Chapter 5
Echoes in the Caves
~<(0)>~
The entity sat in a puddle of itself, blind and deaf to the world, though at the moment, it didn’t care. All it wanted to be able to hear was the voice inside its mind. It formed a sort of voice of its own and directed it towards this other voice. “You… you claim you are Lyrei Araphine, or what is left of her.”
“{That is partially right. When I was alive, or at least within my body, I had the ability to split my mental faculties into multiple parts. I think it was partially thaumic, partially my own millenia old mind finding new ways to optimize things. It’s always been weird to focus my mind four ways like that, handling different things at once… it was extremely mentally draining to do for extended periods of time, especially with all my minds active. I had them running when you… I suppose ate me would be the most appropriate way to describe that, and I suppose that somehow, I survived.}”
“How can you be so… nonchalant about all this? I think that’s the right word, I’m still sifting through all your knowledge.”
“{To tell you the truth, I was pretty terrified at the end there. I think everyone has an innate fear of death, though some circumstances can override that fear. But, I guess, I’m here now… I spent a long time, probably the days since you ate me and just a little while ago, in a dark void. I thought it was perhaps an afterlife of sorts, maybe a penance for how I acted during my life. I still don’t know that it isn’t, but that doesn’t change how I feel.}”
“Penance? What do you mean? You did so much for the world. You didn’t deserve to have… me happen to you. You ought to hate me for what I did, why don’t you?”
“{I had a lot of time to think about things while I was alone in the dark. And then I heard a voice… your voice. It was calling out, wanting help… I thought that maybe I was hearing a child I had never had, perhaps from another world. I wondered if I’d made the right choices in devoting myself to my research the way I had. I didn’t have friends, I’d never had lovers, or children, or anyone I cared about. I’m not even sure I can truly say I cared about myself. My love was solely for the science.}” the voice paused for a moment now, seeming to gather its thoughts, “{I can truly say now that I regret the choices I made. When I realized this child I heard was calling me mother, I wished I could be her mother, truly. And… it was no coincidence that you heard me when you did. I saw you spiraling down that dark path, and I had to take action, hope beyond hope that I could actually have my words reach you.}”
“Why though? I killed you; I’ve stolen the life you had, and I had the disgusting audacity to call you my mother. I’m just something that was never meant to exist.”
“{Why? Let me tell you why. Yes, you killed me, death is a natural part of life. Even elves die at some point or another. I am not young. I have been on this world for thousands of years, watching the younger races pass each century. I have had my time… the fact that I am talking to you even now is something more than I feel I should have been given. You hardly stole my life… it was hardly a life even worth stealing. Have you not been listening? You may not have known this at the time, but I don’t feel like you thinking of me as your mother is disgusting. Far from it, I would be honoured to be your mother… and that includes you taking my surname. Look… I know you’re still somewhat new to life, especially this level of comprehension about the meaning of life and all that… no one is really meant to exist. You make the best use of your life that you can and try to get to a point where you can be happy at the end of it all. I and a few others set off a chain reaction long ago that apparently led to your creation. And by some twist of fate, I got to sort of… bestow my knowledge and wisdom upon you, as a parent would.}”
The entity was shaking, once more wishing that it could cry, though not in any state to even make that happen. “I don’t understand! Why won’t you hate me? It… it would have been easier that way! I could have just… I could have just let them kill me. Y-you’re here and you just… you aren’t mad, you just…” its words devolved into great wracking sobs that echoed within itself.
“{Shhhhhh. I don’t think you want me to hate you, not really. I’m afraid I’m incapable of that anyways. That’s… something you will need to learn from living. Sometimes life is hard… and you just have to keep on living it. You can make it through this, I’m here for you, and want to help. I’m serious, I think you deserve to live just as much, if not more than I ever did, and I want to help mentor you. I don’t have to be your mother if you don’t want me to be… if you still feel like I shouldn’t be that… but please let me help you. You’ve been through so much in such a short amount of time. I may have given you my knowledge, but even all of my memories can’t replace experience gained by living.}”
There was no answer for some time as the entity cried inside its soul, letting all its bottled-up grief out. Lyrei wished she could comfort the entity as the mother she wanted so badly to be, but as it was, she simply murmured soft soothing words and waited patiently. After what felt like an eternity, the entity spoke up once more, “You truly want to be my mother, even after everything I did to you?”
