When we returned to the circular hall, the pristine cleanliness stuck out. It starkly contrasted the storerooms, thick with dust and rat droppings, and the dining area, veiled in cobwebs. Here, not a speck of dust marred the smooth floor. There were no doors to stop the spread of the dust from one area to the other. Our body didn't become magically clean and we still left dusty footprints on the clean floor. That left only one possibility… Housekeepers. The dungeon had to have a cleaning staff.
Had that been who they had heard on his climb up? Had we just missed the overnight cleaning staff?
A couple of housekeepers… er, dungeonkeepers? Yeah. Dungeonkeepers talking while dusting and sweeping? Had they known about the rats and spiders? Were the spiders why the dungeonkeepers avoided cleaning that part of this dungeon?
That made sense.
Was this a reliable way to find more traps? Maybe? Possibly? It was something I had to watch for.
With only two ways to go and knowing the hole they had climbed out of was to their left, we turned right.
It was a short walk to another chain coming out of a hole, up to a pulley, and then to a giant spool with a control panel attached. Looking into the hole, we saw the chain descend into the darkness. It looked exactly like the hole we had climbed out of.
I only had to look at the torches to see that it wasn't where we had come from, as these brackets were intact, and the torches were still there. The hole I came out of, that torch was in my pack. I reached back and touched it, just to be sure.
Would this chain lead down to another prisoner? I thought about it. I recalled the purple-eyed woman with her organs splayed out around her. I shuddered at the haunting memory. It would have been… her hole. The purple-eyed corpse that watched me climb.
I considered climbing down to free her corpse or maybe just close her eyes. I didn't want to risk falling into that hungering darkness.
We continued to walk until…
We came to the next intersecting hallways. Would this be another barracks and dining hall?
Voices. They were coming from around the corner. While I couldn't hear the words, we heard their tones. One sneering voice belonged to a man, while the other belonged to a red-headed woman on the edge of panic.
We crouched and crept quickly over to the corner. Slowly but briefly, we glanced around the corner. There were people—a lot of them.
One man in black robes was separated from the rest by iron bars. Though the man had his back to Toll, he was the closest. His voice was taunting and not in a good way.
The woman was wearing a blue and white dress, the kind seen in balls. It was ragged and filthy, with the bottom of it… droopy? Deflated? The bottom should have looked like an upside-down bowl with the hem floating just off the ground, but instead, it looked like hanging curtains dragging on the floor. The woman was holding some excess material between herself and the robed man.
A man with blond hair the color of hay stood behind her, saying nothing. His attention was wholly focused on the robed man.
Several other people were standing several feet further back with fear and disgust on their faces.
"We're starving," the woman pleaded, her voice trembling with desperation. "People are falling ill, and many aren't recovering. We're dying down here."
"No. I brought a bucket of food and a bucket of water. It's way more than you can eat. Share it however you want. These others, they are not my problem."
The blond-haired man snarled, "We had two people die last night. If we don't get more food and water, more will die."
The woman took a deep breath, trying to stay composed. "If the need arises, I'm prepared to stop eating and drinking until there's enough for everyone else."
"Good," the robed man sneered. "The sooner you die, the sooner I can stop hauling these buckets. Consider it a favor."
The woman was shocked to silence as if she had been slapped.
The blond man stepped around the woman, his face an angry red, and… tested the bars. He tried shaking them and pulling them apart. None of it worked. The bars didn't even rattle.
"What? Did you think you had any power here?"
None of them said anything.
After a long moment, the robed man was the first to speak. "Stack the bodies of your dead against the bars."
Reluctantly, two bodies were dragged over.
The robed man produced a cleave, crouched low beside the bodies, and began chopping the bodies to fill his empty buckets.
The scent of food hit my body like a thunderclap, overriding my every thought. Before I fully understood, my body surged forward, a predator pouncing on prey.
One of my arms wrapped around the man's head, pulling it to the side. My other arm snaked under the man's cleaver arm and reached back up to tear out his throat. My body bit into his throat like it was a juicy steak. It felt like the most natural thing I'd ever done.
