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THE DUNGEON

A tentacle whips around and cracks my beak so hard that a couple of my fangs get knocked loose. I spit them out on the floor.

The deranged mouth on the wall chuckles and says, “Ouch. That looks like it hurt, sir!”

Then another fleshy tentacle grabs me by my tail and starts swinging me around and around the Dungeon Room. Now as I’m being swung around the room by my tail I say a little prayer in my scaly head, asking that my tail please not get ripped off. Somehow miraculously it doesn’t.

But I also fight back like a true savage.

I know the sweet feeling of sinking my fangs into a tentacle.

And I fight with a lust for blood and victory.

I rip tentacle after tentacle out of the wall and then shred them with my fangs and claws. I blast a hundred firebolts. Dozens of amputated glistening tentacles writhe on the floor, unable to put out the flames that cover them.

Now even with all the chaos and flying green tentacles here in the Dungeon, I can still just make out Fribby’s silver body floating peacefully in the Evolution Machine’s stasis pod on the other side of the room.

“Hold tight, Fribby!” I shout. “I’m coming!”

The hideous mouth on the wall snarls, “That’s where you’re wrong, sir. You won’t be saving anybody today. Not even yourself!”

Now the giant mouth on the wall opens wide and this long red tongue comes shooting out of it and then wraps around my scaly neck and cinches itself tight like a noose.

My eyeballs bulge.

I can’t breathe.

I’m seeing yellow dots swim through the air.

I claw helplessly with my talons at the repulsive tongue as it squeezes tighter around my neck.

The tongue suddenly yanks back and I’m whipped off my webbed feet and I go flying headfirst into the open mouth.

I can’t breathe.

Then the mouth closes.

It’s so dark and warm in here.

And that’s when I black out.