Her answer was immediate without hesitation, “{Yes. I really want to be your mother.}”
“Please… please be my mother, Lyrei. I’ll… do whatever I can to make it up to you… to make everything up to you.”
“{Well, if you want to start, I’d love it if you took my last name again. And… If you’ll take it… I’d like to give you a name too.}”
The entity spoke up, “I-I’ll take your name once more, Lyrei.” It… she… Araphine said. “I’ll take whatever name you wish to bestow upon me, My Mother.”
“{I would like to give you the name Ophelia. It means benefit or aid. And you have truly given me so much that I never would have been able to have, were it not for you.}”
Araphine was quiet for several minutes, to the point that Lyrei thought she may have done something wrong. Then suddenly she came back with the mental equivalent of a hug, “Thank you! Ophelia… I love it. I am… Ophelia Araphine. And I am proud to be your daughter.”
“{I don’t think I could be any happier to hear that, Ophelia. I am so proud to be your mother. I’ll do my best to raise you into a fine young slime girl.}”
~<(0)>~
Several more days had passed. Ophelia, with the help of her mother, had avoided the expedition coming back up from the Central Leyline Convergence Reserve, and had otherwise explored the caverns at a leisurely pace. Lyrei had been interested in the fact that Ophelia seemingly didn’t need to eat. “I’ve never felt hungry” had been Ophelia’s answer, and she knew the feelings of hunger that Lyrei felt when she had needed to eat, as well as the same feelings from the other creatures she had consumed previously, so she was fairly certain she didn’t ever feel anything like that. Her only desire had been to absorb more and grow larger. That was from when she was far simpler, of course, less knowledgeable about the world. Now, it was no less of a goal, she wanted to grow larger in a vague sense, but it was on the back burner. There was so much to life it seemed, and she was already the size of an underground sea.
This too, Lyrei had been fascinated about. Apparently slimes, which Ophelia superficially resembled, contained a slime core. It was essentially what defined them as a living being, as opposed to a group of loosely held together slime. It was what housed the thaumic energy that powered each slime’s rudimentary intelligence, and if it were damaged, the slime would generally quickly expire.
Ophelia had something similar it seemed, Lyrei had convinced her to turn her eyes inwards and spot it. She had always thought of it as her innermost space, and Lyrei had thought of it as a slime core until Ophelia had described its other property.
“{You have HOW much of you inside there?}”
“Well, the… Leyline Something something Reservoir or whatever you call it… as far as I can tell it was filled to the top with ah… what I am?”
“{The entire Central Leyline Convergence Reserve… that’s a lot. And it’s gelid thaumic energy. I guess, simply put it would be condensed magic slime. Were there thaumic crystals too? I didn’t see any when you were there, it was pretty dark.}”
“Thaumic crystals, you mean the… hard ordered material I consumed near the walls?”
“{Hard ordered material…? I… suppose that explains them relatively well. I take it that is what you called them before gaining all my knowledge? So, you absorbed not only the entirety of the gelid thaumic energy, but the thaumic crystals as well… You contain more thaumic energy than… probably anyone else on the planet… probably combined. And you can condense yourself to the size of your core. I would have killed to find you before all of this. Well, I suppose I was pretty determined to capture you before everything went wrong… heh. I’m sorry about that… I think if I’d known what you were I might have gone about it differently.}”
Stolen story; please report.
“I think that we’ve apologized enough, mother. You said what happened, happened, right? And if things didn’t happen like they did, neither of us would be here like this.”
Lyrei chuckled softly, “{I guess you really do listen to your mom, huh? Anyways, if you had the know-how, you could probably cast some really powerful spells. Goddess… even simply with me packaging spells for you, we could easily outclass anyone that tried to fight you, but I think we can do better. How would you like to learn some spellcraft?}”
~<(0)>~
The surface was, put simply, stunning to Ophelia. Lyrei had seen it a million times too, but even she was seeing it through new eyes, both literally and metaphorically. The slime girl had, with her mother’s assistance, shifted her body to an even better version of her earlier elf-like body. She could feel things now, actually feel herself touching them, not just their presence within her. Smell too. Lyrei had attempted to help her to make taste buds too, though she found it rather difficult as they were in the middle of an unfamiliar forest, and Lyrei didn’t know where any familiar foods might be to test the taste buds on.
