The Dungeon's Worst Little Mistake

Two days come and go with little fan fair or much of anything interesting happening. Bug continues to study her grimoire for her twisted ritual that she is planning, and Susan remains a captive, bound up and left to wait and wallow.

But Bug doesn't abuse her.

Susan isn't left in the corner to wait in the cold or anything like that and is instead kept near the fire where it is nice and warm, with comfortable blankets and pillows to sit on, rather than the cold hard brick floor. She is fed three meals a day and has unlimited access to fresh water. Bug even offers to lend her a book for entertainment, with Billy available to hold the book and flip the pages for her. But she refuses to untie her. After all, regardless of how nice Bug wants to be to her prisoner, she isn't stupid enough to loosen her binds.

Even injured and slowly healing, Susan is still a flight risk that Bug isn't willing to take. After all, she knows better than to underestimate humans. She has learned her lesson.

The issue of using the restroom did come up again though, and after an incident happened, Bug decided to change her mind on that matter though. Leaving someone to sit in their own filth is just too cruel for no reason, even for Bug, so bathroom breaks are now conducted under heavy guard and with a constant watch. Details will not be provided. Just know that it is being taken care of.

It is on the second day of her imprisonment that Susan is 'enjoying' a meal of salt roasted fish skewers with some soup and hard bread for dipping. On one hand, it is hard to enjoy a meal when your life has suddenly taken a nosedive off a cliff and you are now at rock bottom, but on the other… Actual, real, flavorful food.

Again, despite being a prisoner, Bug isn't abusing her. She isn't being fed scraps or Goddess forbid, any of that slop she had been living off of for the past week or so. Susan is warm, mostly comfortable, and even surprisingly, her stomach is full of good food.

Bug had actually found the slop in Susan's bag while digging through their stuff and tried one out of curiosity. She nearly threw up and promptly made it all disappear, saying that she is selling it as trash. Though, apparently the stuff was worth a surprising number of points, or whatever the hell it is that Bug will sometimes mention without further detail or explanation. Susan had considered asking about it a while ago, when boredom was needling her on, but her desire to interact with her sister's killer is currently nonexistent. So, she decided to keep her curiosity to herself. Watching her gag on the slop was a nice little bit of revenge though.

Back to the present, Susan is eating her food as little Billy helps out by holding everything for her. Sitting is a nest of blankets on the floor, her back propped up against one of the stone chairs grown from the floor of the Safe Room, she eats bites of hot salted fish and chunks of bread dipped in soup.

Looking down at the food, for not the first time in the last couple of days, she considers not eating anymore. At all. To just stop eating and drinking and let her body wither away.

To kill herself.

But it wouldn't matter for a number of reasons. For one, dying of dehydration would take too long. It shouldn't be too much longer until Bug is finished learning from her grimoire, and that time would just be spent in suffering.

And that is assuming that Bug would even let her.

While the shorter woman has yet to raise a hand to Susan, she has no doubt in her mind that Bug wouldn't hesitate to force feed her if she thought it was necessary. After all, Bug wants her alive.

Aside from that, Susan had considered a number of other ways that she could kill herself. She could bash her skull against the floor, but that is more than likely to just knock her out than kill her. She could try and swallow her own tongue, but Bug would probably save her. Biting off her tongue could work, at least, until Susan learned that Bug has access to potions and had even used half of one the other day to stop Susan's bleeding after capturing her.

If she could manage it, maybe jumping into the fire of the hearth? But the skeletons that are always watching her would most certainly stop her, and if it didn't kill her, she would just be in even more pain…

Yelling and screaming at Bug, to try and maybe get her to kill Susan in a fit of rage utterly failed as well. Nothing she said would get a rise out of the little Demon, and Bug hadn't been lying about craving human interaction.

Anything made her happy. Even being yelled at and insulted about her appearance seemed to just feed her desire for interaction and conversation, which somehow led to Bug excitedly asking questions about fashion and beauty and then promptly getting lost in a tangent about how Body magic works and then her thoughts on different kinds of underwear, for some reason, when Susan decided to give up on that route and stop talking.

Bug apparently likes boxers, because they are comfy to wear while relaxing, but for everyday use, she prefers panties. But not the ones that are too revealing or skimpy and small. Tighty whities and loincloths are a big no from her though, and she was sure to talk on at length about her dislike for them…

Regardless. Suicide. Besides the fact that it would probably just not work, there is one big factor that is keeping Susan from doing it.

The Goddess doesn't reward killing yourself. It is a sin, and doing so will send you straight to hell. And Susan knows; she knows with all her heart that Elaine is in heaven. There is nowhere else that that sweet and wonderful girl could possibly be now. And if Susan were to go to hell, well, then she really would never get to see her sister ever again.

Bug claims that this ritual will twist her soul and keep her out of the cycle of reincarnation, or whatever, but what could she possibly know about the afterlife? How could she know more than the Goddess?

No, Sussan just has to persevere and hold out. Even if she is to be forcefully turned into a living Undead, one day. One day someone will kill her and free her soul, and then she will be free to go and join her sister again.

