Having your sanity slowly pieced back together bit by bit by someone else was a strange feeling. Sean felt a detached sense of calm throughout the procedure. The unrecognizable, alien runes that had swirled about him earlier snapped back into place and no longer caused him any pain. A minute later, the entire world suddenly slid back into its proper place.

Sean’s vision returned, though his status sheet was now gone. Whether because of whatever had been done to him, his undead nature, or the fact that Sean was truly starting to become accustomed to handling the unexpected, the gelaton did not panic.

Mostly, he was just relieved the pain had stopped. He stood up, experimentally trying to blink out of reflex. A way to regain some sense of control. It didn’t work, of course.

Oh, right. No eyelids.

Sean shook his head and rolled his shoulders instead. The action was relaxing, and he could feel the turmoil inside Gel begin to die down as well through their bond. At least, for a second. The slime whirled about in his rib cage as if searching for an enemy. Crimson veins rippled across his arms and legs, and a gleaming red battleaxe rapidly manifested itself in Sean’s right hand.

“What in starvation was that!?” Gel demanded.

“No idea.” Sean admitted, feeling more than a little anger bleed through the emotional dampening effect of his nature. “I was just looking at my status page and I saw yours, tried to open it, and then everything went pear-shaped. What the hell was that? Those runes–”

Sean paused. The last ‘prompt’, those flowing, handwritten words floating in mid-air, were still there. They didn’t look like any prompt he had ever seen since coming here. The message wasn’t impartial, it was personal. What’s more, they had no border. No real, describable color. Just semi-solid outlines that seemed to hover in the direct center of his focus - no matter where that happened to be.

Just as Sean was trying to figure out how to properly respond to whoever this being was – did he have to think at them, like he did Gel? – the words changed.

Hmmm. Not really sure what happened there, but you should both be good now. All your marbles back in the proper bowls, so… give it a go! What you were doing before, I mean. Better than even odds your mind doesn’t implode. Again.

For the second time in as many minutes, Sean tried to blink. His mind felt… both ‘fixed’ and somehow off-kilter. Like he had jumped off a speeding train only to land on solid ground without any of his former momentum. The experience was both jarring and off-putting. He shook his head, trying to clear it as well as cancel the ‘prompt’ like he had done with so many others.

It didn’t go away.

“Sean?” Gel said softly, in a tone that was every bit as forced calm as it was afraid. “Do what the words say, please.”

For some reason, Gel’s reaction unnerved him. The slime sounded nearly petrified, but was still trying to communicate. When Sean didn’t react immediately, Gel spoke up again. Firmer this time.

“Now, bone man. Right now.”

A feeling of urgency passed through their bond, pulling Sean’s thoughts out of the disjointed rollercoaster and allowing him to focus. He pulled up his character sheet again. Then he searched through it. Nothing had changed that he could tell, except that there were now only four tabs at the top.

Weren’t there more a few seconds ago?

The first two were clearly written in the standard bold English Sean was used to seeing, simply reading “Sean” and “Gel”. But the last two appeared to be more runes. The very same kind of runes that had just branded his non-existent brain into the side of his skull. Sean physically and mentally winced when he saw them. He braced, readying his mind for another round of searing pain–

– but none came.

Well, that’s handy. Where was this guy five minutes ago? Sean mentally snorted, before deciding to commit these new runes to memory. Since he couldn’t understand them, Sean just mentally assigned them as pictograms.

Sean // Gel // Superman-Dagger-Fishhook // Leany Face-Table-Pickaxe-Spinning Top

Moving on to what he imagined was ‘trial 2’, Sean opened the next tab - Gel’s page. The slime’s status popped up for him immediately, perfectly legible. The gelaton’s jaw opened, exhaling a sigh of relief that carried no actual air behind it.

Alright, now on to the real test. Sean thought, skipping past his friend’s status page to the Superman-Dagger-Fishhook page. What in the…

Just as before, a new page opened up - one that mirrored the exact layout of the last two status pages… only Sean couldn’t read a word of it. It was written in all of those strange runes that didn’t make any sense. Or at least, not immediately. Sean knew what was going on here.

This has to be a translated page. This one is probably mine, and the other one… Sean tabbed over to the fourth status page. Yup. Looks just like Gel’s. I can’t read any of the words, but if you compare the amount of text, it looks… about right. Is that what went wrong here? Some kind of syntax translation error? Like through Javalscript into Pearl or…?

Sean glanced over each of their status pages, comparing both of them to what he suspected was what Gel actually saw on his own prompts. Excitement shot through him.

I could use this to learn. Sean realized. With Gel’s help, and this as a baseline, I might actually be able to pick up whatever this language is! Or at least get a good headstart on it!

