Cleansing.

 

It is a cleansing for us all. A chance to burn it all out. All of this gunk, all of this goo, all of this sticky, disgusting, goopy, oozy black-water that fills us all, as it has done for so long. It is a chance to light a fire and to let it all be scorched away. It’s time to let it all out, for all of us. I think we need this, guy. Though, I wish the hero would just hug it out with me, but I guess this is good too.

 

Brilliantly shining sparks dot the air, filling it and cascading down all around us as if we were being showered with luminescent moon-dust.

 

Though, that cleansing is a little more metaphorical and spiritual for myself than it is for them, the humans that is. I leap back a step, just barely avoiding the tip of the blade cutting the air where I stood.

 

They mean it more literally. Though, I think that’s your fault, guy. Not mine. You’re really making it difficult for me to make friends, you know that? I know that it’s not your fault that they hate you and don’t want you to get outside. You’re just what the world made you to be. Maybe that’s why we get along so well?

 

I watch out of the corner of my eyes, as the row of hands lift into the air, filling themselves with fire and white-magic. Sure, there are a few mixed and matched adventurers in-between, but the bulk of them? They’re here to cleanse. To purge. There’s nothing quite like a cozy, little fire to fix all of your problems.

 

I’m guessing that hugs and hand-holding are off of the table. Maybe tomorrow, then?

 

Stepping forward, I rush to meet the hero a second time, holding my lance down at the very bottom of its shaft to swing it like a giant club, trying to get some more momentum behind the strike.

 

The world continues to shake, not just from the impact of our blows. There is a crack like thunder, as my extended lance strikes down against his sword from above and my feet stay off of the ground for a moment. Harrowing screams fill my ears as I hang there, suspended in the air for what feels like several seconds. The hero pulls to the side, sliding his sword free from my lance with a swift movement. The next thing I know, I’m flying, hurtling back once again. It happens to me a lot, now that I think about it.

 

The tip of the lance digs into the stones, pulling through the ground and creating a jagged scar in the rock as I fly, landing just next to the priestess who stands there alone in the middle of the room. There is no language to her body. No expression painted onto the soft features of her face. The bones in my arm crack and break, but I don’t let go, sliding back to land on a knee. My cape billowing behind me from the surge of wind that pushes back against me, the fabric obscuring the line of sight of the staircase which continues to rumble, which continues to growl as if the gut of the dungeon, of the deepest pit in the world, was rumbling. As if it was about to purge its body of the sickness held inside of it.

 

As my cape drifts back down, the fabric touching the stones, as my neck cracks, as my head turns around, as a single glowing, blue eye of mine watches the darkness; I see the emergence. Lurching, dragging silhouettes rise up from the bowels of the world. Mangled, fetid corpses that pull themselves up the stairs. Creeping, crawling, reaching hands wrap themselves around the edge of the stones, pulling their rotting faces forward. Undead. Zombies. Skeletons. Anything and everything that lives far down in the slithering pits of the deep-dark has made its way up to the highest floor of the dungeon.

 

My head turns back forward, not of my own volition or of yours, but by the dungeon itself as it cracks my skull and twists it back to face the hero. Not in an effort to fix my broken neck, but to make its wishes more than clear. I rise to my feet, lifting a hand to the priestess to push her to the side so that she doesn’t get caught in the fray that is about to start.

 

But as my hand reaches out towards where I am sure someone was just standing a second ago, I touch nothing. I hear only the sound of a thousand, tiny, skittering feet running through the darkness just out of the sight of my eyes. The tippy-tapping of their tiny little legs pulling on a thousand more behind them.

 

Suddenly, everything is bright.

 

Why is everything so bright?

 

You make me leap forward, my arm swinging through the array of spells flying my way as the dungeon wall behind me explodes into an eruption of fire and white-magic, the two cascading around each other and birthing a violent storm, their magical energies merging and becoming inseparable from another like spit and red during a bloody kiss.

 

Man, I guess our private duel is already over. It looks like they’re all getting involved now. Those jerks. They’re ruining it for me! That didn’t last long at all! We only got to whack each other like… two times. I sigh, as the firestorm rages behind me. Being a raid boss is so hard. I just want to hang out with the hero and let him pet my head and tell me how good I fought him and then- and then- and then- !

 

I blush, my free hand holding my cheek as I land on the stones and I rush forward, unable to finish my sentence because it’s too embarrassing. My metal boots clank like the ringing of a bell as I press forward and make my next assault. He comes towards me, meeting me in the middle. Fire washes over both of us, white-magic washes over both of us as they flood the entire floor with it, trying to stop the dungeon-break, trying to stop me. I hear screams coming from the gate. I hear screams coming from the darkness behind me. I hear screams coming from the center of the inferno, as the hero and I dance around each other and only after my third or forth pass around him, do I notice that they’re my own.

