Hunched over a floating dark sphere, an old, decrepit fossil of a man remained with his mouth agape for a few seconds, incapable of reacting properly at first before breaking into mad laughter.
A raspy, guttural scraping came from his dried-out throat, his meagre attempt at voicing his joy was cut short as he began coughing without stop, up until blood splashed down onto his emaciated arm.
His broken record of a voice repeatedly bounced off the eroded walls surrounding him on all sides, escaping through cracks and slowly growing distant as his distorted words escaped the dungeon he had made into his own prison.
Not only did he not know how to speak properly anymore, his life was nearing its end.
But it didn't matter to him.
This floating orb was the sum of his entire life, nearly one hundred and ten years, all for the sake of this one object.
Turning around hurriedly, he clutched the sphere, cradling it like a child.
His abrupt movement sent him to the dusty and cold hard ground, uncaring for the newly risen particles suffocating him. He dragged his sorry self through the pebbles, shards of glass, and many other objects he had hoarded and taken with him before secluding himself.
The vestige of a man smiling toothlessly was reflected in the orb, uncaring for the abuse he was putting his decaying flesh through.
He had long since forgotten what the point of the orb was, what it was supposed to accomplish, why the fire of hatred within him was soothed by its completion.
Why he had even locked himself deep into a dungeon in the first place, he only remembered the process he had elaborated.
With madness fueling his muscles, he soon arrived before a huge hole in the ground, overflowing with cadavers, some whole, some reduced to mere dust, most in between those two states.
There was no telling just how expansive the hole truly was underneath, how many people and creatures had been shoved into its darkness, left to rot away.
Just above the pile of decay, a small bird cage was hanging on by a thread from the ceiling, its exterior rusty and suffering from the elements.
Its exterior was illuminated by a bright light, but its true colour couldn't be perceived, was it red? Was it blue? Was it everchanging? Was it a colour that did not exist?
The crumbling elder could not care less.
There were many lights, in fact, the sheer mass of them pressed against one another unified them as one.
Inside of this cage, the souls of the bodies beneath were trapped, both their spiritual and physical bodies had been gathered together, the souls carefully extracted so that both the minds and spirits remained perfectly linked to the soul.
All of them were to be used as kindling for the orb to reach its true potential.
Struggling to his knees, his bare body bruised from all the crawling, the living corpse the man had become took in the sight before him.
The stench of death had since long numbed him, his eyes plagued by cataracts, he smiled.
Not one of his teeth remained in their place, the gum supposed to anchor them had turned black and unstable.
With warm tears going down his cheeks, finding themselves in a maze of deep wrinkles, the old man raised the sphere as high as he could muster, readying himself for the penultimate moment of his awfully long life.
Even without being able to remember a single reason why this was so important to him, he looked forward to what was going to happen.
His long and filthy beard found itself within his vision, averting his gaze down, his moment interrupted as he wondered what could be happening.
No breeze this potent could make its way in this desolate room.
It was no breeze, he felt nothing on his back, something was pulling everything in the room.
Looking back at the pile and cage, he witnessed the mountain of dead bodies folding onto himself, the rotten and mummified flesh was compressed, the bones were ground into dust as everything converged into a single point.
Everything in the room but the old man was sucked in, furniture, filth, dust, any piece of rock that wasn't properly stuck to the walls.
The cage and orb were no exception.
His most prized treasure was snatched as easily as candy from a baby─ powerless to do anything about it.
The old man could only question what was happening.
He hadn't done anything yet, this wasn't his doing, it wasn't his creation.
The remains and souls fused with one another seamlessly.
The complete harmony mesmerised the sole witness before blinding him as the compressed mass exploded outward with a dark, purple light.
A purple the old man couldn't fathom, a colour he could perceive, yet, knew he had never seen before and would never see again.
When he regained his sight, something else now stood in the room with him.
"Aah- AAAAH!" crying out shamefully, he tried to get up to his feet only to fail miserably, falling to the ground once more and forced to crawl like a maggot.
He didn't dare look back again, consumed wholly by his fear, he moved with renewed vigour.
Still, his poor attempt at escaping wouldn't have even gotten him away from a sloth.
The sound of footsteps rang out like the tolls of a passing bell.
Clicks resounded from the being that was slowly walking up to him.
A loud clack shook the room, like a bear trap snapping into action.
This sprung the elderly man to stop his useless attempt to flee and roll over on his back.
Raising his arms defensively, he shouted incomprehensible words at the creature, his intent unknown even to him.
No one would have understood what he said, much less the being walking toward him.
Seeing his doom only getting closer, showing no hesitation in its advance, the frail man swatted his arms randomly, most likely hoping to deter the monster.
There was no success to be found in his frantic action, the thing born from thousands of corpses and souls took a hold of his twig-like arms, snapping them with appropriate ease.
His suffering didn't last long, the aggressor, not interested in making him wail, swiftly grabbed him by the neck and with a sudden motion, broke it.
Death had already been inevitable for him, his actions had only brought it faster and made it that much more harsh.
