《Dungeon Island》Chapter 01 - What am I?
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Light!
There is light!
No. There is no light. I can see, but there is no light. There is only darkness, yet I can see through it.
I can only see dirt. Dirt all around me, I’m surrounded by dirt and occasional rocks. The dirt is strange, forming a perfect sphere, even the rocks are cut through to complete the shape of this place. Even the dirt seems impossibly smooth. These walls look dull. But is it ‘walls’ or ‘wall’? There is only one face on a sphere, so it must be a singular ‘wall’. Whatever, it’s just an empty, dreary room.
Or not so empty. There is a strange, black ball floating in the center of this chamber. I pass some time looking at the ball. It’s completely black. So black, that it seems to absorb any light touching it, but since there is no light here I can’t be sure. Also, it is perfectly circular and looks even smoother than the already perfectly smooth wall. The ball seems rather big, occupying a fourth of the space, but since I have no real comparison, despite the rocks in the wall of dirt, I can’t be sure. Maybe it’s just a small ball in a small place. The fact that the ball is floating mid-air seems quite strange to me, but it could be normal for this kind of ball for all I know. And that’s all there is in the room, nothing more that the empty space between it and the wall..
Wait a second…
There is nothing else in here except that ball.
So where am I?! Where is my body?!
Am I dead? I must be dead. Is this hell?!
No… I can’t be in hell! I was a good person! I think…
Now that I’m trying to remember how I was in my previous life, I can’t recall any memories. I cannot even remember my own name! I don’t know who I am! I don’t know what I am!
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…
- 10 minutes later -
…AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!
Stop, something is happening!
The black ball is shining! It shines with a strange pink light that gives the dirt a purplish color. And now that I’m starting to calm myself down, it’s shining less and less.
Is it linked to me? It began shining brightly when I started panicking and stopped after I calmed down. Is that black ball my new body in hell? No, that doesn’t feel right. Now that I’m focusing on it I can sense it’s a part of me. Only a part of my body, yes, but a really important part. It’s like my heart or something. A brain? Bones? No. A core? Yes, that’s it, that name feels right, it’s my core. But why do I have a core? And where is the rest of my body?
Maybe if I focus I will be able to feel it, like I’m now aware of my core as a part of me. Ok, let’s go. Focus!
…...
What’s that? All I can feel is my core, the wall and the air filling the room. Is that it? Is that my body? Yes, I can sense it, I feel it’s right. The core is my brain, the air my blood and the wall my skin. It’s not a body made out of flesh and blood, but it’s mine. It is right but it also feels wrong at the same time.
I can sense that there is a part of me that doesn’t get comfortable with this body. Something I can’t grasp, just like my memories. Maybe if I focus on it, it will work as it already worked for my body. Ok. Focus!
………….
Nope, it does not seem to help this time. I can sense there’s something, like I know that I had a life before waking up here. But I can’t recall even one bit and I can’t do anything about my situation. In that case, I’ll let it be for now and I’ll come back to it another time. After all, I have other things to do.
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Since I have a ‘skin’ I can feel the earth around it. My wall is rather thin and behind it, I can feel that there is an area of dirt that is a bit different from the others. It is located at the same height level as my core. I’ll try to focus on this.
...
Wow. As soon as I start to focus on the part of the wall in front of that strange area, a small hole starts to appear in the dirt. I can dig! And quite easily at that.
I start digging in the direction where I can sense something different, I feel I’m getting closer. There are more and more rocks. I’m almost there, but it’s only stone now. Just a liiitle push... aaaand done! So, what’s this?
It’s wet, and it’s starting to flow through the hole. It slowly flows into my room. Because the hole is so small, my chamber is not yet overflowed. At least now I can analyze it at will.
It’s water. Just plain and clear water. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I feel a little disappointed.
I can also sense a big cavity on the other side of the water and that the water is only flowing through this cave into a calm underground river. Well, I think it is calm, I can not see this as it is out of my room, but the swirls are too weak to correspond to anything stronger than a stream.
As I’m focusing on the cavern, I feel the riverbed slowly becoming part of me. Same thing for the water flowing into my room. In contrast, the water flowing through the river is sadly going just too fast for me to integrate it.
I’m starting to feel tired by these actions. Exhausted even. I think I’m going to take a nap to replenish my energy. But before that, I must still close the hole, as I don’t want my room to be flood while I sleep. I focus on the hole, willing for it to close, and the moment it does I lose the connection with the cave beyond. My connection with the river is severed and the parts that I claimed as my body no longer are mine.
I'm beaten. So I’m going to sleep for now.
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