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We were transported into the middle of a forest. I landed ass first into a puddle of mud, and Donut jumped onto my head to avoid the splash. Mongo and Rend had landed outside the puddle in front of us. Mongo peeped, then jumped in the puddle, splashing mud onto my front, and onto Rend's face. Donut didn't get the chance to scold him before Rend let out a deep giggle, and jumped up. He cannonballed into the puddle, splattering all of us with mud. I wiped my face off and looked around while Donut yelled at the pets.
Birds were chirping, and there was a light wind that made the branches above us rustle. Bugs were screeching somewhere up in those branches, and down here around the ground. The river was running. I could smell the aftermath of rain around here through the mud in my nostrils. The sun was visible through the canopy, and there were a few clouds trailing across the sky. Even though I'd "seen" the sky many times inside of the dungeon, I could feel it. The infinite amount of space that I was staring into.
It was surreal, how ordinary it was.
It was over. We made a deal with the AI. My family and many other crawlers made it out alive, and we got to keep our upgrades from the dungeon. The NPC's were all given the freedom to live their lives however they pleased. Some of them chose to go up here, to help rebuild civilization and experience a "real" world. All of the former crawlers and indentured servants under contract were released, with pretty much all of them going to the surface. The cookbook authors had all disappeared, except for Milk, who's somewhere up here. The AI was asleep in the center of the world now that its business with the wider universe was done. Kind of. The outworlders directly involved with the crawl and the manufacturing of the AIs were either dead, or trapped at the mercy of the AI.
The view counter sat firmly at zero. And it would stay that way.
We sat there for a moment, not saying anything while Mongo and Rend ran around to play with the mud. I held my arms out, looking up at Donut. We both knew what we were waiting for.
Donut stared at my arms for a moment, then flicked her eyes around, looking. She finally jumped into my arms, and paced around my embrace for a bit, eyes still flicking about, ears swiveling. I pet her, and she jerked away.
"Ugh! Carl, you know you should wash those filthy hands of yours before petting me. It's going to be an eternity before we get to a proper shower!"
"We aren't going to be that far from a saferoom, Donut. Besides, you're muddy already," I said, holding my hand still.
"That doesn't matter! I will not spend my time outside the dungeon getting disgusting fluids matted against my fur anymore! I will absolutely not tolerate it," she snapped, looking at me with her nose scrunched. Her ears kept swiveling.
"I promise it won't happen again," I said as I placed my hand against her head. She stayed there.
She hmphed as I pet her again. Eventually, her ears stopped swivelling, and she laid her head down. We watched Mongo and Rend lick up dirt and spit mud at each other.
"You promise?"
"I promise."
We sat there for another moment, waiting. Then Donut started sniffling. She let out a croaky meow.
And then, she was sobbing. Just like that. Like I said she would. I hugged her tight to my chest while still stroking my hand through her fur.
Mongo jerked his head in our direction, and ran towards us with a scared screech. He peeped over and over again as he looked over Donut. When he couldn't find what was wrong, he pressed his nose against Donut's cheek, making a low rumbilng sound in his throat. Rend galloped over, his worried giggles sounding like sobs. He looked over Donut as Mongo had, and sat to the other side, continuing to make those disturbing sob-giggles.
I felt relieved seeing Donut wailing and sobbing into my arm. That was probably fucked up, but I couldn't help it. She's finally safe.
She finally feels safe, I thought to myself. There's still so much that could happen. They could still come back, and try to destroy us all. The only thing we have to defend against that is the promise of an insane AI. Hell, we probably shouldn't feel safe with with that thing either. I still don't fully understand what was running through its brain--its processor? Whatever it is, I don't fully know what it wanted. But I do know that it was laughing at us every time we suffered. It's asleep for now, but we need to make sure that it never played with any of our lives ever again. I need to plan-
"Carl, that," Donut blubbered out, hiccuping, before sobbing again.
"That, whatever--whatever it is, that you're th-thinking about," she swallowed, reducing her sobbing to sniffles for a moment.
"That doesn't matter right now," she finally rasped out, nuzzling against my hand.
With those words, I felt something break. Just a crack in the glass. My eyes burned as the first drops gathered. I stared down at Donut as she blinked back tears, over and over again, waiting.
Then, the dam finally broke.
And for the first time, I felt it. The river, roaring through my mind. Mixing in with the heat gathered behind my eyes, coursing through my veins as I trembled, flowing around the sudden lump in my throat. I heard it in my voice as I started sobbing alongside Donut.
