Cutter and Lita discovered the closed door a little while down the corridor.

  They stood before the door to the boss chamber, pausing for a moment as Cutter gathered himself.

  He said, “Like, if it kills me I’ll probably just wake up or some shit…”

  Lita’s little glowing eyes darted to this, then back straight ahead. “Yeah… sure, bruh…”

  Cutter swallowed, his knuckles whitening as he squeezed the axe handle. He bounced on the balls of his feet. “Okay. How do I open it?”

  “Uh, dude… it’s a door…”

  “Oh, so I just…” The door slid away under the pressure of his hand. The gap it revealed was small, kobold-sized really. Scraping his chest and back, he was just able to squeeze through. Lita had to stretch the levitating connections of his body segments to contort his full form sufficiently to make it through.

  And then they were in the boss chamber.

  Without the night vision sigil Cutter would have been hopelessly lost. The room was large, with only two faint lanterns casting paltry light. Without night vision the far end would have faded under a shroud of shadows. Instead, Cutter could see all the way. He could see the dais, the throne and its occupant. He had to clench to control his bladder.

  “Hey! Fuck you! I’m not gonna piss myself!”

  Instead of making his entrance with utmost stealth, Cutter had chosen to curse at the ceiling about his own confidence in his urinary continence, to Lita’s confusion and dismay. The throne’s occupant, who had been in slumber, was suddenly very much awake.

  Lita hummed, “Whoa… so that’s the King Kobold…”

  Cutter shot him a glance. “You’ve never seen him?”

  “No way, dude. Look at him, look at the size of the door. That dude does not get around the place.”

  Cutter gripped his weapon tightly, facing the lumbering enemy. “King Kobold? Looks like the old version of King Koopa.”

  “I don’t know what that is, bruh…”

  King Kobold was very removed from his subject in appearance. The creature towered above Cutter, standing at least eight feet, hugely bulky, with long arms and a thick gut. Its face was more crocodilian than the lizard-like visages of the kobolds. It carried what amounted to a tree trunk as a club. On its wrist hung a huge stone band, with five glowing sigils. Cutter didn’t have time to count but he felt a twinge of dread as he noticed the glimmer of cinder-level sigils on at least two of the little orbs.

  Cutter rolled his neck and started to bob and duck on his feet. “Okay, let’s do this!”

  “GO GIT SOME!”

  Lita hung back by the door as Cutter bounced forward to meet the new opponent. The huge club smashed down without warning. Cutter jerked back to escape. As soon as he twitched in reaction the dodge sigil glowed and he was rolling clear.

  “Sweet,” he breathed, launching to his feet and swinging at the unprotected side of the monster as it struggled to lift the huge club back up.

  He had an opening, an exposed flank, an easy shot. He had a feeling something this big would take more than a few hits to bring down, but he was suddenly confident. The thing was slow and seemed dumb as hell. Even if it took a hundred blows, how could this be? Dodge to the side, chop it, bounce back, rinse repeat.

  Cutter was an instant away from delivering the blow, axe in full motion, when the movement caught his eye. On the back of the creature’s left hand, an eye blinked. There was no time to process how bizarre this was, how out of place. There was only the wordless thought that there was an eye where there shouldn’t be, then the crushing impact of the back-handed slap.

  Cutter flew across the room, already breathless and beaten by the blow, to smash with terrible force into the far wall.

  He slid down, gasping, lungs spasming.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Lita shouted, “Cutter! Up, bruh! He’s a comin’!”

  King Kobold was indeed “a comin’,” lumbering towards Cutter’s writhing form with deathly intent. The cry from Lita turned the creature’s head toward the construct. The club flew.

  “Aw, heck n-”

  Lita’s curse was cut off as the club slammed into him. Then there was no more, just pieces of stone rolling and clattering on the floor.

  “LITA!” Cutter shouted, finding his feet.

  It was strange how he reacted to Lita’s destruction. By Cutter’s own admission, this was a figment of his imagination, a dream companion he had only just met in a reality that would only persist as long as he slept. But he’d been alone here, and the dream had, admittedly, gone on a worryingly long time. Cutter had kind of been the Wilson to his Tom Hanks.

  King Kobold was on him again. He had no time to process Lita’s demise. Only to react. The pattern repeated, but this time he was ready when the eye saw him coming. His dodge wasn’t quite ready so he had to duck out of the way. When the club came again he dodged with his sigil, tried rolling to the right, but another eye on that hand waited to spy him. He barely avoided that slap. His body ached, blood was already flowing freely from his nose. He didn’t think he could survive many more of those blows, even with his stone-banded resilience.