Foul-chemical-rot-mud filled our mouth, and we spat it out in shock and disgust.
Not food.
Despite the grievous injuries inflicted, our victim turned his smiling head and mouthed words that had no sound. Black ichor drooled out of his mouth instead. Taking advantage of our shock and horror, he twisted loose of our arms and stood up. He turned toward us with his meat cleaver already in motion, already arcing toward our head.
My body ducked or tried to. The blade bounced off the back of our skull. How bad was it? We didn't know. I needed a health bar.
A health bar appeared. It was an ornate gold bar in the left corner of my vision with a red liquid filling the bottom three-quarters of it, like a thermometer. '13/17' just below the bar.
The robed… he wasn't a man. His skin hung loose from his emaciated body, pale and covered in sores. His hairless head rolled oddly on his shoulders, clearly wounded in a way lethal to humans. He coughed out blood, his red eyes glaring at us, "How did you escape?"
My body and I had wanted to run.
His body wanted… no, needed the food it smelled. This… thing-that-wasn't-food stood challenging our claim to the food. My body wanted to kill the creature.
The creature's words caught my attention, though. He had asked, 'How did you escape?' This creature had known at a glance from where I had escaped. This creature had to be our jailer!
Though for different reasons, my body and I were unified in their goal: this creature had to die.
We swung our claw at his jailer's head.
The creature raised its cleaver to counter our strike, but my body was ready, too. It pulled on our arm's momentum, powering a kick. Our foot connected with the jailer's knee, a sickening crunch echoing through the hall.
The jailer's face didn't even register pain.
The cleaver slammed deep into our chest, stopping in the bones of our sternum.
Pain seared through our chest, but my body dismissed it with cold efficiency. My vision flickered to the health bar: '11/24'.
Why had it felt so much worse than it looked?
Realization sank in. We must have just leveled to stay alive.
Our hand desperately grabbed the hand holding the cleaver, keeping the creature from freeing it from our flesh and bones. I kicked the man in the groin with a satisfying thud.
Again, the jailer's face showed no pain. It smiled, its head and neck having partially healed from our devastating earlier attack. It was regenerating! It was cheating! That was supposed to be our trick!
We refused to let this thing win. My body jumped at it, our claws and mouth ready.
The creature had been ready for the attack. It sidestepped while ducking beneath our flailing claws. It's fist slammed into the side of our head.
Pain radiated out from the strike, unlike anything we had ever felt.
I eyed his health bar, watching the liquid rise, stop, then reverse its motion. It was low. '4/24'.
We needed to run, to escape.
We couldn't. Somehow, the creature had cornered us with the last exchange.
I grabbed a couple of pieces of bedframe out of his bag and threw one of them, trying to force the creature back and buy us time.
The creature slapped it out of the air, leaping forward with another fist punching out. Black energy snapped and crackled in the air around it.
My body was ready for it this time. Despite the black energy, we drove the wooden wedge, which we still held deep between its knuckles. It connected, and we twisted, driving the wood deep, but felt pain from the brief contact with the edge of that energy.
What was that energy? The creature didn't have gloves or gauntlets on. Was it magic?
It changed everything! I was in a world with magic!
We watched as the creature stepped back and pulled the wood from between its knuckles as if it were nothing more than a splinter. It barely even bled its foul black blood.
It changed nothing. We were fighting for our life with something that could not only go toe-to-toe with us, but also had magic. If we didn't win now, decisively, we were going to die. The little bits of wood we had used to throw at the spiders weren't anything more than a distraction.
I raced to come up with a solution.
My body, which seemed to have a mind of its own, charged with claws out and fangs bared.
I glanced at our health bar. We were back over half our health, reading '14/24'. Something had changed.
We still had no time.
The jailer's fist slammed into our stomach.
My body took the blow and pushed through it, our clawed fingers spearing through the monster's skin and ribs, grabbing hold. Our teeth sank into the other side of the monster's neck and pulled back, ripping flesh and foulness loose.
