“Sure,” the Chosen One replied, unconcerned by the fact that their only exit had been cut off. He seemed similarly unconcerned by the fact that there didn’t appear to be any other exits or doorways in this laboratory. Despite its massive size, it still didn’t come close to accounting for the whole house.

There must be secret entrances! Qube realised. Perhaps from moving a bookcase or one of the colourful jars? Qube had never actually encountered a hidden doorway, but it was almost as much of a staple of adventures as inns.

It was only her extreme dedication to the quest that stopped her from pulling a “Chosen One” and ignoring the human to go exploring for secret passageways.

Speaking of which, the Chosen One was flat out ignoring the speaker and already rummaging around the room.

“I am the Constructor,” the man said, staring at the Hero attempting to put a rack of test tubes inside his backpack. “I made my children to be industrious and assist me in my great works. Instead, they waste their time getting into petty arguments, and their neglect is causing me to fall behind!”

“Look! Look, I can open them!” the Chosen One cried in excitement as he managed to pry open a jar with several eyeballs in it. “Oh, they feel so slimy,” he said, fishing a large, red eyeball out and staring at it. The eyeball stared back.

“I wonder if I can — “ he closed his fist around the eyeball and it popped, gushing goo all over his hand.

“Oh! Oh, gross!” The Chosen One waved his hand furiously, sending the goo flying. “That was disgusting. But very cool. Can you do that with every jar?” He poured the jar out onto the ground, and watched the various eyeballs roll around in the puddle. “That is an insane level of detail,” he said, awestruck.

The Hero of All’s boon companions watched as their Saviour poked the loose eyeballs with the tip of his boot, before stepping on them.

Sewer Bard was the first to turn back to the Constructor.

“What ails you, humble Constructor?” Sewer Bard asked, sweeping a formal bow. To his left, the Chosen One was having various vials of coloured liquids snatched off of him by Qube.

“Stop trying to drink them!” Qube snapped, grabbing another.

The Constructor couldn’t seem to decide whether he should look at the Chosen One or Sewer Bard. His solution appeared to be looking at both of them at the same time, making him rather walleyed.

“I made them with natural affinities to their own kind,” the Constructor explained.

“How else will I know what’s in them? I’m not getting any labels!” the Chosen One protested as he tried to keep a bright blue vial out of Qube’s reach.

“But something has gone wrong. Instead of merely being interested in working with their own materials, as I intended, they have started harassing the other constructs made of different matter!”

“You can just ask me! I have [Identify]!” Qube went bright red at her public proclamation of her spell ability.

“It seems that some, at least, have overcome their unnatural distaste for other constructs,” Sewer Bard said, smiling slightly. “It is most touching to witness.”

Sexy Screamy Spider Lady nodded, her and her children’s eyes misting over.

“It’s so romantic,” she said, almost wistfully.

“Well then [identify] it! I want to know what it is!”

“I will; just stop trying to drink them!”

The Constructor ignored the squabble occurring between the Chosen One and his Childhood Companion, and, for the first time, focused fully on Sewer Bard.

“I needed someone who was clever enough to solve this problem. That is why I made it so anyone who wanted to reach me had to pass a series of rigorous tests. By making it to me, you have proven yourself worthy of fixing this issue!”

The Chosen One, who had solved precisely none of the puzzles, was busy climbing up a half-built metal construct and prying a golden metal coin out of its chest cavity. Qube, meanwhile, was busy trying to [identify] as many vials as she could before he came back down.

“If you made them in the first place, can you not just —” Sewer Bard paused, as if searching for the right words, “can you not just remake them, so they don’t fight?”

“Sewer Bard, they’re his children,” Qube hissed. “You can’t just suggest he kills all his children and make new ones! That’s not how parenthood works!”

Sewer Bard tilted his head as he tried to make out what Qube had been saying.

“But it’s not like they’re human, or human adjacent,” he protested.