  He tried a change in tactic. He charged.

  He ran right at the towering beast, roaring, axe raised high. He was fueled by anger at Lita’s destruction, desperation at the pressing need to end this fight, and a strange compulsion born of a fear that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a dream after all.

  Frontal assault was the wrong choice.

  King Kobold poked forward with his club, like a pool cue. Cutter had enough time to groan, “Oh, shit,” before his body was crunching, pain flaring, his momentum reversed violently, and again he was slammed against the far wall.

  He coughed, spitting blood. “Fuck, fuck…”

  The saving grace was the sheer lumbering slowness of the gargantuan. If it had been closer it could have crushed him to death with another blow. Instead he had time to find his feet and start the dance again.

  But the dance was tiring.

  It was utterly wearying.

  He tried different formulas. Hacking at the arms, but those eyes saw, and the arms pulled away. Rolling between the legs, but again, the creature’s perception caught him and a huge clawed foot kicked him back. Leaping on the club to gain height after it slammed into the ground resulted in so near a miss that it did not bear a second attempt.

  If he hadn’t been so distracted he might have noticed the pieces of Lita sliding towards each other on the stone floor, as if drawn by threads.

  “What?” His head turned. “Aw, sweet.”

  The chaos continued, Cutter pulling back now, losing the energy to fight through. Dodging and just catching his breath more and more, keeping a watchful eye as Lita reassembled himself.

  Lita had just about returned when Cutter stumbled. His muscles had been cramping for a while, his legs were weak from exertion, and he simply stumbled, a toe catching on a stone. The club caught him with an uppercut and he flew again, blood painting a trail in the air behind him. He crashed to the ground by Lita’s feet, the door a few feet to the left.

  The ground shook with the impact of the giant kobold’s feet.

  “Fuck, Lita, let’s get out of this!”

  “Read my mind, brother!”

  They fled, Lita distorting to squeeze through, Cutter squeezing, rubbing his bruised and bleeding skin against the stone. The kobold’s left hand shot out, claws raking him, grasping. He gasped in fresh pain as it scored his shoulder, then he was through, and free, panting on the floor, looking back at the door.

  The door was eclipsed by the titanic body. It shifted, dropping down, until that terrible crocodilian face filled it, turning to point one eye at him. The voice was booming, deep, “Come back, meat. Nowhere to go.”

  Cutter shivered. “Nuh-uh, that’s freaky as shit.”

  He scrambled down the corridor and out of sight. He did not want to be in the line of sight of the creature a moment longer than he had to be. As he moved he could feel the vibration, hear the impacts of its feet moving away, no doubt returning to its throne to await round two.

  Lita waited for him at the end of the corridor. “Good try, sport! Nothing wrong with giving up. The best in the world give up all the time. Like I always say, it’s better to give up than to try at all. So… I guess you live here now, dude. I know, it’s not exactly your plan or anything. But you gotta look on the bright side. For me, bruh, total win. I was totally alone for the entirety of my existence! Now I got a pet or something. People get to name their pets though… bruh, are you totally married to Cutter?”

  Cutter gasped on the ground. “I can’t stay here.”

  Lita’s eyes dropped to the floor, weakly masking disappointment. “Oh, yeah… totally… I was only kidding around. I like spending all of eternity in the dark with no-one to talk to…”

  “I’m sorry, Lita. I have to get through him. This is a dream, obviously… but, if it’s not… I sure don’t remember ever feeling ribs hurt this bad in a dream before… I have a family, man. I need to get past him… maybe there’s another way out…”

  “Dude, listen to me, there is one hundred percent no way out.”

  Cutter said, “Then I need to beat him. Didn’t you say I could level up? The bands and sigils could go up? Maybe there’s more kobolds I could kill for XP or whatever…”

  “Think they’re all dead, bruh. Besides, you could kill kobolds for a thousand years and it won’t get you to the next step. That takes achievements. Killing the King would be an achievement, wouldn’t get you to the next band, dude, but it would sure as heck fill your bar a smidge.”

  Cutter slumped. “If I go back in there he’s gonna kill me.”

  Lita said, “Dude! I know it! He totally nearly killed me!”

  Cutter had been looking at the floor, but slowly raised his head to look at the automaton.

  Lita shifted, uneasy. “Dude… what are you looking at?”

  Cutter smiled grimly, wincing as his lip split and fresh blood ran to join the stream from his nose.

  “I’m looking at the solution.”