Sophie had been baptized in mud. Arise now: Sophie Brown. Odds on, she'd develop a severe and crippling form of mud-specific mysophobia. She was gasping for air, crawling inelegantly across the ground, dripping down wet mud. That's it. She reminded Bob of a slug. That sticky, wriggling movement. Bob made a point not to tell her that in the future.
They'd done it. She might be traumatized, psychologically scarred, permanently damaged, but she was safe; she'd made it out alive. George was there to protect her and General Slime had suddenly remembered a pressing appointment with one Mr. Brown.
Yes, General Slime was a respectable, green-suited businessman and he was running a little late. But General Slime was determined to make it to his appointment on time. There is nothing like unpunctuality to make a poor impression on potential business partners. General Slime rushed to the meeting. But strangely enough, Mr. Brown, appeared to be legging it in the other direction as fast as he could. General Slime stretched out a dripping, gooey hand without slowing down. Inexplicably Mr. Brown refused to take the proffered handshake. Most rude.
Yes Bob was sprinting. Sprinting for his life. He'd started well, opening up the distance between himself and the Green Death, but the slime rolled inexorably after, like some giant's rolling pin. And because the slime was approaching side-on, he couldn't escape to either side. He had no choice but to run away in a straight line and the slime was picking up speed. The perpetual momentum machine thrummed, stacking wave after wave after wave, accelerating in a way completely beyond that of us limited organic organisms.
Should Bob take to the mud? When a two dimensional battlefield fails you, add another dimension. That was his trump card. His escape pod. But he couldn't use it willy-nilly. He wasn't fighting alone. He had to make sure he'd gotten the slime far enough away from the others first. Otherwise the Glibbermeister would just reverse directions and meatloaf his friends. And hey, he still had one jar of caterpillar pus left. Nothing like a massive bomb to inspire delusions of security.
He'd have to time this just right. Bob didn't quite understand the principle, but isolated goop was just that, goop. The severed section of the slime body had lost animation. In other words, a certain volume of slime was required for the slime to preserve its sentience. That meant if he could nail the slime bang in the centre and halve its volume, he might be able to kill the monster. Cores were a lot easy to understand...
Bob veered right, running parallel to the rolling pin. He was riding the storm, surfing in the shadow of the great wave. There was still a good forty meters of slime left to the creature.
"General Slime, I've brought a little gift for you. It's an expression of my heartfelt wish that this be the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership."
Wait for it.
"NOT!"
Bob launched the jar into the air. Sometimes he was an absolute badass. Did Sophie see that? He hoped she caught the show.
The jar spiraled through the air. Now Bob had never been a very good shot. Pebbles, knives, jars. They never went where they were supposed. Maybe he should practice. It's boring though isn't it? Practicing throwing things by yourself. And yet somehow his life frequently depended on throwing things just right.
Answer honestly: you thought he'd missed didn't you? He hadn't missed. Give the man a little credit. It was impossible to miss. The thing was a fricking wall. Three meters high, forty meters across, two meters away. Boom!
A huge chunk of the slime was sliced away and fell lifeless to the ground. He hadn't missed, but he hadn't hit centre. He carved out fifteen meters of the goop, but twenty-five more still hounded after him. General Slime was coming in for a hug. Scratch that. He wasn't coming at Bob at all, he was flying towards him. Somehow the slime had channeled the explosive energy to launch itself into the air and at Bob. Bob was a highly trained wizard. He'd seen tens of combat situations. He was a lightning draw. He reacted instantaneously. "Mud--"
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Everything was dark. What had happened? Where was he? He felt foggily back. General Slime and his sweaty, green shirt. The slime must have reached him. He'd been too slow. He hadn't made it. He was gaseous particles and molecular paste. Is this what it's like to be a chemical molecule? CO₂, brother, why you got to be making things so hot? Someone just needed to level with the guy. Bob would sort things out.
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So Bob was dead. Dead, dead. Not the soap opera dead, where nobody actually saw the death and it was just strongly implied by circumstance and musical tone. No, the see-that-smear-of-liquid-on-the-ground-that's-all-that's-left dead.
Subjectively, though, Bob felt he was floating, bobbing up and down on a soft cloud. Dead and floating on sunshine? This must be heaven. The only fitting place for a hero of Bob's quality. To the virtuous, the rewards of their virtue. Thank the heavens.
Bob was greatly relieved that God didn't place any particular value on the lives of beetles. For otherwise, he'd have ended up somewhere a lot less pleasant.
