Rowen snorted. He grabbed a leaf off a tree and held it in front of Anadine. “What color is this leaf?”
“It’s green?” Anadine said, a little questioningly.
“Is it?” Rowen laughed hatefully. “How can you tell? For all we know, this could be red, yellow, or blue. Slimes can’t see color! Do you know how frustrated I felt watching those images play across Doc’s crystal, only being able to see the outline of images move? It’s as if the world is in shades of grey, just like me. Just like this dead-end existence.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Anadine sighed, “but you’re going to have to get used to it. Accept who you are and roll with it. Literally and figuratively.”
“Accept who I am?” Rowen punched the ground with a tentacle. “Look at me! I’m a slime! A dirty, filthy, mindless abomination of magic! I have neither bone nor skin nor hair! Even when I was in my stronger form, I was a fancy skeleton made of slime! Even my clothes were slime! Do you think I can find the positive side of being a squishy skeleton? Even undead can see more colors than I can now!”
“Calm down little brother—” Anadine cautioned.
“And stop with those stupid ‘little brother’ comments! I’m not your brother. Hells! I’m more likely your ancestor. I barely know you, and in that short time, you’ve changed from a completely loyal idiot into a laidback brute with no interesting characteristics beyond an ever-present positive attitude!” Rowen roared.
“Hey, you’re starting to get insulting,” Anadine said, feeling the rising anger inside her.
“Oh really? I’m only starting to get insulting?” Rowen yelled at her. “Are you actually feeling insulted now? What’s there to insult about a slime, your color? I can’t see your blasted color! You are an amorphous blob to me, just like I am to you!”
“Alright, now, I’ll have you know that my humanoid form is beautiful and graceful,” Anadine retorted.
“I bet, given your ability to morph your body into any size and shape you want. Was that a dream of yours back when you were human? A bigger bust, smoother skin, maybe longer legs? Too bad. Even if you can give yourself all those things, it’s all still a lie,” Rowen argued angrily. “Your slime will never be as smooth as skin. Your slime won’t dance in the wind like hair. In fact, you’re worse than me! At least I’ve accepted this miserable existence as what it is, while you delude yourself with factitious looks and fake realities!”
“Stop it! That’s enough!” Anadine yelled at Rowen.
“Oh, but I’m not done yet! How about this? You’re a flat character both physically and mentally without any redeeming qualities who is still as trusting and naïve as when she was alive, and it’s this kind of behavior that not only got her and others killed but also catalyzed the deaths of everyone from her city! Your death killed your people, your parents, and it killed me!” Rowen screamed. “We all died thanks to your stupid pledge to this dungeon!”
“No!” Anadine screamed in return, and she leaped at Rowen with tentacles outstretched.
“Come at me, blue freak!” Rowen said, throwing his tentacles out to intercept her. The two tangled against each other, slapping each other violently with waves of tentacles. The occasional miss resulted in branches snapping, holes being made in the ground, and general destruction.
“Darkness blast!” Rowen cried out, sending a beam of dark magic towards Anadine.
“Fire shield!” Anadine responded, summoning a wave of fire to block the attack.
Anadine condensed her tentacles, forming four extra-large slime appendages that she used to slam into Rowen. The boy took the hit, flying back into a tree. He responded by launching another dark magic attack before landing and cutting off part of Anadine’s body. The two hissed in pain as they lost slime mass.
“Take it back!” Anadine roared.
“No!” Rowen answered, punctuating his words with a barrage of dark missiles. Anadine leaped to the side, dodging each spell by the slime of her body. She changed two of her tentacles, morphing them into hardened shields. She charged, using the shields to deflect Rowen’s magical attacks.
Rowen cursed, climbing the tree he was on to get out of the way of her charge. Anadine slammed into the tree, breaking it as it creaked in pain. Rowen held on tight as the tree tumbled down away from the enraged female slime, grunting as the tree landed.
