What do you think happens when someone dies?

 

I dive to the side, avoiding the lashing whip of fire flying past me as I continue my escape, leaving the hero-party behind once again in the realm of the dreamer who dreams an uneasy dream.

 

Anyways, I mean like, when you die-die. Not when I die. But when you die. You specifically, guy. We know what happens when I die, that’s too easy to answer.

 

Leaping, I rise above the clawing hands of the dead that are swimming in the black-water beneath me. The gaping wound in the floor seems to slowly pull itself back together, the pits of hell resealing as the dreamer shifts another way and their dream changes.

 

My boots thud against the stairs and I continue running, not stopping to look back at what new form of dream is happening in my wake.

 

“Sleep tight,” calls the slime out behind us as I run up the staircase. By the sounds of the fighting and explosions behind me, it sounds like the hero-party is going to need a minute. Lucky for me, another lucky break for me. I’m so lucky. What a lucky life. What a lucky existence. Isn’t it just dandy?

 

I leap, bounding up several stairs at once.

 

Anyways, yeah. I just want to know really, what do you think happens when you die? Because after I escape, after I breach the surface of the dungeon and I get to live my final life, well…

 

Well that implies that it will end. That’s why it’s a ‘final’ life, you know?

 

But what happens then? Is it just… over? Was that it? Will that be all there is and all there was to see? Is that sad? I don’t know. What about all of the things I did? All of the people I met and places I saw?

 

Something skitters behind me, a thousand sharp, spindly legs running up the stairs, each of their pointy steps pulling on a thousand more behind them.

 

Will it all just be gone? For nothing? Or was the journey the whole point, as they say?

 

I scratch my head.

 

Who even says that? Who’s ‘they’?

 

Hmm…

 

You know what I think?

 

Now, maybe I’m a little messed up because of all the respawning and maybe I just can’t imagine anything else. But after my perpetual existence, after my imprisonment here in the bardo, I can’t help but think that it just keeps going. Nobody gets out alive -

 

Because nobody gets out, period.

 

I think that after my final life, I might be able to sleep for a while. I might be able to finally close my eyes with a clean conscience, because I did it all. I did everything I was supposed to do and then some and so, when I lay my head down to rest, there won’t be a single skittering leg prancing around inside of my dying skull. It will just be quiet. I will be free.

 

But that won’t last forever. That quiet. A dream always ends.

 

You know how when you have a really long, fun day. A day full of exciting, interesting things and then when you come back home and lay down in bed, you just simply… stop existing for a while? Because you’re in a deep, deep sleep?

 

I mean, I don’t know, honestly. But I understand the concept. Anyways -

 

I think that life and death is like that.

 

Life is the long, fun day when you spend hours playing with your friends and eating worms and climbing trees. Then, the sun begins to set and you have to go home because a voice is calling for you in the distance, as the dusk sets in to loom over the world. Then, you lay your head down to sleep. Death. Death is the sleep that comes after life, but the thing about sleep is, you wake up again after. To experience a new day.

 

What if life and death is just a long-version of day and night? Days make a week. Weeks make a month. Months make a year. Years make a life. But what if that isn’t the end of the ladder? What if there are more steps that we just can’t see? Because our eyes aren’t good enough. Because they aren’t sharp enough. Do you follow what I mean, guy? I know eyeyoume gets it, but she’s a little more philosophical. Nature of the beast, I suppose.

 

Days make weeks. Weeks make months. Months make years. Years make a life. Lives make a cosmic-existence, for a lack of a better word. It’s just as abstract a concept as a ‘year’ or a ‘month’. We understand what those are, but we just can’t see the next stage. We just can’t understand it, we simply aren’t built to be able to. The goo-brain can’t handle it and tells us that a life is the final unit of time. The end of the road.

 

I’m not sure about that.

 

A slime doesn’t know what a week is, but the week exists nonetheless. A harpy doesn’t know what a month is, but it exists nonetheless. I, you and me don’t know what a ‘cosmic-existence’ is. But it exists. I’m sure of it.

 

Why?

 

Dunno. I just am.

 

Ah, it’s nice to just have a good ramble again. Really helps me get my thoughts in order. What a strange life this is.

 

The thing that skitters skitters on behind me, but let’s just ignore it, okay? It’s kind of weird and icky and it makes funny noises. Also, it haunts my wakeful life with its horrible monstrous presence, built out of deception and ten-thousand legs, so, I feel justified.

 

The slime bubbles around inside of me and I feel her pressing herself against my back, perhaps peering out of the slits of my damaged armor to watch the strange cosmic-presence that is the skitterer move behind us, move behind me. As it pursues, as it reaches for me. I don’t think it does so out of malevolence, perhaps at worst, out of hunger.

 

Does it want to eat my eyes? I hope not, I still need them. There’s still so much left to see.

 

 

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