“They’re still people,” Qube replied. “You can’t kill people just because they’re not doing what you want!”

The rest of the party shuffled about rather awkwardly at that. Qube frowned at them.

“We haven’t killed people,” she said.

Sexy Screamy Spider Lady tapped a claw to her fangs thoughtfully.

“My darling Healer has a point,” she conceded eventually. “The closest we came was when I killed those little Bandits’ desire to get in our way.”

The Constructor patiently waited for the party to stop arguing with thin air.

“The investment of materials and time makes it prohibitive to start from scratch,” he said. “I need them to be fixed now, not to start all over!”

“And also, you don’t want to kill your kids,” Qube said, before remembering that the Constructor couldn’t hear her. The more the Constructor spoke, the more she was starting to sympathise with Zincy and Slate. Sure, they may have wasted a lot of time pretending to write letters, but who would want to live under the thumb of someone whose only reasoning for not wiping you out is that it would be too much effort?

“I don’t care how you get rid of this trouble — shoot them if you have to — I just need my projects to work rather than them tearing each other apart.”

The Chosen One, having taken almost everything not nailed down, turned to leave.

“Chosen One, wait!” Qube exclaimed. “Let me — I mean, shouldn’t we look for hidden passageways?”

The Chosen One smiled at her proudly.

“I’m totally rubbing off on you, aren’t I?” he grinned. Qube gave him a rather concerned smile in return. Sewer Bard choked a little. “Let’s look for secret tunnels!” the Hero said, and instantly flipped over a table to look behind it.

---

They didn’t end up finding any secret passageways, much to Qube’s chagrin. They did end up discovering that the front door wasn’t locked though, which rather made Qube wonder why it had slammed shut behind them so ominously. She wasn’t a fan of dramatic doors.

Like the one in Definitely Bad Guy’s Wizard’s Tower. It just seemed so inconsiderate.

It was still night when they left the laboratory, but dawn stars were twinkling, and the various suns were peeking over the horizon.

“Right, time to go get our reward,” the Chosen One said, setting off for the plaza.

“Chosen One, they will be long gone by now,” Qube reminded him as the group trotted obediently behind him.

Only to find the letter-faking lovers standing in the middle of the plaza.

“We’ve packed all our stuff, and are ready to get out of here,” Slate said, as soon as the Chosen One entered the plaza.

“We couldn’t have done this without you,” Zincy said damply. “Here, we can’t carry any more, so take this.” She limply held out a hand, a tiny necklace hovering over her outstretched palm.

They didn’t have any luggage with them, Qube noticed. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the pair. No luggage, waiting until the Chosen One actually arrived before loudly declaring that they were leaving… there was definitely a trap here somewhere.

She nudged Definitely Bad Guy, who was walking beside her.

“Be ready,” she hissed. “Something is wrong.”

Definitely Bad Guy glanced down at her then nodded, his eyes flaring red as he channeled his mana.

“You overgrown stalagmite! How dare you try and seduce my progeny away from her people?” Zincy’s mother appeared from a side street, golden sparks flying from her whirling cogs.

“But, Mother, I love him,” Zincy declared in a strangely dispassionate tone.

“Ms. Mags, please don’t be angry at her, I just want to be with her,” Slate said, squaring up manfully. Only to immediately cringe when —

“SLATE! Are you fraternising with that artificial hussy again?” Slate’s mother pounded into the plaza, her apron flapping wildly.

“Ma, please,” Slate begged.

“Chosen One, we have your reward,” Qube reminded him in a whisper. Even though she knew none of the people in this fight could hear her, it still felt right to be quiet. “We should leave, before the trap is sprung.”

The Chosen One looked at her thoughtfully. He seemed to be pondering something deeply.

“Do you think, if I ate one of the eyeballs, I would get a buff?” he asked seriously. “Like, better vision or something?”

Qube closed her eyes for a moment.

“Chosen One, please pay attention to the potentially deadly conflict happening in front of us,” she said.

