Scene 3

"So, what does that mean? We can't get out?" Matthias asked Ari.
"Perish the thought. You simply need to use one of your perks to gain a class and level it up to level 10 without dying first. Then you can just escape through the entrance door." Ari explained casually.
"But taking a class will mean we can't gain as many skills, and skills are how we get path points." Cleo commented.
"And? A class will help you grow faster than random skills and paths will anyways. Just pick a class." Ari said dismissively.
Cleo studies his face a moment, turns to Matthias and says bluntly, "I don't trust him. He's a little too focused on us getting a level without feeling like explaining his reasoning. Besides, what kind of System Companion doesn't know the protocols that got us stuck in here?"
Ari's faces turns indignant at that statement, "I did not lie. A class is your best bet for survival. Or you can defeat the dungeon boss. Which of those two do you think you can realistically do?"
Matthias cuts in from where he's laying submerged in the water basin, "Can't we all just get along? Ari be nice, Cleo be nice. I don't want to rush into anything either way. Why don't you review our class options Ari so we can sort through the noise of too many choices containing descriptions of mechanics we don't even understand fully or at all yet."
Cleo's face turned a little red as she turned her eyes to face him, "Be. Nice.? What am I a dog? Don't you dare fucking answer that!" And with that she stomped outside the safe room and back into the dungeon.
Ari shrugged, "Problem Solved. Now have you considered the Beastlord Class? Given you are in a Beast type Dungeon, it could be prudent, especially given your origin of Beast Master."
"Damnit Ari, you're supposed to be helpful, not pissing off my friends. Cut it out and go apologize." Matthias said to his spirit companion pointedly.
Ari rolled his eyes, dropped his shoulders, and walked out the door into the dungeon. Matt watched him go and began to scroll through more perk options. "Regenerative Core, now that sounds like something I want." And without a second glance, he purchased it with his Medium Perk point. "What else do we have that can level up my combat skills? I do not want to die from fighting acid-spitting frogs or fire-breathing turkeys. Or that big evil demon goat. Man fuck that thing. Who dreams that kind of nightmare fuel up?"

Cleo tossed her Survivor's Backpack against the base of the tree they had tied the turkey meat up in the branches of. She pulled the hatchet and pulled a piece of the hickory her and Matthias had gathered before he got injured by the monster frog. At that thought she gripped the hatchet tighter and looked around her for any creatures stalking towards her.

Seeing nothing in the forest. She propped that piece of wood on a nearby boulder in the ground and began chipping it like Matt had said they needed to make the meat taste the best.

She attacked the log with strike after strike, letting her frustration bleed away with the wood chips falling away after each impact. 'What is going on with me? I know I'm freaked out about everything, but Matt didn't really deserve that.'

She struck again and again, slowly and steadily converting that log into tiny wood chips. She reached for another log and continued chopping.

"Stupid Boys always talking down to me cuz I'm short! Even the ghost Boi is Rude! I'm stuck inside a Dungeon apparently and have to live eating giant turkeys. I don't know if my Mom or my boyfriend are still alive. And Josh just FUCKING DIED!" That last bit came out in a strangled cry as she slammed the hatchet through the log she'd been chipping so hard it exploded from the impact and the hatchet cracked the stone beneath it. Cleo didn't even notice. She just slumped to her knees and cried as she stopped hiding her pain for a moment here alone in the woods.

At least she thought she was alone. She forgot at the moment that Ari could be invisible to her whenever he wanted, and he stood there watching her break down into tears. 'Best not to appear just yet, that cannot improve my odds of making amends as commanded.'

Matthias stood next to the water basin in the safe room attempting to practice patience as he wondered where Ari and Cleo had gone. After nearly an hour of spacing out in the water basin feeling the strange sensation of the magic in the safe room accelerating his healing he watched his current HP tick up to full while standing beside the basin air-drying as he waited the last few minutes out. He had half a shirt left at this point, and a small hole in this pants leg already he noticed as his anxiety from waiting caused his attention to pinball around the room until he landed on what he was wearing as he checked his skin's progress healing alongside his HP regenerating. 'You know, I think what made video game healing better was you didn't have to wait so long as a starting character to heal. And, you know, it didn't Hurt So MUCH.' He thought to himself.

He started stretching, thinking to himself, 'I need to grab my spear and go look for Cleo.'

Ari had waited for a while for her to finally stop crying. He'd been growing concerned all her noise was going to attract a predator and kept taking a walk around the area to check for danger. Seeing none, he walked back to her and watched as her sobs slowly died down. Then he'd appeared sitting beside her and spoke softly that he was sorry. He did well to help calm her and bring her back towards an emotional center. Then he inevitably made one of his bad form jokes that set her off again with boiling anger and overwhelming despair. Her face contorted into a visage of pain and rage as her voice became a monument to the old saying of giving someone a piece of your mind. He desparately backpedaled his words and pivoted to attempting to bribe her in an appeal to her greed so he could get her to say they had made up to Matthias, which was all he really cared about.