“Slime Spears!” Anadine cast, forming spears of slime on her tentacles that she whipped at Rowen in waves. Rowen summoned a barrier just in time, as waves of slime-hardened spears slammed into the ground around him. He grit his slime, feeling each hit on his barrier as if it were his body.
Anadine kept up the assault, moving every closer to her fellow boss slime.
Roaring, Rowen shattered his shield, turning the magical energy into shards that he sent cutting through Anadine’s body. The falling of the shield, however, meant that Rowen took the full force of Anadine’s last volley. Both their bodies were sliced apart and cut by the other’s attacks.
Groaning in pain, the two slime bosses collapsed onto the floor, the majority of their slime spent and depleted.
“Take it back!” Anadine said weakly. “It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t... my fault.”
Rowen spat out some slime weakly. “Fine, I’m sorry. You didn’t kill anyone. It, it wasn’t your fault...”
As if to remind her, Anadine felt tears, but was unable to shed them. She had no eyes from which to cry. She had no stomach to fill with butterflies. She had nothing human, nothing at all. So, what was she?
“Mother, father, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, finally falling unconscious from the lack of mana.
Rowen watched her turn into a puddle of slime and sighed. “I’m sorry I took it out on you...” he murmured, before he too shut down and fell unconscious.
A few moments later, a familiar form appeared above them. Claire shook her head as she examined the large swath of collateral damage the two had created.
“Looks like Doc was right,” Claire said, “You both are still too human. Oh well, that’s what this is for I suppose.” With a wave of her hand, Claire levitated the two sleeping slime bosses and flew them back to their rooms. Unbeknownst to her, a pair of unseen eyes watched her fly away then disappeared.
Chapter 9
Doc watched the two slumbering slimes as Claire returned them to their respective starting rooms. Anadine and Rowen were fast asleep, dreaming perhaps, or maybe living in their memories of a different time. Doc wouldn’t know. He could no longer dream. Though the question remained to be seen whether that ability had ever been his alone.
What would they do upon awaking, realizing they were back where they started? Would they continue to try to leave their rooms to make their way to Doc, Claire, and the heart of the dungeon? Would they continue their previous fight between them, seeking solace in violence as only adventurers could? They certainly would find it extremely difficult to make it back down on their own. Every slime they’d come across would treat them as an enemy. Even if they worked together to make it through, the challenge of relying on someone to watch their back would only add to the trial. Both slimes—no, both humans in slime form—were fiercely independent with their own pride. Royal pride, perhaps, or maybe it was a pride form of their humanity.
What is it to be a human? Doc wondered to himself. Certainly, Doc no longer had this essential part, unknowingly possessed yet obvious when gone. Rowen and Anadine, they try so hard to constrain themselves to what they were, yet who they are now fights to assert itself in place of this past. How much of a shock was it really, for a soul so used to its form to find itself in a different container. Did they realize the fight within themselves? Is their pain caused by being unaware of this inner turmoil?
Yet it must be said, humans were not the only race to possess this persona, this inner core, this basis of all personality. Calling it humanity was easy because humans were what Doc dealt most with. But did elves not have their own form of this pride? The conflicts between these
two races, did it not stem from the difference between them derived from this great source of self? Or was it because they were so similar that they fought? And the other sentient races Doc had yet to meet: dwarves, gnomes, grey orcs, devil-kin, the other types of beast-men, were they all the same? Humanity—perhaps elfinity, gnominity, etc.—was the same for all.
The sentient races—no, the peoples of the world—they all had this sense of self at the core of their being summed up best by the ending applied to the form for the thing no one understood: inity. Divinity, infinity, affinity. All these words drew upon the essence of being.
However, if every person possessed the same core, how did they become so different individually? What could a person rely on to establish who they were, are, and to be: their experience, their struggles, their actions, their triumphs, their failures? Perhaps it could be summed up in the ability to refer oneself, so say ‘I.’ But then, when you take away the ability to say ‘I,’ are you still who you are, or are you someone, something, else?