Chewing on her fish, Susan does have her concerns though… It's not like she has led a perfect life, free of sin and temptation…

She's killed people, but it was on the battlefield, so it should be ok. She has had her fair share of, well, it's hard to resist the temptations of the flesh… And she certainly isn't married yet, so the Goddess might not look so kindly on her activities in bed… Not to mention, she hasn't been very obedient to her parents either, what with leaving that life behind and refusing to marry Brad. Gosh, she can still remember the argument she had with her parents before she packed her things and left…

I miss you, mom, daddy…

When she had eventually returned back home to try and rekindle their relationship, to apologize for leaving like she had and give them some money from her adventurer work, they hadn't been there. A plague had taken them both a couple of years after she left… The only family she had to left to welcome her home was a pair of tombstones in the town's graveyard by the church. Many of the people she had grown up alongside hadn't even recognized her, and a new family of four was now living in her childhood home. Susan had become a stranger there. She left the next day and never went back.

They'll be waiting for me too. I'm sure of it.

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Feeling extra depressed now, if that is even possible, Susan finishes the last of her meal and holds back the desire to thank the cute little skeleton for its assistance. Instead, she sends a quick little prayer and a thank you to the Goddess. Mostly out of spite for the Necromancer sitting across from her that hasn't stopped talking this entire time.

Yes, this entire time while Susan has been moping in her head, Bug has been excitedly sharing her life's story. Most of it just goes in one ear and out the other, with Susan hardly paying attention to a single word that the little Necromancer has said.

"And that was when I met Mimmie. I woke up and found it eating my fingers, the little jerk! And after it had just fallen out of the ceiling and knocked me into a freaking whirlpool no less! Seriously, I was so tempted to just kill it then, but I… Hey, are you listening?"

Susan just looks up with her eyes and gives Bug an exhausted look.

"…Yes." Susan lies.

Actually, you know what? Scratch what was mentioned earlier. Bug has been torturing her. Now that she has a new friend to talk to, Bug's desire for human interaction has finally burst free and started pouring out like an exploded damn flooding a lake's worth of water onto an unexpecting village full of war orphans and sick puppies.

If Susan didn't know better, she would seriously think that she was being actively malicious with what she is doing. But honestly, Bug just seems to be genuinely happy to have someone to talk to. Even if she is the only one doing all the talking.

Having been knocked off her train of thought for a bit, a new thought hits Bug.

"Actually, speaking of Mimmie, I wonder how long it going to keep sleeping?"

She turns and gives the unassuming treasure chest a few pokes and then even knocks on the lid like she would at someone's front door.

"Hello, Mimmie, sweetie~ You going to wake up, you little hand eating menace? Knock-knock, anyone home? Hmm……. I guess not."

Bug gets a worried look on her face and gently pets the lid.

"I hope it will be ok… That's the first time Mimmie has ever eaten that much all at once. I mean, it eats a lot! Like, all the time. But not like that. I hope it didn't burst its stomach or anything…"

"I hope it died." Susan finds herself saying before she can think to stop herself. But when she considers it, she honestly doesn't care if she makes Bug angry or sad. After all, this bitch is evil.

"Don't say that. Mimmie is very important to me, and I would be sad if it died."

"Good, I hope your pet choked on my sister's corpse."

"That's not very nice, Susan."

"I don't give a shit. That thing ate my SISTER! YOU KILLED MY SISTER, YOU BITCH!"

Bug just returns to her drink and takes a sip.

"Fair enough." She says with a shrug after a moment's consideration.

"Is that it? Fair enough? You aren't going to try and argue with me or hold the moral high ground. You aren't going to try and explain why it was ok to do what you did!? Fair enough!!!"

"No? Why would I?" Bug asks, looking genuinely confused.

"What?"

"I mean, yeah. I have my reasons. You guys were trying to kill me, and her Light magic fucking hurts. I was angry and wanted to make her suffer. And I did. But at the end of the day, what I did was inherently wrong and even pretty fucked up, no? I fed her, alive, to my pet Mimic. What I did was bad, regardless of the reasoning. I could have just as easily of killed her with a knife to the throat, the temple, her heart. I could have killed her nearly instantly. But I didn't. And yes, I killed someone close to you. I killed your sister." Bug says as she stares deeply into Susan's eyes, with not a shred of remorse to be found.

Susan is stunned by this momentarily. One moment, Bug had been a happy and bubbly girl, talking about this and that. And the next, she had become a heartless, sociopathic killer who is fully aware of the evils of her own actions. Who still actively chooses to do the things she does without regret. She doesn't care that Elaine is dead or that her blood is on her hands.

Susan can see it, deep inside of those emerald-green eyes. Elaine had already become an afterthought to Bug. Something to eventually be forgotten about as she happily moves on with her life. If it wasn't for the fact that she has a bit of a grudge over the pain that was inflicted, Bug would have probably already forgotten about Elaine entirely. Remembering her only as the treat that she had fed to her pet.

