Bob opened his eyes. He hadn't gotten bored. He hadn't lost focus. He left the meditative state freely of his own will. There was nothing left to do. The mud around his eyes was pure and clean. Only the faintest particles of clay drifting through crystal water. He'd even taken the time to pick apart at the clay aggregates, splitting them up into their component pieces. The work was over.

Bob opened his eyes and saw. It was a little strange. Like he was looking through a veil of tinted glass. There was the faintest hint of a distortion as light refracted, but it was almost imperceptible. Bob opened his eyes and saw George, George and Sophie. They were standing on the top of a precarious tower, surrounded by luminous green slime. The monster was reforming itself slowly, stacking goo on goo, towering up with the inevitability of the rising tide.

Thank god they were okay. Bob had wondered about trying to break out of the slime before regaining his vision. There were risks involved. He'd probably have had to retract his breathing tube. And he wouldn't have know what direction to swim in. It's possible he might have ended up swimming in circles or that some vigorous motion might have let acid seep through the thin, mud shield. He still might have risked it if he'd had some quick way of damaging the slime. He didn't.

Sophie was shouting something. She looked panicked and harried. Being painted with mud does that to a human. Somehow it destroys your creditability. People immediately assume the worst (Bob spoke from experience). Maybe she was giving on-point, result-focused instructions in deliberate, commanding tones, but to Bob's eyes, she just looked like she was screaming her head off.

George, on the other hand, was his natural cool-cucumber self. Hell the dog looked like he was enjoying himself. The noise, the pretty lights, the excitement, he probably was. George barked and wagged his tail and trotted happily around. Why did Bob get the impression Sophie wasn't a dog person? Bob could help smiling at the dog a little from here. Sophie was not smiling. Sophie's expression was flint.

Gurgle, gurgle, the slime tide rose inexorably higher, gurgle, gurgle. George popped out two mud-brick walls on top of their platform and then a horizontal roof piece. Good old George, hoarder that he was, he must have stored away every one of Bob's brick-wall attempts. And there had been a lot. Bob had been experimenting with different shapes, thicknesses and material composition. You know, magical QA at its best.

Next came a little mud brick staircase, five rough steps of hardened mud. Bob had forgotten about that. It was one of Bob's prepared siege equipment. He'd shaped it in a flight of fantasy. Imagine, if you will, a grand enemy stronghold, the emerald city of the unicorn beetles. The invader strolls up to the wall, plops down a staircase from thin air and then wanders up. Hello everyone. How we all doing? Of course it had never seen the light of day. The walls were made of grass. George could breathe fire. You do the maths.

George and Sophie scrambled up onto the next level and, pop, George had stored away the staircase again for future use. It was a damn good plan. Bob was impressed. George really was a sharp thinker. He grown so much during the initiation. Or maybe he'd always been intelligent and just played dumb in front of Bob? The dog did tend to get exactly what he wanted. But that was probably just Bob's soft heart.

It was a good plan. A plan that depended on the noble, stoic nature of mud. Mud was a pure inorganic substance, so the slime couldn't just dissolve through it. Nor would Brown Corporation's signature mud-brick walls, thick, heavy and beetle-horn proof, be easily toppled over. Instead the slime had no choice but to slowly elongate itself and chase them up into the sky. It was a good plan, but George did not have twenty five meters worth of wall. They'd get caught eventually.

Sophie continued to shout at George, motioning higher. She probably didn't appreciate the way George liked to leave things to the last second. George flattened his ears, blinked slowly. George, George, (Bob couldn't keep back a little chuckle) George yawned. He lay down and rested his head in his paws. Sophie was stamping her foot. She didn't understand dog like Bob did. Bob understood George. George was saying there was nothing more he could do. That must have been George's last set of walls. When Sophie started pulling on George's collar, he spat out the staircase again. But no walls followed.

Gurgle, gurgle, the slime tide rose inexorably higher. They were trapped. Slime slowly congealed together, stacking on top of itself. Bob found himself caught in the suction effect and pulled inside the green tower. He could feel the currents that facilitated the slime's movement. Waves would start up from the slime's feet and slither through the body, guiding dumb goo in the desired direction. Gurgle, gurgle. George stood up and hopped up onto the first step. Sophie was long since at the top. She was pulling her hair out and cursing the dog.

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The slime spilled over the level of the platform. Green goo lapped against the rim of the lowest step. Gurgle, gurgle, the tide continued to rise. George lazily hopped up another step. The tide came after him, washing over the first step, then the second, then the third. The fourth step was swallowed into the green sea. Sophie and George were crowded onto the fifth step. End of the line, folks.