His executioner stared at its own reflection for a few moments, taking in its own appearance before dropping the lifeless husk down like the meaningless object that it had become.
Still, to the monster, the old man had ascended to something superior.
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Letting go of the corpse, it fell limply on its back, the monster moved onto inspecting its own hands.
They were skeletal, nearly nothing but bones, so was the rest of its body, it was a skeleton.
Not only that, it wasn't a pristine white one, its body was discoloured and rotten bits of flesh seemed to be sprouting everywhere like parasitic mushrooms.
For all intents and purposes, anyone would believe this undead to be the animated remains of a human, save for the long and pointy teeth that filled its jaws.
Pinching one of the rotten bits, it oozed out with putrid blood, the vile liquid falling right on the old man's body.
The undead stared at the spot it had just touched for a whole minute without moving in the slightest, it had grown back.
Its arrival had made the room completely silent and empty, moving over to the deep pit where the countless corpses had been kept, it looked down, seeing nothing but pure darkness.
With unreadable intentions, it moved back and forth, dragging the old man by the wrist before lightly kicking him into the hole.
Silence ensued once more as the undead remained in place like a statue.
Multiple minutes after, a loud splash and clap came from deep within the hole.
As though it was all meaningless, the walking cadaver turned and headed toward the very same direction the old man had been trying to escape toward.
Of course he would, the only door out of this room was there, it was a roughly built wooden door, made by an amateur of the craft, hastily assembled nails and planks.
The frame and door weren't even fitting well, the skeleton stared at the door with his hollow sockets, not having a clue what a door was for a few seconds before trying to open it up normally, reaching for the handle and pulling it.
One pull didn't do anything, the second neither and by the third, it was clear that the old man would have never made it out of here even with a severe head start.
One could only wonder how he had even found his way inside of here.
One could, but the undead didn't, instead opting to pry the planks off one by one with remarkable care.
Peeking into this new room, the light flickered for an instant, the source of it unclear, there was simply light and no reason to bother questioning why.
This one hadn't suffered from his entrance, and was thus, filled to the brim with its old owner's personal belongings.
Papers, papyruses, stone tablets, a wide variety of objects and materials used to write down information were gathered here, spread out on tables haphazardly, many laying on the ground, others hanging from the ceiling or displayed on the walls.
Most were damaged but even for those that were legible, the skeleton wouldn't be able to find a usage for them, for he couldn't read.
Picking up one of the planks he had taken off the door, he moved on to the next room.
The door swung open effortlessly this time, it was much smaller than the frame.
Unlike the first two, which had been relatively large but still nothing too grand, this one was simply gigantic.
The ceiling was too high to be made out, the only proof of its existence being the pieces of debris that had fallen from it and smashed into the ground.
The light source wasn't unknown this time around, the area was much dimmer, illuminated by differently coloured orbs similar to the one the old man had been clutching so longingly.
Each of them were resting on stone pedestals, there were two rows of them, ten of them in each row.
There used to be at least, a good portion of where pedestals had most likely stood had been destroyed by rubbles from the ceiling.
All of those that remained had an orb sitting atop however, each sporting different shades.
The undead walked in between the two rows, undisturbed as a rock the size of his skull fell right beside its position.
All were shining a light but one shone much brighter, moving up to it, the skeleton inspected it, feeling something that shouldn't be from it.
"Hello? Hey? What the hell is happening?" a youthful and confused voice rang out from the brilliant orb.
"Anyone there? Seriously, am I in a coma? Did I have a heart attack or something?" on and on, it seemed like the orb was speaking its thoughts aloud.
What was most curious however, was that the undead was understanding the words being spoken, which was ludicrous on multiple levels.
It didn't even have clear thoughts and had only gotten the rough grunts of the old man as words until now.
Grabbing the orb with one hand, the undead lifted it up to its face, clacking its jaws loudly.
The physical touch startled the orb as it began to speak rapidly, shooting out sentences one after the other without end.
"Oh!" suddenly, the rapid fire of words ceased as the voice exclaimed loudly.
"Is that? Oh my god! It's like in those-"
"Dear lord, why the hell is it so cluttered? It's like if someone never closed any of their tabs for a year straight…"
The whole time, the skeleton had been calmly walking until it found itself back in the very first room.
"Hold on, we are moving right? To where? Are you God? Or something like that?" the orb seemed to finally realise what was happening.
Frankly, the soul contained within the orb had been quite confused at first, one second, the young man was eating heated noodles as the only meal of the day, and then, he was seemingly blind and unmoving.
It had been so quick that he hadn't had time to let it sink in and now, strange things were appearing before him and someone had picked him up.
"My reading experience tells me that this is a-"
The skeleton dropped the orb into the hole.
The light allowed the undead to get a better idea of what was down there, although it was still much too deep to see anything.
There was definitely some water or liquid at the bottom, but it was hard to judge just how much.
Now that that was done, it made the short trip back and shattered all of the other orbs, only keeping one intact to serve as a light.
The only other way beside the one it had gotten in from was a simple corridor without any luminosity.