The monster punched again.
The health bar was almost empty, reading '1/24'.
We were going to die!
"Do something!"
My body pulled, and for the first time, the jailer stopped smiling and looked scared.
The tiny jailer's hands grasped at our forearms, trying to free itself, but couldn't get a grip. It was like it had suddenly shrunk and weakened.
My body roared a feral sound that echoed through the dungeon. It tore at the jailer with every ounce of strength, ripping flesh and bone apart. Black ichor sprayed over us, its stench mingling with the copper tang of blood.
The jailer began thrashing wildly, trying to get free.
The damage we had done; it wasn't enough.
The creature, despite having part of its ribcage and side ripped off of it, was still alive. It tried pulling away only to realize…
We were still holding it in one hand. We lifted it. Our free hand gripped the jailer's head and pulled. A last spurt of ichor rained down as they came apart.
"Oh, gods!" came the woman's voice.
We had just torn a man… creature… jailer thing limb from limb, er, head. We had done that. Or my body had. I didn't know. Everything was just blurring together.
My body turned towards the new challenger…
The words were the woman's. The blond man stood before her, trying to keep between us and her while pushing her back.
My body roared. Our heart wasn't in it.
There was this horrible taste in our mouth, which we really, really wanted to vomit out. I had never thought vomit could be the lesser of two evils, but this creature's blood had proved me wrong. My body resisted, unable to show weakness in front of more enemies, no matter how putrid the taste or how empty our stomach was.
We boldly strode to the food bucket and picked it up in one hand, our eyes looking downward into the faces of the people inside the bars. All of their faces looked down or away except for two.
The man's brown eyes met our gaze, but the man looked away.
The woman's blue-gray eyes look through her tears into ours. She sniffled and blew her nose, conceding a contest she was probably unaware of. It was enough that his body no longer felt the need to rip her head free of her body.
The survivors cowered, their fear of us eclipsing even their hatred for the jailer. My body… we gaze met the woman's tear-filled eyes, and for a moment, something in her expression made us hesitate. Was it pity? Disgust? I couldn't tell. All that I knew was a line was approaching, and I didn't want to cross it.
We picked up the jailer's body with our other hand and returned to the kitchen and one source of clean water we knew of.
Back in the kitchen, we hunched over the water basin, our hands trembling. We spat, rinsed, and spat again, but the foul taste clung to our tongue like a curse. Desperation turned to anger as we scraped our tongue with our nails, the metallic tang of blood joining the rot.
We vowed to each other never to fight whatever that thing was ever again.
I needed another distraction.
"Status Screen!"
Name: Toll. Origin: Otherworld Gamer. Class: Rogue - Assassin level 3. Race: Troll Cursed Halfbreed - Stage 3. Large humanoid. AC: 14. Health: 27 of 27 (32). Strength 18, Dexterity 13, Constitution 18, Intelligence 9, Wisdom 8, Charisma 9. Saves: Dexterity +3, Intelligence +2. Feats: Skilled. Proficiency Bonus: +2. Skills: Athletics +8, Acrobatics +3, Disguise Kit +2, Insight +1, Investigation +1, Perception +1, Persuasion +1, Poisoner's Kit +2, Stealth +3, Thieves Tools +3, Video Games +3. Class features: Expertise in Athletics and Video Games. Sneak Attack +2d6, Thieves Cant, Weapon Mastery, Cunning Action, Steady Aim, Assassinate, Assassin's Tools. Racial traits: Darkvision 60 ft., Keen Smell, Regeneration of Proficiency Bonus + Constitution Bonus per 6 seconds, Multiattack, Natural Attacks - Bite, Claws. Natural Armor of 10 + Constitution modifier. Languages: Common, Thieves Cant.
Every single number had changed. We had gotten both stronger and stupider. That's not how games were supposed to work!
I closed the screen, unwilling to look at the overwhelming amount of information frustrating me.
Everything was trying to leave a bad taste in my mouth…
Except for the bucket of food. That was fine…
We just needed a bit… More?
The bucket was empty.