Having just spent a considerable amount of time in conversations where he couldn’t participate or understand a single word of what was being said without help, the idea was incredibly appealing. Sean didn’t have any real background in linguistics, but he sure had a powerful source of motivation now! He didn’t need to be fluent right away, ingredient lists in cookbooks didn’t exactly require native-level skills, but any degree of skill would help.

As Sean was contemplating just how great of an opportunity this was, and what doors it might open for them, the words superimposed over the center of his vision changed once more.

Perfect. That should do it, then. Have to hand it to you, I really did not see this one coming. None us did, actually. Novel errors aren’t exactly common these days, so good job there. I’ve unfused your… whatever that was. Everything should be back in its proper place.

Before Sean or Gel could comment on that, figure out who was writing to them, or just ask out loud what the flowing script meant by ‘novel errors’, the text changed again.

Good luck, and try not to die. You’re mildly interesting.

The flowing script faded quickly from sight, and Sean stared after its disappearance. Sand fell in a small river not far away, adding an ambience to the moment that felt oddly fitting.

“O-kayyy… I have… so many questions right now.” Sean said slowly. “So many I don’t actually know which to ask first.”

“Really?” Gel asked, gesturing towards the next tunnel as if trying to get him moving. “I thought that was rather straightforward, myself.”

“Straightforward?” Sean echoed, incredulously. He started moving, keeping an orb out for any potentially lingering enemies, but that didn’t keep the bewilderment from his voice as he continued. “How was anything about that–”

Gel quickly spoke over him, the same fear from before leaking into the slime’s tone.

“--Perfectly straightforward and normal. Yes, indeed. We’re both still alive, you managed not to offend whoever that was, and–”

“Yeah, about that.” Sean said, interrupting the slime’s own derailment mid-sentence. “Who in the star-soaked sin was that? I’m getting used to the whole mental-communication thing, but I’m not a fan of people just writing all over my vision like this is some random livestream. How did they even do that?”

“Couldn’t tell you exactly who it was.” Gel said, ignoring Sean’s second question entirely. “But I can tell you that whoever it was, we don’t want any part of them. Not even a nibble.”

“Why?” Sean demanded, his irritation at being constantly messed with boiling over. “Because they messed with our minds? Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the help – it felt like my mind was caving in on itself while imploding – but just running off afterwards? ‘Try not to die, you’re mildly interesting?’ Who walks off like that?”

Gel sighed, both literally and mentally. As they headed down the next tunnel to clear it, the slime’s voice took on an explanatory tone not indistinct from when Gel was quoting memories from someone he had eaten before.

“Your status isn’t a simple thing, Sean. It shows both the soft, supple core of who you are and the crunchy and/or chewy exterior. It’s a record of you, yes, but it’s also one made for you – if that makes sense. It’s not an external thing. It’s not like some written document you can write over with more ink or burn to start over if you don’t like what’s on there. It’s intrinsic to you. You, and you alone.”

Sean nodded along to show he was listening as they worked, though he had to brace for a second against the wall as the ground beneath them rumbled. Another tunnel collapsing, maybe?

“So you see,” Gel continued. “Your status can’t be changed unless you, yourself change. Unless the facts about you change, nothing about your status will change no matter how much ink or fire or whatever you try to change it with. Attempting it is pointless. You can’t just grab your status page, no one can. It can’t be physically interacted with.”

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

“How about magically interacted with?” Sean guessed, taking what felt like a comfortable shot in the dark here. He didn’t mention that he had once tried to grab the prompts in his vision. More than once, if he was being honest.

It had never worked.

“Exactly.” Gel agreed. “But that’s the thing. I don’t have a single memory of anyone who considered something like ‘status magic’ to be a possible feat. Not by any mage they knew of, anyway. And not even by some of the legendary ones they had heard about. It’s just not done. Even the attempt would be blasphemy. There are some groups out there who would kill you just for entertaining the thought.”

“Alright…” Sean muttered, grateful for the extra grasp on the situation he was starting to get. There was still so much about this world he had to learn. “So, that’s what had you so worried, then. That whoever-that-was was some uber-powerful mage who might get irritated and obliterate us if I hadn’t played along?”

“No…” Gel responded in slow frustration, though to Sean it almost sounded like the slime was upset with himself. “I was worried because whoever-that-was didn’t just mess with our status pages. They somehow knew we were having a problem, took it upon themselves to fix it, did so, and then just up and left after dropping some half-amused message in our minds without even asking us for anything in return!”

