Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 302: A red string (Patreon)

Fresh isn’t really sure what it is that she’s feeling right now.

Not because of the world-ending crisis brought on by herself, but rather because of… this.

She ‘blinks’ looking around herself at the white void that they find themselves inside of. Well… also that isn’t exactly it either.

After the four of them had gone down the shortcut that the dungeon-master had left, a shortcut that leads all the way down to the entity’s home in the void, they had found another thing. A gate, like the one marking the entrance of every dungeon. But this one was smaller, less grand. It was a simple stone archway, carved into the wall of the dungeon and inside of it was a white, ghostly fog.

But it was a warm, thick, rich white. Like the fluff of a fat cloud on a sunny day, like the wool of a healthy sheep. This was assumed to be the exit, the way out of the dungeon from the bottom.

Sure, there was a sliver of temptation on Fresh’s part to go back up the stairs, just one floor, just to take a peek at what is on level ninety-nine. But Jubilee had grabbed her hand and yanked her in after them into the fog.

And now. Here they are.

Well. ‘Here’ - ‘they’ - ‘are’. Each of those words is loaded, really.

‘Here’ is… well. Fresh blinks, looking around themselves. It’s like a current, like a stream of soft particulate. It’s like they’re underwater in a calm river that pushes towards the west, carrying the four of them along with it beneath its surface. Prismatic, pastel colored bubbles and lights, coming from sources that she can’t identify, float all around their odd gestalts.

As for they ‘they’; after entering the portal, some odd transition seemed to happen. That being that for, whatever dungeon-magicky reason, the four of them seem to have lost their bodies.

‘Are’, finally can be summed up as they are floating along the current together as oddly stringy blobs that have vaguely person-like shapes. They look like dolls made out of yarn, but it’s all goo. Except for one thick, red string that connects them to each other. Like an artery from a heart.

So they ‘are’, but she isn’t exactly sure what it is that they are.

Fresh looks down at her weird, wibbly-wobbly hands, wondering if this is what life is like for Shamrock all of the time?

“Are we dead?” asks Fresh, floating upwards above her friends as the odd, white-water current carries them away from everything. “Did we run into a trap or something, guys?” she asks, feeling the warmth of the stream. It reminds her of their bath in the west. It’s so comfortable and soothing. It’s easing and warm and calming.

The blobby thing that is Basil looks up at her, grabbing her and pulling her back down before she floats away. Fresh tilts her head, looking at the priestess. The strings that make up her body are all tangly and mixed up. Some go left and some go right, all of them twisting in and out in complicated knots and bends as they connect to their origin somewhere deep inside of her, where she can’t see it.

“We’re in the spirit world,” says Basil.

“Fuck off, Basil,” sighs Jubilee. “There’s no such thing.”

“Look at yourself!” argues Basil, yanking on the red string and pulling Fresh down towards herself. Jubilee looks down at their body. It’s tightly compacted, the strings all run out into singular, unified directions in tight bundles. They all are frayed and broken and cut, but it looks as if they had been tied back together by intricate handiwork, coming to reform the things that should be. A repatched, repaired and resewn entity.

“It’s probably just some poison fog or something,” says Jubilee. “We’re just hallucinating.”

“Please!” argues Basil, gesturing to all around them, her arms wobbling as she holds them out to her sides.

The current continues to carry the four of them to some other place.

“I kind of like it,” says Fresh. “What about you, Shamrock?” she asks, looking at the man.

In a strange twist, he is perhaps the most human-like of them all. Despite his ebbing and flowing form, his strings come together as clean, solid, thick lines that make up a large man.

“I feel light,” he says, drifting upside down.

“Wait,” says Fresh, just having realized something. “If this is the spirit world -”

“It’s not,” interrupts Jubilee.

“- then how are we going to get out? I thought if you went to the south, it was one way?” asks Fresh. Jubilee and Basil exchange a worried look, before looking over towards Shamrock. Seeing their confusion, the man shrugs and lets the current carry him further.

“Mires trap,” explains the man. “Currents flow.”

“The current?” asks Basil. Shamrock nods. “Wow…” she bubbles, her body becoming a little looser as she looks around them. Fresh isn’t sure, but she feels like some of the knots become undone and here there on Basil’s form.

“Fuck it,” says Jubilee, swimming up and leaning backwards against Fresh. “We’re not in the dungeon. So I guess we’re allowed to die here.”

“We’re not dying,” says Basil. “We’re moving.”

Jubilee groans. “I’d rather die. I’m sick of moving.”

“Good thing we don’t have any boxes this time,” jokes Fresh. The others look at her and she realizes what she just said. In light of what happened only half an hour ago at most, maybe that was tasteless. “Sorry.”

