“I have something to tell you,” Cuby said as we made our way up the steps to the observatory to price check the last of our items, the demon stones—which I had foolishly not asked about while I was there. We’d already checked everything else at merchants in town, and true to his word Karrol Stir would outpay all of them for my inventory.
“You do?” I said. “Okay, go ahead then.”
“Well, between the poisoner’s shop and when I built all my bombs I went to talk to Haroshi.”
“You did?” I asked. “That’s strange. I thought he scared the hell out of you.”
“A strange turn of expression,” she said, stopping a moment and blinking. “But yes. He… scares the hell out of me, as you say. I wanted to present myself as being useful to him so as to gain some idea of his plans.”
“And what are his plans?”
“To gather many followers and assault the free dungeon as soon as possible. You know, the place Kontor told us about. Mirakkatet”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said.
“Yeah,” Cuby said slowly. Her voice contained more uncertainty than I’d ever heard from her. “The thing is, I just wanted to make sure… nevermind. But the point is, he rejected me wholeheartedly.”
“Oh. You wanted to join his group?”
“Not really,” she said. “I mean, if it was the only way into the dungeon, then yes. But mostly I wanted to know his plans so we could plan around them.”
She drew in a breath and sighed, a strange thing to see from someone in the middle of climbing so many steps. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but he’s an imbecile. I’m the kind of phrenodine that even a lot of Taxin El have to respect… or I used to be. But all he saw once I introduced myself was a phrenodine, just any old Phrenodine. And when he wanted to tell me no… he just said some of the things you say about the phrenodine, you know? Things that haven’t been said about me in a long, long time, at least not where I can hear them.”
I had no idea what insults someone might fling at her species, or even if she really was a kind of tree, as I suspected, so I waited for her to continue.
“Look,” she said, stopping. I stopped and turned to face her. Her side faced away from the peak, and the mountains stretched behind her quite impressively. Her face was uncertain, almost nervous.
“I’m sorry about everything I’ve said about your malfunction. When I stopped and thought about what I’ve been saying about AIs all this time, I realized I really have been a dry-rooted fruit-crisper. You’re probably going through a very hard time.”
Dry-rooted fruit-crisper. To my mind it had less force than some of the racial slurs I was familiar with, and I fought the urge to laugh. Maybe on the other side of the translation software, the language was a bit more harsh. “It’s all right, Cuby.”
“Great!” she said, her face breaking into a grin instantly. “I hope my apology helps us to build a relationship out of greater trust.”
“...Okay,” I hazarded.
Cuby started back up the mountain. A moment later, she said: “I noticed you fixed your HP, by the way.”
“My HP?”
“You were gaining the wrong amount per level,” she said. “40 instead of 30. But now that you’re under the False Identity spell, the math checks out. See, I don’t know if you found it, but when you’re in a group with someone you can set their tag to show their specific HP.”
Oh. I looked down at my Strength score—I couldn’t help it going up by 1 each level, which meant my HP increased by an extra 10. I had done the math when I’d cast the False Identity spell and made myself look like a level 8 Mage without any extra Strength. But I did have extra Strength, from Human Adaptability. Cuby seemed to think she’d outsmarted me by not telling me about the specific HP setting—but I hadn’t even thought enough to know my Strength would be a problem even if she could see my HP.
Uh-oh.
“For a little while, I thought you must be spending your stats badly. But when I watched you level up, your Hit Points went up by 40 right away—faster than you could have bought the point,” she said conversationally. “Then I noticed that your mana and stamina did the same. I waited until we got to town to ask around and make sure I hadn’t just misremembered the mage entry, but I didn’t. Your stats are different from anyone else’s. See, the grappling hook requires 7 Strength and Agility, but that gets hidden in the detailed description if you already meet the requirement. That’s the main reason I wanted you to build one—you should have objected because you couldn’t use it, but the simple description didn’t tell you that because you could use it.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I said nothing. I felt like it would be obvious, and shameful, if I tried to pretend she was wrong. It was clear from what she’d said about building greater trust that she wanted me to tell her my secret, but….
They are going to find Earth.