Monster. That is the only thing that Susan can think of when she looks at Bug.

She is nothing more than a monster playing at being a person. And that horrifies Susan down to her core. The thought of allowing this thing to escape the Dungeon and exist on the surface…

Bug closes her eyes and breaks the spell. With a shrug, she returns to being her normal self and then lets out a sigh.

"Haaah… Still, I guess saying, fair enough, is pretty rude of me. Regardless of the reasoning, it is wrong to kill, and I imagine even more so, to kill those that are close to those that I am trying to befriend… After all, even with how they treated her, I'm pretty sure that Hannah would be rather upset with me if I were to kill her parents… Susan, I am sorry that I killed your sister and fed her to Mimmie, and also, I promise that in the future, I won't kill anyone else that is important to you… Regardless of how mad they might make me… I won't promise not to hurt them though. I can't promise that one. Just no killing."

"… You don't honestly think that I would ever accept that apology, do you? Or that I would ever, for even a moment, believe that you will keep that promise?"

"Nope. After all, I'm not an idiot. I know you hate me."

"I do hate you."

"But, I am being genuine. And while you might not believe me right now, you'll eventually see that I am. After all, I will never tell a lie."

"Everyone lies."

"Except for me, and Demons."

"What?"

"Apparently, Demons are physically incapable of telling lies. I've been studying!" Bug declares proudly.

"I don't care; I hate you."

"That's ok. You can hate me as much as you like, Susan. Because you and I are going to be together for a long time, and I promise that eventually, I'll manage to worm my way into your heart and break down your defenses. Eventually, even if it takes a hundred years or even a thousand. You will, eventually, consider me to be your best friend." Bug says with a smile that sends a horrified shiver running straight through Susan's soul.

And then she claps her knees and stands up, the strange and scary atmosphere popping like a balloon.

"Welp, ahhhh. I best get going. I still need to farm up some more points so I can buy the rest of the reagents for the ritual. I'm going to go grind and sell some more corpses. It's easier to gather the bodies when I can hit them right as they spawn. Keeps them from spreading out too much… Anyways, I'll be back. Remember to ask Billy for help if you get thirsty, and that my guys here will forcefully knock you out if you try to escape. Hopefully, tomorrow we can get started on that ritual, and then we can finally get you turned into an immortal Undead. Exciting, right?"

"I'm dying from anticipation…"

"Great! That's the attitude we need, new friend. I'll see you when I get back! Don't throw any parties while I'm gone!" Bug calls back as she walks away from the Safe Room and down the hall.

"I was being sarcastic, you bitch!"

"I know! It was funny! Bye!!!"

"...If I ever get the chance to, I'm going to kill her…"

Letting out an exhausted sigh, Susan looks around the room at all the massive skeletons that are just staring at her. She moves a little, testing as she pulls on her bindings and the nearest one tightens its hand into a fist, the sound of bones scraping against bones being clearly heard.

"Right… Fuck this, I'm going to sleep. Good night, Billy."

The cute little skeleton waves goodbye in response, and Susan just has to stare at it for a bit. Did Bug order it to do that, or… She decides that she doesn't want to know.

Letting herself fall over and collapse into her bed of blankets and pillows, Susan tries to get comfortable despite being tied up from ankle to shoulder, and them closes her eyes to catch some sleep.

Her life might be falling apart all around her, but at least she can enjoy sleeping. There, in here dreams at least, she can still see her sister.

With the exhaustion of a tired and bruised body slowly taking her down, her mind drifts off to sleep.

…

It is some hours later that she is awoken from her sleep by a presence and some noise. With bleary eyes and a stiff neck, she gets up and looks around the mostly silent Safe Room. Bug isn't back yet and all the skeletons are still right where she left them.

"Wh-what is making that noise…?"

Looking around, drowsiness fogging her mind, her eyes eventually fall on Mimmie as its lock clicks open and the lid starts to slowly creak ajar.

"Finally awake, huh? Thank the Goddess…"

With Bug not here to stop it, Susan is certain that she could convince a Mimic that hasn't eaten in a couple of days to devour her whole.

Finally, I can be with Elaine again. Mom, daddy, I'll be seeing you soon. Goddess, please forgive me for everything I have done. All I want is to see my family again. Nothing else matters. Just please, let me have her back.

With her prayer going to the heavens, Susan sits back and watches as the Mimic continues to open it mouth and reveal lines of sharp, crooked teeth that can easily crunch bones and tear flesh to ribbons.

Her death will probably be a painful one. And while she has no intention of resisting, Susan does hope that this damn thing will choke to death on her corp-

And then Susan stops thinking. She sees something that has her stunned to silence.

Be it the tricks of the Devil, or a blessing from the Goddess, she doesn't know. But all she can do is stare in horror and shock as a golden-blonde head emerges from the Mimic's mouth along with a pair of pale-white arms in a big, wide, stretch.

Looking like she just woke up from a very satisfying nap, an angelic looking child stretches and yawns. Her sleepy eyes, blue like sapphires.