Lita did not rejoice to hear the disaster that Cutter had planned to accompany the commencement of the enterprise which regarded the destruction of King Kobold.
Cutter said, “Just hear me out!”
Lita backed up, stone flippers flailing, “Bruh, no way. I’m the tutorial! Whatever you’re thinking, dude, you better stop thinking it!”
“Just listen to me a second. It won’t hurt you to listen to me a second…”
Lita stilled. “Dunno…”
“Okay, listen. You stopped the kobold from getting me earlier, and nothing happened, right?”
“Yuh…”
“And in the boss chamber, you made a sound and he just smashed you. Like, bam!”
Lita shuddered, “Yeah, bruh, I’d totally forgotten about that…”
“He targeted you! You’re not special!”
“Dude! I have feelings! I know I’ve lived down here like totally alone for, like, all of time, but I don’t think-”
“No no no,” Cutter adopted a conspiratory tone. “You’re special. OH, trust me, you’re special. You are literally the only living being made of stone that I’ve ever encountered in my whole life!”
“I’m not just a stone automaton… I, like, make poems and stuff too…”
“Yes! YES! Exactly, you’re special. I didn’t mean you’re not special, but what I meant was, you’re not an exception to the rules or anything. King Kobold went right after you! Get it? You’re not outside the scope of the fighting…”
Lita looked at him, little blue eyes impassive.
Cutter said, “That means…”
Lita did not move or alter expression,
“It means…”
Lita just continued to look back, unable to understand or unwilling to.
Cutter sagged slightly, “It means you can fight too!”
The blue eyes expanded to huge circles and the stone robot vibrated, backing up again. “Bruh! Bruh! BRO! No way. I’m the tutorial, I, like, tutor or whatever! I don’t fight!”
“Why not? Nothing happened before. And you like it, don’t you?”
“Whadya mean, dude…”
“You like the fighting. Git some. You like to see me smash a kobold, don’t you?”
“Well, like, it’s different, is all…”
Cutter crept closer, eyes narrowed, “Wouldn’t you like to git some? Do that cool spin move, do a little damage…”
“Like, who wouldn’t, but we all gotta walk our own paths, bruh…”
Cutter put his hands on the stone shoulders. They weren’t cold. They weren’t warm either. “You could go in there with me… we could get you a weapon. Or two! You could do that spin thing, chew him up with me! Think about it? We could fight together. Whatever you feel, you can’t say that doesn’t sound good…”
“I guess…”
“You, me and him, in a fight for our lives…”
Lita’s eyes grew a little brighter. “Like, when you put it that way, but-”
“You’ve been down here forever, man! Do you want to be here for another forever? Damn the forces that be! Either they care or they don’t! Wouldn’t you like to roll the dice, see what happens? Live for once!”
“Yeah… that does sound-”
“Gear up, brother! Let’s do it!”
“YEAH!”
“Let’s git some!”
Lita’s voice was suddenly exploding with enthusiasm, the construct shaking with eagerness, “GIT SOME”
They held each other’s shoulders, screaming into the opposite face. “GIT SOME! GIT SOME!”
Then Cutter passed out.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Bruh, you gotta eat. You can’t go back in there like this. You gotta heal.”
Cutter shook his head, pain in his body, pain in his skull, groggy.
“Come on, bruh, I wanna git some, can’t git some with you, bruh, come on.”
Cutter looked at the object in Lita’s stone flipper. His vision was blurry, he couldn’t make it out. “What is that?”
“Dude, it’s a mushroom. Kobolds eat ’em all the time. It’s all they got to grow down here,”
“Is it… raw…”
“Bruh, you can’t go worrying about stuff like that. Get it down you, then we can go GIT SOME.
Cutter looked hesitantly at the mushroom, “I don’t think eating mushrooms is going to un-break my ribs.”
“Dude, that’s exactly how you do it! If you’re hurt you gotta eat!”
Cutter looked at the mushroom dubiously. He hadn’t been steered wrong by the automaton so far, and this place, this dream (he tried to assure himself with flagging confidence) seems to have a strange video game–like quality to its rules…
“It’s not cooked or anything? No?”
“Oh, yeah, bruh! I totally fired up the wok and cooked the heck out of it, then I gave it to my sous chef and he, like, braised or something. NO IT’S NOT COOKED!”
Cutter shrugged. His body was aching. He could feel the blood oozing from his wounds, his vision was blurred and he could have sworn he could feel his own heartbeat ebbing weakly. He reached out for the blurry object and brought it to his lips. With a shudder of revulsion, he bit in.
“Lita…”
“Dude?”
“That’s… amazing!”
“Made it myself, dude.”
“No. It’s… it’s… holy crap, this is delicious!”
He bit into the mushroom again, and again. It was fleshy and soft, in a yielding rewarding way, the flavours a mix of chocolate and nuts.
“Wow! Imagine if it was cooked! Holy shit, that’s delicious!”
Cutter noticed his vision clearing. “Got any more?”
“Totally! Like a freakin’ tonne! The kobolds farm them. Or used to farm them, before, you know, you likely totally killed them all.”
