Chapter 9: Chapter 9

The blade of the swinging trap slices through my gooey body before I can react. In this instant, my thoughts seem to be forming in extra quick fashion. My sense of time has slowed to a crawl, driven by the natural adrenaline present in my physical body. Yet I am, at the same time, aware of this dilution of my perception. I have experienced adrenaline so often that my mind is able to disconnect from the racing of my body.

Even now, after all of these deaths, my physical body doesn’t want to die. It never wants to die. There is often a split between my desires of body and soul in some cases where one wants to go this way and the other that way. Ah. I don’t want to die. I was so close.

So close to… to what? I feel half of me flying back down the stairs, the other half I feel here, still stuck where I was standing.

It is an odd sensation. Being cut in two as a slime. It’s an odd sensation as any creature, really. But like I said, as a slime your feelings are very objective. I don’t feel pain in my body. All I feel is the pain of failure in my spirit. I messed up. Why wasn’t I paying attention? Why didn’t I notice? There was a trap. I walked right into it

If there was a trap here, that means the dungeon-master has to know about these hidden stairs, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t have set the blade trap up here. Shit. What’s the deal, guy? Ah, I hate this feeling. I can feel both parts of my body at the same time. I can feel the wind surging past my slime that’s being propelled down the stairs, far away from me, falling back down the way I came. I can feel the fresh air on the cut of the remaining lower half of my body. I can feel the droplets of my goo, still clinging to the blade that is rising up back into the air, into some crevice inside of the wall.

As those parts of my body grow in distance, so does my connection to them wane. Me, myself, I seem to be ‘in’ this bit here left standing on the stairs. Was it just luck that I’m not in the part hurtling down below? Or is there some monstery trickery at work here? I can not say. I am glad I wasn’t a goblin. Being cut in half really smarts, tell you what. A full second has passed now since the trap has swung. My sense of self, my sense of time is returning to me once more. Am I not dead? Did I survive? My reserve of nutrients is critically low, most of the good stuff seems to have been lost in the damage. I am sorry sister, I have wasted the nutrients you gave me. Brother is foolish.

I feel the vibration running through the stone and rise into my body, as the old blade slides back into place, rubbing along the narrow slit in the stone wall as it sheaths away. Slowly, I calm myself. I feel. I wiggle. I remain. Death has not come for me just yet, but I will be soon to go to it myself, if I do not regrow my mass soon. Hidden-Village slimes burn energy like little wildfires and I have little to none left. There comes a point when a slime is so small, that it simply cannot sustain itself any longer and I am close to that. Close enough to feel the reaper’s creeping hand, lazily reaching towards my ooey-gooey body. I wiggle. Shoo-shoo reaper! Shoo-shoo.

How long do I have left exactly? It is hard to say, even with my acute awareness of my nutrient reserves. I have never been such a small slime before.

Oh no! I make a grim realization. Sister will eat me if she sees me like this. I must be sure not to let her see me. I can not let sister see brother in this state. Sister needs me to be strong. I can’t let her see me weak like this, it would break her slimy little heart. Metaphorically. She doesn’t actually have a heart, you see. No, I shouldn’t be thinking about the slime. I need to think about myself. I need to think about the hidden stairs. I need to think about what this is. I need to keep going, before I fade away, before I burn out.

I pull myself together, in every sense of the phrase and extend my goo one final time to pull my meager body up over the final step. I wish I had eyes, I wish I could see. But I see nothing. I hear nothing. All I do is feel. I feel air touching my exterior. The heat from the lower level is rising up past me, climbing up the stairs and lazily wafting out into the chamber before me, intermingling with the stale air left here from times long forgotten. I sense no movement. No scampering or skittering or scuttling, no traps, no nock of arrows against a string, no stepping of leather boots in my direction, no smashing of a wooden staff on the ground in an overly dramatic preparation for a spell to come my way. Not even an unsheathing of the hero’s sword to finish the job. No. Everything is quiet. There is nothing here but me.

I move forward. Where am I? Where is this? Is this one floor above where I was? Or is it more? Somewhere higher? I do not know. I wish I could see. Carefully I move forward. I can not afford to waste time, but I must be cautious all the same. I feel weak, I can feel my strength waning. Slimes are robust creatures, but even they have their limits and I have come close to reaching them. I wish I had a rat to eat. I miss you sister. I am lonely. I move forward into what I can only assume is darkness. If there ever is light somewhere, there is usually warmth to accompany it and here I feel neither. There is a dank coolness in the moist air.

I think higher levels are always just cooler than lower ones. Temperature wise, I mean. I can’t really speak to the aesthetics, since I don’t quite remember what the higher floors look like. But the deeper you go, the hotter it gets. I remember that much. Why is it like that? I don’t know. They say heat rises, so I suppose there has to be something hotter below the dungeon?

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Wait. Who said that? I don’t remember. And if heat rises upwards, then why are the higher levels cooler? I don’t understand. This stuff is all too far out of my trash-mob pay grade. Not that we get paid, mind you. I don’t think we do at least? Maybe I just haven’t survived long enough to see the day. Who knows? Another great mystery to be solved in another lifetime.

