Chapter 59: Chapter 59: Congealed Salad

Nay took a step back, in surprise, fright and awe. The child was glowing and Nay could see the vigama flowing inside of her.

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[Quest Complete!]

[Find Aule in Maer Scathan Completed!]

[You have been rewarded Vigor Points]

---

Aule watched the golden vigama fly into Nay and clapped.

The Friend of Men's skin was translucent and they could see the interior of her physiognomy’s different systems. The circulatory, the nervous, and every pathway had a corkscrew helix of miniscule golden vigama flowing around them. She was pure vigor.

Nay blinked and this view into the child’s interior spiritual systems went away, shifting back to opaque porcelain skin emitting a gold aura. Ringlets of gold and red hair fell to her shoulders. There were crystallized blue flowers poking out of the ringlets.

Looking at her longer now, she wasn’t a child, but merely smaller in stature. Her facial features weren’t completely human either. Her eyes were large, and almost feline in nature. Green pupils rimmed in a gold ring. The nose was fox-like, and she had three fox tails pluming out of her garments. She was clothed in a white robe like she was some monk of the mist.

“Do not be frightened,” Aule said. “I will do you no harm.”

“Sorry,” Nay said. “You just weren’t what I was expecting.”

“And what were you expecting?” Aule said.

“To be honest?” Nay said. “I guess I was expecting someone a little taller.”

Aule laughed then, a shrill feral giggle and half bark. “That’s what men in this age always expect. They have forgotten about us.” Her voice became sad for a second. “Now that our numbers have dwindled.”

Then she looked at Nom and walked over to him. “Now, this is a curious one.” She appraised him with her strange eyes. “Most curious indeed. The void is your vigor.”

Nom flinched at that, his Cyclopean eye darting to Nay and then going back to Aule.

“But I don’t sense malevolence and disdain for beauty in you,” Aule said. “We should schedule a tea time as I’d like to talk to you more. But now is not the time, is it? I sense urgency in both of you.”

“Yeah,” Nay said. “We could really use that recipe.”

“It is not our way to freely give gifts,” Aule said. “It is only proper to exchange gifts. That’s the way it’s always been.”

“Okay,” Nay said. “You mentioned something about a nasty creature. And us fetching its heart?”

“That could be your gift to me,” Aule said. “Then I could exchange the recipe as a gift to you.”

“Sounds like a fair enough trade to me,” Nom said. “Where is the creature and what is it?”

“There’s a series of burrows underneath this region,” Aule said. “The creature lives in a warren connected to these burrows. It managed to get into my secret garden through its subterranean digging. My elder flowers bloom once a month, every full moon. And every full moon, without fail, the creature has been feeding on my flowers before I can harvest them.”

Nay had claustrophobic visions of delving underneath the earth to hunt some creature and she shuddered. “Okay, but what kind of creature is it?”

“I do not know,” Aule said. “I’ve yet to see it.”

“You haven’t tried to deal with it yourself?” Nom said.

It was a good question. Aule, with all her vigor, seemed capable of handling things like this herself.

Why does she need us? Nay thought.

“It is a complicated matter of time,” Aule said. “It is our way to patrol several outposts,” Aule said. “This is one of many for me. Eventually, I would have dealt with this. But now you’re here willing to take care of it for me.”

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[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Slay The Vampra and Retrieve Its Heart]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

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Nay looked at Nom.

Well?

He gave her a curt nod. She accepted the quest.

As she did so, Aule seemed to pulse with vigama glow for a moment. She smiled. Oddly, her teeth weren’t fanged.

Nay had been expecting fangs for some reason.

“We’ll hunt this thing,” Nay said. “If we’re successful, you’ll give us the moon cake recipe.”

“A fair trade indeed!”

/////////

Aule brought them to a knot of entwined birched trees. There were a dozen of them, twisted around each other like massive vines. The effect, if viewed from further away in the mist, was that of one massive tree.

Their root systems were intertwined, sticking out of the earth and snow like fallen leviathans. They had fused together into a network. There was an opening in the center of the ground, flanked by a crescent of stones. It led into the earth. It looked a lot like the entrance to a dungeon.

“I’m confident if you enter through here,” Aule said, “you’ll eventually find the culprit.”

Nom gazed into the darkness, unfazed. “You don’t want to come with us? Just out of curiosity?”

“I have to tend to another outpost, far from here,” Aule said.

“How will we find you when we’re done?” Nay said.

“I shall return with the first rays of the sun.”

Nay consulted her mini-map and saw a winding passageway leading into further tunnels underneath the earth. When she pulled out of the map, she discovered Aule was gone.

“Where’d she go?”

Nom looked around, just noticing that that she had disappeared. They were alone again in the white-out mist. The wind whistled through the birch trees, an eerie tune.

“Figures,” Nom said. “Shall we enter this dungeon and get this side-quest over with?”

Nay pulled a torch out of her inventory. She applied a ring of heat to it with Chef’s Thermometer, lighting it.

A flame whooshed to life.

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“Clock’s ticking.”

/////////

There were earthen steps leading underneath the forest. As they descended, Nay handed Nom the torch. “You carry this.” She drew Thorn out of its sheath and ice scythe materialized in her other hand. Vigor spirit energy bloomed around the blades as Dire Knife activated.

