Hallow, hallow! I am blessed, truly by the divine. Truly I have been chosen. I walk towards the edge of the pit and look down at the hole that so much sand cascades down into. There, deep down below I see the sand that falls down the edges of the pit, leaking away, down into a tiny hole in the very center; down towards a hidden passage. How? How did they know this was here? I don`t know. But I am grateful. I am grateful. I would have never found this here on my own. Never in a million years.

　　I sigh, realizing a lot of things.

　　I`ve been a bad friend, that`s why I feel lonely. I should. I`ve been working so hard to climb out of the dungeon, that I`ve lost sight of what`s around myself. Nobody wants to be friends with an obsessed, selfish workaholic like me. Sure. There is a virtue in it. A purity. To working hard, to doing my best, to wanting to escape to this new, brighter dawn. But what good is it, if I get there and then I open my eyes at the precipice of the dungeon and I see the sun for the first time alone. What good is it, if I`m standing there alone, with nobody to see it with me? I suppose that`s rather selfish of me too though. Hallow. I bend my legs and lean forward to look deeper into the pit. They`ve been working hard too.

　　Something touches my back and I look, my skeleton friend has placed his palm on my spine. He nods to me and before I can respond, his hand presses me down and I fall, only barely managing to land on my feet. As I slide down towards the darkness, just barely managing to keep my balance upright, I wave to my skeleton friends and they wave back to me. Good night friends, sleep tight. I`ll wake you when the morning comes. Promise.

　　I release the magic and they all fall down into a pile of bones in an instant, as they return to the place that I stole them from. Each and every skull adorned with a bright, wide smile. The same smile that they`ve always had, because they know the truth. They knew it all along. All the lessons the desert had to teach me were already in-front of my face. I just didn`t want to use my eyes. I blink, and fall into the hole.

　　I`ve got places to go and people to be.

　　My feet press against the stones below, sand crunching beneath myself as I slow my fall just in time with a flap of my wings. Another tunnel. Getting up, I walk forward and down it until eventually; I see the single staircase built into the rock. With a sigh of relief, I press my foot down against it, stepping down extra hard for emphasis, as I look up towards the low ceiling above myself, from which I know the dungeon-master is watching. My foot slaps down with a loud, audible slap as I raise a single finger to point upwards at the nothing above from which I feel their constant, scornful gaze.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

　　"I`m getting out of this messed up dungeon and I`m taking you with me too!"

　　My voice reverberates around myself, before being swallowed up by the silence and dissipating like a ghost into the night. There is no response, but I expected none. I lower my gaze and narrow my eyes and begin to climb the stairs, filled with hallow determination. I wonder where the hero-party is right now? I hope they don`t clear the dungeon soon. I want to keep going a little longer. I`m not ready to sleep just yet. Just a little more.

　　The pace of my strides increases, as I climb and I think about those people the desert showed me. Was that real? Or did I flip my lid? Was the desert some emergent property of the dungeon itself, or was it just my frazzled brain going loopy under the sun? I don`t know. It doesn`t matter. My steps ring out. It doesn`t matter. Because I`m going to do better this time. It doesn`t matter what`s above myself. Floor eighty-one. It doesn`t matter what`s below myself. I`m getting out of here. I`m getting us all out of here.

　　A light makes itself visible ahead of me, just above, just near the edge of my sight and I cross through, as it envelops me whole. Its strange, greenish glow fills my eyes with a sickly radiance that I feel should unease me greatly. But it doesn`t. I don`t let it.

　　My foot reaches the next floor as I feel the heavy, foul wind surge against my body immediately. No. It isn`t wind. It`s breath. Crinkling my nose, I step forward and look at the great thing before me that stares down at me in return, having already sensed my comparatively minuscule presence long ago.

　　It`s giant. Grand. A dragon, beyond the scale of even papa, sitting on a great mound of indiscriminate mass. Rubble. Coins. Dead trees. Old armor. Bones. Corpses. Jewels. Broken furniture. Anything, everything is all jumbled together into a literal mountain, as I raise my head, my eyes still following the mass of the leviathan, my neck straining all the way back as I finally reach the top and see its giant, yellow eyes, staring down at me from above.

　　It breathes out once. A single, short exhale from its nostril powering against me with rank odor. I raise my hands to block my face as the gale surges through my wings and hair.

　　Something shifts, as if a new mountain itself were emerging. My eyes grow wide as a second dragon appears behind it. No. No. A second head of the same body. Each massive skull alone the size of papa and then some. What is this? This monstrosity. A third head rises up from the pile and now all three lower themselves towards me to look. Each eye of the six alone bigger than my entire body is.

　　I feel a fear, my legs feel weak.

　　No. I clench my fists. It doesn`t matter how big it is, how monstrous. I step forward towards the titanic hydra, towards the largest, most monstrous creature I have ever seen and raise a single hand towards it to wave.

　　"Hey, guy. How`s it going?" I ask the colossal hydra. Its lizard eyes flick and turn thin as they watch me.