He had almost sealed the deal with her when he let his tone slip and then she got mad again. But he'd already sent the System Prompt containing his offer to her. Her anger flared. She reached out to the notification box and let her rage flow into it. She watched as the terms altered to favor her. One by one.

By the time she was done, he was required to commit to teaching her everything he knows about magic and continue to aid her learning until she masters all magic he has at least to his same skill levels. Additionally he's got to shut up when she says a code word. And the System has to bring back The Homie Josh. She pressed accept on the deal and Ari began to glitch out.

Matthias spoke up at this moment, "Hey Cleo, no Killing my Spirit Companion okay? I know I shouldn't have spoken to you like that earlier and I am sorry but please stop whatever you are doing to Ari."

Ari flickered, glitched worse, then disappeared in a shower of sparks.

Cleo blinked. Looked around and saw Matthias, "What Just happened?"

Matthias blinked at the shower of sparks where Ari had been, then noticed a System Notification blinking in the corner of his vision. He activated it. The screen showed: "Forgive her, she knows not what she's done. My gift to you both. - A" Before he could process that fully, he looked up to see Cleo swaying on her feet, her eyes rolled back showing only whites as her body convulsed slightly.

"Cleo!" He dropped his spears and lunged forward just as she collapsed, catching her before she hit the ground hard. Her breathing was shallow but steady, and when he checked her pulse it was racing like she'd just sprinted a mile. But she was alive. "What the hell did you do?" he whispered to her unconscious form, then louder to the empty forest, "What did any of us do to deserve this shit?"

Matthias's arms trembled as he lifted Cleo's unconscious weight, her head lolling against his shoulder. The rough bark of the massive tree scraped against his back as he settled against it, positioning her so he could watch for any sign of movement in her face.

"Come on, Cleo," he whispered, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead. "What did you do to yourself?"

His stomach growled, breaking the forest silence. The turkey meat hung above them like a macabre chandelier, still raw and useless. He glanced down at Cleo's pale face, then forced himself to stand. She'd be hungry too when she woke up—if she woke up.

He carefully moved her to the base of the big tree with the doorway, propping her against the trunk where he could keep an eye on her while he worked. "The meat isn't going to smoke itself," he mused and scanned his options. The wood chips lay scattered around the cracked boulder like confetti from hell. Matthias picked up the abandoned hatchet, testing its weight. The blade had actually chipped from her final blow. "Jesus, Cleo." He began gathering handfuls of the splinters, each piece sharp with the scent of fresh hickory and Cleo's rage. 'Girl's got some serious anger issues. Can't say I blame her though.'

The smoking trench fought him at every step. Matthias arranged the chips, struck flint to steel, cursed when the spark died. Strike, miss, strike again. Finally, a thin tendril of smoke began to rise.

"Still breathing," he muttered, checking Cleo for the fourth time in ten minutes. Her chest rose and fell with mechanical precision, but her face remained slack, empty. "Come on, wake up."

His hands shook as he reached for his knife and the pile of branches. He needed something to do, something to keep his mind from spiraling into panic. The blade bit into green wood with satisfying resistance. Shave, turn, shave again. The rhythm steadied his breathing.

"Just making some insurance," he told Cleo's motionless form. "Nothing scary's gonna sneak up on us. Not on my watch." Using his knife and the remaining good branches, he continued whittling points on dozens of small stakes, each about the length of his forearm. If he could make enough of them and scatter them around their little camp area, anything trying to sneak up on them would have a bad time.

The repetitive work of carving helped calm his nerves, and he found himself getting lost in the rhythm of it. Scrape. Turn. Scrape. The knife peeled away thin curls of wood that gathered at his feet like pale worms. Each stroke brought the point closer to perfect sharpness. Twenty stakes. Thirty. His thumb tested each tip until a bead of blood proved its readiness. Soon he had a pile of wooden spikes that would make a medieval battlefield proud.

"Okay, you bastards," Matthias whispered to the sounds of animals in the distance beyond the trees around them. He jabbed the first stake into the soft earth, angling it outward like a fang. "Come get some."

He worked his way around their little clearing, creating a defensive perimeter, angled outward like oversized caltrops, that would make any approaching predator think twice. The familiar motions from countless camping trips with his dad flooded back—his hands knew this work even if his brain kept screaming about demon goats and acid frogs. 'Dad nor the Boy Scouts really covered giant demon goats and acid frogs, but at least some of the basic skills transfer.'