It was nice, cozy; the gentle, rocking motion of the clouds was incredibly soothing. It was a bit dark though.
Why's it so dark? Is it raining or something? Does it rain in heaven? Call me prejudice, but I'd sort of imagined heaven to be a bit... well, lighter, airier. It's a tad stuffy, don't you think? And what's that smell? It smells like mud. Don't tell there's mud in heaven? Even dying isn't enough to get the smell of mud off me.
Bob's chest hurt. It started as a dull ache, but was tiptoeing up the pain scale at an alarming pace. He tried to breathe. He couldn't. There was no air. He was drowning. He was drowning in heaven? What a way to go? Does heaven have a heaven do you think? He tried to push out against the blackness around him. But he couldn't, it was like the blackness was surrounding him, like he was trying to push against his own clothes, like someone had wrapped him up in a black sheet.
"Hello Harry."
Bob had been too slow. Harry had been just fast enough. Bob was inside the slime and heaven was somewhere far, far away. He was floating in a sea of corrosive acid, wrapped up from head to foot in his mud mantle. He was the mud mummy. And unfortunately, they'd buried him alive. He was drowning in the mud. A taste of his own medicine. So this is what it feels like?
Bob carefully pushed out on Harry with his mind. A mud antenna probed forward, slowly extending as it twitched forward, searching for the boundary of the slime. Pop. Bob felt the shift in surface tension as the antenna penetrated into clean air. He hollowed out the tube and air whistled down. Sweet, restorative oxygen. The fuel of the life. Bob gulped greedily down. He grinned to himself. The mud magician wasn't finished just yet. Soap opera death resurrection complete. Mr. Brown had an appointment with General Slime.
The first thing he needed to do was gain some visibility. He delicately shaved away at the mud that covered his eyes. It was a ticklish operation. If he went too far, slime acid would pour into his eyes and melt away his eyeballs, so you appreciate the need for caution. Bob had never had to cultivate this level of control before. He took his time. The slow swaying of the slime was soothing. It helped him concentrate. He was in the zone, scratching away sub-millimeter layer after layer of mud. Light trickled in, dirty and veiled, like you might see through closed eyelids.
He kept going. The layer of mud was now imperceptibly thin. A fraction of a millimeter wide. He couldn't shave away any more without the acid spilling through. And yet he still couldn't see. That paper-thin layer remained opaque. He'd reached an impasse. Maybe mud googles were impossible. Magic can't reach beyond a mage's understanding. Bob had to be able to conceive of the method to realise his objective.
Bob frowned. He concentrated on the mud of Harry's cloak. He really concentrated. He closed his eyes and let his consciousness sink into the mud. Mud is a composite; varied particles floating in a watery stasis. And those particles aren't arranged in a strict, regular pattern. It's no crystal, no diamond or graphite. They are randomly distributed and they aren't all the same size. They are a mixture, a jumble of distinct elements. There was sand and gravel, trace mineral components, silt, and then clay.
Bob focused on the clay. Clay was the smallest, tiny specs of substance, so small they tended to bind together and form little aggregates. Bob had never tried to influence the internals of the mud before, but he tried now. He imagined a comb with microscopic teeth. He brushed the comb through the mud, one slow stroke at a time, herding the bigger particles away. Where did mud end and water begin? At one point would the system say, "that there is just water" and revoke his authority?
Bob didn't worry about that. He let the thought float up and drift out of his mind. He was reaching for Zen state of the experience factory. That empty doing. It was an arduous process. He had to keep hold of that image in his mind. That microscopic comb. Each pass, he would sweep away hundreds of particles, but there were thousands more, ten of thousands. Sometimes he would lose it and he'd have to reconstruct the comb, reground himself in that microscopic mud. He repeated that action hundreds and hundreds of times, refining his form, simplifying his movements, pacing up again and again.
He was making progress. All of the sand was gone, the gravel too; some of the silt had merged onto the little clay stars and he had to pick them apart, sliding a tooth of the comb between them. He didn't look. He didn't worry about progress, about how far he'd come. He didn't want to be distracted. If you do a job properly, the results will come of themselves. He remembered those QA flows. He would glide from step to step like someone was guiding his hand and he was just the instrument.
Bob felt sweat rolling down his face, even with his eyes closed. He felt sweat roll down into his mouth and he tasted the salt of his own effort. He didn't break focus, but a remembered phrase bubbled up all the same. What had old Yamada-sensei said?
Sweat makes the man.
Bob sweat.