Notch/Pull/Loose – golden arrows struck, and sometimes missed, the madly darting aerial demons – the air filled with – running backward madly further from the door their obvious goal at least in this portion of reality –

– web strands and bowel pockets, shattered the air and – the webs – pulled the arrows down in messy non-returnable pulp stacks on the floor.

The Golden Bow would be reduced to his poignard, shortly, no arrows, and this, for some reason – this was not who the Golden Urchin was – made the Dream Slave mad.

Charging forward barking in repeated auto-reload the insatiable super[natural]shotgun, gears and eldritch lights trilling across its surface, the Hero for Killing the Demon who Dreamed Him ducked, weaved, strafed side-to-side forward between the demons lying to him their various directions.

– But he knew, he felt it in his glands, where to step; when to stop; when – he ducked past flying web strands, pointing his shotgun at his feet – nearly, rupturing arachnid matter up the shop – forward, he leapt, he jumped; another spider/turned back, he –

shotgunned its arse to smithereens and bits immediately behind that. He was through the back layer of spiders, shattering a toilet baby's skull and corpus in fragments. He reversed, back through strafed flying bowel-polyps, air saturated with them, took two in the middle – health-vitality 50 – ran forward through various strands, snatched half a dozen golden arrows; still trailing web strands he avoided touching, back to the Golden Bow, “here, but watch that,”

All five notched and loosed trailing the spider ear strands he avoided – scuffing insufficient to stupefy – simultaneously dispatching the five remaining airborne demon bats, ending square inside a baby toilet that exploded various varieties of shits and web strands: melting them mid air in the boiling crap that coated him.

The Golden Bow's arrows returned –

Atmosphere cleared of bowel polyps, the Dream Slave ran straight at the remaining – 2 – Spider Ears, in close contact bucking shotgun shells in their welcoming corpses; back through the back layer, confronting the beautifully predictable baby shamblers, whose bodies were faeces and whose faces were foetuses – toilets filled with the shat parts from bottom holes.

70 health – he'd ran over something in a corpse he didn't notice. An arrow seared a baby face off, and the four remaining were equally half disintegrated in one massive wide range blast of the super[natural]shotgun; backup/up avoiding the indication of what they would throw boiling at him – he was back in again, barking the bowels of his shotgun once more at the half-disintegrated demon bags, finishing the explosion of happy shit matter with the final blast that showed a pulpy halo of weird matters mid air – he avoided, because it was mainly shit.

He could breathe again.

Empty.

Just halls.

Breathing.

His shotgun rose and fell, rose and fell, in the breathing merely a fake artificial rhythm.

The Golden Bow – “Do you not feel, Hero Dreamt, that this place is becoming all the more... artificial?”

The Hero for Killing the Demon who Dreamed Him. “Even more?”

“They are layering yet further layers of this fake reality. Health. Vitality. Numbers, merely.”

“– The same time they're adding more demons.”

“Fake complexity.”

“– You're right.” Why? What did this satisfy? For what ultimate design? And –

He felt what it was to be in an artificial world, momentarily. – The unmistakable presentiment of that. And. Completely absorbed. Completely inside.

And it was a strange feeling. A desperately; desperately, strange one. “It's almost like it's new,” said the Dream Slave. “– It's like it's new and they are adding the rules, adding the – new rules. The new ways in which this world will – even – function. Perhaps – forever, perhaps for a long time, perhaps for... forever. – It's like they are layering it in. They don't even know.”

The Golden Bow got a faraway look then.

“What?” he wasn't a – nothing wrong with being a female person he just wasn't – a woman, so he really didn't care what people thought; were thinking – their feelings – but – for some reason – and he didn't know why. He wanted to know who he was, too. The Golden Bow – a lot more than he cared about who he actually/technically was. And he actually was him. This was the person he was. Him. He was the him signified by the pronoun him. And yet he gave more a care about finding out who... The Golden Bow. Was. Actually. Really finally. – And this was what he was thinking.

“It's something you said. Everything is meaningful. Weirdly, here – everything is important, everything we do – matters. Even – perhaps especially – the things we say. I understand nothing... as these imprecise thoughts manifestly display. But – you're right –”

“I know I am –”

“And that is –”

“I think –”

“It's because.”

“What?”

“There's something in this idea of this being entirely new. This being entirely new – is why I'm here; and why... the biographical facts we can enumerate, once more. – Why all this. You here, obviously – why; I don't know, because –”

“Because I'm used to being erased.”

“– Is that so?”

“You could maybe want to be. I could foresee a scenario whereby someone might. – I've done things I'm not proud of. Not that I care. I'd like to remember the things I'm not proud – the most. The things I'm not proud of are probably the most entertaining memories of things I've done – that I've got. – I could foresee, but, a scenario whereby someone would wish to be erased. Not me though. I could give a care. I could give a shitty demonic care about it/that – but. What I care about – I don't care. I want to kill this thing. I can be erased. For some reason – my memories; my identity – it's not my soul.” He stopped. He'd stopped himself. They couldn't erase that. “It's just more important; my organs tell me it's so – that you have been. Erased that is or –”

“It's still there.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe it's through that door.”

“Who you are – you're saying.”

“Maybe it's through that door.”

There was a door at the end of the corridor.

They moved towards it across demon corpses.