Inside and out

"So," said Styx. He and Lank stood on the edge of the forest, staring at the world stretching out before them. "Our quest begins." He stretched and steadied himself. "Where to begin?"
Lank scratched his head lazily. "Obviously they're at Grandfather's Mountain. Where else would they be? It's bad, but, you know, where else?" The pair looked to their left, where far away a menacing purple mountain loomed. Flashes of dark light burst forth from the doom fortress built into it. "Although perhaps that's not a good place to start," he finished hurriedly. "I think the Broken plains would be the best place."
"Let's go there, then." And the pair went to the Broken plains. "Now," said Styx, "surely there must be something here..."
"Wait," muttered Lank. "How did we get here so fast?..."
Styx shrugged dismissively. "This is our world. Its size is disproportionate to its surface area because it's convenient. We can do anything we want here."
"Really?" Lank began to float.
"But not that." He tumbled to the ground in a cluttered heap. "We're not gods, you know." They avoided looking back to the blue mountain. No need to drag Skeleton into this.
"The rules here make no sense," Lank grumbled.
"A lot of it's arbitrary. We are a chaotic being, after all." They nodded sadly.
A short distance away was a patch of scorched grass. The grazing bull creatures eyed them warily but casually nearby. In the center was what appeared to be an old campfire. "Someone was here," he said. He poked the remains with is foot. Suddenly it burst upward into a balloon of fire, setting the shocked identity state alight. The pair stood for a few seconds, perplexed, as he burned. Then Lank pointed. "The stream!" he yelled, moving forward, and when a stream of running water failed to appear he settled for hurling himself into one of the cracks that covered the plain.
Styx jumped after him into the hole, landing on soft dirt about a metre down. This he began packing onto the still-burning Lank, muttering "This is bad, this is bad," under his breath. Then the earth opened up beneath them and swallowed them.

Beneath the Broken Plains, Styx and Lank awoke. They were in a cavern with a low ceiling. A small, gnomelike creature huddled nearby, beneath where the fire pit had been, crying.
"Okay, I've had enough of this," said Lank. "Freeze." The creature froze in place. Lank turned to Styx. "This is pointless. We're going nowhere."
"We are going," said Styx, "where we're meant to go. Once we're finished we'll have what we came for."
"But it's meaningless!" cried Lank, aggravated. He began to pace, flinging his arms about wildly. "We're just going to blunder about endlessly, finding nothing. Because we're making this up as we go along. This is our mind." He turned to Styx. "Our world."
"But it's not just us. The others are a part of it too."
"The others are just as bound by it as we are. We won't find anything in this world. Not like this." He sighed. "Look at the fire trap. That was put there, by one of us. Because we were expecting to find it. But we didn't know what it was for, so it blew up in our faces. This gnome thing is no different, as well as anyone or anything else we may happen to meet on this quest. It's our invention. We can't tell ourselves anything we don't already know. Our efforts will be fruitless. If we never find what we're looking for - our siblings - or even the secrets of our past - what then?" He stared at Styx mournfully. "What then?"
Styx was silent for a long time. He looked up. "What do you propose we do?"
"I think you know."
He sighed. "Well, under different circumstances I'd suggest we finish our search here, gain experience, pick up new allies along the way, explore the Rocks, find the secret at the heart of the Dredge ship, discover if the Hanging Forest is real, pick up a new weapon, go to Grandfather's Mountain to rescue our brother and sisters, stop by the Peak to seek Skeleton's aid, then collectively head to the Chasm for a final confrontation against our demons. However, since we're bound by our internal systems, such a scheme would undoubtedly draw us deeper into this deceptive web of our own devising. So..." he stared blankly into space. "We've got to somehow cheat the system."
All around the cavern collapsed. What was left was blackness. Lank looked around sadly. "Our world isn't real."
"Our world is as real as it needs to be. Everything here exists in one form or another. All that changes is our perception. Just because it's unreal doesn't mean it's a lie."
"But nothing is as it seems. Inside and out, we have no way of knowing what's real and what's not. Our perceptions are skewed."
"We see what's important. Is that not good enough?"
"I don't know." He closed his eyes and sighed. "So much fear, so much uncertainty. So much pain. Is a different sense of reality worth that?" Silence. "How can we know what's important when we don't know what's real?" More silence. "Am I real?"
The pair did not say anything for a long time.