We had lost so much. So many people. So many futures that we could've had now if it just went differently, if I was fast enough, if I was smart enough, if I was strong enough, if I was just better. Li Jun could have stayed there for Li Na and Zhang if I made more distractions, safer ones that didn't need people to risk their lives, Tserendolgor and her group could have made it if I had just dealt with Quan Ch before any his bullshit happened, Pony's mother could be playing piano for him up here if I gave her something to repay her kindness, Chris could have been looking at the sky with his brother right now if I checked my messages, if I checked in more with everyone around me, if I was there, really there-
Yolanda. Her death felt like it was years away. She could have made this easier. I could have--I could have--
I couldn't have done anything.
This part, I hazily thought as I started wailing. This part is why I'm glad the mask never slipped.
She was ten feet from the rage elemental. Even if I had kept running and activated Protective Shell around Yolanda and Randall, we wouldn't have made it to the safe room in time. I had barely gotten in there with just me and Donut. Yolanda would have had to make the decision to sacrifice Randall in order to get to safety, and I don't know if she would've made it in time.
I pressed my cheek to Donut's fur as we cried together. Rend started licking at our faces, and Mongo laid his head on top of my arm, still rumbling.
I couldn't have done anything. There was absolutely no way I could have known that Maggie My had turned into a parasite, and infected Chris. I couldn't have given Miriam anything to help with an enemy that neither of us knew about.
In some part of my mind, in all of our minds, we were always aware of it. Even if we never got any skulls by our names, the only reason why we survived as long as we had was because of the deaths of others.
If Miriam didn't die then, the vampirism infection would've snowballed and locked almost all of us out of Club Vanquisher, and then we'd all be fucked on future floors. If our initial plan worked, and our allies in the Cuba region made it through the 8th floor with enough keys, I never would've thought up that plan to save the keyless crawlers. So many people would be dead. There was already so much going on during Faction Wars. So many different things that could go wrong that we couldn't predict. I couldn't have done anything for Li Jun. His sacrifice is a big part of why Donut is still alive, shaking in my arms, and I'd have to be grateful for that.
I couldn't do that now. Not when all of their deaths that felt so far away suddenly felt like they happened just now, all at once.
Donut suddenly let out a loud, pained wail. She had come to the same realization that I had.
So we did the only thing we could for them now, and we cried.
I cried for every life I saw ticked down from the counter of remaining crawlers every time I made it to a saferoom. For everyone who died in the collapse, and the unknown amount of people who'd died trying to live on the surface. For the unawakened NPC's that we needed to kill, that could've been real now. For the world that we lost, the desert of civilization I knew we'd finally see clearly in the sunlight. For Asher, who I would've taken to a circus, who I would've given anything for to leave him with a happy memory before the collapse. I finally cried for the scared kid I was, as I remembered everything my father did to me, really remembered, to my mother, and for the man that I became because of it. That dam I built because of him, I realized, was a big part of why I could be sobbing in this forest with Donut right now.
Fuck him anyways.
As we cried together, I let the sadness and guilt I should've felt flow straight to the front of my mind, where I couldn't hide from it.
I experienced a lot of different types of pain in the dungeon. I remembered the absolute agony of getting stitched back together after dropping a bomb at my own feet.
I'd take that again over how absolutely shit I felt about myself right now. It was as if every mistake and decision I ever made was pressing down on me, trying to drag me into the ground the way all the buildings had collapsed. But I could feel a cool emptiness in the back of my mind, growing as the sorrow washed through my consciousness.
We lost ourselves to that sadness we locked away, and felt it all slowly drain through our loud, ugly bawling. Mongo and Rend were crying too, in their own ways. I heard the quiet little peeps in Mongo's rumbles as he rubbed his beak against our faces. Rend was whimpering while leaning against me, occasionally licking our faces.
The birds were still chirping. Another gust of wind rustled the branches above us. Bugs were screeching. The river was silent. The sun shined down on us, doing its best to dry the tears running down our faces.
Our sobs died down to ragged whimpers and hiccups eventually. I knew that the river would run again. But for now, I took it all in. How ordinary it was.
"Carl," Donut sniffled. "You're already breaking your promise. You're leaking snot all over my fur."
I chuckled, straightening my posture to look down at Donut again. "I'm sorry. Now it won't happen again."
"It better," she said after a bit, leaping to my shoulder. "Now then, we need to clean ourselves of this mess before making our grand return to civilization."
I stood up, and Mongo jumped around in relief after Donut stopped crying. Rend stared at us curiously, and I knew it was probably because our faces were a puffy mess of snot and tears.
Donut wrapped herself around my shoulders, and looked at me as I started walking.
"What are you going to do next, Carl?"
I thought for a second, and grinned.
"I'm going to find a goddamn pair of pants."