Fuck

I float helplessly in our mind, Chatty unconscious on the forest floor. While I usually see through her eyes, I have a second, backup point of view. Whenever she closes her eyes, like when she sleeps, I can see everything around us clearly.

And in the cylinder that is my vision’s range, is nothing I like.

Well… that's not true, I do see the back half of the monster, lying motionless on the ground, its front blurred into the darkness of my vision’s edge.

But that’s not important! What is important is my sister! And that we just lost a body part.

I’m holding my slime to the end of our arm, after switching it to medical slime, of course. It thankfully stopped the bleeding, which I was scared wouldn’t happen. But it did, so I’m relieved.

What’s not great is that I can’t take the slime off of it, or it’ll start bleeding again. I can’t just wait until it scabs over either, because none of the blood is hitting the air.

But if I let it hit the air, I can’t stop the bleeding.

So what do I do?

I squirm my small body uncomfortably, totally lost.

I want to ask Chatty, since she’s so smart, but she won’t wake up until I stop the bleeding and heal us some. …I think.

Twisting myself in knots, I try and think. It’s hard, I like to just go off what I feel. But I do it anyway! For Chatty!

So… Someone is bleeding a lot, and not scabbing up, what do you do?

I panic.

Okay, what would a doctor do?

…I’m not really sure, since I’ve never met a doctor. But there has to be a way. Maybe I could seal the wound myself, instead of letting the blood scab? But how can I…

Wait a tick! What if I burned it shut?

My heart churns in sadness at the thought of hurting my sister. But it’d be to heal her! Hurt to heal!

…That doesn’t make me feel much better.

I’m not even sure if it’ll work! But I can’t just leave her here forever. Even though I can hold this slime here forever, I can’t keep her safe from the spooky night creatures.

So I need to at least try. If it doesn’t work, I just have more to heal.

Focusing, I condense my body and cut myself off from our body as much as possible.

The pain we’re feeling slowly fades until it’s just a faint background noise. That’s when I turn my attention to the slimy bandage I’m controlling.

The purple lump clings to our wrist tightly, the blood not able to escape our ruptured veins. I focus on a small spot of still healthy skin, and ooze out some acidic slime.

My mind shudders, a horrible weight suddenly pressing it down. Moving the new slime becomes difficult, each little twitch causing me pain.

Not us, not our body, but mine.

I ignore it, remembering how much pain Chatty has ignored. Slowly, I push the acidic goo through the healing goo, spreading it out like a piece of cheese in a sandwich. Except the sandwich is slime, and the cheese is also slime.

My fluid body twitching in pain, I push the layer of slime through the healing goo, and onto the open wound.

A loud hissing fills the air as the slime bubbles against our skin. The slime burns, the pain it's causing distant to me. I ignore everything, and focus on the wound.

My heart leaps as the bleeding slows and the skin burns shut.

Once I’m sure it's properly closed, I shoot the acid out of the healing slime, severing it from my control.

Instantly, the mental strain vanishes.

I sigh in relief, the sound vibrating my body.

I did it, I stopped the bleeding, and now the healing slime can do its job!

For the first time since I woke up inside our mind, I feel exhausted.

────────────

An incredible amount of pain greets me when I regain consciousness.

I sit up and grab my arm instinctively, setting off a new wave of agony. My muscles all scream in protest at making them move, while my eyes sting from the little sunlight falling on my face. But even then, those are only irritations compared to the pain radiating from my hand.

Or where my hand used to be, I suppose.

With as much courage as I can gather, I take a closer look at my wrist.

To my surprise, I’m not greeted by a bloody wound, instead seeing a stump covered in scarred, but otherwise healthy, skin. But… if it's healed over, where is the pain coming from?

I dunno, I’ve been trying to figure that out for hours.

I jump, startled by Lotus suddenly speaking.

‘Oh… So it’s not still injured?’ I ask.

I feel her mentally shake her head. Healing goo did nothing to it, so I’m pretty sure it’s all healed.

I let out a long sigh. Damn, guess I just have to deal with the pain then.

A bit depressed, my eyes glide over to the cause of my pain. The bright red monster.

It’s laying a couple paces away, laying on its side, mouth open, tongue in the dirt. The bastard died facing away from me, so all I see is its red ass.

With a wave of discomfort, I push myself to my feet.

As steadily as I can, I walk over to the monster’s front. I want to make sure it's dead. I push my body to move, and it does, a bit slower than usual. A dozen shaky steps later, and I’m standing directly in front of the creature.

The inside of its mouth isn’t a pretty sight, black blood everywhere, burns on every surface. In the center lies its eye, a jagged hole in the center of that. The acid damage is the most prevalent in and around the bloody pit. Maybe the acid fell into it after I stabbed it, and got to its brain or something?

It doesn’t matter, what does is that it's dead.

