“The old man says your plan is insane.” Gel relayed with amusement after Sean’s strategy had been passed on to the survivors. “Well, technically he said it has ‘more gaps than his gran’s gold teeth’, but I like my translation better.”
“What about the ones who matter?” Sean asked, keeping his orbs on the trio who had been mostly silent as Gel had explained his plan. The two fennekians he had given daggers to had already raised their hands when Sean had asked for volunteers, so the most dangerous roles were already filled. “Are they in?”
“Probably. I haven’t heard any other suggestions. Besides, it’s not like they have much of a choice.” Gel commented. “Without our help, they’ve got less time left than you do.”
One of the things that had come up in their conversation had been the survivor’s infection not clearing up despite having been freed from the source of it. Bernard had theorized it was due to either the infection feeding off of the ambient mana concentrations in the tunnels, or that it was being reinforced due to their constant exposure to new spores. Whichever it was, none of them were getting any better down here. Which meant the survivors needed to get out of the tunnels soon if they wanted to keep doing that whole ‘surviving’ thing.
The slime warrior expected that hanging hourglass over their heads would push the trio to agree with his plan. Despite the increased danger of it, this was not the time for half measures. After a few hushed exchanges, Sean was proven right.
“They’re in.” Gel confirmed as Saren turned towards them and quirked his entire owl-like head a full 45 degrees to the right. “Though the paladin wants to know if we really plan to come back for the fungus after they escape.”
“Of course we do.” Sean said with a confident nod and a broad smile at the owlen. The few visible parts of the paladin’s skin paled, but Saren didn’t step back. “If we didn’t, the ants would just recapture them anyway. So they play bait for us, and we’ll take out the source of the problem once they’re gone, now that we know where to go.”
The pair of shroom sensors they had consumed after the battle with the soldier ant had been a wealth of information for Sean and Gel. Now, instead of a partial map of the colony they had a nearly complete picture of it. Well, technically Gel did, but it had amounted to the same thing. There were tunnels branching everywhere. The sheer scope of it was mind-boggling, and Gel’s descriptions reminded Sean of those videos online where people had filled ant nests with concrete only to reveal a structure nearly two stories tall. It was amazing the slime could navigate it at all, given that the acidspitter ants had built themselves a home the size of a small city underground.
A city filled with hordes of acidic insects who had been entirely enslaved by a massive fungus, but a city nonetheless. There was even a path down from where they were to the chambers hosting the core network of mushrooms serving as its ‘brain’ - for lack of a better term. Several paths, in fact.
Unfortunately, each of those paths were absolutely swarming with hordes of those very same enslaved acidspitters. Enough of them that fighting their way down was suicide. Trying to sneak past the hordes might be possible for Sean and Gel given the slime’s ability to remove spores, but they certainly couldn’t do it with an entire group of fumbling humanoids behind them screaming at every new opponent. Being unable to rescue their fellow monsters from enslavement had depressed Gel initially, but Sean’s new plan had rallied the slime’s spirits.
“I just want you to know how much I approve of smothering food on food to bait out even more food.” Gel reiterated, for perhaps the third time. “I know we did something like this with that pig earlier, but this is so much better. I can’t wait to start. We’re going to eat like royalty.”
“You don’t mind that we’re going to be eating most of those ants instead of freeing them?” Sean asked. “Assuming this all goes well, that is.”
“Food is food.” Gel asserted confidently. “We’ll free the ones we can and eat the rest. Once the fungus is gone, our job is done and we can go back to consuming one another worry-free!”
“Uh-huh.” Sean rumbled, unconvinced. He had a feeling Gel would want to leave the rest of the ants alone at that point, but he didn’t push the issue. Instead, he latched onto something else the slime had said. “Do slimes even have royalty?”
“Of course we do! Ants aren’t the only ones to give out titles, you know.” Gel said, clearly offended. “We’ve got slime kings, queens, dukes, lords… there’s a whole monarchy.”
“Are those… evolutions?” Sean hazarded carefully, unsure if his friend was messing with him or not. “Or are those actual positions?”
“Both. There’s a slime kingdom out there somewhere, I just don’t know where it is.” Gel sighed, and it sounded like there was a pang of regret in it. Sean wondered if this was another one of those legends like the ‘Great Slimes of the Past’ Gel had told him about before.
“I should have asked my cousin before we left.” Gel lamented. “Maybe that’s where she went.”
Sean was just about to ask how Gel could have asked the tidal wave of angry air-purifier anything when one of the humans Sean hadn’t bothered to learn the name of ran towards their group cradling several bright yellow potions in his arms.
“Oooh, that one says he found something!” Gel translated, though that much had been obvious.