Nom looked at the weapons and the vigor imbue in wonder. “I can’t wait until I get to unlock a combat tree.”

“Keep a lookout for Delicacies, then,” Nay said. “Who knows, maybe we’ll find one down here.”

“There’s not a part of you that thinks this is a trap?” Nom said.

“Of course there’s part of me that thinks this is a trap,” Nay said. “I’m not one just to take enchanting yet weird fox girls who dwell in the middle of a snow forest at their word.”

“So what’s the backup plan?”

“The backup plan is the same as my normal plan.”

“Which is?”

“Stabby stab stab stab.”

“She gets a combat tree and suddenly she thinks she can solve every problem with knives.”

“What about you? What’s your backup plan?”

“This stew makes me run fast as fuck.”

They were well under the earth now. The tunnel they found themselves in had cold, dirt walls, with the roots visible in the strata and running along the ceiling. Nay opened her mini-map and could see the network off tunnels branch off a few times, but it was all connected. The burrows all led to a large chamber that must have been the warren.

There was a blinking red dot in the warren. That must be the Vampra.

“It’s kind of weird that this thing’s crime is destroying flowers but the fox girl wants its fucking heart.”

“It does kind of seem like overkill.”

“But then again, people get protective over their gardens.”

“Yeah, the Vampra has done fucked up.”

“Vampra?”

“It’s the name of this thing up ahead.”

“Not sure I like the sound of it, but I’m ready to get this over with so we can get back to the Lodge. Maybe I can catch a few hours worth of sleep before dinner service.”

“Yeah, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to speed-run through this side quest. Can you get the torch up here? There’s a fork coming up.”

Nay reached the fork and there was still no response. “Come on, Nom. Did you hear me?”

Again, no response. Unless one counted the torch light extinguishing as a response.

So, she whipped around only to see Nom seemingly frozen in mid-air. He was gently vibrating, trying to move, but that’s when Nay noticed the clear pile of light green jelly he was encased in. The torch had been snuffed inside it. Which meant there was no oxygen.

Nom was stuck inside of a slime like a piece of fruit in a congealed Jello salad.

“What fresh hell is this?” Nay said, disturbed. Remnants of the slime were dripping from the ceiling. It looked like it had been hiding in the crevices of the roots before dropping down on Nom.

“Hold your breath bud,” Nay said. “I’m gonna cut you out!”

Nay stepped up to the sludge, slashing down with ice scythe. It looked like Nom was trying to shake his head, ‘No’. But her was intent was to slice open the gelatinous bubble and free him.

Instead, ice scythe entered the slime and got stuck. It wasn’t a strike so Nay got zero Kinetic Points. She yanked on the weapon, trying to pull it out. But it got sucked into the blob. It threatened to pull her hand in with it so she let go.

It quivered inside the slime with Nom.

“Uh, that’s no bueno,” Nay said. “What the hell do I do? Think, Nay. Think.”

Nom was trying to mouth something inside of the goo, but Nay had never been very good at reading lips, much less beaked mouth holes. When the tentacle opened his mouth, it just filled with slime.

“I’m sorry about this, broski,” Nay said. “But it’s about to get cold.”

She used Chef’s Thermometer to conjure a ring of freezing cold, making it big enough to contain the slime and Nom. There was a dry ice reaction and the skin of the slime started to make a screeching sound as it frosted over. It was like watching Vaseline harden and freeze.

Not that Nay had ever seen Vaseline harden and freeze, but if she had one could be sure it looked like this. The blob of slime finished its metamorphosis into a giant ice cube, with Nom frozen in dismay within. Nay struck the frozen slime with the skull crusher end of Thorn, using it like an ice pick.

Cracks spread along the surface of the slimesicle and her next strike broke it apart like it was a giant ice cube. Nay pulled chunks of icy slime out of the way and was able to grab Nom, who was extremely cold to the touch.

As Nay pulled him out, the rest of the frozen slime crumbled. An ice sculpture shattering and falling to the floor. She scooped ice scythe out of the icy debris and put a hand to Nom’s face. He felt like a pickle that had been chilled in ice.

Nay used Chef’s Thermometer to warm him, pulling him out of his frozen and dormant state. He coughed, his breath fog filling the air between them. He was shivering, his teeth chattering. “You…y-you, y-ou….you bitch!”

“I said I was sorry!” Nay said. “What else should I have done?”

Nom blew several cold breaths, warming up in the ring. “Y-you did…the right thing. Still, so cold.”

Nay rubbed her hands across him, using touch and friction to generate heat. “If I used heat there was a chance I would have burned you too bad. We know that extreme cold just puts you to sleep.”

“Doesn’t mean I like it!”

“You were inside a slime!”

That’s when she noticed movement at her feet.

She looked down and saw the frozen chunks of slime were starting to melt. Little half-frozen blobs of slime were moving across the floor towards them. Nay helped Nom up. “We gotta get outta here.”

Nom looked down at the one slime that was now dozens of smaller slimes. “I don’t think I like this side quest anymore.”

They hurried towards the warren, away from the multitude of slime.

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