I won… We won. Although it did cost me.

Speaking of! I look through the creature’s mouth a second time, this time to find my missing part. But after a few minutes of lifting dead meat and wiping away blood, I find nothing.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

‘Guess it's gone… Not like having it would’ve helped.’ I mentally mutter.

A strange feeling touches my mind, coming from outside it. …Comforting… Like someone is giving my soul a hug directly.

‘I-I that you?’ I ask Lotus.

Yeah… I thought you might need it. She answers softly.

I look at the ground. ‘...Thanks.’

Feeling a bit better, I remember why we fought this thing to begin with. Its monster core!

‘Would you mind, Lotus?’

Without responding, Lotus starts shooting slime out of my shoulder and into the dead monster’s mouth. It doesn’t take long for the ooze to pile up, filling the inside of the creature like a stuffed chicken.

I sit down, getting what rest I can as the acid does its work.

‘I wonder…’ My mind wanders as the acid hisses loudly. ‘You think we could’ve attached my hand if we had found it?’

Lotus doesn’t answer for a while, the silence strangely tense.

No… She answers flatly.

Strange… ‘Why so sure?’ I ask, trying to gently prod her.

Because… because I burned your wrist. There’d be no way to reattach it. She answers angrily. But her anger doesn’t seem to be directed at me. And… she burned me?

‘Why’d you burn me?’ I ask, confused.

You wouldn’t stop bleeding! And… and I was worried you wouldn’t wake up if I didn’t stop the bleeding. So I… She trails off, sadness rolling off her.

I blink at the stones at my feet.

‘So you did it to save me?’ I ask.

Yeah… She sniffles.

I nod to myself. ‘Well then it's fine. I’m sure you thought it through.’ I say with a calm I don’t totally mean.

While I don’t blame her, and know she probably saved my life by doing it… I can’t help but wonder if I could’ve saved my hand if she hadn’t.

The hissing stops.

My eyes raise, and see the hollowed out skin of the monster, lying flat on the ground. I move over to it, and lift up the scaled skin with my hand.

Nothing remains inside, except for a glowing stone.

I crawl inside the skin, which is easily big enough to make a tent, and reach out for the stone. After grabbing it, I scoot out of the wet skin backwards.

Once outside the creature’s remains, I look at my prize.

A fist sized stone, this one giving off a sky blue light. Just like the monster’s eye.

Without giving myself a chance to freak myself out about eating a possibly intelligent creature’s possible soul, I throw the core into my mouth, and swallow.

Like the ones before it, the core slides into my stomach easily, despite the fact I should’ve choked on it. After heating up, the energy inside shoots up my spine, to Lotus.

Nggh… Lotus grunts, a mental wince shuddering through my mind. Not too bad this time. She says after a few seconds.

A glowing window appears in the air in front of me, neatly written words quickly filling the frame.

You have consumed a [FMV1_210012] core and gained the ability [Acid Resistance]! Additionally, you have gained 3 evolution points, which you can use to upgrade your current abilities. You are the first to slay a [FMV1_210012]! Would you like to give it a name?

Before I can really process what I’ve read, Lotus says something.

Thank you for naming [Red Eye Dog]!

I pinch the bridge of my nose. ‘In what world did that look like a dog?’

I dunno, but that’s not what I named it anyways… or at least what I tried to name it.

I blink. ‘Wait, then what did you try and name it?’

When it asked, I told it to call it a red, one eyed bitch. She says angrily. But it didn’t listen.

Despite my best efforts, I smile.

────────────

After giving myself a little time to rest, I drag myself to my feet.

I look at the now empty animal skin, the glimmering red scales pristine, like they’d never had anything in them to begin with.

‘That… would be useful as a tent…’ I mutter to myself.

With my one working hand, I grab the hide, and try to flatten it out as much as possible. Once it's as good as it's gonna get, I roll it up, and throw it under my good arm. It’s… pretty heavy, but not unbearable.

Let me do something. Lotus mutters.

I feel the gentle tugging of my skin as her slime exits my arm, slithering down it and onto the monster skin. From there she wiggles inside the curled hide.

‘What are you up to?’

It was all wet in there… I’m gonna dry it up. She replies.

I blink. ‘How are you going to dry it with wet slime?’ I asked confusedly.

When I was stopping your blood earlier, I realized I can surround liquid with the slime, and then lift it. It wasn’t useful for healing you, but maybe… She goes quiet, clearly concentrating.

With a shrug, I start my walking, glancing around for a safe place to sleep.

After a little while, I hear a dripping sound. I glance at the ground below me, and see a greenish liquid dropping out of the slime sitting on my arm, landing on the dry dirt.

‘Figured it out?’ I ask with a smile.

Y-yeah… She says, her voice strained. Just… Gotta concentrate.