The stakes were too high. I needed to live, and I needed to find whoever had left their warning on my loading screen—and Cuby was… not the most trustworthy person I’d met in my life. There was no way I could tell her I was human, or about Earth: she was ambitious, and the knowledge of those things might well be worth more than a handful of Supremacy Boon cards… might be worth more than anything that could happen in this game.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “But I’d prefer you would. You’re not going to get me hurt, right? Or betray me?”
“Uh… no, Cuby. No, I won’t betray you.”
“Okay. Well, I hope you stick with me, because I’ll figure you out.” She cocked her head at me. “The only reason I’m here is because I see things that other people don’t, you know. You could even say I’ve seen too much.”
She flashed me a sly grin as we continued up the stairs. It was all just more of a reminder that I didn’t understand her—she was apparently okay with my open deception. Maybe in her old job it was normal for everyone to be playing games with each other? She’d worked in politics, after all.
I couldn’t bring myself to even try to change the subject as we finished the climb to the observatory, then spent about thirty seconds asking after the price we’d fetch for the demon stones and my staff, which Cuby had no compunctions about selling. As with the other places, it became obvious after asking that the NPCs couldn’t compete with Karrol Stir.
“What do you think he’s doing?” I asked. “Why are his prices the best?”
“He’s a Karox,” she said. “He probably just wants to make the most efficient market possible. And everything you buy from these NPCs is so expensive compared to what they buy it for. You know.”
I frowned. I had worked in advertising before I’d been laid off. I most definitely didn’t know anyone who wanted to make the most efficient market possible. When I thought of how I might try making money if I were spending all my time trading, I figured I’d try to monopolize something and then charge exorbitantly for it.
But if Cuby hadn’t reminded me enough, these people weren’t humans. Maybe getting people great deals was something that Karox biology found as innately pleasing as humans found… fucking each other over to hoard resources and increase their social prestige.
Sounded kind of crazy, though.
We found Karrol Stir back in the square still, bellowing out his Karox credentials as before. We waited for an NPC to sell him some ore, then I traded him almost all of my inventory for a hefty 1165 gold, more than two thirds of which had been from my staff.
Cuby was next, selling her ceremonial athame and a few more drops from the players for what I gathered was a similarly large sum of gold. We’d both agreed that spreading the gold out over some moderate gear upgrades, consumables, and new abilities would be much stronger than just keeping the weapons, which were flashy enough to command a premium.
“So,” I said when we were walking away. “A couple hours before we need to sleep.”
“Mhm!” she said, nodding. “I think I’m a little tired, but not very—the taxin el always made it sound like getting tired felt like dying, a little.”
“Heh,” I said. “Do you want to see if we can head outside and grind a bit?”
She glanced toward the ramparts at the edge of town. “It might not be safe tonight. Say, do you want to hold hands?”
“Hold hands?” I asked, taken aback by the question.
“Yeah,” said Cuby. “You may not know this, but humans are supposed to be like taxin el in that they gain a certain satisfaction from physical contact with each other. A lot of physical contact has to do with mating, but I think holding hands is platonic.”
I blinked. “Mating,” I echoed, startled by how matter-of-factly she’d brought it up.
“Sorry, I didn’t ask—do you know what that is?” Cuby asked innocuously.
“Ah, yes. Yes, I’m pretty sure I know.”
“Taxin el are very curious about mating—they have a certain way of subtly weaving their mate viability into everything they do. Anyway, do you want to hold hands?”
Cuby was new in her body, and the request had to be a mostly harmless one, so I said: “Yeah, all right,” and offered her my hand.
She took it, squeezed it. “I’m not sure it feels different to me than if I were touching anything else soft and warm and little moist,” she said.
But I was thinking about everything else she’d said more than anything to do with the handholding. From her description of their mating habits to the way she described their expressions as much like our own, taxin el were starting to sound a lot like, well, ordinary humans.
Looking to change the subject, I asked: “Earlier, you said it might not be safe out tonight,” I said. “What did you mean by that?”
“Hm?” She glanced up at me, seeming distracted. “Oh. I’m a little worried Haroshi’s gang is out there killing people.”
I blinked. The sudden image of the woman dying in the cave, forgotten for most of the last few hours, invaded my mind once again. “You are?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah,” she said. She flicked a worried glance in my direction, then added: “Actually, I’m a little bit worried that his crew is about to kill everyone.”