It has become a somber existence, all the way down here. Since it has started to grow. The strange fuzz that I can feel over my body. The strange fuzz that has begun to grow over everyone else’s bodies, those that remain at least. Most of the others have simply given up the ghost, as it were. They are too tired to hunt. Too cold. Too drained and exhausted from the sapping, leaching effects of the parasite fungus mixed in together with the strange, cold aura that seems to be filling the space. It seems to drift out from the cracks in the walls, from every crevice and nook and every splintered, stone fragment. Anywhere there is a dark hole, the cold seems to just leak out of it. The floor is much like a ship taking on water.

  Is this punishment? I don’t know. I hop forward again. Standing still for too long will cause my goo to become stiff and to become thick and coagulated, as the nutrients are drained from my body slowly. There is little I can do about it. No matter how much I stretch and squirm and wriggle and writhe, the invisible roots of the rot have set themselves too far throughout me to be removed anymore by anything other than a purging fire. But there is no such thing down here.

I shake my head. Uh. Well, my body. Snapping out of the slime-brain for a moment.

  Did the floor change? This is unusual. Unprecedented. I’m a hidden-village slime, but I’m… fuzzy. Is this the same blue mold that has been growing in so many other places? I can’t see it, having no eyes, but I feel like it would be a safe bet to say that it is. What does this mean? I vaguely remember something about mold, from when I was a magical tome. Didn’t I make a friend there? Matilda? Madeleine? Miranda? Dunno. But I feel like we talked about the mold spreading through the dungeon once or twice. Something that grows independently of the respawns.

  Is that what this is? Is that what’s infecting this body? It feels… bad. I feel unwell, as unwell as one can feel, as a slime. Ugh… I jump forward again, searching for another rat. For anything to eat. I am hungry again, despite the deep sense of nausea that I feel, I still feel compelled to eat. I still crave nourishment, but there is nothing here to eat. The rats all heard the drowning screams of their brother and they have scampered. But they watch me from afar, I feel them watching me from afar, as I grow colder, as the parasite drains me dry. The nutrients I gained from the fresh kill already almost burnt away with a lightning pace.

  The sensation of it is a haunting presence that makes me feel just as unwell as the physical nausea does. I feel cold. Slow. Lethargic. My pace is tepid, as if I were freezing in place just a little after every hop. As if every subsequent jump and skip and plip and plop were becoming more difficult than the last. I’m really hungry, guy. But I can’t feel anything else in my reach. It all scampers away. Like ghosts, they vanish into the mist of my senses. Always just hovering on the precipice of what I can perceive. Spirits on the border of this realm and the other one. Shoo shoo spirits! Shoo shoo!

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  But they don’t shoo shoo. They scamper around myself, always following, always watching but never reaching. Never touching and all the while I feel worse. My energy is drained. I am just about empty. What is this? What’s going on? I feel unwell. I feel cold. I can’t move anymore. I feel weak. Hungry. I can’t sustain myself like this, I -

Die.

  My life having been cut short, very short, I begin to float away from my vessel and return up to the void. But something is different. The… vaulting, the catapulting speed that usually takes me up above is somber. Slow. Meandering. I’m being pulled up higher still by that strange hand that takes me to the above, but it is as if a second hand from below were trying to drag me back down before my ascension has even begun. As if something didn’t want to let me leave. Eventually however, the strands tying me down seem to snap and tear and I am hurtled upwards towards the darkness. Towards limbo.

And I float.

Uh, okay. So that was a bad life. A really short one too. I guess the slimes aren’t doing so hot, poor little gu-

I open my eyes and look down at my undead hands, the dead-light calls to me from across the graveyard and I-

Die.

Uh…

I fall back down. Opening my eyes, I stare around at the purple lined fortress, and the many people all around myself chanting and dancing around a large fire. Moving towards them to join in, I stumble and hit my head.

I die.

Uh? Oh. Are we doing this agai-

Squeak. I squeak. It is warm here, very warm. Many brothers. High honor! Paradise! Queen throne! Queen throne! I open my eyes again and stare upwards, staring up at the weight pressing down onto us, as we act as her throne. Raising my gaze I look up at uh… the…

Uh…

Oh.

The thief isn’t going to forgive me for this one.

  Something squeaks next to me, a panicked voice. They have seen me, sensed the first me and the rat-queen jumps up to see what the commotion is about. Turning around, I see a pair of furious eyes staring into mine from above. Thankfully, before anything else worse befalls me. Something lurches in my breast as my heart comes to a sudden stop and I die.

I float.

I open my eyes and stare at the dungeon-master sitting there, taking a large swig from a nearly empty bottle. A mountain of crumpled paper surrounds them.

With an almost comical ‘ah’ they finish, exhaling a deep breath and slamming the bottle down on the table, as their gaze turns to me and my pages.

“Well?” they ask, angrily.

“Well what?” I ask, not sure what they want. But happy to see the dungeon-master nonetheless.

“Well, what did you learn, idiot?!” The dungeon-master slaps the top of my covers with a strike of their small palm and my bottom hits the table beneath myself from the force.

“The rat-queen doesn’t wear underwear,” I answer.

  There is a silence in the library and the dungeon-master places both palms on the table and leans in forward towards me. Even without a nose I can smell the liquor on their tongue. Without words, they release their grip from the table and take hold of my book body on both sides and raise me up into the air. Uh…

AHHH-!

  They slam me down onto the table and there is a loud, whipping crack as my leather slaps against the wood. Lifting me up they then slam me against the table another time and then another, each smashing of my body against the wood faster than the last as they beat me against it. All the implements of their art rattling around myself as I collide. This repeats several times. I guess that wasn’t the answer they were looking for.

“You useless moron!” they yell, finally slapping me down one final time before tearing my pages open.

“Uh, please be gentle. This seems like inappropriate beh-“

“Shut up!” They yell, as they begin scribbling all manner of rude words inside of my pages.