Beyond that, Ophelia was fascinated with all of the… well… everything. She had absorbed various flowers, ferns, and some saplings, and gotten thoroughly excited about at least one rabbit, two squirrels, and a particularly confused deer.
Spellcraft tutoring had been rather tough. Ophelia had literally thousands of years worth of knowledge at her disposal, and learning something like this practically was still a learning process, one that she had to start from the ground up with. It was especially difficult with an entirely different body compared to that which Lyrei had been used to. This was part of the reason that she’d been helping Ophelia recreate an elven body in her slime.
Ophelia’s body was quite capable of not only mimicking things with a great degree of similarity, but also shifting to actually recreate things she had absorbed previously. This was why her entire body was comprised of gelid thaumic energy, it had been the first, and simplest form to take, considering that’s what it had been in the first place. She had demonstrated this property properly though, by crystallizing part of her body into a thaumic crystalline structure and showing it to her mother.
Lyrei had immediately been convinced that, with enough practice and experimentation, Ophelia would be able to mostly take the form of any living creature she’d absorbed. This proved to be a tougher ordeal than she had thought, and in the end, they were both just enjoying each new discovery, big or small.
~<(0)>~
The Expedition team had explored the massive cavern, waving useless scanners around, each member genuinely hoping that they didn’t run across the slime that had managed to kill two of its members. The space was so large that even with the high powered thaumic lanterns, they couldn’t see the ceiling or either wall from the middle. It was unnerving to say the least, and it was very clear that something had indeed been in here at one point. The thaumic radiation levels were off the sensor scales for their scanners, though considering the fact they were in the reservoir where multiple leyline convergences happened, this was in no way surprising. Where there should have been centuries old thaumic crystals growing on every surface, gently glowing, was nothing but the natural rock that looked as though it had been ground clean. Not even seed crystals had been left behind. In the end, it was with a sigh of relief that they didn’t find anyone, and Aleon called everyone back. Morale was incredibly low. No one had especially gotten along well with Lady Araphine, but she was the bulk of their magical might, and had simply been a boon to the expedition. The captain had been another, just as sudden loss, though the military portion of the expedition had fared well enough. He supposed that they had systems in place for the loss of command.
He didn’t figure that they would, but he really didn’t want to have any of the team run into that accursed monster. He idly wondered where the Late Lady Araphine had teleported it to. They hadn’t been able to get a good lock on her position before it…. Presumably consumed her. If the situation weren’t so grim, he’d find this hilarious. Or, perhaps he did anyways, a morbid mad amusement of the damned. If they had the misfortune to run into this monster again, he had little faith that they could do anything but hope and pray to the Goddess, or whatever gods were listening, that it wouldn’t wipe them all out. They were down two thirds of their magical arsenal, though in all honestly, Lady Araphine had likely counted for far more than that. Somehow it had overpowered her, by fluke or by sheer power or skill he didn’t know. It didn’t matter; If he and the team ran into it, they were dead. A Sudden thought occurred to him, that perhaps the survival team had run into the slime on their way to the surface and were now nothing more than a part of the creature.
Thus, a few days later, he was more than grateful to see every member of the survival team greet him and the remainder of the expedition team at the surface. As much as they all wanted to teleport away, Aleon had insisted that the best choice was still to trek back to the waygate they had arrived at initially, much to the displeasure of the rest of the team. Still, they made the journey without much of interest happening, and they were quickly back within the capitol city.
Aleon had sent word to the Lord that they had returned from their expedition and had started making his way to the palace. He had relinquished his command of the military side of the expedition, and they had returned to their own part of the city. The Leyline Management members that had been a part of the expedition he had turned away as well. If they were needed, he was sure they could be called for, but he seriously doubted that. He had been around long enough to know what information the Lord was likely to be interested in, and he was more than able to give everything necessary. The Only other two people that could give more information were dead, so that didn’t really matter.
“Stand and report, Head Monitor.” He did as he was told, smoothing his travelling clothes.
“The Mission was a complete failure, Your Lordship. We lost two members of the expedition team, Lady Araphine and the Captain of the soldiers. We encountered the creature and then lost track of it, and were unable to regain tracking of it, much less capture or destroy it.”