To confront the idea of something, one must be willing to understand the opposite concept. One cannot know light without darkness, and someone who has never known cold cannot understand heat. To understand yourself, then, would you not need to understand the opposite of you?
What is the opposite of being human? An animal? No, animals share too many similarities. One of the other races then? Same problem. Being elvish or anything else is the parallel of being human. Using demons and gods was incorrect as well, for they already formed their own opposite reflection. From the brief interactions with the members of divinity, Doc could see that their sense of self was too different. Perhaps it was because they were goddesses of neutrality, where their portfolios depended on implementation, like law or balance, but they appeared to be much too fluid in comparison to the mortal self.
Doc turned inward, trying to peer at his inner self. He had once hosted a human soul, using it to stabilize his own self. It wasn’t the same, however, now that it was gone. Doc was a dungeon. He had a clear purpose born with him with, no doubts or fears regarding what his future held: advancement or death. He had been born with his identity, his core, his heart crystal quite literally. The opposite of a dungeon crystal was non-existence, for dungeons started off as nothing before forming slowly from rock, to crystal, to mana crystal, to soul stone, and finally to dungeon crystal. Years of evolution, adaptation, and growth concentrated on a single core. Doc had no doubts who he was and what he wasn’t.
At least, that used to be the case. The humanity once at his core had left its mark on him. Morals, ethics, aesthetics—these things were left over from hosting the human soul. Dungeons had no need for these concepts, but without them, dungeons could never become all they were meant for. Such was the curse of existence for those that relied on the presence of others to survive. A wolf cannot live without prey to hunt, the trees cannot live without the sun, and dungeons could not survive without the presence of living creatures. Doc, as all dungeons, had to learn these concepts to survive. But unlike other dungeons, Doc had these concepts within him rather than having to slowly integrate them into his self. He was better, yet also ruined as a dungeon because of it.
Then why is being human, or elf, or devil-kin such a hard concept? Is it because they complicate their lives with the invention of abstract concepts? Is it because they hide their core selves under layers of identities, choosing which one to wear every time they wake up? Or perhaps it is because they were slaves to their bodily needs and wants, slaves to their emotions. What was the opposite of being a person?
The answer?
The slime, Doc reasoned out, the slime is the opposite of the human. Slimes lack everything. They shared no part of the human body: no eyes, ears, hair, skin color, feet, brain, blood, stomach, or heart. That which killed a human would not kill a slime. Slimes had no need for shelter from the rain, delicious food, water, companionship, or emotions. They were the epitome of an emotionless, soulless, intelligence-devoid being that somehow still existed and even thrived. They had no purpose except to exist: be born, feed, reproduce, and die. They had no individuality beyond their species and location. They were the perfect receptacles for those with will and without body, like Doc. In the scheme of things, the world could exist without slimes. They truly lived a most meaningless existence.
It is no wonder then, Doc thought, that Rowen and Anadine are having such trouble adapting to their new bodies. Their very identities bring meaning to their otherwise mindless existence, and they are weaker for it.
Whatever emotions they have, whatever memories the possessed, it was not ‘their’ own. Those were the belongings of their past lives. It was why Doc referred to Anadine by her name instead of her past human name, even after learning it. D something or other. Rowen would also gain a new name in time, once he realized the need. Slime had no need for feelings, morality, ethics, or thoughts, really. Doc created slimes to serve him as extensions of his will. All they had to do was kill, eat, and fight.
And yet, that need was changing. The new system, this natural form of dungeon building, called on Doc’s slimes to be more than killing machines. He needed them to grow beyond the simple existence, to become a part of something greater than each individual. In his mind’s eye, he could already see changes happening on the cavern floor.
While Anadine and Rowen slept, Doc’s new style of dungeon had spread. His ever-present spirit no longer inhabited each slime. Instead, they were free to do whatever their instincts commanded them to do. However, his spirit had left behind something unexpected in each slime: the tiniest, little bit of self. A ghost of a memory, but enough kindling to spark the beginning.
