Chapter 14: The metal fairy 7

Having finished its meal, the slime regrew its earlier discarded head construction, a vulture head save for the ears, and then added another right next to it. That second head was just a vulture’s neck ending on the otherwise featureless maw of a snake. Testing, the slime opened its new appendage.

The tongueless mouth opened, revealing the successful reconstruction of the fangs. Reaching out of their hiding place in the flesh of the upper jaw. There was just a minor problem here.

Vulture Neck x2

Vulture Head

Vulture Eyes

Vulture Beak

Vulture Legs x2

Vulture Wings x2

Vulture Tail Feathers

Pheromone Glands

Vulture Nose

Snake Head

There were a total of fourteen Growths the slime was currently sustaining. As it so happened, that was also the upper limit of it. The annoying thing was that it still needed the poison bag for the fangs to pack the proper punch. Something had to go.

It couldn’t make the pheromone glands vanish. While having the Growth become a part of its own body came with a slew of advantages, such as a wider and continuously relevant array of applications, it was also permanent. No getting rid of that one.

Going through the rest of the options, the slime ultimately decided that a sense of smell was not that important, so it got rid of the vulture nose and sported a poison bag. Now it only needed to produce the poison.

“I wish I knew what is going on inside there,” the metal fairy, whose exterior was squeaky clean from getting a thorough cuddling session, poked at the slime’s exterior. A less experienced Aclysia would have made a surprised noise when the slime suddenly started moving again, but at this point the suddenness of her awakener’s decisions could not bother her. She was pretty good at going with the flow.

Galloping as best as the thin bird legs allowed it, the slime gained momentum. After a few metres, it spread its wings and beat all four of them at once, raising it off the ground just enough to give it time for a second beat. The back and front pair of grey feathered wings gradually went from large synchronized strokes to a tandem where the slime went from maintaining height to gaining it.

Taking advantage of the natural winds, it soon glided effortlessly and watched over the landscape.

It should have kept its eyes higher.

“Awakener!” the urgent tone fell on deaf ears and the slime suddenly found the winds underneath its wings ripped away by a magical gust from the opposite direction. Its whole world tumbled around and Aclysia was catapulted off its back. With a majestic screech and sporting its sickle-like talons, dark grey on yellow feet, an eagle was heading for the slime.

Not any eagle, but exactly the one the slime wanted to fight, given away by the acidic burn marks on the black-tipped yellow beak. The king of the air had tolerated this pretender in its domain long enough and now moved in to teach this creature a lesson. Unaware that it was facing its former prey, the Ctanian mountain eagle clashed into the chimera and then both of them turned into a kicking, scratching and biting assembly of limbs in free fall.

The slime did not like this whatsoever. It had planned to face the eagle, but it had wanted to do so on its own terms and with poison in hand. Instead, it had been the one who got ambushed, the eagle was now on its defenceless back. Even worse, with all the recent growing it had done, getting rid of the useless poison bag and replacing it with something more useful was not an option. It would only leave the slime famished and it shouldn’t risk losing energy in the middle of a fight.

Not that the speed at which it all happened even allowed it to think about it in mid-combat adaptations. This was not an axolotl thrashing periodically, this was an eagle in full flight, picking its curved beak at the slime’s eyes.

Picked and succeeded. At the same time as the talons ripped open the slimes outter membrane, it lost an eye. Acidic and faux blood spluttered into the air. The slime’s only retaliation was to try and use its newly acquired fangs to deal some damage in return. It hit. Hit and bit into a mouthful of dense feathers, only barely reaching flesh with the tips.

Without poison, that wasn’t enough.

The long neck of the vulture, which the slime thought was an advantage at first, turned out to be a massive weakness. Once the attack of its first head had been evaded by the skilled predator, the eagle moved in. As great as a long neck was for mobility, it was also a large and exposed weak spot. The eagle had killed more than one vulture in its days.

While it was true that the corpse eaters were generally bigger, the eagle was better in almost every other aspect. Its talons were sharper, its beak more dangerous, its sharp form allowed for quicker and more nimble flight and this particular breed even wielded minor air magic.

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Torrents of electricity flooded the slimes body. Not a harmful amount, just enough to paralyze it for a few seconds. Which was all the eagle needed as it let go of the slime. Their fight had been about to end in a double suicide, the ground too close. Letting an enemy shatter on the rocky floor of the mountainside was a normal way to end prolonged battles in the air, be it by taking away their wings or paralyzing them.

A streak of white and black passed the eagle. Having spent the entire time since being catapulted of its back chasing after the slime, Aclysia stretched her hands towards it. An angry eagle set after it, whatever this small creature was, she was an ally of the invader of its territory. It would end her and the slime and once again be uncontested in these heavens.

The metal fairy had no particular reason to feel strongly for the slime. After awakening her on accident and basically ignoring her since due to a lack of knowledge, the time spent with it was often boring and mildly humiliating for a divine construct.

Still, the slime had potential. It had shown her warmth recently, a continuous process that showed it was capable of learning. Even without those reasons, Aclysia was duty-bond to save her awakener, as the 33rd god, her creator and last of the great ones, had commanded her.

‘This vessel for your life,’ she thought as cracks began showing all over her body. Glowing from within was a magical energy that vastly exceeded her capabilities, a calming white. The tip of her fingers touched the slime.

