NOVEL NEXT Chapter 296: Strung along
The wizard-girl rubs her eyes, feeling the dry itch inside of them. Maybe she’s just been crying too much?
She sits with her back against the wall, staring out over the destroyed floor, before turning her gaze over towards the gate. Nothing fights anymore. Nothing creeps or crawls or slithers anymore. The entire floor is covered in charred bones and ash and rubble. It’s been about ten minutes since the fight had ended. She doesn’t see anyone anymore. Everyone is gone.
Rubbing her char-covered face onto her tattered sleeve, she rises to her feet and hobbles towards the dungeon-gate. Her bag, feeling oddly heavy on her weak shoulders, falls off of her back as the burnt straps snaps in half beneath the weight of her lifting it into the air.
There is a loud shattering of glass, as it strikes against the rocks down at her feet. The fragile contents of the large bag break. Though maybe the bag isn’t the thing that’s heavy. Her body feels oddly heavy too, as if all of a sudden the lightness she had always felt holding her aloft had suddenly left her.
She looks down at the brown sack, staring at it for a moment, before her eyes return to the gate. Without her bag, she limps towards it. There is nothing left here for her. She can’t see the hero, the priestess, the monk or the corrupted thing that needed to be put down like a rabid animal before it spread the magic-rot to the surface world. Did they all destroy themselves? Did they all get consumed by those massive eruptions of light and fire? Is she really the last one left?
What a mess. It was never supposed to be like this. What kind of adventure is this? What kind of nightmare did this turn out to be?
She cries, thinking about her missing friends as she enters into the purple fog. The kind priestess, who betrayed them, likely infected and twisted by the rot. The great hero, who is nowhere to be seen now that she needs him the most. The chaotic monk, who she lost track of during the flurry. Everyone is missing.
Reaching the other end of the dungeon-gate, the wizard-girl falls onto the stones, feeling the bright sunlight reach her for the first time in…
She blinks.
They hadn’t been inside of the dungeon for so long, a couple of days maybe? Maybe even a week or two? It’s hard to tell under the ground, but it felt like it was ages. Years.
The gentle rays of the sun almost feel like they’re burning her pale skin, as if she hadn’t felt their touch in a long, long time.
Her legs feel weak beneath her, wobbling as if she were a newborn fawn trying to walk. So she opts to flop down and sit there alone outside of the dungeon, basking in the afternoon heat that welcomes her back to the surface, until her strength can finally return to her.
The thing that beholds listens to the now familiar voice as well as the unfamiliar voice that echo through the stones, as it creeps and crawls and reaches down towards the very bottom of the dungeon.
“What the fuck do you mean the strings broke?!” yells the dungeon-master. “Aaaah! Fuck! You had one job!”
“There’s no need to get snippity,” says Misses Dainty-Doily.
“I’ll snippity your button eyes!” threatens the dungeon-master. “Do you know how hard it was to get those damned puppet strings around the hero-party?!”
“I should,” says Misses Dainty-Doily. “It was my job, after all. So I had two jobs, thank you very much.”
“We needed them! They were a great way to cook up some pressure on demand in a believable way, without making anyone suspicious!” exclaims the dungeon-master. “A little tweak here, a little tug there and they’re moving faster and faster, really bringing it all to a boil.”
“If you hadn’t sent that bunch of rabble-rousers up to the top floor, it would have been fine. But this one was a bit of a… ruffian.”
“Can you make a new one?” asks the dungeon-master, sounding somewhat annoyed. “Watch your mouth. That’s my baby you’re talking about.”
“A new what? A new hero-party?” asks Misses Dainty-Doily. “I suppose? But it will be a lot of work. We might have to delay the next start for a little while.”
“That’s okay, we need them. They’re half of the whole dungeon-story!” barks the dungeon-master.
“I don’t know if I can make believable humans though. Real ones really were ideal.”
“That’s also fine,” says the dungeon-master. “I’ll make some warm bodies, you take care of the puppeteering. It should be less messy now, without that damn elf running around being a kook and not listening to the plan. Seriously.”
“Speaking of,” begins Misses Dainty-Doily. “What happened to her anyways? I haven’t seen her around.”
“There was a slight hiccup.”
“A hiccup?”
“Yeah, but it worked out for the best,” explains the dungeon-master. “She was being a bad influence.”
“Huh… alright. So, should the new hero be a human?” asks Misses Dainty-Doily.
“They all have to be humans. We need to feed that us versus them mentality, give them something to fight for, you know?” explains the dungeon-master. “Everyone needs something to believe in. Otherwise they just sit around and fester.”
“If you say so,” sighs the woman.
The thing that beholds crawls through the rocks, unable to hear anything else of the conversation, as it now slips too far into the crevices and cracks so far beneath the surface of the world to feel even a single vibration from the two. Yet it feels so many more.
It stops, blinking, confused. Having an eye is making its sense all jumbled. It isn’t used to seeing. Did it go upwards again?
The thing that beholds stares around the darkness that it finds itself in, wondering if it hasn’t backtracked for the third or fourth time now. It blinks, realizing all of a sudden that it is entirely lost. One would think that up and down are simple to differentiate, but as wibbly-wobbly as the space outside of the dungeon walls is, it’s a lot more difficult than could be assumed.
The thing that beholds, mimicking what it has heard so often, lets out a long breath, much akin to a sigh. It isn’t sure why, but it notices that it feels better after doing so. Reorienting itself, it continues crawling.