Gurgle, gurgle. The tide rose inexorably higher. It was at the brim of the step, wobbling at the edge, only surface tension preventing it from spilling over and onto them. George breathed fire. A thousand liters of slime evaporated in an instance. The slime was pushed back a full step. Sophie was coughing and cursing. She gotten a mouthful of the rancid smoke. That stuff couldn't meet air quality standards. Bob didn't think she and George were going to be friends.

The slime gathered itself together. What was a thousand liters to the Green Death, to the Slime Sea? George's mana reserves were finite. He wouldn't be able to hold back the tide. No king, no god could hold back the tide. The tide comes for us all. Gurgle, gurgle; gurgle, gurgle. The tide rose inexorably higher. George spat out his heavenly flames and the wave was beaten back.

Bob had to do something. He was the only one left. He was the mud magician. But what could he do? He was suspended inside the slime. Some mud-fly frozen in green amber. He wasn't connected to the mud outside. The laws of magic constrained him. He only had his mantle and his wits. How could he overcome the Great Slime, Der Glibbermeister, a being completely resistant to physical attacks, seemingly immune to everything but caterpillar pus? He was half-way up the slime tower. Seven meters up in the air. There was no getting down or out in time.

Once more the wave rose up from the infinite depths of the Slime Sea. Bob felt the current pass through him. The energy propagating forward, compressing the slime and raising it higher. Once more the golden knight forced it back. But the fire was growing weaker. It was hard for George to cast his spell so many times in short succession. The slime only fell back half a step. Once more the wave shuddered up through the Slime Sea. Once more the fire ravaged it back. Only a third of a step this time. Already the wave had come back, pressing on the island shores. One last rattling breath of flames. Only a quarter-step. The green tide and the golden knight.

Bob felt the wave shiver up from the depths. This was it, the final push, the current that would sweep over the last step and sink them into the sea. Bob acted. Harry thinned and extended out like a great sail. The wave reached the cloak, but the cloak stayed rigid, resisting the motion. Bob caught the wave. He held it. He pushed it back. The wave faltered, its energy dampened, but it stumbled past all the same, seeping around the edges of the wave-breaker. Crap.

Gurgle, gurgle, the voice of the green tide as it rises inexorably higher. The tide prodded against the step's lip, bouncing forward and then wobbling back, stopped by the faintest hint of surface tension. Sophie was weeping, calling on her maker for mercy, confessing her sins. George yawned and nuzzled over to the crying woman. She didn't seem to appreciate the concern.

Bob felt a wave shiver up from the depths. He braced himself. He readied himself. He had to hold the line here. He was the final defense. The hooded man and the sea. The wave shoved up. Bob seized it, pushing Harry out as far as he could. They wrestled together, battling for accession, writhing and twisting against each other. The wave died. But in its death, it tripped forward as faint ripples. Crap, crap. Gurgle, gurgle.

The ripples reached the green boundary. And the surface tension broke. A breath of green slime washed across the step. George jumped. Sophie hopped. And like some awful game of dead man’s jump rope, the acid swept under them and drained back into the green sea. They'd... survived? Though Sophie's nice shoes were smoking. She'd mistimed her jump.

Bob was defeating the wave. He was an immovable stone, but he wasn't god. The relentless quality of directed energy could not be so easily quenched. It was impossible to prevent some momentum trickling past, bleeding around the limits of the wave-breaker. He would win the fight and lose the war. In the end, the tide always wins. He'd only bought them time, a few more minutes, a final game of dead man's jump rope, played until they wore out or fell down or gave up. It was over.

Is this the fabled mud magician? Is this it? The wielder of the great mud wave. The heir to Excaliborn. Lord of the golden knight. Defeated by the tide? The humble tide? Must be somebody else. Some pretender. Is this the limit of your strength? The end of your path? Defense, defense, defense. Are you trying to survive or are you trying to conquer? Why don't you play to win for a change?

Bob understood. The world belongs to those who act. This time he didn't wait for the wave. This time he was the wave. Harry flapped forward, sending out a counter-wave, and then another and then another, a constant beat of force and energy. When the slime's own wave shivered up from the depths, it was battered, bludgeoned and kicked down by counter-wave after counter-wave. Bob's wave tore it apart and kept going.

Bob's army of waves collapsed into the base of slime and pulled the creature away from his friends. Gurgle, gurgle. The slime tower slipped down a step. Gurgle, gurgle. Another step and another, down to the platform now. Sophie looked down in wonder. George barked like he'd been expected about as much.

"Gurgle, gurgle," Bob shouted out, laughing manically, "gurgle, gurgle."

The tide had turned. He was the tide.