Silence reigned for a moment after that comment, and Sean spent the time going over the situation in his head a few different ways. Allowing the cool, logical part of his undead nature to seep in and steer his thoughts. To his surprise, the trick worked so well that he almost lost himself in it. Some of that feeling must have seeped through their bond, because they had managed to clear nearly half of the tunnel they were in before Gel continued.

“Sean, I– I don’t know who or even what could do that. Much less why they even would. It doesn’t make sense, they don’t make sense, and now–” The slime’s entire body shivered, even the crimson whip currently consuming a corpse. “-- now whoever-that-was not only knows we’re here, but either is or has been watching us.”

Sean nodded, having come to that particular conclusion himself. Then the gelation simply rolled his shoulders in his best approximation of a shrug.

“Well, the way I see it, sounds like we’ve got two options.”

“Oh?”

Sean spread his hands wide and motioned them up and down, as if weighing different pieces of meat. He made his tone light as he spoke, just to reassure his friend that he wasn’t being entirely serious here.

“Either we try to track down this uber-powerful-whoever to get some answers at some point after we off Bancroft, and give them a stern talking to on the importance of respecting personal privacy when fixing “novel errors” inside other peoples’ heads...”

“I’m not a fan of option one so far.”

“Or we do what you were doing earlier, decide not to look this particular gift horse in the mouth and simply move on with our lives. Grateful in the knowledge that whoever that was… they at least appear to be on our side.”

As indignant as he had initially been, Sean had to admit he was grateful for the step-in fix by their mysterious good samaritan. He could let the idea that there was now someone else out there able to mess with his head slide on that note… for now, anyway.

Gel’s body vibrated eagerly along Sean’s bones in a way that he felt had to be the slime-equivalent of rapidly nodding one’s head. “I’m all-in on option two! Just have one small question for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Can we eat this gift horse instead? Because it sounds delicious.”

The slime’s tone was full of such suddenly bright optimism that Sean couldn’t help but laugh in response. The remaining tension caused by their little ordeal began to bleed out, and it felt surprisingly good. Sean also ended up spending two whole tunnels explaining to an increasingly disappointed Gel that a ‘gift horse’ was just a metaphor he had used and not an actual gift-bearing horse the slime could consume.

Never one to be deterred, the endlessly omnivorous slime merely swore to eventually find one and eat both it and its presents whole. Hooves and all.

Sean’s clattering laughter filled their tunnel for some time after that.

—------------------------

“Tell her she is more than welcome.” Sean told Gel as they faced down the massive ant matriarch at the top of the sands. “And that this is… incredibly generous.”

Before them lay the accumulated treasure and gear the colony had taken from those the shroom had enslaved. Apparently the ‘supplies’ room Sean and Gel had found in the tunnels before had not been the only one of its kind. Though only two other such rooms had survived both the blast and the ensuing collapse, the unsorted pile of what could only be called ‘stuff’ before them still stood at least as tall as Sean.

Armor, weapons, knick-knacks, crates, and several barrels of what had to have been just random caravan supplies had been stacked haphazardly atop one another by the queen’s brood. Truth be told, Sean wanted to dive in and search through all of it. The gamer in him was entirely onboard with the idea of doing some loot sorting after all the fighting they had done recently.

Unfortunately, they were currently standing in the middle of a monster-filled desert. Once the queen left, the odds of being interrupted while searching through all of that was rather high. Not to mention the fact that they were already carting around a huge pack of gear themselves.

The gelaton’s next words caused him almost physical pain to say. He waved helplessly at the pile of clearly valuable goods.

“... I am not sure we can take all of this with us.”

“Are you sure you can’t just… carry all of it?” Gel asked, hopefully. “Maybe if there’s some rope we could–”

“If I could drag all of that around with one hand.” Sean interrupted. “We wouldn’t have had so much trouble with the inmortu. Now, if she had something with wheels then maybe I could rig something up. She doesn’t happen to have a wagon stashed down there somewhere, does she?”

“No, she doesn’t.” Gel admitted dejectedly. “I already asked. They kept the wagons and caravan-type deals near the surface. So when the bomb went off...”

“No more wheels.” Sean finished.

“No more wheels.”

“Pity we can’t contact Saren and have him turn his wagon around.” Sean said, gesturing at the pile again. “I’m sure he’d love to trade for all of this.”

The ant queen screeched inside their minds, and Sean did his best not to wince at how grating the insectoid nature of the sound was. The second I find a node that has an ‘off button’ for people trying to talk into my mind– I’m taking it.

“She wants to know if we’re unhappy with it.” Gel translated. “I told her you said ‘thank you’, but you keep pointing at it and she wants to know why.”