Not wanting to bother her while she’s trying so hard, I go quiet again, returning to my search for shelter.

About an hour passes before I stop.

GRRRRRRR…

I jump at the sound, and then blush.

GrrGrRRrrr… My stomach groans a second time.

…I think we’re hungry.

I nod, too embarrassed to talk.

But what the hell am I gonna eat? I don’t know anything about edible plants or mushrooms, so the stuff we might find is a huge gamble. The other option is hunting, but that has its own problems.

Well… standing around won’t solve the issue.

So I continue on, ignoring my rapidly growing hunger.

A few hours later, and I still haven’t thought of a solution, and I have a new problem.

The sun is setting.

I start moving faster, my eyes darting around, looking for somewhere I can hide, but find nothing. Panic starts to rise in my chest, the memories of the noises I heard last night fresh in my mind. Despite my effort, and worrying, the sun sets all the same.

And the noises begin.

They start softly, an occasional groan, a shriek. But they quickly get louder, more frequent. Women screaming, metal tearing, trees snapping, children crying, the crash of ocean waves, every imaginable unsettling sound comes from one direction or another.

I start running.

My eyes flick over every tree, every stump, every large rock looking for a nook, a crevice, anywhere I can hide myself out of sight.

Out of time.

Just in front of me, the tree I was looking at starts to shudder, its branches thrashing around like there’s a heavy wind. I skid to a stop, watching in horror as it continues to seize, the sound of splintering wood filling my ears.

The tree twists unnaturally, in perfect right angles. The branches and trunk, all fold into squared spirals. Its roots rip from the ground, doing the same as the rest of the plant. And then, still quaking, the tree vanishes with an ethereal whoosh.

Standing where the tall oak had been, is something I can barely understand.

It looks like several cubes, all… layered. The shapes intersecting, rotating, inside one another, yet not ever touching. The thing fills me with a sense of wrongness I can’t describe. The… thing shimmers in shades of green and blue, and looks like it's still in direct light, as if it's lit by an unseen sun, yet it doesn’t glow. Every part of it makes my mind scream that it doesn’t belong, on an instinctual level.

It floats where it is, not doing anything, yet giving off an air of being… bored? Then, behind it, there’s a loud crash.

A second monster, this one much more… mundane, appears from the forest brush.

The newcomer is a large reptile, armored plating covering its back. A large bone club adorns its tail, which it swings threateningly at the shape. Disturbingly, the creature has a human face, which is twisted into a snarl.

The outermost layers of the cube rotate, as if turning to look at the creature. Before the cube can do anything, the reptilian monster attacks.

A mistake.

As soon as the reptile’s tail makes contact with the floating geometric entity, it stops dead, and begins to vibrate. The monster tries to pull back its weaponized limb, its face scrunched in anger, but finds that it can’t.

Then the shuddering gets worse.

A loud crack fills the air as the monster’s tail bends in a right angle. It howls in agony, the beast’s face marred by pain. Another crack, and the tail bends again, closer to the creature’s body this time.

Bone crunching snap after snap rings through the area as the reptile’s tail continues to be folded, like it's a piece of paper being played with by a bored child. Eventually, its tail is totally coiled, twisted into a square spiral.

But the shaking doesn’t stop.

More crunching, more snapping, the cube entity continues its attack, moving on from the monster’s tail. Instead folding its body, the shelled back crumpling in ways that don’t make sense, at angles that shouldn’t be possible. Yet, they are, as the monster is slowly twisted, its limbs also folded. After what seems like an eternity, its entire form has been contorted into squares, and it begins to vibrate.

Just as it vanishes, I catch sight of its face, half hidden by its own twisted form.

It’s crying.

As it blinks out of existence, I run, as fast as I can, as hard as I can. Branches and vines whip my skin, thorns grabbing onto the ragged remains of my clothes, but I ignore it, forcing my legs to keep moving.

I don’t look back, terrified that thing will be behind me, floating along silently.

When I eventually run out of energy, and my legs refuse to keep going, I reach a stony cliff face. In the grey rock wall, there’s a small crack, which I force myself into. It’s just large enough for me to fit.

Trying to forget what I saw just a few minutes ago, I clumsily get into my makeshift red sleeping bag, not yet used to using just one hand. Once it's covering me, and giving me a bit of protection from the cold stone I’m surrounded with, I lay down as much as I can.

Which is basically still standing, the crevice being almost totally vertical.

Lotus’ slime oozes from my shoulder, and covers me again, like she did the night before. A part of her branches off, and fills the crack I shimmied in through with the goo.

I sigh in relief, the horrible sounds coming from outside now muffled.

So… What the hell was that? She asks, sounding terrified.

I don’t answer. I just close my eyes, and try to forget the thing’s haunting presence.

It takes me a long time to get to sleep.