Darkness surrounds me as all I hear is the incredible crushing roar of the tidal-wave crashing over the entire floor, crashing over my body and swallowing me entirely. I grip on to the lance as tightly as I can, feeling the rushing movement around me as I am swallowed whole by the surge of the black-ocean.

 

Water. Water fills everything. Water drowns the entire floor as the great wave crashes down all around us all. My body shakes, my legs flying back out from under me as the pressure of the impact rips me from where I stand. The lance, anchored into the rock holds firm and I feel my body lift off of the platform below. Do you think the dungeon-master is watching me?

 

I like to think so.

 

But I also like to think that they’re busy having fun. Maybe they’ve started talking to the others. I’d like that. They need to socialize some more, or they’re going to grow up and not know how to interact with people. They might think that I’m a jerk, but sometimes you need to have a firm hand.

 

Just as I think that thought, I lose my grip with one hand, my other about to break off as well, just as the slime presses herself out, crawling along the length of my arm and holding on tight to the shaft of the lance together with me. It’s important to have friends, you know?

 

As the ocean cascades down all around us, strange things shift in the distant darkness. Great, massive tentacles, each a full minotaur’s height in thickness, sway and swipe in the murk. Only the edges of their silhouettes are visible, as they dance in the oppressive depths, as the current rushes through my hollow skull with incredible force, washing my head clean.

 

I fight the current, holding strong against the drag of the tide as hard as I can, fearing the dark places that it will take me if I allow it to do so. Fearing the bleakness that will swallow me if I let go and if I let the ocean take me where it may.

 

I lift my head, my body swaying in the crushing surge as I look up at the giant, furious eye in the distance. At the giant, raging pupil staring my way with its tired, gangrene yellow shine. Her impossible features, partially obscured by the darkness of the black-water, are twisted and contorted and wrong. They’re warped and broken and bent, at least what little I can see of them. Or perhaps that is just what my impression of her ‘face’ is. It’s not like I can actually see it, all I can see are vague shadows and shapes and the rest I make up in my own mind’s eye.

 

She writhes, thrashing harder and harder, the current becomes wilder and stronger as she pushes the water around, as she strengthens the force of her movements in an effort to make me let go. You can’t make me. You can’t make me, I yell at her, gripping tighter still as I look into her tired eye.

 

A giant tentacle lashes my way, as she makes me.

 

My body is crushed in an instant, my armor dented, the lance bending and breaking free from the rock as all of me is sent flying, tumbling through the black-water. The current grabs hold of me and spins me around and around, lashing me this way and that, whipping my body, as if I myself were one of her many reaching arms that slashes through the ocean.

 

I spiral and tumble, flying wildly through the wet, the illuminated bubble of white-magic that the hero-party finds shelter in, fades quickly from my vision as I am ripped away from the only dry place to be found.

 

There is nothing I can do as another tentacle grabs me, tightly wrapping itself around my waist. I really wish she woul- NNIIAAAH!

 

The meaty tendril lashes out wildly, tearing me through the water in another direction with a violent yank. My broken body rattles as I am tossed around like a plaything, as she tears me to the other side of the floor. All I see is water. All I see is the stone wall rushing towards me in an instant, or more aptly said, I’m rushing towards the stone wa-

 

Crunch.

 

It was me. I was the thing that got crunched this time.

 

My body falls limp as my pulverized shell drifts down to the stones below, as the tentacle lets go of me. The dust of my body held contained by the compacted, almost entirely flattened armor. Slime seeps out of me in all directions as my hollow breastplate has almost been entirely flattened.

 

As I watch the tentacle drift away out of the corner of my eyes, my skull pounded into a heap of coarse fragments, I watch a giant, yellow eye close itself again. It’s expression clearly agitated at having to punish me for my nonsense. I was a bad child.

 

I feel the dungeon grab me, the great invisible force pressing itself into my broken body rather inappropriately, honestly speaking. The water of the ocean starts to recede as the tide begins to drift away again. As the wave loses its energy and the dungeon floor returns to what it was only a few minutes ago, as the great leviathan draws back into the darkness. Satisfied for now, that it can go back to sleep.

 

My metal armor pops loudly, as it expands back outwards, as if something were blowing into me to re-inflate me. The fragments of my crushed skull slowly begin to crawl back together, as if carried on the backs of a thousand scurrying, little beetles coming to make a hive.

 

Do beetles make hives?

 

Maybe I meant ants. I think ants make hives.

 

No… wait… they make nests. Uh… what’s the difference between a nest and a hive?

 

Wait… no, ants make a colony, right?

 

Uh…

 

Two forceful hands grab my skull on either side and wrench it back into place, my neck snapping with a loud, audible pop as my spine is realigned.

 

What was I talking about?

 

I sit upright, my head pressing out of the water that sinks down lower and lower. I sit against the staircase, leading to the next floor up. Half-way across the floor, is a translucently shimmering bubble of white-magic, still closed off from the world like an unhatched egg. Was I doing something? I think I was escaping the dungeon, right? Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right.

 

I hear a slapping inside of my armor, looking down, I stare at the pair of soapy yellow eyes looking up at me, her goopy form entirely untroubled by my mutilation. Two gooey hands lift something cold, wet and slimy up towards me. Something that flops around in her palms, its lips smacking as it stares at me with big, glassy eyes.

 

“Fish?” asks the slime, holding the little fish up to me.

 

I shake my head. “No, thanks. I hate fish.”

 

She bubbles, somewhat let down and tosses the fish back into the water where it lands with a loud splash, before quickly swimming away into the darkness. Swim well, little fish.

 

Seizing the moment, as it were, I jump up, water splashing around my boots and I run up the staircase that I have been hand-delivered to.

 

Tentacle-delivered, I correct myself.

 

 

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