He said nothing.

“– I don't know what it does. But some point... it'll broach some kind of subject, something it wants. If it's not already. It clearly works with this ear-face-colour-thing, in lies, but...” disturbing thoughts fought to rise to the surface, “No clue? You? – The Golden Bow?”

“Just that. These corridors. It's a title more than a name... but I see you are familiar with titles.”

“I'm for killing the demon who is dreaming us here. That's all.”

“I think I'm to find out who... I am. – If we're being dreamed by a demon...”

“I'm – same time/same place – with you. This might just be the way. And in terms of any potential team-up. And – any more of those spider ears – there's an open vacancy for archers.”

The youth observed the weapon he held “That's a shotgun. – Did you know that? Supernatural,” weird lights trilled off it. It was filigreed with weird organic gears and the bizarre combination mechanical and organic material suggestive of this place in which they were unfortunately trapped. Aesthetically.

“It's a shotgun – I don't know how I know, but you're right. It's the weapon for here. Apparently. – And it explodes demons quite nicely so – I don't care why,” he had a sword on his back, “– I'm going to kill him/it with it. There's also ammunition, scattered, in here, for it. I need that too. – That's the stuff it shoots in their brains; makes them explode all pretty.” He stopped. “Look, we're for killing these things, and taking these corridors – whatever they are, and in whatever fashion. – All the way to him. – And we're going to kill him. The demon who dreams us. This place. Us. – This place. Here. At least. At the end of it. We're going to kill the demon dreaming us.”

They were at a crossroads in corridors; in three separate branches. They stood next each other, and looked up.

There was a rule to this. Three corridors before him. A system of them. A two-dimensional imposed fake reality. Yet familiar. – Yet completely familiar and even – comfortable. He was made for this, indeed being here was who he was, in these halls; forward, through demons – scattering their bowels at wall-textures rupturing flying spleens and other fragments in the showers of biological materials he'd set flying there. Fine. This was combat. This was repetition. This was muscle memory. This wasn't even thinking. It was the corridors; that formed this world. It was – there/here/there/here.

“We take the left.”

The Golden Bow followed.

Why a fake world. Why the left corridor. It was a rule. Take the left each time; that way you know – he said to himself – when you've forgotten every passage that looks the same, if you even imagine you've been doubled back, you know you've taken the left.

And anyway that was the way mazes took you.

Inside.

He'd been in dungeons. He had massacred thousands of these dried out demon bags. This was who he was. No memory. – He didn't need memory. – Identity? He didn't need that either – in these halls toward the demon that – still – dreamed him.

Processing through these tunnels was a passage in thought. Was a process whereby he worked himself through a system of flat repetition tiers – even in the combat; even in the compulsions; – even in the same thoughts repeated. The corridors.

This was the world.

The fake world that had been imposed. They were beneath. They were beneath everything. Whatever was real. Whatever this was for – beside killing the demon who dreamed them, fine – it wasn't here. This world was fake. And yet why was he always plunged here? Why was this so easy – why his whole existence in corridors such as... these.

More developed. More verisimilar. More like a reality you could actually take for one. Sure. More real. A glade. A pasture. A hillside. Anything. Outside. A place. Architecture from a historic tradition recognised, in fact understood in its connection to theology even: merely, in the, shapes. – Possible; all possible/something that could actually occur all – fake!

This place.

FAAAAKKE!

This place stopped lying to you – it was a lie. Reduced everything. Out. Set the corridors before you in two-dimensional planes. Demonic reality. Fine. This was demonic reality. Pretty – Obviously it was. He was trapped. – He had been dreamed here by a demon – the current scenario – what alternative was there to that; demonic reality, lulling him into who he was; showing him that its compulsive repetitions were... holy; it always went there. Those repetitions a stand in for something – else. Virtue, maybe.

It always ended in parody; it always ended in fakery. It always ended in a – lie.

– How did he know?

No memory. No identity. His organs and his bones. His tissues and muscles whispered in him – told him he'd been in halls; dungeons, more often he thought – the technological was perhaps new – a thought confirmed – but no difference; he was used to swinging a side-sword; smashing skulls with a shield he didn't currently have.

