image [https://i.imgur.com/9JnFmXw.jpg]

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The last things he remembered from that night were grabbing onto the damned mage’s leg as the sorcerous flood swept them all away, but his tendrils came apart in the water. Then he’d tried to use the last of his mass to cling to the sword and staff and keep himself from being washed down into the drains, but it proved futile and he was entirely dissolved.

In the drainage system his consciousness split apart into a million tiny fragments, each no more than the barest mindless impulses, stripped down to a single goal; reassemble, no matter how long it took.

He’d felt almost nothing for a long time, just dark, and wet, and the wordless wrongness of being spread out across miles of pipes. But even those were vague sensations, and he’d lacked the mental faculty to identify them in the moment.

The diluted essence of him flowed and seeped through the reservoir, into the overflow and the natural aquifer beyond, where he joined the slow ebb of downhill saturation that left the vicinity of Vishrac-Uramis and descended towards the ocean in the silent depths of the soil.

Every inch of pulling himself together through damp mud and rock was a struggle. It would have been so easy to allow himself to fade, becoming a thoughtless selfless part of the water table.

But for some reason, even in his subconscious state, acting on nothing but instinct, he would not stop.

His diffuse essence gathered into a thousand tiny nodes beneath the earth.

At last, a tiny sliver of himself, just cohesive enough to dig and squirm, broke ground like a little wriggling worm, a bead of slime no larger than a drop of dew. It slithered up into the dry hollow of a tree trunk, and started consuming bugs and grubs to regain its strength.

More pieces followed over the coming days, slowly, so slowly it was torture.

It took weeks.

Fucking. Weeks.

Weeks before there was even enough of him in one place to regain his memory, and sense of self.

Weeks before he knew that he was Slimy Lez, and that he had been wronged.

None of his family made it, that was the first conclusion he drew. He’d always been the smartest, and by miles the best at shaping and reforming himself.

If it took him weeks, how long would it take them? Months? Years?

Too long, across that time frame any progress they made would be meaningless. They would be swept out to sea, and spread so far and wide that they would never be able to reform.

They were dead, or as close to dead as things like them could get.

In the hollow of that tree, barely sheltered from the summer storms that crashed and raged over the Southern Jungle Strip almost every day, Lez combed through everything he knew about the people who’d killed his family.

There was no question that the fighter was Fig Sable, the famous mercenary. He’d never actually met her before, but he knew her by reputation and the woman he’d fought fit the description perfectly.

He could still remember the taste of her skin, flaking and bubbling off underneath his acid. He never forgot a person’s taste. Everyone was unique, and he hated to leave a meal half eaten.

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As for that nightmare mage, or lich, or whatever manner of withered creature he was, Lez only had a name, shouted by Fig in the heat of battle.

Rick, she'd called him.

Rick was the one who’d summoned up the flood.

For that, Lez was going to find him and eat him alive.

This was the first time since Lez first gained sentience in the darkness of Vishrac-Uramis, all those hundreds of years ago, that he had ever been fully dissolved. He’d lost parts of himself before to rain and accidents, but never his whole being.

It was the one thing he’d feared. But here he was, still alive after the flood, the only one of his brethren strong enough to pull himself back together.

If that flood couldn’t kill him, he was basically immortal as far as he could tell.

That was good. It meant that no matter how far Rick and Fig ran, Lez would eventually be able to follow them, and no matter what they did to try and stop him, he would survive it.

No door could keep him out, he could squeeze past it.

No wall would stop him, he could eat through it.

No blade or spell could kill him, he’d just pull himself back together and keep coming.

He had contacts. He had expertise. He knew how to gather information and track people.

The particular set of skills he’d honed over years as the Heartland’s most infamous burglar, would now turn to the sole task of finding and killing the two adventurers who’d taken his family from him.

They were working for Mirabelle the Black. That was where he’d start his hunt, Saltcrust.

Lez seethed in the tree trunk, consumed by cold rage and his desire for revenge.

At last, enough of him emerged from the ground that he grew to the size of a melon, then a small child.

He made his way back down into the temple, to find it wrecked, with the bodies of several huge Ragon’ta lying slashed apart and discarded through the corridors.

He greedily ate them, packing on more mass until he was finally back to a healthy size and feeling strong enough to face the long journey that surely awaited him.

He checked the rest of the temple.

As he’d feared, there was no sign of any other slime, not even a little forgotten puddle cowering in some dark corner.

They were all gone. The original slimes the old priests used for food disposal, back before The Forgotten War, must have come from somewhere, but in his travels he’d never found any other life form quite like himself and his family. He was alone. The last of his kind, as far as he knew.

The stash he’d spent so long collecting, had been pilfered. His cloak and hat were gone, along with his packs. Any rage he felt at the theft was a drop in the ocean that had already filled his heart.

An odd magic circle was drawn on what remained of the Archives’ floor. Lez couldn’t make sense of it, but it didn’t seem to be having any lingering effect.

There was a lot of dried blood on the ground as well, Fig’s blood; he knew her taste. Enough of it was splattered across the stones that she might be dead already, but there was no body, and he hoped she was alive. He wanted to eventually feel her flailing and drowning inside his orb.

But first he needed to get to Saltcrust.

Lez set about the task of weaving together a makeshift waterproof cloak from layers and layers of overlapping oil treated fabric, drawn from the temple’s long forgotten stores.

He needed something to keep the rain off him until he could make it to the edge of the jungle and the dry heat of the desert beyond.

From there, he’d trek to Demerris, and find a smuggler who could ferry him onward to Saltcrust.

After that, who knew. Rick and Fig had a few weeks lead on him, at least, and that would only grow until he picked up their trail.

But he was coming for them.

He’d never been more sure of anything in his life.

He’d hunt them down.

He’d find them

And he would kill them.

[End of Bonus Chapter 19.5]