The door started to glow a bioluminescent green, thin delicate vines rubbing away from the center and embellishing the stone frame. The smell of moss engulfed her sense for a harsh second and the door slowly opened with a rumble. From here she could see the start of a stone room. There was nothing inherently scary about it, the entrance left her distantly inquisitive on what they would find. The ground was gone of the soft dirt and dust and was replaced by smooth stone like a rock tumbled through the sea.
A quick crinkle of metal and then silence as a dark figure of similar stature walked swiftly in a forward direction. Vaelin, Darnell, protagonist, and her current fixation took the lead again, or more like all she could do was follow. She knew it was not of his volition and that he was eager with his own wants in mind. And those wants what were they of? Did he even feel? Whenever she read about an aloof protagonist she found herself experiencing peculiarities of her own. She was hardly smart herself, her thoughts like cold plastic tinsel swaying, weak and cheap, and her feelings numb and surreal. Her thoughts lacked a grip on her emotions, and even when they did there was no process to label them. Again, cheap and weak. So, she read, on and on and on eventually her fingers gained muscle memory and her thumb would twitch. Essentially, she escaped her reality. her thumb twitched.
No, she wasn't numb to feeling. That was too strong of wording for she could cry, talk, laugh, and give comfort but her emotions regarding reality itself left her drifting. Who was she? And why did she need to know? Would anyone question her, was it a need? It probably was because when she was not reading, lost in a tinier world, (giving her the illusion of comprehensibility before remembering someone so human, like her, made the story ) she was consumed with her own potential. Why did she have so much in her body? How could anyone not live to be happy? But here she was and sometimes calling herself stubborn simplified everything. So, she followed him through the door, a sound emanating from her one step on the smooth frigid floor.
Her steps clacking and clicking while her vision bobbed like a small boat on a calm day at sea into the broad back of the protagonist. She imagined the texture of his hair on her fingertips and wondered what would make him, him. Nothing about him and his fantastical achievements would ever stand out when he was the generic story itself. Vaelin, Darnell, and again the protagonist she intended to fixate on was not himself without a reader's perception. She looked at his built back, wide and sharp, and felt him tiny because he was not real. A funny thing considering most of the time she felt flimsy and fake herself. If she stopped staring at him would he cease to exist? Was it too pretentious of her to consider she was the only tether keeping him from being a figment of imagination? Who else was thinking of fake people, burying their identity and projecting on someone who had no potential themselves to consider the possibility? No ability to comprehend such a perturbed vicariousness, because again they were fake. They were fictional characters.
She paused a stutter in her step, a deep breath that was a second too slow before starting back up again and kept walking and kept staring.
A blue glow took over the vicinity emanating from inside the smooth cavern. She noticed the glow started from underneath the grey rocks like an underlayer of skin, the grey part of the rock revealing itself to be opaque. She was fascinated by the texture and visuals of the wall. It begged for her to pet it.
"Don't touch," her reaching hand interrupted by the harsh remark.
She flopped her arm down and looked at his face or the third of it showing. He was squinting his amber eyes. His gaze didn't look like one of contempt or judgment but almost as if he was trying to sparse out details.
"Why are you squinting?" The voice from her mouth had a different tonality than the one she was used to. It was clear and considering they were in a cavern, the voice boomed.
Vaelin squinted but this time it was one of questioning judgment. She could see the minute tension from his hand on his sheathed sword. She felt this dream was taking too long, she was too stationary. With a hop in her step, she peered into his face, expecting a glow even if there wasn't one so far from his eyes but the amber appeared only as a color. Vaelin did not flinch but did stop squinting. His sheathed sword buckled back.
He turned around and continued walking.
"Where are the others?" she caught herself, "I mean to say, where may the others be?"
She slid her tongue on the roof of her mouth, grimacing at her wording. Her dream while coding her looks must've coded her speech too. After a while, it wasn't hard to miss that she wasn't in her body. It wasn't too unusual considering her other dreams. One time she was a dragon that coveted a princess, it was super weird to gobble up humans like soft fleshy gushers.
Her mouth pressed together unsure what she would say next. She hummed a shortlapsed disorganized tune, not giving it much further thought. It was surprisingly peaceful, her pace fastened and she stood to Vaelins right. In dreams, the concept of time was inconsequential however she felt the need to search for a clock, she could feel the way time lasted and affected her.
"I'm bored," she complained without restraint and thought.
Vaelin stopped before walking again. The stop was so abrupt that she stumbled in a step before continuing right by his side.
"You're bored?" It was a question of politeness.
if she had never read a little about Vaeling, she would have assumed he was stating something given his lack of curiosity oozing out of the question. In dreams where intuition was everything she felt that her answer would not reap admonishments.
"Yes!" She tilted her hand and quickly clasped her hands together, her sudden enthusiasm filling the smooth dark cavern.
She made little steps in succession, the satisfying noise clicking right into her ears and undoubtedly into Vaelin's.
He kissed his teeth 'tch,' and brought a finger up to his mouth, searching for something in the distance with a cautionary shift of his head but she could see. She had been seeing the surroundings since the beginning. She flourished her arm out.
"There's nothing," her hand pointed out into the distance, "nothing at all, if there is what would it be?"
Her lips curled, her voice a little too tuneful for her liking. Her words again organized into a fashion she wasn't used to.
"You were silent before," Vaelin whispered, yanking his sword from its sheath and pointing it out ahead of him ready to attack.
His amber eyes perpetually searched through the darkness, like a bug digging upward from the sand, a senseless journey. She turned her eyes on his sword with its dull silver catching the soft blue light before fading away like dripping water.
"Okay, I'll be quiet," She eyed him from her peripheral.
In dreams where intuition was everything, she felt something was coming. A scraping noise met both their ears. She could imagine the object making the noise methodically swerving and swishing fast, like a pointed stick but the sound was too sharp to come from something natural. The metallic-like skidding noise came closer.
It was hard to describe it as a pretty creature. She felt her lips pulling back trying not to cringe. In its knuckly hand was a long bone with a pointed end pressed to the ground. Was that a hobgoblin?
Her wrist turned and her finger pointed, "what the hell is that?"
This time Vaelin glared at her with his sword ready to swing in the creature's direction despite the still safe distance.
"Is your adventure guild pass for games?"
At the hint of personality in his voice, she laughed.
He wasn't wrong, on her phone she did play MMORPG's, it was also about time she woke up.
A/n-
fuck. anway, weird wording but like idk, my hands are off, I'm throwing it. also, also. nvm.
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Isekai dump
Fantasycrappy isekai MC's that don't have progress, so, I call them one-shots, despite having an outline and plot that I don't want to write out. "What up. It's me, truck-(put honorific here), the god. it was never about how many people I crashed into, i...