Lilyth

I was very surprised to wake up still in the tunnels with the tear-and-blood-stained faces of Aki, Caei and Ren in front of my eyes. The moment she saw me open my eyes, the first embraced me tightly and began to weep even harder.

It took me a moment to regain enough control over my limbs to hug her back and began to cry from fear and relief too.

‘H-h-how is everyone?’ I asked after a while.

‘Alive… thanks to you,’ Caei admitted. ‘Ren got shot in the side, but I managed to heal her. I got grazed in the arm; Aki… barely avoided a bullet to her head and suffered some burns from her magic.’

I winced hearing that.

‘Did you take out a bullet from Ren’s wound?’ I followed-up.

‘Went clean through. Could have been worse.’

‘Sorry… if I…’ I began but Ren cut me off.

‘Stop! We would be dead if we didn't listen to you, Lilyth. You not managing to completely mitigate the threat is not a mark against you, you stupid jelly.’

‘Yes,’ Caei agreed. ‘We had to deal with just two of them instead of all seven, so that's a win.’

‘Exactly!’ Aki cried.

We sat there for a moment as I mulled it over.

‘Glad everyone is alive,’ I said, finally.

‘And how are you feeling?’ Caei asked, pointedly.

I took a brief stock of myself.

‘Mostly fine,’ I answered. ‘A bit weak.’

‘I am no expert on slimeling health,’ Caei laughed weakly,’ but given the size of the hole you had in your stomach most would be in a far worse state, so I will take “mostly fine” as a good outcome.’

‘What are those guns?’ Ren asked as we were going through the battlefield. I have never seen… stuff that can fire this quickly. The interface just says “Unknown Firearm”.

‘I have no idea what those are,’ I freely admitted. ‘They fire in three-round bursts though. Basically, one pull of the trigger shoots out three bullets.’

Ren’s eyes widened at that.

‘That’s…’

‘... pretty standard tech where I am from.’ I finished for her. ‘I wouldn't be surprised if such guns were being designed around the fall of the Vandarian Empire given how they had light machine guns.’

I told her about the one we found in the hospital.

‘That’s fucking terrifying.’ she summed it up.

‘Yup. Which is why I wanted you away. If those guns were set to full auto we’d be dead.

‘Full auto means they would be able to fire every single bullet they had?’ Caei confirmed

‘Indeed.’

The three most important women in my life shuddered.

‘You know, Lilyth…’ Aki began. ‘I had serious doubts about letting you investigate these guys alone… As far as guns go, anytime you, Sav, or, I guess, Anika say something I will follow it no questions asked.’

‘Same,’ Ren and Caei confirmed.

‘Why didn't they react to you until you touched that one guy, though?’ the latter asked.

‘Your guess is as good as mine, darling. Maybe shoddy programming?’

I told them about the pre-set attack patterns that the skeleton I fought right after arriving in the Tower of Trials had.

‘Yeah… they acted pretty competent after you woke them up,’ my Dark Sorceress confirmed. ‘So… what… someone didn't want them to activate unless disturbed? That seems… weird.’

‘Probably I managed to get past other triggers somehow,’ I speculate. ‘Maybe whoever programmed them didn't know slimelings were a thing.’

‘Why would this matter?’ Aki asked.

‘You recently got a good look inside of me,’ I answered. ‘Tell me, did you see anything there?’

‘Just goo…’ Caei answered in lieu of her, and then it appeared to have clicked because she quickly added:

‘You think it is because you are, for lack of a better term, magic?’

‘Well… the thing I felt… it was interested in flesh…’ Aki whispered.

‘Exactly,’ I confirmed. ‘It was part of the imprint I felt too. So… it is possible they didn't activate because I didn't register as “food”. This is just speculation on my end though. The pieces fit, but…’

‘... We’ll probably never know,’ Ren finished.

We found several interesting things on the soldiers’ bodies. The first were grenades. They were kinda boxy with indentations for easier gripping, but still had the familiar-looking spoon and pin. I would have preferred to discover them in some other way than seeing Aki mess with one. When my mind finished processing what I had just seen and let out a weak “meep”, I yelled at her to stop.

‘Why?’ she asked with a slightly hurt look, probably because I didn't bother with niceties.

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‘Those are thrown explosives and you were making good progress arming them.’

To say she went white as a sheet of paper would be an understatement. Her hands began to tremble, so I simply took the grenade from her and placed it under the wall in the direction we came from.

I nodded then to Caei to take Aki aside and we finished searching with Ren. Fortunately, only two of the soldiers had grenades on them, so the two extras we found ended up next to the one Aki was playing with. What my friends weren’t aware of, however, was that there were actually a total of four grenades we found. I just hid one of them in my satchel when no one was looking as a just-in-case thing. The next time we came upon something suspicious, I would be sending Ambassador Pineapple to meet them. Assuming I didn’t blow myself while doing that. I also was wary about using what was likely high explosives in a tunnel, but I was hoping that it being a magic tunnel meant it wouldn’t cave in on our heads. “Rocks fall, everybody dies” would be a shit ending to a promising relationship.

Ren looked pretty white by the time we were done searching the corpses but kept her composure. I couldn't get any paler than I already was, so I am just going to claim I was cool as ice the entire time. And, hey, no one can prove I wasn't.

The other thing of note was the three handheld radios that didn't get damaged in the fighting. It took me twenty minutes of fiddling but I managed to figure out how to turn them on, set them to the same channel and send messages.

‘Wow… this is so cool!’ I heard Aki’s voice from the speaker on mine.

