Y’know, people say that a good story isn’t always true, that the best ones bend the facts a bit to sound better. I personally don’t believe that. A good story, if it’s not made up, always starts with the truth. In fact, the one I’m about to tell you starts with something that I know happened, because I was there.


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    Five minutes. Me and a friend, Elric, we we’re exploring a dungeon with one of those parties for hire. Everyone else we knew had just barely left for the holidays, and we decided we’d surprise them with some new gear when they returned. We needed a dungeon for that, since we didn’t have much money on hand. We would collect the loot from there and sell whatever we couldn’t use.


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    They were all nice enough, even the embodiment of spite that was their rogue, but it…things went bad in the boss room. We took the thing down within maybe an hour, and we were about to go back up when…when they decided we were dead weight. Those five minutes I mentioned, that was how long they took to get rid of us. One minute to take us down, and another to bind us. One minute for them to leave, and two for the monsters to find us and rip our bodies limb from limb. It wasn’t pleasant.


    It wasn’t the end though. I suppose that’s where the story actually began then. At the end of the end.