Just a new weapon; just a new world – never a new world. A new corridor. Always the same – always the same hell structure beneath. Everything. It was always here. Waiting for you. Hell. Beneath everything. Beneath –

Perhaps he was just – only one of those forced face-first into it. Maybe, he was –

he knew what lies were – so why lie? That it is a lie. So he was rammed in it. Reduced reality; demonic repetition, forever. In halls. Part of something.

A trillion trillion worlds and beneath them all these corridors hacked out of evil.

Seen in demonic planes, unending, fake infinities – Always the same. Thing. Always compulsion. Always repetition. In the halls.

Killing the demon that dreamt them? Was it that? – Really was it that? Could that be anything other than a – temporary respite; could that be anything other than a posting between hells. Could that –

Demons in the halls.

Anything more than a movement between superstructures upon –

Twelve baby head toilets.

– Upon this. This. This space that was under everything.

“They shoot acid,” he shouted, “Watch their – rhythms,” running up square-direct with the toilet-heads. They were shambling dried out common or garden demon husks. With baby heads for heads, with toilets for torsos, that backed-up shooting shitty acid over anyone/them/enemies: their enemies.

The supernatural shotgun barked up in their coupons setting three exploding baby heads trailing cascading green liquids all over the shop. – Reversed back instantly the Hero/Slave avoided the belched bowel matter of – that of the remaining nine toilet-baby-heads; the same time an arrow from the Golden Bow, entered the aural passages of the one nearest – him – incapacitating the ambling water closet infant, collapsing it in its own shit – presumably – on the floor.

The numbers between him and reality showed declining shells for the superb-shotter. – He'd have to quick set about finding others, he'd have to be refurnished by these halls if they wanted their slave to keep performing further for them.

Switching out his side-sword off his back for the shotgun – he could handle toilet-babies, he thought, without wasting more ammo – it was a good tactic actually to reduce a horde dramatically with a couple quick shotgun blasts before cleaning up hand to hand. He recognised by now the squinting for a fart face and the bubbling of the toilet that were the – exactly when the bubbling commenced actually – indicators of what must inevitably follow. He stepped back instantly before the boiling faeces – for this was what it was as opposed to actually acid – flew all over him.

A side-sword through an eye of the first mean wean – dialect word; in his dialect – he had a dialect? – for a; child;

backing up quick as the shit in the bucket commenced the boiling sequence of the one next it.

An arrow set a coupon exploding in the fun liquids he liked to see flying around them all. Noticing, he did, the hero, that the arrow, once it had despatched a fiend, immediately flew back into the quiver – so that – infinite ammo was something, effectively, the Golden Bow had in his metaphorical quiver, also quiver.

Notch/Pull/Loose – a searing arrow strike through two skulls simultaneous; the Golden Bow, set his bow behind him, and joined the Demon Slave – he was a slave to demons. Standing next him, with a long poignard in fist, really two thirds the length of his own side-sword – a very decent close-combat weapon – he was right on them stabbing in the face of one of the remaining four toilet toddlers.

Flicking out between him in a wild arc the Hero flew two decapitated baby-heads across the tight corridor; while the Golden Bow, presumably – having learned from him – or indeed from his own encounters, backed up upon the last bubbling boil of a toilet that was preparing to shoot merd across them. They avoided it, plunging upon the return, two sharp implements into the remaining shambler whose corpse immediately began boiling under the weight of its own faeces matter.

– Stepping back they took a breath, regarding the alchemical experiment happening at their feet: a demon corpse – in the sense in this case of being no longer animate – boiling entirely in faeces whose source was the collapsed in on itself toilet of its thorax.

They breathed. Faeces.

“Let's breathe over there.”

They moved forward a part, past the faeces odours that were really accumulating in that section, and stood and breathed a bit.

“It's repetition.”

“Yes; it's the same kill every time.”

“The problem is, and I shouldn't give the fucks any ideas, though – they know this – is when, in here, tight corridors – they start sending twenty/thirty of these fuck-shanties down the halls. And you saw the stupor I fell into when you combine the Spider Ears. I'm not going near Spider Ears. – But – their webs – you appreciate how this – particular life-situation we're inhabiting – can become a pie of precarious design rather quick.”

“I suggest we keep going, in that case. – You need shells.”