Herb slimes were gathering together, tending their gardens under the control of their stronger plant slime relatives. Bug slimes were gathering the lesser mimic bug types together by chosen species, a few fighting other types of bug slimes to expand territory. The ants and beetles appeared to be dominating, having already worked together to eliminate the worm and wasp groups. The chest slimes were scattering themselves, each finding an area to hunt, though they were largely unsuccessful in the greenery. The grey slime family, patrolling the entire floor in set paths, returning only to a gorged-out wall where they all resided together. Even there, the various sub families lived together in fragile peace.
Doc wasn’t making them do any of that. The only slimes he controlled were the luminous slimes and the light-eater slimes rotating across the ceiling to mimic the changing of the day. They were the only elemental slimes Doc could create, as their elemental attributes had been unlocked by magical artifacts rather than mana stones. He watched above them all, a god in this sunless world. He no longer shared each individual slime’s death with them, allowing him to place a greater connection with these slimes of his. Instead of living through them, Doc was now a spectator to hundreds of individual slime lives, something that seemed to satisfy the hollowness within him.
So, while Rowen and Anadine were struggling to accept their new selves, the slimes around them were growing in ways Doc could have never done on his own. It was an interesting observation, the complicated becoming simple and the simple becoming complicated. Perhaps the dungeon as a whole would reach the next level once the two reached some sort of equilibrium. Doc could only dream.
For his two slumbering bosses, perhaps he could help work out their issues by increasing their stress levels. While their selves would never completely accept their identity as ‘slime,’ perhaps by ways of stress and battle, their souls and bodies would slowly come together in order to survive the trials he’d create for them. To stretch their limits out until they could take no more, to push them past those limits, that was what Doc envisioned for them. He couldn’t hold back a sadistic chuckle as he metaphysically rubbed his hands together in anticipation as he watched the two slime bosses continue to sleep.
“What are you laughing at, Doc? Claire asked. The pixie, having returned the two slimes to their starting position, was c
losely examining a dead leaf muncher slime on her stone table. To be exact, she was giving it a slime autopsy, which involved a dense wind magic to prevent the slime from breaking apart and dissolving.
“Just thinking about something fun,” Doc said. “How’s your examination going?”
“I’m about finished,” Claire answered, using two wooden twigs to pry the slime further open. “From what I can tell, the leaf muncher slime has all the outer physical attributes of a normal leaf muncher slime, yet, just like the furry slimes, it doesn’t have anything inside of it except slime and the core.”
With a solid yank, Claire removed the core from the slime. As soon as it was gone, the leaf muncher slime body trembled and broke down into a pile of amorphous slime kept together only by Claire’s wind magic.
“The core,” Claire continued as if nothing had happened, “is just as I observed earlier. Unlike the standard perfectly round ball, this core is grooved almost like a walnut shell. I can faintly feel the mana running through the grooves, but I can’t understand it. Perhaps the increased surface area allows for greater mana absorption and thus the core can devote some of the mana to forming behavior.”
Claire walked over to a small alcove next to her door. She placed the tiny slime core on a small pedestal next to four other similar cores. When she was done, Doc closed the alcove and sealed the cores inside.
“Now that’s done, what do you want to do next, Doc?” Claire asked.
“Hm,” Doc hummed. “The nests for the leaf muncher slimes have been made, but they aren’t very active yet. The other slimes are all busy carving out their territory on the second floor. Even in maintenance mode, I’m starting to run out of usable mana. However, I would like to try something before I reopen the dungeon.”
“Oh, what is it?” Claire wondered out loud.
“I’d like to experiment with another idea,” Doc said as he summoned up a lesser mimic slime. “With the herbs around the entrance, I was able to capture a few of the more curious insects that entered. Like this one:” In the middle of the room, a honey bee materialized, buzzing frantically around Doc’s crystal as if it were the sun.
Dungeon Wars Page 10