Said conflict had now escalated to a level of dramaticness that would make the most florid of saga writers blush. Speaking of which, Qube noticed that Sewer Bard was watching, wide eyed, drinking in every line.

“I have had enough of you people dragging us down with your old-fashioned ways! My daughter will stay here, and lead us into a brave new world!” Ms. Mags screamed.

“For as long as I live, I will never let Zincy go!” Slate boomed.

“Then I will rectify the issue,” Ms. Mags hissed and flicked her left wrist, her hand suddenly transforming into a blade. With a spurt of steam, she surged forward.

Everything seemed to slow as Qube’s training kicked into gear.

“[Lesser Shield]!” she cried, her spell’s silvery mana springing up just before the metal blade could touch Slate’s exposed chest.

Quite what a metal blade would have done to a stone construct, Qube wasn’t sure, but, after the fire elemental debacle, she wasn’t about to find out.

Ms. Mags’ blade snapped as it slammed into Qube’s shield. She looked at her hand in confusion. Slate’s mother started wailing.

“My son! You’ve killed my beautiful son!” she cried, sinking to her knees.

Slate, still safe inside the shield, looked down at his mother.

“What?” he said intelligently.

Zincy also started crying, a high-pitched, mournful keening sound.

“My Slate! My rock! My immovable love!”

“I love you too, my Zincy-winky,” Slate said.

“I cannot live in a world without him!” she declared tearfully.

“I can’t live without you either, my forged heart,” Slate sighed at her.

“Come, happy poison, let me join my Slate!” Zincy cried, pulling a bright green vial out the front of her corset. Everyone in the plaza (except for Slate and the party) gasped at the sight of it.

“Zincy, darling, no!” Ms. Mags screamed, reaching for her daughter.

“To eternity with my Slate!” Zincy sobbed, and gulped down the liquid. There was a beat of silence. Suddenly she started spasming, toxic-green looking foam bubbling at her lips, steam violently hissing as it poured out of her joints, her cries now garbled and disjointed.

Qube surged forward, grabbing Zincy’s arm. “[Minor Cleanse]!” she shouted. She had no idea what a cleansing spell designed for mortals would do to metal, or what the poison that Zincy had ingested was, but she had to try.

“Wait, what’s happening?” Sewer Bard looked frantically back and forth between the lovers.

“Chosen One, someone, tell her that Slate is just fine!” Qube ordered, and her mana injected itself directly into the construct. Zincy’s twitching increased, her limbs flailing wildly as the spell took effect. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she threw off a few sparks before suddenly snapping into a standing pose.

“My Zincy-winky!” Slate said urgently. Qube cringed, expecting him to rush at them.

“Oh, Slate,” Zincy said lovingly, and sighed.

“Oh, Zincy,” Slate said lovingly, and sighed.

The [Lesser Shield] dimmed, and flickered out.

“Oh, Slate,” Zincy said lovingly, and sighed. Again.

“Oh Zincy,” Slate repeated, equally as lovingly. And then sighed just as heavily.

The adventuring party stood in that tableau for a moment, as the whole town seemed frozen. For a second, it seemed like a crisis had been averted. Maybe now the Chosen One could try and talk some sense into them, Qube thought hopefully.

“My baby!” Ms. Mags screamed.

“You!” Slate’s mother bellowed, rising to her feet. She pointed at Ms. Mags with terrible purpose. “You killed my son!”

Ms. Mags snarled in hatred, stepping away from her perfectly healthy daughter.

“You forced my daughter to die!” she hissed. The two mothers squared off.

“This means war!” they declared at the exact same moment.

“Oh, Slate,” Zincy said lovingly, and sighed.

“Oh, Zincy,” Slate said lovingly, and sighed.

The Chosen One looked at Qube, still standing with her hand on Zincy’s arm. She gave him a sheepish smile. His expression was a mix of horror and glee.

“This. Is. Chaos!” he said, and laughed as metal and stone alike drew their weapons.