What is this feeling? I feel something in the air. A miasma. Not like something physical, like poison gas or a fog, no there is… something. Something I can not name. It feels heavy. Heavy on my spirit, but not on my body. Like a dark cloud looming over my soul. I do not like the feeling. It makes me feel sad. Why? I move forward, trying to escape the sensation. But the further I press into this new place, the stronger it becomes. As if I were burrowing deeper into it, rather than away from it. Still… everything is quiet. All I sense are my own vibrations coming back to me. They tell me things, they tell me that this is a larger chamber. As big as the moon-light arena, easily. Are there mushrooms? I can not say. But I sense no life. No un-life. No adventurers, no sub-boss, no trash-mobs. All I feel is me. I do not like the sensation. It reminds me of when I was stuck underwater in my last life I realize, surprised that I can remember that so clearly. It is an oppressive feeling. Lonely. Sad. Cold. Sister? Sister, where are you?

I move forward, what else is there to do? I do not know what it is I am looking for. What it is that I hope to find. But I have found nothing yet. I wish the hero was here. I do not like this place. Wait.

I wish the hero was here? Why? He’d just kill me. Heroes don’t help trash-mobs. We are on our own, all we have is each other and the dungeon-master, dark lord bless his heart. But all I have is me. I can not forget that. I do not have a sister. I do not need to be lonely. I have me. That is enough. That is all I have had this far and it is all I need in the future. Yeah. Yeah! I move on in silence for another minute. I don’t think I am moving fast anymore. My pace has slowed significantly. I am running out of energy. Running out of time. I am dying. I do not know though, if I would have had long left, even if I hadn’t avoided the trap. Trap. Trap! Rat. Rat? No. Trap! I repeat the word several times in a half annoyed, half pleading tone in my mind.

I need to remember the trap idea. I need to remember the stairs. I don’t think I have long now, honestly. Lurching forward bit by bit, I can’t help but feel like a zombie. Literally. This is basically the same shambling I do as one of them. Slow, awkward, tiring. Honestly, zombies have terrible posture to begin with. All the slouching and lurching and dragging is terrible for your joints. They’re all a rather unenergetic bunch, those zombies. Not big on words either. It’s always ‘uuuurgh’ this and ‘rooorgh’ that. I try to set a good example for them, when I can, but they never seem to take after me. But if you ever see a zombie standing upright, back straight, shoulders back, head high, that’ll be me for sure, tell you what.

The vibrations shift before me. The density of the makeup of the air changes. The miasma is growing thicker now, heavier, more enveloping. I am beginning to taste it now. It has become both physical and spiritual. It is bitter. Sad. Corrupting. I do not like it. There is an evil here. It tastes bad. It tastes old. Shoo-shoo evil! Shoo shoo.

Metal? There is metal before me. The vibration is clear, it rings out like a midnight bell, tolling in the fog. A shining beacon that reaches me in the dark. It calls me towards it, like a witch’s clawed finger that beckons me into a black forest. The feeling, the miasma, it is reaching for me, pulling me closer. It stems from the metal. Spreads from it, like the roots of a fungus, branching out in every direction that it can, unseen to the eye. Touching. Staining. Burrowing. Reaching. I am aware of it, but I allow it to happen. My curiosity outweighs the sensation of dread welling in my tired mind.

I move, but I have become light, weak, distant. It has become hard to form thoughts in any longer form. Starving as a slime is a gentle death. There is no pain, you simply burn down like the last glimmer of a candle, bit by bit, until you silently hiss out into the night. I am soon to fade, but I am so close. It calls me. I feel it enveloping me, embracing me. Bad touch, miasma! The sensation reminds me of sister. Something bubbles in me. The metal. I reach it now. I touch it now. It is cold. Sad. Lonely. Hello strange metal, what are you doing here, all on your own? The metal doesn’t answer. It is an inanimate object. I can not digest metal. Even if I could, this wouldn’t be good to eat. It is rotten. Corrupted. Moldy.

Oh. Ah. Oof. Something runs through my body. It reminds me of the tingle of my holy death as an undead just one life ago. It is warm. Old. It is the feeling of a vague youthful summer memory in a senile mind. A dying man, foggily reminiscing of the warmer days of his youth. It is happy and sad, it yearns for a life now gone, but is frustrated about its corrupted existence. It is not evil, it is lost, trapped, forgotten, warped. It is like me. I can’t feel anything anymore. My body is beginning to spread wide, to flatten. I do not have the strength anymore to hold myself together. I am dying. I am sorry sister, I never caught a rat for you. Please forgive your useless brother. I need to remember. Stairs. Stairs. Traps and stairs.

I feel something intermingle in the warmth of my death. I am fading away into that place I always go, but this time, something is with me. I do not like it, but it has taken root in my being. It has dug into my ethereal core and it won’t let go. Shadowy claws dig into my soul, the long fingers burrowing into my spirit. It doesn’t want to be left behind here alone. I feel like I could shake it off, if I tried. It is weak, tired. Far more than I am. But I feel sympathy for it. It is a wretched thing, warped by time and circumstance. It is not maleficent, it is desperate, feral. It wants to leave. I understand

I am happy. I won’t die alone this time.

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