A branch cracked somewhere in the distance. Matthias froze, stake half-buried, listening until the forest settled back into its normal whisper of wind through leaves. And then he noticed his fire had gone out in the wood chips again. 'Of course it went out.'

Meanwhile, Cleo's consciousness drifted like smoke through landscapes that weren't hers. Purple sky stretched overhead, painted with three moons that cast everything in shifting silver light. Before her, a boy who looked like Ari but younger—much younger—held his hands cupped around empty air.

"Ignis," the boy whispered in a voice tight with frustration. "Ignis flamma."

Nothing. The space between his palms remained cold and dark.

Cleo wanted to reach out, to help somehow, but she had no body here. She was just watching, just feeling the ache of his disappointment as if it were her own. The boy tried again, speaking words in a language that felt ancient and familiar on Cleo's dream-tongue.

"Ignis."

This time, a tiny spark flickered to life. The boy's face lit up with wonder as a flame danced steady and warm above his palm, casting golden light across features that would someday become cynical and sharp. But here, now, he was just a child learning magic for the first time.

The joy hit Cleo like a physical force, and she gasped—or thought she did—as the scene dissolved into another memory, then another, each one teaching her things she'd never learned but somehow always known. She could feel the magic flowing through her dream-self as if she was there, as if she was learning alongside him.

The wood chips caught properly this time, sending thin ribbons of hickory smoke curling up through the turkey meat hanging above. Matthias added another handful of splinters to the smoldering pile, watching the smoke thicken to the perfect density his dad had taught him. The meat would need hours, but at least now they'd have something to eat that wouldn't try to dissolve them first.

He glanced back at Cleo, still propped against the massive tree, her breathing steady but her face slack. 'Come on, wake up. I can't do this alone.' He turned back to tend the fire when a rustling in the nearby brush made him freeze.

Something small moved through the undergrowth, picking its way carefully toward their camp. Matthias reached for his machete, then stopped when he caught sight of what was approaching. The same horned rabbit from earlier poked its head through a gap in the leaves, its single spiral horn catching the dappled sunlight. Its nose twitched as it tested the air, clearly drawn by the smell of smoking meat.

'Well, hello there, little guy.' Matthias stayed perfectly still as the rabbit emerged fully from the brush, about the size of a regular cottontail but with that distinctive unicorn-like horn sprouting from its forehead. It moved in cautious hops, stopping every few feet to sniff the air and scan for danger.

The rabbit's dark eyes fixed on the smoking meat above, and Matthias watched in amusement as it tried to figure out how to reach it. The little creature stood on its hind legs, stretching as tall as possible, before settling back down with what looked suspiciously like disappointment.

Matthias slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife to slice off a small piece of still mostly raw turkey from the smoking rack over the fire nearby. Moving with exaggerated care, he tossed it gently a few feet in front of the rabbit.

The animal startled, hopping backward, but the smell of fresh meat was too tempting. After a moment of deliberation, it crept forward and nibbled delicately at the offering.

"That's it," Matthias whispered. "See? I'm not so bad."

The rabbit finished the meat and looked up at him expectantly, head tilted to one side. There was an intelligence in those dark eyes that reminded him of a dog waiting for another treat.

Matthias tossed another piece, this one closer to himself. The rabbit hesitated only briefly before hopping forward to claim it. Each subsequent piece brought the little creature closer until it was eating directly from his outstretched palm, its whiskers tickling his fingers.

'You're definitely the same one from earlier. Same white patch on your left ear.' He'd been watching for that marking, the one distinctive feature he'd noticed during their earlier encounter. This was definitely his little friend from the pecan tree.

The rabbit finished the meat in his palm and sat back on its haunches, looking up at him with what he could only describe as hope. Matthias grinned and reached for his inventory, the strange mental space that had come with the system. His fingers closed around the pet contract scroll he'd been saving.

"What do you say, buddy? Want to stick together in this crazy place?" He unrolled the parchment on the ground between them, the mystical writing glowing faintly in the forest light. With his other hand, he held out another piece of turkey.

The rabbit's ears perked forward as it studied the contract, then looked back at the food. It hopped closer, close enough that Matthias could feel its warm breath on his fingers as it delicately took the meat from his palm.

Instead of backing away immediately, the rabbit paused. It turned its head to study the glowing parchment, then looked back up at Matthias as if asking a question.

"It's okay," Matthias said softly. "It just means we're partners. No tricks, no traps. Just you and me watching each other's backs."

The rabbit set one small paw on the edge of the contract. The parchment flared with brilliant white light that made Matthias squint, and he felt something like an electric current flow through his chest, warm and strange and oddly comforting.

