Desert winds whiffed over the sand-dunes like a hair-dryer, and they ran like ice-water over Cas as a chill shivered through her figure.

Whether because of her shrill screaming, or her last minute pancake against the ground, or honest to goodness divine intervention, the shadow missed, clipping her top and crashing into the sand behind her with a soft thud.

It remained there, still, for two seconds before exploding back up onto four legs with a snarl and puff of sand-powder. It stood there, shaking its head as it staggered a bit. Cas had already dissolved her vocal chords, redirecting those resources elsewhere as she hardened her exterior.

Squeals and snarls like a pig exploded over her exterior, as the creature snapped and lunged and circled around her figure. Its frantic, jerky feints kicked up ever more dust and clouded it in a soft haze that obscured everything except its fangs as it snapped and snarled inches away from her.

And, throughout all of this, Cas stood frozen, frozen, frozen. She couldn’t move! She realized after two seconds of this. Every thought in her mind was screaming ‘run’, so why was she still here! Why couldn’t she move?

It felt surreal, like a scene straight out of a nightmare. Her own body was transparent to her, except for the blue-tint it shaded the world with, and it truly felt to her like she had no body at the moment, as if she were just some sense of perspective forced to observe this horror.

Ragh!Reaaahg!

Another snarl and snap as white fangs dug into her, cutting into her armor like daggers into play-dough.

Useless! She cursed with a dark undernote.

She tried to run, and she felt her underside… It was stiff. Panning her eye down, she saw the cause for her lack of motion. Her underside, normally an undulating wave that crawled her along every surface, had lost it’s flexibility with the addition of an armor. Of course! That was why she couldn’t move.

It wasn’t so much a thought as it was an instinct when she removed the hardness from her underside. She just wanted to get away from this thing, and she quickly latched onto the first thing that would give her her agency back!

And, just as the fox let go and reared back for another attack, Cas booked it.

The fox was a twitching mass of lightning compared to her, however. Noticing her motion, it dashed forward and struck with the precision of a trained action.

Before she’d managed to get more than two inches away, it sprang down and dug its nose into the sand beneath her. Digging it against her newly soft underbelly, the fox braced its legs with a practiced motion and reared up tossing its nose back against the sky.

Helplessly, Cas saw the world flip.

And all the abstract terror and panic of the past few seconds culminated as she stared up through her naked underbelly at the sky, and the dark silhouette and knowing, patient eyes of the fox, her killer, as it sprang its sharp maw forward and dug into her guts with a watery squelch.

…

Everything happened all at once, yet Cas could see every minute detail. The whole world was distorted as if every important and deadly detail had been highlighted for her perusal. Through it all, however, all she could pay attention to were those golden eyes. Those, knowing, trickster’s eyes that had gotten the better of her, goading and gloating as if to mock her fearfulness as the fox struck forward and took a chunk and…

Kiee! Kiee! Kiee!

A sudden, intense relief shivered through her.

The fox had already pulled away, squealing and crying and pawing at its own nose. It made pitiful sounds like a squeak toy as it snorted and staggered about it was trying not to fail a sobriety test. Occasionally it stopped and hunched over. Flexing its back and sticking its tongue out in a wretching motion.

After two seconds of this spectacle, it quickly turned about and:

WHHHAM!

A powerful beat of its forelimbs and a large explosion of dust that trailed like a spear after its take off. She saw only a glimpse of its sandy-brown wings as it flapped into the air and shot back over the rock cliff.

----------------------------------------

Sharon and Tara had been uncharacteristically quiet since the attack, leaving her with no distractions except her own thoughts and the ever-present unease of having almost been killed.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Cas couldn’t really take a breather, so she distracted herself by reading, looking back over her encyclopedia’s section on slimes.

It was a short section, however, and left her with sparse entertainment as she booked back through the paragraphs and chapters for the thirteenth time

It had become clear: despite being her primary point of interest, she’d learned basically nothing about slimes.

Ugh!

Rolling her eye, she closed her window in disgust. She didn’t even know Slimes had predators, and -- considering the latest attack -- that was kind of important information! Why had that thing even attacked her? It knew how to kill slimes. It knew to bait her into moving before going for her underbelly, yet… it somehow didn’t expect her to be so unpalatable. Could it be?

Again, she panned up and looked at her absorption skill.

Absorption: Level 4

Absorb and store components within yourself.

Like all her skill blurbs, it was obvious to the point of tautology, but… it did remind her of something.

You see, as a biologist, Cas was often relegated to being a purveyor of animal fun-facts whenever she found herself at a casual party.

One of her go-to facts, one that led to a lot of debate and google searches was this:

Poison dart frogs… weren’t actually poisonous… technically speaking.

You see, they actually cheated by eating poisonous beetles and stealing all their hard work. It was for this reason that pet dart frogs - being fed meal-worms rather than cyanide bugs - were quite benign.

Now, maybe that was just a technicality, and maybe the fact wasn’t even that fun in the first place.

Even so, Cas did know one thing: she was the only slime in this cave with enough smarts to track the Ants’ to their hidden colony, and she’d been eating a lot of ants lately.

With that in mind, she imagined that eating her had felt quite a lot like drinking rubbing alcohol, or piss, or budweiser.

In any case, quite a shock for the unsuspecting fox! Hehe!

Still, the fact that her status screen didn’t give her this information outright was... a point of interest, to put it politely.

…

The fox came back like a shadow at mid-day, a sly figure that slunk like rope as it ventured into the cave.

By now, Cas was feeling a lot more brave. Electing to take a look, she shape changed, growing a stalk which peeked over the rock she’d been hiding behind. Floating her eye up into that stalk, she panned her crystal across the cave and focused to get her first good view at the creature.

It was a shock in more ways than one.

A mixture of fox and bat and bird and reptile, it somehow reflected the appearance of a a dozen different animals while looking nothing at all like any of them.

It trundled along on spindly legs with an awkward gait, stepping its knuckles along the stone cavern as if unused to the stable surface, it flashed its gaze around as if seeing through everything.

It had bright eyes, and ruddy brown fur and a dark stripe that ran along its back.

Despite all that, the strangest thing was how Cas knew exactly what it was.

A flush of color went through her body, tensing as her figure hardened in a defensive posture. Because, she recognized it immediately for what it was.

It was a Zanzibat from Siablo III.

The videogame...

‘Wut?'