Dungen

The dungeon’s gate was half lowered as Uatchita rushed through, looming over her head like the mouth of a carnivorous plant waiting to snap shut. And she indeed looked like the platonic ideal of prey: A young woman in rags with the head of a horsefly limping on bare feet through the night. But appearances can be deceiving. True, in those first few months after her disfiguration, the dungeon had swallowed her whole, ground her to a pulp, threatened to digest her and leave her meagre remains as an atmospheric set piece to scare fledgling adventurers with; but she had learned to adapt. The dungeon had soon become her new home, a place to run to - just as she was doing now.

“Hey! Get back here, monster!”

The voice was drawing close. The watcher had been following her for 5 miles, way beyond the city’s limits, the area he would have signed up to patrol. Uatchita didn’t know what had driven him to pursue her so relentlessly. It couldn’t be the money. Watcher pay was infamously terrible, which is why the only people willing to take the job were either desperate, zealous, or out for blood. She did not want to have to find out which category this one fell into.

Having dragged herself down the unevenly paved entrance corridor, she took a right turn at the first crossroad and kept following the path until she reached the door at its end. She knew this part of the dungeon like the back of her hand. She knew what was waiting for her in that room…

Moments after her, the watcher burst through the door.

“Now I have you cornered, you-“

The watcher, who had been shouting non-stop during the entire chase, was momentarily at a loss for words. The room that greeted him was a far call from the barren dead end he had expected: there was a bed in the corner, a table with some empty dishes at its right wall, even some strange-looking flowers growing in a patch of dirt- and in the centre of the room, the fly-woman he had been hunting. His grip around his sword tightened, but his thoughts were too scattered to allow anything but a pressed “You!” to escape his lips.

The monster in the centre of the room revealed two rows of sharp teeth in a wide grin bursting through the flesh beneath its mouth-tube.

“Me!”, it hissed, sprouted an extra set of sinewy arms with sharp claws at their ends and pounced on him.

***

“Thanks, Kiyah. You really saved my butt back there.”

Uatchita had crawled back out from under the bed where she had been hiding and watched with long fought-over indifference as her friend munched down on one of the watcher’s legs.

“Aww, don’t menshen it. Thanksh for the food!”

The shapeshifter had returned to the form she usually took around Uatchita: Somewhere between a woman and a bird, with fluffy, pristine white plumage and a long and narrow, triangular yellow beak. Kiyah noticed her gaze and the held the leg out.

"Want some?"

"N-no, I'm good."

It still made Uatchita a little uncomfortable whenever Kiyah made herself look like her. Three years hadn’t been enough to forget where her eyes had used to sit, what her smile had used to look like… Catching herself in the mirror was bad enough, but having to see herself move around in physical space was intolerable. She tried to shake the impression off with a sigh.

“Those guys are so annoying. What do they even want? It’s obvious I’m not a danger to anybody.”

Kiyah threw her a sly glance.

“Ishn’t that ekshactly the problem?”

Uatchita felt caught. Kiyah took the bone she was gnawing on out of her beak and turned towards her.

“I keep telling you, you need to learn how to defend yourself. Today I was here to save you, but what would you have done if I hadn’t been in? Hmm…?”

Uatchita felt the urge to point out that Kiyah was always “in”, that that was basically her job as protecter of the first floor's monsters, but she bit her tongue. That would be splitting hairs, and not what Kiyah was really playing at anyway. Unlike Uatchita, the other monsters didn't leave the dungeon to visit town.

“You know I don’t have any special powers. I’m like a weak human.”

Kiyah raised her eyebrows.

“Wrong! You’re like an untrained human. Well, I guess you’re limping right now. Either way, you’re definitely strong enough to pick up a sword! I mean, you've been flinging that axe around like nobody's business.”

She swung the bone through the air for emphasis. Uatchita didn’t know how to reply. Kiyah was right. Frankly, the whole “not strong enough” shtick was just an excuse. In fact, Uatchita had quite a bit of combat experience- fighting monsters, ironically. The real reason she didn’t want to confront the various humans she had to deal with was her own humanity. Even if it was just in self-defence, attacking a human felt like crossing a boundary into monster territory she had been very careful to keep intact. She knew that that was irrational and unfair towards her monster friends, but she couldn’t help feeling this way, and she was afraid of bringing it up around Kiyah.

Kiyah noticed her clamming up and decided to drop the subject.

“Sorry, sorry… I just worry about you, y’know.”

“Yeah… Don’t worry, you’re right. I’m just… yeah.”

Kiyah snorted, then turned back to her food. Having struggled to tear the meat away with her beak, she had transformed her mouth into something more closely resembling a dog muzzle.

“I don’t really get- Hamph!- What you’re doing in the chity all the time anyway. It’sh not like you’re hunting, and if you were- we’ve got shooooo much freaking food down here!”

Kiyah was grinning. Both of her hands were pointing at the watcher's, which was sticking out of her mouth. She was totally unaware that she had just asked the question that Uatchita was most afraid of.

“W-well, it’s just… Humans. They’re… they’re fun to watch…”

Kiyah was looking at her attentively.

“Hmmmm.”

They stared at each other for a while. Kiyahs absent-minded chewing slowed down more and more. Finally, she turned red.

“D-don’t look at me like that! I didn’t mean anything by it, y’know. Jusht curioush. Guesh it’sh none of my bishnesh. Jusht-“

She swallowed.

“Just… stay safe, Uatchita.”

Uatchita curled up her mouth-tube, which was the closest thing to smiling her current form allowed for. She stepped over to Kiyah and lightly ruffled her neck-feathers.

“I’ll do my best. Thanks again, Kiyah.”

Kiyah flinched at the unexpected contact, but silently let it happen. Uatchita let go and turned towards the door.

“I’ll be off for now. See you later!”

“Y-yeah…”

Uatchita stepped back out into the dungeon. There was something she had to take care of.