They set down the halls. Same bowel gear wall-textures. Clearly two-dimensional – this was a fake three-dimensional universe. Same patterns repeated. Same space. Same atmosphere – demonic – under everything. They went on. The same corridor. They'd have to – keep on it, keep forward, more enemies, more turnings – what was time here? It didn't exist. – It wasn't anything. Maybe only a slave like he was. To this.

The Hero for Killing the Demon who Dreamed Him said, really, at the Golden Bow, “But I've been here before. Who you are, though, is actually an interesting question; final purpose etc. – Are you made for this space too? As I clearly am. This place. – I've been here before.”

The youth, by his side, scanning the halls for ammunition the same way he was, said, “I'm not for here. Except... I don't know. I'm not for here. Killing them – maybe, but no – I'm not for here.”

“You got magical organs too?” he asked, flicking his throat testicle – immediately regretting it – his throat testicle was now sore because he'd flicked it.

Laughing, “You hurt your ball bag didn't you?”

“Yes.”

– First subject, “No, I, that is – maybe I am one. Not ball bag. Supernatural organ. – What do we know, in these halls, Hero? Might be there's a box of memories, in one of these angles; next to your shells. – Let me have anything you can't explode out twin barrels. Maybe he's – it has – got them?”

“Who/what?”

“My memories. The fucker who put us in here, as you might say.”

He was more uncouth than the youth, it was true, “The Uncouth Youth.”

“– Add that to your collection.”

“I'm not even young.”

“What?”

“35? What do you think?”

He looked doubtful – like it might be... higher.

“I'm not saying it's been easy! These slimy underworld reprobates have scratched my face up. – I like you, youth, but debate my – despite everything – good-looks, is – objective, now, good-looks – is a direct corridor to us not being... friends, anymore, and in these halls, we need to get along; you and I – the remaining subjects of this benighted kingdom are not disposed to mix, nor... that is... mingle.”

He was just talking. The oppression, behind everything, the walls; the dread implicit in everything, the sense of a fake repeating infinity that wouldn't end; of the compulsions beneath it all: this sense of their being – even if they got out of here, only replacing this maze for another, this sense of... being trapped. But, being trapped, however somehow despite it all... in something, even psychologically pleasant.

It was pleasure.

This was one of the many contradictions inherent.

And even if he could distract himself momentarily from the endless internal ruminations and the endless external retaliations – he might. It was just that. Repeated.

They kept on down the first hall on the left, they were inside it – scanning for shells, other exciting items/implements; just by walking through: this seemed to be how this universe functioned; they could either absorb its various properties or use it – if it was a weapon, to shoot at things.

Reality reduced. Reality reduced to these shapes and repetitions. Clearly for – it was all implicit, it was all obvious and immediate in the atmosphere; in the halls – he barely had to run any/ of this anyway automatically – as it was anyway – past supernatural organs that confirmed all of this.

Soothing.

Walls covered in bowels. Gushing organ fountains out the wet anuses of mangled demonic type repeated enemy varieties. Clones of each other; not even unique – the same thing over:

All he knew: one fake soul operated every baby toilet, another the spiders – he – it didn't matter. Copied and repeated. All he knew: one fake soul operated every baby toilet, another the spiders – he – it didn't matter. Copied and repeated. It hardly mattered if he had annihilated a billion fake souls or only ten thousand. He was killing nothing in continuation in repetition in this fake space all the complexity of life reduced out of. Even to halls, straight, and two dimensional – that took you forward in them. No complications. It was merely you and your projectiles, between the hordes of pathological maladies, that you killed/pressing/pulling a trigger/button.

Clearly it was entertainment. But for whom?

The demon who dreamed him?

No alternative; no answer but this, his organs told him so, in halls that – no difference between these basic realities; the entertainments; the distractions and deceptions of a demon, and his own mind.

What was such a mind that corresponded to this? What was he?

“You ever think that everything is fake?”

The corridor stretched before them, repeated patterns in flat bowels and gears on the wall textures. Flat. So familiar. These repeated patterns. – That they barely saw what they represented anymore; barely saw the pink bowel snakes; the intestinal ropes snagged in gears and other repeated non-interpretable mechanics. Just shapes.

“You ever think that everything is fake?”

The youth said nothing.

“Or that you are?”

The youth said nothing. Then. “I've indulged that feeling, of being fake myself, of being nothing but the correspondent, the other side of the game board, of these things here. Nothing but the reversed image. I've indulged that as well.”

“So – no?”

He searched the gaze of the Dream Slave, with a kind of sincerity that was almost paralysing, “No there is something real.”

“Where?”

“Inside.” Silence for a while, a long while, then, “this is a planet of trials – if you want to be – let's reduce it into something manageable that we can handle; not the same way they do, in these halls, making reality itself just,” he indicated just this, “just this – we can handle this concept. I'm to be something. I don't think I've ever said this. I'm five minutes old and yet – I don't know I've ever said this. Something terrible and inevitable will tell me what. I. am. Who. And it won't be like this. It won't be pleasure disguised as horror. – It won't be disguised... at all. I'll just suffer. Die, likely, and then...”

“You'll know.”

“I'll... know.”

“You seem like a happy-go-lucky sort of guy, but you're actually a miserable fuck, aren't you?”

He laughed. He said yes. They kept on in the halls.

One thing commenced the process of approaching them on the horizon of a hall so long they couldn't see it's end.

At first they of course could not interpret it, but the closer they got the more it coalesced in their minds into something recognisable.

It was this:

It was this:

A door.

“It's a door.”

“We're excited about a door.” This was a comment.

“It's a door. I see it's a door.”

“– It is a door.”

Far on the horizon, still – the entire corridor? It ended in that door? This corridor had an end, they saw, approaching it. And it was a door.

“Don't – walk that –”

The black tiled floor surface – in repetitions – was all black tiles – apart from the one he had just walked across: dark brown.

It opened the bowel-ceilings.

Bats with four eyed human-faces and livers for wings fell out the top wall-texture – eight/ten/eleven – five Spider Ears,

and half a dozen toilets –

“Hit the spiders!”

Stepping up the hall back behind them – a sack of shells had fallen out the ceiling and hit him too, thank – the Hero noticed – unleashing immediately exploding two bats mid-flight, sending liver wings splat against opposite wall-textures.

The Golden Lad was already flying arrows at the spiders from distance, both of them running backwards stepping side to side avoiding the flying strands of web that once encountered trapped a personage in soporific piles of debilitating netting that didn't end until their pussies shat eggs inside you eyes and torso and later you exploded an unconsenting baby factory for satisfying the weird needs of demons –

– it wasn't like they could love their babies or anything; this wasn't normal reproduction.

But tossing aside these useless thoughts, running backwards barking his super[natural]shotgun at the fucks approaching. They saw the first, slow toilets, shamblers, back behind the Spider Ears approaching behind; the first strange attack of the bowel bats. They fired bowels.

Flat splat against his field armour. It shouldn't – and yet new numbers between him and reality displayed, here, an indication of what clearly was his health/vitality – no longer maxed at 100.

Despite his field armour clearly having managed to resist it, the splat against his chest – in some semi-material sense he could give a fuck he clearly didn't understand in this moment, subtracted the numbers of his categorisable vigour. Side to side he strafed avoiding the flying bowel polyps, filled with bile – maybe it was this – out the mouths of the four-eyed bowel bats. Their wings were livers and their torsos were bowels.