Saren rushed forward, as did all of the nearby survivors, and Sean waited for his slime-subtitle translator to give him the play-by-play of whatever was going on. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Health potions!” Gel exclaimed in surprise. “Where in the– oh, he found them in the pile. He found health potions in our pile, Sean! I knew we should have called dibs on the whole thing.”
“Just to be clear here.” Sean said, his interest abruptly piqued by the tiny, sun-hued vials. “You’re telling me those little beauties will restore our health? Just like the mana potions did?”
“Not our health.” Gel corrected, and Sean’s sudden interest plummeted back down. “Those are infused with life mana. If we drank them then it would probably do the same thing to us that bar infused with life mana did. Only to our insides instead of our outsides.”
“Our insides are our outsides, Gel. In fact, I’m pretty sure you count as my insides now.”
“Your new and improved insides! Hey, I wonder if we could find a potion to regrow your old ones? Then I could consume them again!” The slime’s voice became wistful. “You were definitely a meal I could eat twice.”
Sean shook his head at his friend and tried not to laugh. If Gel was forced to explain his humor to the survivors, the slime warrior was sure it wouldn’t translate well.
“Alright, tell them to– Oh.” Sean trailed off as the two fennekians – who had never actually given him their names – dove headfirst into the spore cloud left behind by the worker ant he had just slain. Rolling around the tunnel floor with business-like efficiency, the pair quickly covered themselves head to toe. “Nevermind, looks like they’re all about it.”
“Eager little morsels, aren’t they?” Gel observed. “Dibs on the left one.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Why the left?” Sean asked, though he couldn’t actually tell them apart. Especially now.
“Call it a gut feeling.”
“Did you just–”
Saren approached, interrupting their conversation with some more of the owlen’s whisper-on-the-wind style speech patterns. Behind the paladin the entire group of survivors looked as ready as they were likely to ever be. Bernard hitched Karson farther up his back, and Daerkin supported his fellow lizardkin with one arm in a way that Daerkin had assured them would allow them both to keep up. The rest of the survivors stared at Sean, a mixture of fear and courage on their faces.
Cut the paladin down first, then charge in and break the wills of the rest. When they scatter, go for the two larger threats before hunting down the fleeing ones and–
Sean cut off the sudden surge of violence from his instincts with a quick mental flex and a shake of his head. He had just started getting used to the unease of being around the living, and this wasn’t the first time his instincts had whispered advice to him as if they were enemies to be slaughtered. It was, however, the first time they had spoken up so forcefully. Saren eyed him warily, though the paladin’s face appeared to be more concerned now than frightful. Maybe there was some trust building there after all.
Keep it together, Sean. The slime warrior chided himself. Don’t go screwing up the big play before the show even starts.
Gel, it seemed, had also noticed his rising bloodlust through their bond. Though the slime appeared to have mistaken his targets. Gel hefted his clear battle axe up onto one shoulder as the pair stared back at the group, then pointed its blade dramatically behind them down the tunnel as he bellowed both in Sean’s mind and out loud.
“Chaaaarrrrrge!”
Sean turned with his friend’s command, grateful for the distraction, and charged down the tunnel towards the first entrance they had found. Behind him, war cries came from a number of hoarse throats as a stampede of rumbling feet followed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As Sean had expected, their spore-bait worked perfectly. Almost too perfectly, in fact. Ants charged at them by the dozen, coming two at a time down the tunnels. With the two furry humanoids at the center of their formation, and the ants unable to ‘see’ the defenders protecting them, wave after wave of workers charged straight into a bloodbath. Chitinous legs, antennae, and fungal growths flew everywhere.
After the first few battles, those in the formation’s frontline who had been covered in spores retreated back into the center on Daerkin’s command and fresh fighters took up their weapons. Their job was simply to cover the rear, and the corpses they left behind only aided the group in their escape.
A fact which irritated Gel to no end, given that it was their job to clear the path ahead. Needless to say, the slime had not been happy about having to leave fresh food uneaten. He understood the necessity, and Sean did his best to chomp down a quick bite here and there as they went, but that still hadn’t stopped Gel from keeping a running count of the corpses they were leaving behind.
“Sixteen… seventeen! These had better all still be here when we get back!” Gel half-shouted as they sliced their way through another worker. “Or we’re going to free this desert of two pests one after the other!”
“Which way to the hole we came down?” Sean demanded as the tunnel before them branched off in two directions.
His instincts were nudging him towards the left, but they had been turned around in battle more than once so Sean wasn’t entirely sure. They had also been forced to take a different route back in order to avoid a cave-in trap in the sensors’ memories that they had already passed once. In Gel’s assessment, odds were high that with the hive on alert they wouldn’t make it through the trap twice. Sean hadn’t questioned it.
