I reappeared with a rush of wind a moment later in a dark cavern to Sleeping Willow rolling her eyes. “He doesn’t even need the chant.” Drifting Cloud looked back, aghast, “my dear, we don’t NEED salt, but what would be the point of our lives without it?!”

Half a dozen of the old people immediately informed Drifting Cloud that we do, in fact, need salt to live. Without a hint of shame, he responded “we don’t NEED marjoram, but what would would be- no, that’s nothing... We don’t need cargo shorts? We don’t need spleens?...”

I ignored his muttering as I looked around. The old people were relighting the nearby torches which the teleportation spell had extinguished. This was about the dungeoniest dungeon I had ever seen. To be fair, it was also the only dungeon I’d ever seen. Well, I guess I was the first dungeon I’d ever seen. Whoa! See, this is what we should be shooting for! The flickering torches, the damp mossy walls, the hauntingly echoey dripping of water in the distance. Manny 1, would you like to live in a place like this?

Come on, Manny knows he deserves better than some Wolfenstein knockoff, this cave is like 95% “it’s dangerous to go alone, here take this.’ Wolfenstein was nothing like this I reminded myself. Fine, Hexen? Nope not even close. Chex Quest? Wow, my memories of 1990s shooter aesthetics were way off.

I quite like it. Very classic. Yeah, well of course you like it, you won’t have to live here. I mean, I kinda will. Just because my conscious is localized in the human body doesn’t mean that I’m not also fully you.

Ooh, I replied, is this is our first disagreement? How exciting. Are we going to slowly diverge and each become the final boss in our respective routes? That would be fun. Maybe we can have a big moment where we’re about to kill each other, but at the last minute we realized that we’ve both been manipulated, and we have to overcome our biases and the tragic burden of our pasts and learn to forgive the parts of ourselves that we despise, and come together in an uneasy but ultimately cathartic alliance to defeat the secret boss.

Sounds dope. I’ll get started on hating you now. You’re a big jerk and your mom is weird. True. She is an odd bird.

Under the returning light, I could see that there were bits and pieces of detritus scattered about the floor of the cave. Elf Wood noticed my glances around and chuckled “you look like you’ve never been in a dungeon before. We all know that’s not possible though.

Drifting Cloud began to speak, regaling us with the tale of the time a particularly nasty creature hit him with a public nudity spell. “It lasted thirteen days. I cleared the dungeon a bit too quickly after that, so I had to spend a week topside without a top or bottomside if you know what I mean.”

Sleeping Willow blushed.

“And that’s the week I met my wife.”

Sleeping Willow punched him.

“And that’s the week I met my wife’s parents.”

I waited for the follow up punch, but none came. “Wait, really?” I asked. Iron Bear grinned proudly “they animated my baby crib to hover around his middleparts wherever he went.”

One of the other villagers added “well, his grandparents' crib at that time. We had to transmute the dang thing much larger to hold a baby Iron Bear’s size.

“And much smaller to hold Drifting Clouds middlebits!” cackled Elf Wood.

Sleeping Willow rolled her eyes and shook her head.

As the talk drifted to the mechanics of the spell in question, and how they had to pin sheets around the sides of the crib because “viewing danglies normal, and viewing danglies through prison bars” “waren’t much diffrn’t”, I resumed my conversation with myself:

By the way, if we do wind up going on split routes, what should we do if one of us becomes evil?

Well I don’t want to be evil.

Me neither.

I don’t know that anyone WANTS to become evil. Hell, the more evil the person, the less they can see or admit that they are. Maybe being able to see from an outside perspective how you could be called evil is a lifehack to keep from becoming evil.

You can probably also tell that you’re evil if you join MS13.

Ooh, fantasy cartels! Let’s join rival wizarding gangs! I call Crypts!

Dang, I guess I'm stuck with Blood(sacrifices) than.

Red dungeon sus. Was spelling out ‘blood sacrifices’ with fingers. Didn't even know you could spell that with only two hands.

Obviously, we summon Shiva the Destroyer to do our gang signs. You can spell out anything with six arms.

She’s also great for couples massages. Gotta put those extra arms to good use somehow.

While we were engaging in our diamonologue, Drifting Cloud was continuing to explain the technicalities of the current dungeon using what I assumed were technical terms. Possibly also mixed with a few blatant lies, given how often Sleeping Willow was glaring at him or smacking the back of his head.

The more he spoke, the more confused he looked at the lack of recognition on my face. The other town members began whispering to each other; those whom I’d noticed flashes of sadness and worry from back at the pub seemed to be convincing the others to join them in whatever mindset was causing the knitted brows and general air of... it looked like pity?

Drifting Cloud stopped speaking and looked at me than at his wife. Something passed between them without words and Sleeping Willow stared at me with a furrowed brow and nodded. Drifting Cloud glanced around, meeting the gazes of the other towns people briefly and then looking back at me with his mouth drawn in a hard line. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them, looked me in the eyes, and said “please understand, this is for the best.”

A sword popped out of nowhere into his hand.

He walked a few steps forward toward me.

My eyes lit up with fear as I backpeddled away.

The sword reached out. Waist height, but slightly to the right of my stomach.

The sword swung.

I remained frozen like a rabbit in the path of an oncoming car.

I felt nothing.

The sword hadn’t hit me.

The sword hadn’t hit me. I finally noticed the reverberations of the loud clang the flat of the sword had made when it hit a metalic object embedded partially in the wall.

Sleeping Willow whispered “please don’t hate us.”

With a rush of wind, the nearest torches went out and everyone was gone.

I was alone in the dark.