It was a mediocre healing spell, something that could recover a humanoid from a simple sword wound. To the vastly smaller and less complicated slime, it might as well have been a full recovery. The electrical shock that had turned its nucleus into a thoughtless orb of hard material was undone, as were the injury of its eye and membrane.

Beating its wings at the last second, the slime turned around. The eagle, not particularly well-versed in healing magic, was completely dumbfounded by this. Trying desperately to beat its wings and gain a better angle of attack, it was slow enough for a moment for the slime to reach it with its mouths.

Beak and fangs closed around the thin stilts of the eagles legs. The slime stopped beating its wings and, despite the eagle’s hardest tries, they fell together. The drop from a few metres did little to damage either party, but now the ground was the arena of their fight. Keeping the eagle’s feet in its clasp, the slime shook its long necks violently.

Side to side the aerodynamic, light body flew. Now it was the eagles turn to be disoriented. It only felt that it was smacked down on some rocks, its feather’s cushioning most of the damage from that as well.

It would quickly recover from its confusion, but not quickly enough for the slime to get on top of it. With two heads and four talons, it viciously tore at the smaller bird. Without the homefield advantage, the eagle’s many advantages were lost. The only thing the slime was still wary off was another gust of wind or electricity, thus why it kept used its hindlegs to pin the eagle’s talons, while the front two were ripping and shredding the eagle’s chest.

Feathers flew everywhere, lose ones at first but more bloodied once followed soon, ripped out of their home in the eagle’s body with the kind of brutality only civilization could prevent. The eagle rejected death with every fibre of its being. It was born as the most majestic creature to soar the skies. Nothing but age itself should have been able to topple it, yet it should be an abomination and a small black and white streak that did it in? Preposterous!

While the eagle wasn’t smart enough to think these things, those were what fuelled its instincts as it desperately tried to fend off the repeated strikes from the two heads. Now the long necks were an advantage again, as they allowed the slime to strike and then quickly pull back.

Bloodier feathers tumbled. A bare chest like mincemeat. Angry and violent screeches were made. An eye for an eye was taken, swallow by a snake’s mouth and travelling down a vulture’s windpipe to end up in a slime’s body. Ultimately, the eagle’s body convulsed a few more times, desperate protests, then it stopped moving.

The slime had no idea what had finally allowed it to win, but just knew it had to do with the metal fairy. Exhausted but victorious, the slime looked around. It spied the tiny creature lying on a rock, in a position no one and nothing would find comfortable. Upside down, her long white hair, her arms and her long moth-like wings were all hanging downwards. The green eyes looked dull and her mouth stood open. Her body was covered in ugly grey cracks, from the black, smooth shape of her feet to the tip of her pointy, elvish ears.

Completely forgetting about its new feast and the revelation that it was granted a second scaling Growth, the slime stalked over to the metal fairy. Gently, it stubbed her with the tip of its beak. All that was dislodge Aclysia’s skirt from a piece of protruding rock that caused her to remain in place, sending her falling to the floor with a disheartening ‘clunk’.

The slime continued to poke the metal fairy for several minutes. It couldn’t believe she was gone. She had been with him for several weeks now, had been company and now she was dead? Just like that? It had saved her and now she just lay there.

For the first time the slime felt loss. Not just sadness over suboptimal circumstance but genuinely like it was robbed of something it couldn’t comprehend and didn’t even know it had possessed.

It reverted all of its Growths and just enveloped the fairy’s body. This was the only sign of affection it knew. No more senses, just the one that allowed it sense vibrations, just the one it had itself. All was darkness and silence. The world was nothing but where its membrane ended. Nothing but the occasional gust of wind.

In that darkness, it saw two lights. A fledgling sense born from recent increases in biomass, incapable of working outside its own body or if competing for the slime’s attention with its other, borrowed senses. Just a whisper of magic. The light of its nucleus, a magical heart of compressed minerals, and the light of Aclysia’s body.

It was faint, but it wasn’t fading away. The slime rejoiced. She wasn’t dead, not truly. Instead, it seemed that she was asleep. With such good news, the slime went on to eat the eagle.

Still inside the slime’s body, Aclysia’s state remained unchanged for a week. In that time, the slime moved as little as possible. The fear of getting caught by the metal-skinned one was minor compared to the slimes worry it might again lose the metal fairy. However, neither her body nor her magic showed any sign of recovering. The grey cracks remained in place and her aura faint.

In the process of healing it, Aclysia had broken herself permanently. The slime understood this while pondering over the fight that had caused this state. If that was the case, just staying put would do neither of them any good. What could it do?

That was when it remembered how it had met the fairy in the first place. The pool of liquid metal. While the original source was gone, maybe if the slime could find another one, Aclysia could use the extra materials to heal herself?

A theory at best. With nothing else to go on and a strange desire to try its best and save its short-time and first companion, the slime nevertheless decided to try. Maybe it would have a better idea on the way, but just sitting around any longer and hoping was not how it liked to live its life.

It had to take the risk and hope the body of the fairy was as sturdy as it felt, able to survive a long journey. With the resolution made it finally spent its newfound potential and picked the eagle’s wings as its second permanent Growth.

They unfolded to either side of the slime in a brilliant display of long, green feathers. They had the colour of emeralds or a healthy grass plane. Whether that colour came from the chloroplasts still tinging the slime’s main body a translucent green, or a desire to hear the green-eyed fairy’s voice again, was unclear.

The slime took to the skies.

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