The sensation hit him just as Cleo's eyes fluttered open behind him.

"What the Actual Fuck?" Cleo's voice cracked as she tried to sit up straighter against the tree. "Why does my head feel like I got hit by a truck full of lightning?"

Matthias felt the pet bond settle into place, a new presence in the back of his mind that felt curious and cautious and definitely hungry. He looked down at the rabbit, who was now sitting calmly beside the dissolving contract as if bonding with strange humans was perfectly normal.

Hello? The voice in his head was high-pitched and uncertain, like a child testing out a new toy. Are you the food-bringer?

Matthias blinked in surprise. "Did you just say Hello? Can you actually talk?"

"Who are you talking to?" Cleo struggled to her feet, using the tree for support. "And why does everything smell like barbecue?"

Talk-sounds are confusing, the rabbit continued in his mind. This way is better. Clear-thoughts, yes? You have more of the good-meat?

"Uh, yeah, I've got more meat." Matthias looked between Cleo and the rabbit, realizing he was about to have two very different conversations simultaneously. "Cleo, meet Donnie" He paused, looking down at the rabbit. "Actually, what should I call you?"

Call-names are strange, the rabbit replied thoughtfully. But if you need mouth-sounds for the tall-one, I am... fast-hopper who likes good-meat.

"That's a bit long," Matthias mused. "How about Donnie? Like from that movie with the time travel and the creepy rabbit?"

Don-nie. The rabbit seemed to test the name in his mind. This is acceptable. Donnie likes this Don-nie sound.

"Matt, seriously, what the hell is going on?" Cleo took a shaky step forward. "You're having a conversation with a bunny rabbit, and I'm pretty sure I just lived through someone else's entire childhood in fast-forward."

"Well, see, funny story, this is Donnie." Matthias gestured to the rabbit, who was now grooming his whiskers with apparent satisfaction. "He's my new pet. We just signed a contract."

Pet? Donnie's mental voice carried a note of indignation. Partners, you said. Partners who share good-meat.

"Sorry, partner," Matthias corrected quickly. "Cleo, Donnie here is telepathic, apparently. He's been telling me how much he likes the turkey."

The short-one fell down-hard earlier, Donnie observed, studying Cleo with his dark eyes. She smells like... strange-magic. Old-magic. Different from yours.

"Different how?" Matthias asked, then quickly added for Cleo's benefit, "He says you smell like magic. Old magic."

Cleo rubbed her temples. "Great. Magic bunny rabbits. Because my day needed to get weirder." She looked around their campsite, taking in the defensive stakes and the smoking meat. "How long was I out?"

"About two hours," Matthias replied, then winced as Donnie's voice cut through his thoughts.

The burning-meat smell brings other hunters, Donnie warned urgently. Big-teeth creatures from the dark-places. They come when the sky-bright fades.

"He says we might have company soon," Matthias translated, standing up and scanning the treeline. "Something about big-teeth creatures."

"Of course there are more monsters," Cleo muttered, then stopped abruptly. "Wait, did you say two hours? Matt, how long have you been talking to this rabbit?"

"About five minutes, why?"

Time-flows differently when mind-bridges form, Donnie explained patiently. Especially with magic-touched ones. The short-one's dreams were... loud.

Before Matthias could translate that particular observation, a sound cut through the forest that made them all freeze. A human voice, raw with frustration and what sounded like pain, echoed from the massive tree just twenty feet away.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL IS THIS THING?"

Matthias and Cleo looked at each other, eyes wide with recognition.

"Was that—?" Cleo started.

"Josh?" Matthias finished, dropping his spears and taking a step toward the tree. "That sounded like Josh!"

The loud-voice from the stone-den, Donnie observed, his ears perked forward with interest rather than alarm. Familiar-sounds to you? Not danger-sounds?

"Holy shit," Cleo breathed, her face lighting up with hope instead of fear. "If that's really Josh, then maybe Ari actually did something right when I messed with that contract."

Another voice from inside the tree, definitely Josh's now that they were listening for it: "Why does everything hurt so much? And why did I grab my phone instead of my snacks as I went flying from my desk?"

Matthias started laughing despite himself. "That's definitely Josh. Only he would complain about his choices before figuring out where he is."

The loud-one sounds confused but not broken, Donnie noted practically. Good-meat will still burn while you make reunion-sounds though.

"Donnie's right about the meat," Matthias said, glancing back at their smoking setup, "but screw it. If Josh is really alive..." He trailed off, hardly daring to hope.

"Come on," Cleo said, already moving toward the doorway in the tree. "Let's go see if our DM really did respawn."