“That’s a weird name,” he says as he walks around the small chamber that he finds himself inside of. “Are you a boy or a girl?” he asks somewhat curiously, looking over his shoulder back towards the broken pipe.

“I’m supposed to be a girl,” says the voice very matter of factly. He tilts his head, thinking that’s also a pretty weird thing to say. But after he turns back forward, he lowers his gaze and looks down at his own body. It’s a male’s, but that fact is only discernible because of a single, obvious feature. The rest of it, of him, is more or less entirely feminine.

“Yeah, I think I’m supposed to be a boy,” he calls out to the pipe, running his fingers along the wall of the small room as he searches for a way out or just for anything at all that could be of interest. “So. We’re in the dungeon, huh?”

“Yes,” answers the chiming voice rather plainly. “But shouldn’t you know that, if you’re down here?” she asks.

“I told you. I died.”

“But… you’re alive?” asks Alleluia, sounding somewhat puzzled.

He shrugs, only realizing after completing the motion that she can’t see his movements. “I am now.”

“Oh… okay,” says the voice, apparently oddly accepting of his declaration of that fact. So much so, that it actually bothers him a little and he feels a need to explain more.

“I fell, okay? I was up on…” his small fingers run through his damp hair as he thinks. “I was up on a higher floor and I fell and I died. Now I’m not dead anymore. That’s all there is to it,” he explains, feeling around with both of his hands now beneath his hair, just to be sure that there isn’t any mold left clinging to his scalp. There isn’t.

The sound of whirring gears makes itself heard, droning quietly out of the pipe. “You must have fallen really far, if you forgot your name and died,” says Alleluia, her voice growing fainter and fainter the further he walks away.

Choosing to ignore her remark, he simply runs his hands down from his head along the length of his neck and then out over his own arms as he feels his new body out. “Yeah, I guess I did,” he says, as he bends over a second later, looking into the small crevice that he had seen before. A tiny stream pushes through the rock, carving out a just as tiny tunnel, which leads out from the dead-end that he’s in. But he’ll have to get down on his hands and knees and crawl through it. It seems like a tight fit and the walls are somewhat jagged looking. He runs his fingers along the rock. It’s sharp. Filed to a point by the trickling stream of cave water that pushes through it and has perhaps done so for many long, dark years.

Something chimes behind him. “Are you sure that you died?” asks the voice. “Maybe you just got knocked out. I don’t think that you can… you know, stop being dead,” says Alleluia. “People can’t come back to life once they die.”

Not interested in getting into a debate about what, for him at least, is obvious, he doesn’t say anything in response to that remark as he turns around and looks back at the pipe. “Listen, I gotta go check something out.”

“Wait!” calls Alleluia suddenly, her voice ringing out of the broken edge of the pipe. “Don’t go! You’re going to help me, right?” she asks, sounding desperate. “I wasn’t being annoying, was I?” inquires the voice with a tone that takes him somewhat aback. “I’m sorry!”

He fidgets, not sure what to say to that either. Looking down the long, wet tunnel, he ponders for a moment, standing there quietly and thinking about his options until he feels a slight growl in his gut reawaken him from his daydreaming. “I’m just going to check out this path here, I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”

“Do you promise?”

“What’s with you?” he asks, now actually becoming somewhat annoyed by her. But he relents with a sigh, as he realizes that he’s probably just feeling cranky because he’s hungry. “I promise,” says the man, stepping into the water and wincing a little as he does so. It’s cold.

“Okay…” says the voice, falling down into barely a soft whisper, before it is lost entirely to the quiet of the deepest recess of the dungeon. The cave is entirely silent now, apart from a gentle trickling of the water and the sound of the air moving as it rises up, climbing towards whatever point of highest ascension lies in wait for it so very far above, there in the crushing darkness looming over his head.

Taking a deep breath, he gets down on his hands and knees, the frigid cave water splashes against his chest as he presses himself down into it. He feels the loose rock and sediment move beneath his fingers as he wiggles them in the muck, his digits submerged beneath the stream that rises to just above his bent wrists. Crawling forward, he carefully squeezes into the small tunnel. The water carries a deathly chill to it and now that he immerses himself in it, he realizes for the first time how warm it is down here in the dungeon. He must be really deep down for it to be this hot, especially without clothes. In a sense, the icy cave water is almost refreshing to be in.

Suddenly, the man lets out a sharp hiss as he feels a pointed burning sensation digging into his right flank, as one of the razor sharp rocks on the wall cuts into his body because he got too close. Wincing, he tries to look back behind himself, but is unable to turn his head far enough around in the tight passage. He can feel something wet trickle from his body however as he presses on forward. The fresh, hot wound tingles and in a rather uncomfortable sensation, he can feel his damp skin already growing back over the seconds old laceration.

So, he died, huh? He focuses his attention on moving forward, wincing again, but continuing to crawl as a new rock slices into him, as he moves an inch too far to the left this time.

“Is this the same dungeon I died in?” he mutters to himself, the water splashing as he crawls forward. He isn’t sure how this is possible, honestly. He has a new class too, something weird that he’s never heard of before, as far as he can recall. Even though he’s sure that he had a different class of his own before. Lowering his head, he looks at the person on the surface of the water who is crawling along beneath him. His damp hair falls to the sides of his face, as he tilts his head and stares at the softly feminine eyes gazing back up towards him, neither of them recognizing the body of the other. The longer he stares into his own eyes, the more uncomfortable he becomes and he quickly averts his gaze, as if there was something there he didn’t want to see.