 

I can’t see anything else. I can’t hear anything else. I can’t… I don’t… I don’t want anything else but this. I feel it. I feel it in my heart. I feel my heart as I fly past him, our weapons slide along the length of each other’s, as I turn my head and stare into his eyes. I’m so close to him. I’m so close that I can taste him.

 

He has really nice eyes, you know? The orange bits really stick out from the blue of his pupils. I think I’m really starting to get to know him at this point, guy. How often has he killed me? Killed us? We’re basically best friends! I just wish he’d tell me his name, but well, you know.

 

Thook-thook.

 

I don’t have a name to tell him either, so it’s only fair.

 

My eyes grow wide as we lash out at each other, as our weapons meet in the center like two heavy, dewy bodies, the sparks of our fight not even discernible in the burning haze that rages all around us. Before I know what’s happening, I’m flying again as his free hand presses into my gut, crushing my armor and my bones in a fraction of a second, as I smash into the wall and shatter into a thousand pieces, the metal of my armor flattening from the sheer force of the impact.

 

I rattle. As the creeping tendrils of your rot pieces me back together. I rattle, as the frustrated dungeon pieces me back together, hammering and smashing my body back into place with anger and resentment that starkly contrasts the gentle care that you put into me. Thanks, guy. You’re the best.

 

I rise to my feet, restored and duck just in time as the sword presses into the wall where I stood a second ago. Leaping, I wrap my arms around his stomach and shoulder tackle him. Don’t you touch him, guy. He’s mine. He’s mine!

 

You respect my wishes.

 

We fly through the air. My lance lays on the ground. His sword is stuck in the wall. It’s just the two of us. Just our two interwoven bodies coiling around each other as if we were two winding serpents.

 

Hero? Are you listening? Can you hear me? I don’t have a name to give you, hero. I don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl and I don’t know which of those you even like. I don’t think I’m very pretty or talented or strong or useful -

 

We fly, hurtling and twisting through the air in that time-slowed second. Just the two of us. As we spin, as we fly through the incredible firestorm that surrounds us. I see blackened silhouettes all around, engaged in a fight all of their own. The differentiation between humans, between trash-mobs is, from this vantage point, indiscernible. As far as I can see, there’s only me and him. I only have eyes for you, hero.

 

- I don’t know where I came from or why I am here to begin with. I don’t know where I’m going except outside. I don’t know why we have to fight like this. I don’t know why we can’t just be friends, that’s all I ever really wanted.

 

We crash against the stones, rolling over each other as we fight without our weapons, the brute force of his grip breaking my constantly regenerating bones with just his hands. With just his sheer force and will.

 

- I’m not really sure why everyone hates me. But I guess I deserve it, they can’t all be wrong, can they? I’m not really sure how long I’ve been here or for how long we’ve been doing this little song and dance of ours.

 

His knee presses against my chest as he kicks me off and I fly back, hurtling up into the air, my scorched cape wrapping around my body. Something pops in my gut, as the dungeon fixes my spine in mid-air, pressing the metal of my flattened, burnt armor back outward, as I come close enough to the dungeon ceiling to touch it.

 

- I don’t really understand anything. I’m just a creepy, degenerate little trash-mob who lives at the bottom of the dungeon all by myself. Locked away in the darkness where I belong.

 

I fall, hurtling out of control back towards him, my eyes having never left his this entire time. I raise my fist, arching it back to strike as I plummet downward. I feel you wrap yourself around my hand, despite my wishes for you not to get involved. But I know that I need you to do this. I feel the dungeon, pressing its energy into my hand along with yours. He rises to his feet, arching his body back as he gets ready to meet me in the middle. No weapons, no fear, no hesitance. Nothing but conviction shines in his eyes, shines in his heart. I see the magic condensing around his body. I see the aura of the chosen hero of the world glowing, radiating, pressing out of his core. The dense tide of magical energies swallowing and overpowering any fire that is near him. This is it. This is our final strike. The last step of the dance.

 

- I don’t understand what lesson the dungeon has been trying to teach me this entire time, if there even was one to begin with and if this all wasn’t just some contrived nonsense thought up by the dark-lord.

 

I fall, shrieking as I come ever closer to his eyes that glow with the light of a thousand jubilant souls, coming ever closer to his furious scream that meets mine and merges with it, connecting us as one in spirit, if not in body. I’m so happy.

 

- But despite all that, hero, thank you for giving me something to believe in.

 

The world erupts. Filling itself with more magic, with more energy than I have ever seen before. The walls all around crack in an instant, as the shock-wave begins before we even come close to touching each other. Magic crackles in the air like electricity, magic hums through my body, hums through my core like a melodiousness tune sung by an excited voice on a sunny, spring day.

 

I watch, as I plummet, as my body crackles with lightning, I watch, as I fall, as his body erupts with the magical force of a titanous god.

 

I watch, as the thing that reaches, presses itself out of the ground and swallows him whole.

 

 

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