Key - A Five Minute Freewrite

The floor is lava. And killing gas, and suffocating smoke and all that. Basically, that’s why everybody tries the higher levels where dead dealing machines lurk. Most think they can outsmart the machines and mostly they do. Until the first mistake, that is. Which is most often the last. Still, hundreds dare the run each day, almost nobody makes it to the treasures beyond. And when they do, they generally take too much, attract too much of the guards’attention, and lose their skins out of greed. You see, getting there is not the trick. The trick is getting there and out again, with as much as you actually can carry. Or, rather, as much as your brain can carry and not get clogged, sluggish, fatally encumbered.

It’s not a game for weak people but it claims a lot of strong people’s life essence, too. Not because they underestimate it. Because they tend to overestimate themselves, based on some good luck. Luck is not how you make it far. Finding a key and holding to it, not overusing it, staying under the radar.

Under the floor, even.