“Was I killing farmers?”
Lita shrugged. “Here you go, bruh, get your strength like totally up, ’cause we’re gonna GIT SOME!”
Cutter accepted another mushroom and it vanished into him. Then another, and another. After the ninth or tenth raw mushroom had been devoured he was feeling very much like his old self. “Okay. Okay. Start time.”
Lita said, “Strat is go GIT SOME!”
Cutter said, “Easy there, killer. Glad to have you on board. But let’s talk game plan, kay?”
“Sure thing.”
Cutter said, “King Kobold has eyes on the backs of his hands, they see everything. You can’t take him from the front, so it’s gotta be the sides or behind. That’s where two of us can do a lot more damage than one. He’s got three places on his body where he’s got eyes, but he’s only got one club…”
Lita nodded, eyes burning with something that Cutter found vaguely chilling.
Cutter said, “So, I never asked, what are your sigils? What’s, you, um, path?”
Lita looked down at his stone band, then back to Cutter. “I… Me… dude, my path is… know what? Don’t worry about my path, let’s talk sigils! Kay? I got Spin, Reassemble, and… uh… that’s it, bruh.”
Cutter stared at him deadpan. “I can see you have three sigils. Spin is obvious, I guess Reassemble is how you put yourself back together when you get smashed. Show me the other one.”
Lita pulled his arm away, behind him, out of sight. “Don’t like, don’t even worry about it, bruh, it’s like totally nothing.”
“Show me. We’re going to go into the ring together. We need to know what resources we have.”
“Dude… like, don’t…”
Cutter tugged at Lita’s arm. The automaton struggled weakly, but eventually let him draw the arm forward.
Cutter narrowed his eyes at the third sigil. It showed an image of a cake. It, like the other two, glowed with the faint light of ash.
“Is that… a baking sigil?”
“Dude, I can’t help the sigils I was born with, okay? I’m a stone cold killing machine, sigils don’t make the bot!”
“I thought you were an impassive tutorial automaton?”
“I was a totally impassive tutorial, but you unlocked the beast, dude. Now I’m a cold stone killer!”
“-that bakes”
Lita sagged utterly.
Cutter scrambled to his feet, “Lita, man, that’s okay. I bake. In my world. I mean the real world. I mean, when I’m awake. I cook and bake and I love it. You gotta let that shit go, man, there’s nothing wrong with a man spending some time in the kitchen. Chicks love it. My wife loves when I go all out.”
“Really?”
Cutter nodded, “really.”
“Promise?”
“Double promise. Now, let’s get serious. Baking isn’t likely to help us out much here. But that spin attack is awesome, and Reassemble… can you die?”
“Dude, I’m not immortal.”
“Yeah, but King Kobold smashed you to pieces and you just put yourself back together”
“Duh. He didn’t meet the threshold! Physical attacks over a certain force can knock bits off me, bruh, but bigger ones can like totally hurt, or even kill me. And I’ve got like literally no protection from, like, elemental damage or whatever.”
Cutter nodded. “Okay, but in this instance, he can’t really hurt you?”
Lita mirrored the nod slowly, “I guess…”
Cutter said, “Perfect. You can be the decoy.”
“Decoy? I wanna git some, bruh! Decoys don’t git some!”
“No! I didn’t mean it like that. You can be decoy at first. Get his attention, give me a chance to actually do some damage. Then he’ll have to turn on me, and you’ll get a shot. Then he’ll turn to you, on and on, we hack the bastard to bits.”
“Totally dude! That can’t fail! I mean, unless he’s got like, other sigils or something.”
The space went quiet as they both contemplated what Lita had just said. After a moment, Cutter said, “You didn’t get a good look at his sigils, did you?”
“No way, dude. I was busy telling you what to do and like getting totally wrecked to pieces.”
“Okay. Well, we can’t do much about that right now. Are there many mushrooms left?”
“Dude, like SO many.”
“Well, that means we can get back in there and try again. Worst case, if it’s going south because he has another sigil with some ability we weren’t ready for, we get back out, heal up and make a new plan. Sound good?”
“Totally.”
Cutter stood and faced the long corridor that ended in the small open space into the darkness beyond.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?”
“Bruh, I was trying to tell you…”
“If it’s not a dream… then what the hell’s happening…”
“Dunno what to say, dude, it’s like life, it’s the real world. Seriously, I thought you sounded pretty bananas before-”
“You can’t be trying to tell me that I’m in a reality where there are kobolds, and sigils and talking stone robots…”
“Dude-”
“You CAN’T be telling me that.”
“Oh? Yeah? Okay. Totally. Naw, bruh, this is a dream.”
“It is a dream,” Cutter echoed.
“Totally a dream.”
Cutter turned to Lita, “But you know what?”
“Yuh?”
Cutter’s eyes narrowed and his face assumed a new fire. “It’s a dream where we-”
Lita looked back vacantly. “Yes?”
Cutter said, “Where we… Git…”
Lita roared, “Where we GIT some!”
“GIT SOME!”