Basil seems somewhat bothered, but Jubilee starts laughing.

Fresh looks down at the red string that ties them together and tilts her head. She touches it and it wobbles and quivers. “What’s this?” she asks. She feels like she’s seen this before somewhere?

She tilts her head, trying to remember as she looks at the odd thing. It’s looped around them, running over one of their arms and through the other's waist and around one of their knees and so on and so on. In some fashion or another, they’re all literally connected to another. “Ah!” The tailor’s shop in the north. The mannequins had a string like this too.

“It’s fate,” says Basil.

Jubilee shakes their head. “It’s a fucking string. It’s just more weird, cryptic, cosmic bullshit.”

“Bonds,” replies Shamrock.

Fresh likes all of those ideas in different ways, but she has a favorite one. “I think it’s love,” she says.

“Hey, Shamrock,” says Jubilee. “Grab me and throw me off that way, will you?” they ask. Shamrock nods and picks them up. Fresh yelps, jumping forward and stopping the man before he can go through with it. Basil lets out a surprised sound as the red string pulls her along and the four of them crash into each other.

“Agh!” Jubilee lets out an annoyed sound as they’re squished between the three of them.

“Sorry, Jubilee!” says Fresh as the four of them begin to tumble together down the river. All of them are kind of tangled up now, the string and their own ‘bodies’ having become caught here and there into one big mess. “I’m stuck, guys,” she says, pulling herself away a little while the others try to as well. But they’re literally entangled.

Jubilee seems to be taking this well. Maybe the water has a calming effect of some kind? They lean to the side, resting their elbow on Shamrock’s shoulder. “On the plus side, I guess Basil finally lost her virginity now?”

“WILL YOU SHUT UP?!” yells the priestess, lunging at Jubilee. The two of them hit each other and the ball spins around over and over, becoming even more mixed up.

“I kind of like this, actually,” says Fresh. She fought her way to the middle of the mess, so she’s kind of just stuck in the middle of it all. It’s very warm.

“That’s very like you,” says Basil. Though Fresh isn’t sure from where her voice is coming from.

“Being dead is really abstract, huh?” says Fresh, looking at the inside of her friends.

Shamrock’s head pops up next to her. “Life is meant to be light,” he explains and Fresh nods, agreeing with that. Free from the shackles of the world, free from the shackles of their mortal bodies and the laws that govern them and their existences, there is something to be said for existing as an abstract concept as… a soul?

Fresh thinks that that’s what they are right now. These are their souls and they’re all gooey and sticky and warm and stuck together and she couldn’t be happier with her life. Honestly, she doesn’t even know what she was so sad about anymore?

“Hey, guys?” asks Fresh, interrupting the bickering happening between Basil and Jubilee.

“Yeah?” they ask, turning her way. Fresh lets out a smug smirk as they look away from each other, because she can see the little strings coming from their bodies and creeping towards each other in secret to connect while nobody is looking.

“Did we die?”

“Huh?” asks Basil. “No, why would you think that?”

“Where are we?” asks Fresh, looking around. “How did we get here?”

“Huh? This?” asks Basil, she and Jubilee look at each other. “We’re heading to the central-city, we cleared the dungeon, remember?”

Fresh blinks, gasping. “Oh yeah!” she says, starting to laugh. “I completely forgot!”

Jubilee sighs. “You idiot. It was like… ten minutes ago? Remember? The big dragon?”

“He fought well,” says Shamrock.

“Sure as fuck did,” says Jubilee. “Fucking lizard. I can’t believe we didn’t just give him Basil and call it a day.”

“Please! As if we wouldn’t have given him you. You have the perfect face for a lizard, a dragon couldn’t help but love you,” counters the priestess.

“Fuck you, you kook!” barks Jubilee.

“No, fuck you, you gremlin!” replies Basil.

All the while, the strings of their bodies continue to grow into another.

Fresh smiles. Life is good. She has good friends, she has a good life, she has purpose and meaning and warmth more and more days just like this one, bright, happy, adventurous days, to look forward to.

The current shifts and she closes her eyes as they float towards a light, towards what seems to be the ‘other side’, the exit and she says a quiet thanks to her patron deity, for allowing her to live such a blessed life. Basil and Jubilee stop bickering and they all move together, holding onto the red string as they are thrown back out of the spirit-world and arrive in the central-city.

[Adventuring {I have come with the north-wind}]

[Adventuring {I have been to the western-mountain}]

[Adventuring {I have walked on the eastern-shores}]

[Adventuring {Accomplished adventurer}]

[Adventuring {The heart of the world}]