The tunnel goes on for a while longer, continually growing tighter and tighter as he moves further through it. The rocks start to cut him more often now. Deeper. But his body keeps regenerating. The slow current of the tiny stream, which moves in the same direction that he does, carries with it now a nigh-permanent red trickle that leaks out of his form and then flows out ahead of him. Red-water drifts past his wrists, obscuring the reflection, making it much easier to ignore.

He pushes his body in deeper, further, wiggling his way down the tiny passage filled with razor sharp rocks, until eventually a faint glimmer becomes visible in the distance. A literal light at the end of the tunnel. But up until there, the passage still grows tighter and tighter. His shoulders, which aren’t much wider than his hips, are pressed in tightly against his chest. But they too now also run along the walls on both sides of his body and he can feel pieces of the hard rock stick into his biceps, which are painted entirely red now, covered with wet smears from top to bottom.

It’s the only way to go though. If he lowers himself down onto his stomach, he can probably squeeze through. There’s a dim light on the other side, so there’s clearly something there. But…

“It’s going to hurt,” says the man, listening to his voice echo around him, like the whisper of a close companion into his ears. The sound bounces off to the left and returns to him, then again from the right. From all around, the four words keep coming back to him over and over and over, as he feels the aching and the burning that already pulsates through his gestalt with a searing intensity.

It’s going to hurt.

He’s pretty pain tolerant, or so he likes to think, at least. That’s why he’s made it this far with only gritting his teeth. He isn’t sure why he’s used to hurting so much though, but maybe that’s for the best. He lowers himself down, holding himself just above the surface of the icy water that his body bathes in. The rocks, jutting into his shoulders, scrape off pieces of his body as he presses himself down, but the physical pain doesn’t even disturb him all that much.

It’s going to hurt. He knows it. He expects it. Still, he clenches his teeth tighter together.

His hand claws forward, as he worms his way through the tight hole. The trickle of the blood of his body paints his naked skin from top to bottom with a sticky, red tinge, as he pulls himself along the gravel. The tightly enclosing tunnel of jagged stones cuts into his arms from all sides, cuts into his shoulders and then into his hips as he pulls himself through. The man squeezes his arms together, sinking his fingers into the muck beneath himself as he grits his teeth so tightly that he’s sure that they’re going to crack any second now.

An agony shoots out from every corner of his body. No limb is spared from a puncturing or a tear, or a slicing gash inflicted by the blades of wet, obsidian rock. The water around him turns entirely crimson for a while, hiding any traces of its soft, crystal clarity and all he feels is the simple fact, the simple undeniable truth, that it hurts.

That and a slight pang of a deep hunger.

All the while, he does his best to avoid the one thing that hurts the most. He doesn’t look down. Despite always reaffirming that his eyes gaze straight ahead, they always seem to find a way to slowly drift downwards, down towards the bloody reflection only inches beneath his face. Towards the eyes below, that he knows are sitting there and just waiting to meet his.

He doesn’t want to see it. The reflection. It’s going to hurt.

Finally, he reaches the end of the passage, his head is already down against the surface of the water. The rocks scrape against him on all sides and he can barely move more than a few inches anymore. All he feels is a blinding anguish flowing through his flayed meat. All he feels is a desire to feel more. His hand shoots out, grasping the rim of the hole that leads out of the tunnel. Jagged rocks cut into the palm of his hand as he grips them, but he ignores that and presses his other arm out of the hole, his left palm suffering the same injuries, but he ignores them too.

Wrenching, pulling himself forward one final time, the man screams a feral scream as he slips out of the hole, pressing himself out of the crevice, lubricated by a slurry of his own blood and tattered meat which hangs off of him in loose strands. Just like with his words before, the sound of his yelling echoes out all around him. The collective scream of a hundred wailing dead fills the dungeon, all stemming from the same source.

He is covered in gunk and blood. The creature that he is stumbles forward, trying and failing to stand back up, like a new-born fawn on fresh legs. Weak. Frightened. Bloodied. As his tattered legs buckle beneath his meager weight, he falls down onto his knees, his mangled palms splashing back down into the water that they had just left a moment ago. His head hangs drooped and low.

As his eyes look down into the tainted pool beneath him and as he sees the suffering wretch gazing back towards him, he remembers so much. He remembers the lesson that life had taught him before at the end of his old life. He remembers the many truths of his old existence and why he didn’t want a new one. He understands why he hurts, not just in his mutilated body, but in his core where he feels something squirm and pulsate in his chest; His heart. It beats on again and again, despite his mind’s unwillingness as it tries to make clear what it all means. What it means for him to be alive again. What it will mean for him to not just stop and curl up and lay here and die for ever and ever more.

It means that, for better or worse and no matter which path he now chooses, to live or to die, that it’s going to hurt and that he can’t escape that single, undeniable fact.

The man falls back down and presses his face into the water, so that it can muffle the sounds of his screams, as he remembers everything. He screams, as he promises never to exist in anything like that old life of his ever again.

As he screams his soul out, as he releases that rabid cry to the universe, that wretched wail, his voice cracks beneath the water and his lungs ache with the same pain as the flesh of his body and he wordlessly swears a sacred oath to any and all that are listening; if there is any such entity to begin with. He swears, without uttering a single word, that he will never let himself become so hungry ever again.