‘Yeah,’ I confirmed. ‘Those are going to be very useful. We just need to figure out how to keep them charged home. Over.’

‘What’s over?’ Caei asked from the third handheld.

I explained to them the use of “over” and “out” in radio communication.

‘Ohh… that makes sense,’ Aki replied and then quickly added: ‘Over.’

‘You’ll get a hang of it, sweetheart. Now let’s stop wasting battery power and regroup. Over and out.’

It was difficult to choose which of us should get the radios, but, finally, Ren said she would go without one.

‘I probably won’t surprise on my own, so I will need to stick with one of you no matter what.’

‘You don’t have to pull a Lilyth and sacrifice yourself, Rennie,’ Aki protested.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I just… I don’t know… don’t feel good about my chances on my own.’

‘You are with me then,’ Aki said. ‘Should we need to separate, I’ll stick with you too!

‘I’m with Caei then,’ I replied and we set off.

‘Did Aki just annex Ren?’ I whispered to Caei, as we walked.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back. ‘I don't think so, but I will need to check later if my girlfriend just became our girlfriend.’

‘Yeah. Let's focus on getting out of here alive, my love.’

Caeileera

Though I was slightly weirded out by Aki stealing Ren, the idea of pairing up with Lilyth made me more than a little excited.

Ah. Just the two of us together, slaying monsters, having wild sex afterwards. That would be the life.

Then I remembered the massive hole in her stomach.

This is a stomach that should be kissed and caressed and not damaged. So… maybe not slaying monsters. Just a lot of wild sex.

I promised myself that once we were out I would give Lilyth’s belly the love and care it deserved. I needed something to look forward to. The fight against the soldiers was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. Not because I could die, but because the three of the closest people to me almost did. I knew Ereshkigal would let us visit them whenever, but it would not be the same. No. I wanted Rennie, Aki and my jelly warm and next to me. The sight of them getting shot… And I wanted to cry whenever I thought about the graze my blue-haired cutie had on her cheek. A few centimetres to the right… and no more Aki.

I am not cut out for this.

I glanced at Lilyth and saw that there was less certainty in her step. To be fair, I wasn't feeling that hot about our chances either. We were down to one healing potion and my, now meagre, mana reserves. Another fight like this… and it’s possible some of us wouldn't be coming back home. For that reason, I was now carrying one of the guns we found. We used one of them to teach me how to shoot, and Lilyth managed to extract spare magazines from the others. The fact I had to rely on a strange gun I barely knew how to use terrified me, but it was either that, Ren's sword or bare-knuckle fighting.

I really need to start carrying a real weapon everywhere.

I left the metal glaive back on Mer-Cas because we assumed we wouldn't need it and it was pretty cumbersome to travel with. That meant I was in for some sword-fighting lessons with Master Sergeant Savri Adzhenair.

I floated the option of me keeping the gun, but then Lilyth showed me one of the bullets. It was a brown rectangular cuboid made out of some papery substance. On one side there was a hole rimmed with some translucent material called “plasteek”. I could see the bullet-proper hidden inside of it.

‘Do you think we will find someone capable of manufacturing… whatever bullshit this is?’

I suggested that maybe if we showed those to Savri or Anika they would have an idea what those are and maybe how to make them, to which Lilyth retorted with:

‘And how about the replacement parts for the gun? It seems to be at least partially reliant on electronics and sure as shit no one here will be able to make those for centuries.’

That pretty much ended that discussion and the gun would up a mantlepiece once we couldn’t use it anymore. I did point out that those communication thingies would have the same problem, which Lilyth begrudgingly agreed with, but I, in turn, couldn't dispute her argument that if we were to dedicate significant resources to try to keep some high-tech thingamabob usable, the reideeous were a better choice.

‘It’s possible we might be even able to manufacture local replacements,’ she finished. ‘I do recall seeing radio stations in Akh'ret's Mercy, so the technology was once present. The question is - what happened to it.’

This has more and more promise.

‘Though, if possible, I’d rather keep those working,’ my smart jelly continued. ‘Since those were issued to soldiers, chances are they feature some kind of encryption. Basically - the message gets scrambled and cannot be deciphered without knowing the sequence. So if anyone ever intercepts the messages they will not be able to understand them.’

‘You know…’ I finally said in awe. ‘Nothing shows the massive gap between our worlds as the fact you describe frankly miraculous-sounding inventions like it was “nothing special”.

I took out my communicator.

‘From my perspective, this is a magic box that lets me communicate with you over distance by pressing a button. Now you tell me about capacities it has that I didn’t even consider as an option. The power this gives us… By the gods, I will do everything in my power to help you keep those working. ’

‘Thanks, my love,’ Lilyth said, took my hand in hers and squeezed it.

I gave her a peck on her cheek.

‘Wanna hear something cool?’ she asked and told me about numbers stations.

They were those massive reideeou towers that were used to transmit seemingly random sequences of letters and numbers, some of which were long-running mysteries on Terra. There were dozens of theories about them from defence systems to sending out assassination orders.

‘I wonder if there are any on Dwynveia,’ I mused.

‘Wait… what?’ Lilyth asked.

‘You did say that the technology is there and that anyone can listen in on messages sent using it,’ I explained. ‘So… if some group has access to reideeou, they may just have one of those number stations to transmit coded messages without anyone knowing.’

‘You know…’ Lilyth sighed. ‘I wish you didn't say that. I have enough causes for nightmares as it is.’

The full implications of what I just suggested hit me then.

‘Yeah… it’s a thought I wish never crossed my mind.’