We Can Be Heroes ...?

9

Shion watched as the adventurers continued to look downcast. They milled around the cave, forlorn and morose, not speaking, not doing anything. It was as though they expected that if they stood there long enough, some divine intervention could carry them out of this place. Shion wasn't about to accept that, not yet. She had people to think about, a responsibility to her Papa and all the others caught in the magical malaise that had them enthralled.

"This 'Arch-Necromancer'? He is powerful, yes?" She looked between them, but no-one caught her gaze. "Perhaps ... perhaps we could come to some arrangement with him? Perform a service in order to secure our freedom? Perhaps he is powerful enough to disenchant my Papa?"

Mila, sat against the wall of the cave, twiddling a stone between her fingers, gave a look of utter contempt toward Shion. It looked as though she fought to stop herself saying anything, to curse at Shion with those strange words, or to berate her for her stupidity. After a while, she simply drooped her head, saying nothing.

At the other side of the cave, Jova paced to and fro, muttering to herself as though arguing with someone. A complete contrast from the happy, light-hearted, if sexually aggressive, woman Shion first met. She avoided everyone's gaze, staring at her feet as she walked. Two paces, three, turn and pacing back the other way.

Even Dave looked lost, leaning back against a wall, singing to himself in a high-pitched, gravelly voice. A song that Shion had never heard before. As he sang, he rolled a cigarette then patted his pockets before finding a flint and steel. He crouched, setting sparks bouncing onto the wool tinder. It caught and he leaned in, lighting the cigarette before patting out the tinder with his gnarled fingers.

"So, wha' now?" He stood again, leaning a shoulder against the wall as though he had few worries. "We si'ing 'ere forever?"

"I can't stay here. My Papa needs me, even if I can't break the spell." Shion moved, standing in front of Mila. She appeared like the leader of these adventurers. "You promised you'd help."

"Listen, NPC. You aren't real. Your Papa isn't under any spell, he's just another NPC with limited dialogue. He's not real. No-one but adventurers are real." She raised a hand, knocking her knuckles against the cave wall. "This isn't real. We, the three of us, are dead in the real world. What this place is, this game, is a limbo between life and death where we have to earn our right to move to whatever afterlife we believe in. A place to work through any lingering doubts from our real lives. We lied to you, okay?"

"That's not true!" The cruelty displayed by Mila almost made Shion cry. "I am real! I think and I feel, I can love and hate. I can bleed. I can ..."

Without any warning, Mila jumped to her feet, a knife appearing in her hand, and she dived toward Shion. Only an instant reaction saved Shion from the slicing cut that Mila aimed toward her. She backed away, looking for somewhere to run, terrified that this woman now wanted to kill her. Before she could run, she tripped over a protruding part of the cave floor, falling to her back and Mila dived toward her, stopped only by Dave, cigarette in his mouth, grabbing Mila's arm.

"Don'." His half-blind eyes flickered as the smoke tickled his lashes. He stood between Mila and Shion in a relaxed stance, taking the cigarette from his mouth. "Le' the gel believe wha' she believes. I' don' hur' anythin' an' don' ge' us ou' of 'ere."

With a scowl, Mila put away the knife and looked around Dave's painfully thin body toward Shion. Trembling, Shion scrambled back a few feet, only for her hand to fall onto nothing. Catching herself before she fell, she gazed down into a hole as black as the one they had entered on the surface. It appeared Mila had given up trying to kill her, turning away from Dave.

"I wasn't going to kill her. I just wanted to show that she doesn't bleed." Her shoulders drooped and she slumped back against the wall where she had sat before. "We don't need a delusional NPC blathering on all the time. We're not getting out of here unless someone else finds the place. Maybe we can escape as they open the entrance."