Hell, I didn’t even know ants made traps.
“Left!” Gel shouted, carving a quick section of worker meat out and sliding it into Sean’s ribcage even as the slime pointed with the haft of his axe. “Then another left and the one we want is two down on the right!”
“Got it!” Sean confirmed as he charged down the indicated pathway. “How are they holding up?”
“Lost one of the older humans.” Gel reported, and Sean felt the slime peer behind them as Gel did another quick count. “Oooh, make that two, actually. Now I get why they call that one a ‘shooter’ variant. The rest are keeping up, though.”
“What’s a ‘shooter’ variant?” Sean asked, as a soldier ant barrelled down towards them.
“Like the regular acidspitters, only all they do is spit acid. A lot of it.” Gel squinted down the tunnel behind them. “A whole lot, wow. We should probably–”
“Soldier at 12 o’clock!” Sean called to his friend, hoping to pull Gel’s attention back to the harder opponent they were about to face. This one appeared to be moving much faster than its earlier counterpart had, which gave Sean a sinking feeling in his non-existent stomach.
At least it’s not carting any mushroom-bombs on its head. Wait, are its mandible-things bigger than the last one’s, too? Just how big do these things get?
“12 o’clock?” Gel sounded confused. “Is it lunchtime now? I thought we weren’t eating–”
“I meant in front of us!” Sean corrected hastily, just barely managing to wedge his chitin-covered bone shield in between the soldier’s massive mandibles as it lunged forward at incredible speed to bite him in half.
At first, Sean was relieved that he had stopped the attack. But then bright green mana suffused the edges of its mandibles and they began to close with crushing force. To the slime warrior’s dismay, the shield – and his shoulder plates, also caught up in the attack due to the creature’s sheer size – began to crack. Two combat prompts appeared, and Sean felt his mind already begin to slip away from him as he read the last one.
You have been crushed by the bite of an Acidspitter Soldier Ant (Enslaved) for 0 damage (0 total, 10 base minus 10 due to toughness and armor).
You have been crushed by an unknown ability of an Acidspitter Soldier Ant (Enslaved) for 3 damage (3 total, 20 base minus 17 due to toughness and armor).
Crap… not now… Sean scrambled mentally, but to no avail. A roiling red haze swept through his vision, highlighting his enemy as the only possible thing worth concentrating on. Rational thoughts of survival and Sean’s desire to protect those behind him were kicked violently to the side as an incoherent rage overtook him.
He had been attacked. Something had hurt him. It could not be allowed to do so again.
It would die here, and it would die now.
Slipping down into a crouch, Sean escaped the creature’s crushing bite before it could damage him further. His arm was stuck, alongside his shield, but that was alright. With a cold, unfeeling savagery he had not been capable of only seconds before, the slime warrior began ravaging his opponent. He used his teeth, feet, knees, and even his own skull to bash apart the creature’s vulnerable face. A face the soldier ant had unwittingly exposed to him during its attack.
The liquid side of his nature flashed out its weaponry alongside him, and in mere moments the soldier ant fell to the ground, releasing Sean’s arm. When his only working upper limb was finally free, Sean stood.
Then the slime warrior began to systematically dismantle his foe piece by cracking piece.
He was interrupted when another foe approached, this time smaller than the last, and Sean leapt for it with his whole body. He tore it to shreds in seconds, doing the same to three more that charged mindlessly forward one after the other. Their acid sprayed at him, but his armor was their own – such attacks could not deter him.
Only when he was left alone, standing in a pile of defeated enemies as he dripped with ichor, acid, and the bloody viscera of his kills, did Sean finally start to come back to himself. The haze of rage retreated, and Sean’s senses slowly opened back up to the world around him once more.
“You know, I’m not saying I like it when you do that – you stop listening and it’s a little concerning – but I don’t not like it when you kill everything almost entirely by yourself.” Gel pointed out.
“I can’t help it.” Sean said, wiping himself off with his shield before the acid could stick for too long. “Every time I take damage, I just–”
Sean trailed off, though Gel continued talking as if what he had said made sense.
“I get it. I hate being hurt, too. But not to worry, we’re almost there! Then we can get to the really crazy part of the plan that definitely won’t have any chances for you to rage out.”
Sean barked out a humorless and soundless laugh, before resuming his pace forward. The slime warrior did not notice the blanched faces watching him. Nor was he aware that the owlen paladin had raised his weapon in Sean’s direction when the slime warrior had lost himself – only to lower it now before trudging dutifully along, lost in troubled thoughts.