“She have a way for us to carry all of it?” Sean asked, only half-joking. “Can we borrow some of her kids for a bit? Or maybe hold it here and they can help us move it to a cave later, once we’ve found somewhere to hole up?”

To his surprise, the queen answered swiftly. Her massive head nodded once, another short screech sounded in his mind, and then she turned to look behind her towards her back where hundreds of growing ants still watched them in eerie silence. A dozen or so began crawling down her telephone pole-sized legs. Gel spoke up a second later, sounding pleased.

“Oh, how kind! She’s going to send a few with us to carry it. They’re not much in a fight, and they’ll head back home once we’ve found somewhere to ‘hole up’, but that solves that problem, doesn’t it!” The slime barked a victorious laugh. “Ha-hah! I knew these ants were the kind we could get along with. Aren’t you glad we freed them? Whoever made that suggestion must have been a slime of unparalleled genius.”

Sean chuckled, but didn’t deny it. He watched the ants begin to quite literally load themselves up, and walked over to help. In part because he wasn’t the sort to just stand around while others did all the work, but mostly because he didn’t want them to accidentally damage anything. He soon found he needn’t have bothered. Despite their poor stacking skills, the ants seemed particularly adept at carrying things. Which the gelaton supposed made sense.

“And they’re just going to… follow us around?” Sean asked once the now several dozen large cat-sized ants had finished distributing their new loot pile amongst themselves. “Can you tell them what to do?”

“Ehh… No. Not really.” Gel admitted. “She gave them the order and they’ll only follow her. I don’t think they’re intelligent enough for me to talk to them, and I wouldn’t know how anyway. The queen is the one who makes a mental link with us, after all. I don’t have any idea how to do that to them.”

“Fair enough. Are we ready to go then?”

“Yep! Just need to agree to one more little favor for her and then we’re good to go.”

“One more favor?” Sean echoed, but he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a prompt. This one had a border composed of hundreds of ants marching along in a steady line, and was accompanied by a shrill screech that was indistinguishable from the ant matriarch’s own.

Congratulations, you have earned the title: “Colony Compatriot”! Acidspitter ants are notoriously territorial and aggressive, but when it comes to aiding those of their own brood there are few extremes they will not go to. By proving yourself a stalwart ally of their queen this colony now considers you one of their own! You will now be protected.

This title grants you the ability to secrete a pheromone particular to this brood that will allow you to traverse this brood’s lands and even enter the colony’s own tunnels without fear of being attacked.

Note: Other ant broods may view you differently because of this scent, and not all of their reactions are likely to be favorable.

The ability to ‘secrete a pheromone’? How? Sean waited for some part of his bones to give off a puff of purple smoke or something, but thankfully nothing of the sort happened. Still… ‘Not all of their reactions are likely to be favorable’. No shit. Anyone who has watched any sort of ant documentary knows exactly how that’s likely going to end up.

Nice to have as the title was, Sean waved it away. He didn’t feel like getting into ‘Ant Wars’ right now.

“What did you mean by ‘one more favor’? Are you signing us up for more quests?” He meant it as a lighthearted joke, but Sean wasn’t exactly eager to spend any more time down in the tunnels. Nice as the ants now were to them, even skeletons could get bored after spending hours and hours on endless spore-extermination.

“Ooh, you’re actually going to like this one.” Gel enthused. “Apparently, before the slave-shroom showed up, the colony had stumbled onto a tunneling system that ran even deeper than they normally went. One that was just absolutely filled with death mana. The way down apparently collapsed a while back and we blew up the tunnels that led towards it, but she wanted to know if we would be open to exploring them for her if her colony ever finds the entrance again. That way if there are any more dangers down there, we get first crack at fixing them.”

Thinking back to just how right Sean had felt every time he was in any area with a high concentration of that mana – like the room back at Bancroft where the necromancer had kept his skeleton army – that was actually an appealing prospect. The mana had made Sean feel like he was back home again. If Gel was to be believed, it was also potentially possible for them to power up in such a location.

Sean was particularly impressed by Gel agreeing to this however, because the gelaton recalled his friend’s first reaction to ambient death mana. It hadn’t been a positive one.

And yet, he’s willing to just jump in now. Sean thought, glad to have such a stalwart companion at his side.

“I’m down.” Sean affirmed. “But first, and no offense to the queen here, let’s put this place behind us.”

The gelaton turned, facing the direction Saren had told them was where the desert city of Dervash lay. He started walking as the queen behind them rumbled her way back down into her open-pit nest. With a cheer in his long ago consumed heart, Sean raised both of his blessedly functioning arms as he led their ant-loot-procession forward and shouted their new purpose to his friend:

“We’ve got levels to gain!”