The Lord was momentarily stunned. There was a massive part of that sentence that simply didn’t make sense. Lyrei Araphine dead? That was an impossibility. Many a time had this statement been uttered by someone who presumed her dead, when she had simply been off doing whatever it was she did when she didn’t want people to know where she was. From the Head Monitor, however, he knew this statement was both uttered in utter sincerity and was, as far as the Head Monitor knew, completely accurate. “You collected her body?”
Aleon shook his head wearily, “I will explain in more detail. We were deep in the Central Leyline Convergence cavern system when Lady Araphine rushed off in the middle of the night with no apparent purpose. We have surmised after the fact that she had obtained a trace on the creature that absorbed all that thaumic energy and had rushed off to perform the job herself. The captain of the soldiers had woken the others, including myself and the other Leyline Management members up, and one of my subordinates noticed Lady Araphine had forgotten her staff in her haste and cast an object bond trace on it, which we used to follow after the Lady deeper into the caverns.”
“We located the Lady in a cavern with a slime on the opposite slime. I can only make assumptions about what happened, as I am ashamed to say I arrived a few moments after The Captain. I cannot ask him what happened, as he is dead, but it seems as though he charged in and tackled the Lady to the ground and was attempting to restrain her, which is when I arrived.” If he expected any sort of reaction from the Elven Lord, he was sadly disappointed. The Lord’s face was as passive as it always seemed to be. He continued, “I ordered the Captain to stand down, and I think after a moment he was going to follow my orders, but… Well, Your Lordship, the next part will be difficult to explain, and require a good deal of going over what happened in a very short period of time.”
“Lady Araphine seemed to have been forming multiple spells around the slime, all of which collapsed the instant the captain tackled the Lady. The Slime seemed to retaliate by using a technique I’ve never seen or heard of a slime using before, extended a great number of spikes from its body, at least a dozen of which impaled the captain, who had stood up. It is impossible to confirm, but I believe he died instantly. Lady Araphine was luckily unharmed, having been laying on the ground still.”
“The Spikes retracted and the slime started, for lack of a better word, expanding. I am still entirely unsure how it was accomplishing this feat. I quickly shouted to let Lady Araphine know of the situation, and she used ice spellcraft to slow its advance down. I am unsure as to what happened next, as though the mage squadrons were preparing to assault the creature, something happened to cause Lady Araphine to be engulfed by the slime, and then a moment later, it vanished in what we surmised was Lady Araphine’s teleport.”
“My Subordinate still had the object trace running, and we began to triangulate Lady Araphine’s position, when the object bond trace simply ceased to function. We assumed Lady Araphine dead, and her body destroyed, likely by the slime itself, since the Object bond ceased to work.”
The Lord Nodded, “I see. And the Captain’s body was lost as well?” not known to many, but there were ways to make the dead talk, at least for a short time, and about things that had recently happened.
“Yes, My Lord. He was engulfed by the slime’s expansion and vanished without a trace after the teleport. We searched the caverns extensively but were unable to locate the slime again. We do not have a confirmation, but I assume that since Lady Araphine was chasing after the slime, the fact it possessed unique abilities not seen before on a slime, and it managed to destroy Lady Araphine, that this was the Thaumic Locus we were searching for. I would propose that we put together a system to track this creature’s whereabouts and movements on the planet. It is incredibly dangerous and has killed two people.” He didn’t need to emphasize that one of those people had literally been the most powerful person on the planet.
“I will take action to make sure that this threat is tracked down and dealt with appropriately. Make sure that Lyrei’s things are taken to her rooms, they will be dealt with in time. As for you, return to your work as Head Monitor of the Leyline Management team.” The Lord paused, his face falling a little. “Considering the circumstances, you performed remarkably well, and from what you have told me, I think there is little you, or anyone could have done to change the outcome. Tell me one thing before you go. Do you think that Lyrei Araphine would have survived had she not been interrupted?”
The Question hung in the air. The unasked part of it was obvious. ‘Do you think that Lyrei would have been successful in what she was doing had The Captain not tackled her?’ Lyrei had been beyond famous and rated to be worth all of the best magical powerhouses put together. She had been a trump card, and fully outside of the Empire’s control, save for the occasional suggestion. “I think that had Lady Araphine been able to finish the spellcraft she was using and forming, the mission would have been a success, and she would be in her rooms right now.”
The Lord nodded. “Understood. You are dismissed, Head Monitor. I imagine you now have a lot of work to do regarding the Leyline Network.”