of fun together anyways and I spent the summers making fun of you for being too warm and you spent the winters making fun of me for being too cold.” I flip the page.
“We lived in a big castle and we had a lot of fun things and a lot of friends! But you always said that you didn’t like the castle. It was too big. You always said you didn’t like our friends. We had too many and I always laughed at that. You also said you didn’t like the queen and I laughed at that too. You liked to complain, sometimes for the sake of it and I thought that was funny.”
I tilt my head, this feels like a weird story. I flip back to before the first page again, just double checking that there isn’t a metaphor warning written anywhere. There isn’t. Satisfied, I go back and keep reading.
“It was a very fun life for a long time. There was just you and me and the queen and our friends and all of us lived in the too big castle, through summer and autumn and winter and then spring again. Just the three of us. Just you, me and I.”
I show the slime the drawing of a shadowy woman sitting on a throne. Her features are vague, not in any malicious sense or not as if she were indifferent. She’s simply… empty. But that doesn’t seem to bother the two figures running around, chasing each other below her in some fun game. I turn the page to the next one. The right hand side of the book is covered in blotty splotches of ink that seem to come together to create a form that I can’t quite place.
“But then, one day, a shadow fell onto the castle and all of our friends died.”
Oh.
Uh… I look up to the slime, who is already starting to bubble uncertainly. Hmm…
“The queen had welcomed a thing into the castle. Maybe it tricked her. Or maybe she wanted to be tricked. Or maybe you were right about her all along. But the thing sat alongside her now. The shadow had a name, but we refused to call it that. I don’t really understand why. But you told me that names have power, so I believed you.”
The next drawing is the two figures from before, standing idly next to each other. The shadowy queen sits atop her throne, with an entity sitting on the chair next to her.
“At first, the shadow only killed our friends. But then the queen slowly started to die too from his poisonous presence. The king with no name. Fall came and then came winter and with every season, the poison seeped deeper into the castle and by the time spring had come, the queen was dead and there was only you, me and I, left together with the king with no name.”
I turn the book around, showing her the image of the two of them standing on either side of the king with no name. Gloopy ink leaks down like tendrils, reaching for both of them.
“He went through her eyes. We found out that’s how his poison worked. It went through the eyes and so, to stop him from killing us too -“
I flip the page.
“We gouged out each other’s eyes. The end.”
The two figures standing there with blackened out eyes, holding each other's hands.
I hold the book at an arm’s length, flipping it around upside down. What? What kind of weird, freaky dungeon-mumbo jumbo is this? I look down at the slime who is quivering, terrified. I don’t think she likes the story. I guess this floor was connected to the king with no name’s plot-line. It probably made more sense when the dungeon was still put together in a coherent order.
“It’s fine,” I tell her, reaching a hand down to let her crawl back up. “We killed him, remember?”
She quivers, her goo sloshing around as she retreats into the shadows of the inside of my armor. “He was a jerk!”
I nod. He was a jerk. Wait. Did she just say something on her own? I look down at the goo, leaking into me. Hmm…
Looking up, I look around us and notice that we aren’t standing at the staircase anymore. We’re standing in an empty throne-room of some ancient, forgotten castle.
Something giggles, the voice echoing down a distant corridor.
It's sad that the mc has to commit suicide soon. Lance hero's body is great
...Yeah... about that...