Chapter 8 - Intellect

Slimes are beings without intellect. They do not think, they do not feel, they merely act according to primordial instinct, perhaps something lesser than that, even. Whatever it was, it was nowhere near thought.

Slimes had just two base desires that they would doubtlessly follow to the end of their existence; To merge and to attack. These actions were hard-wired into every aspect of the creatures, and so naturally, the thousands of slimes that had just reformed into existence had no choice but to follow these base desires en masse.

Many of the slimes swirled and swarmed together in a primordial spiral, throwing themselves into each other in an attempt to become whole once again. Others flung themselves out of the storm and toward Sol, Luna and Clint, raindrops now, but forewarning lightning.

“Great, we just made it worse!” Sol groaned, quickly parrying and slashing at the onslaught of slimes attacking from all directions.

Clint stomped the few that peeled off from the twins to attack him. “It’s fine. Most of ‘em ain’t even attacking. Just hit ‘em right.” He speared a slime behind him with the spurs of his boots, straight through its core, proving his point.

“If you two hold them off I can charge another blast…” Luna barked, already channeling power through her staff.

Sol continued batting away slimes that came his sister’s way, but couldn’t stand up to the sheer number. Many still made their way past him, but she too did her part, surprisingly swift and agile with kicks and stabs from her staff.

Despite everything, the slimes Sol struck down continued to reform. The ones Luna struck stayed down, however; her physical strikes seemed much more precise than her more powerful magical ones.

And the slimes attacking Clint…

Clint’s eyes flicked around. None of them were attacking him. The few that were approaching him had turned away, now joining the assault on the twins.

With some space Clint did what he did best: He observed. It wasn’t just his slimes that had redirected their intent. The storm had shrunk. Slimes that were previously only focused on merging had seemingly shifted their intent toward attacking the twins. Somehow, some way, they were prioritizing.

Clint’s mind got to work. He didn't understand this world or these creatures, but he understood mobs. He deduced that like any mob they were operating based on a collective shared experience. And what experience had all of these slimes just suffered…?

“Move, now! Both of you!” Clint ordered, already anticipating the worst.

“I’m almost done-” Luna protested, taking her eyes off the swarm of slimes for a moment.

Just a moment.

And in that moment, the entire storm descended upon her. Smaller smiles came like hail from all directions, colliding with her from various angles and destabilising her movement.

The slimes crashed together, warping like freshly blown molten glass as their momentum struggled to find a place to go in their newly formed body. Ultimately, with one more slime joining the fray, the collective momentum caused it to blast through the air toward her, propelled like a cannonball.

Miraculously, she remained unharmed. She thought for a moment their attack had missed, but that hope was misplaced. The slime was precisely where it wanted to be: Globbed onto her staff.

Her precious weapon was totally consumed by the slime. Her hand still struggled to grip it as the viscous, slippery innards of the creature forced their way between her hand and the stick. She did not falter though. She continued muttering incantations, her words and mana reaching the staff slower, but still reaching. Her voice was quiet, low and desperate… Then it was loud. A pained scream. She reeled and shrieked, pulling away from the huge creature and leaving her staff behind.

Her hand dangled unnaturally from the end of her arm. She stared at it as if it weren’t part of her, the adrenaline addling her brain so heavily that she didn’t even feel the pain yet. She felt the snap though, heard the crack of bone and knew cerebrally that her wrist was broken, even if she didn’t feel it. After a second of staring bewildered at the limp, battered joint, she felt the shock of agony all at once, ripping through her body and to her brain. Luna collapsed to her knees, breath ragged, clutching her wrist as if it may fall off next.

Her eyes, so singularly focused on the source of her unbearable pain, did not flick up to see the slime, lurching back like a great wave to crush her beneath it. She only felt the light of the sun dim, diluted by the grimy transparent flesh of the slime eclipsing her.

“Oh man… What do I do?” she wondered, the slime’s pullback reaching its apex now. “If I had my staff… No, that’s pointless. If both my hands worked… Pointless again.” She glanced for any opportunities to run, but her path was blocked by yet more slimes throwing themselves into the gigantic mass that was looming over her. “No way out…” She mumbled.

She looked up finally and saw death. The slime was dropping, an avalanche in and of itself. “Sorry, Sol. I wasn’t strong enough.” She frowned, her words the thesis statement of her life.

“Abracadabra, alakazam.” Nonsense words were muttered quickly and shamefully from across the clearing. To an untrained ear, it sounded like an incantation for a spell. Under a tree, Clint gripped a branch, a look of embarrassment on his face as he mumbled every magic sounding word he could come up with. “Hocus pocus, munditi-whatever.” He prayed this ridiculous gamble would work, lest he die spouting such nonsense.

Sol raised his head, finally free from the slime horde as their attention shifted off of him and onto Clint. He saw Luna now, injured and kneeling. His legs thrust him forth, allowing him to snatch her away, just as the slime locomoted toward Clint, slamming just behind them as it made its way toward the faux spellcaster.

“Are you okay?” Sol asked, fast and breathless.

“Fine. It’s my fault, I should’ve seen it.” Luna sniffed, wiping away tears she didn’t realise had formed.

“You couldn’t have seen it coming. I mean those slimes, how’d they even do that? I mean, it’s rule #1, slimes can’t think! How’d they figure to target your staff?” Sol’s brain whirred with thought, attempting to rationalise and assess all he had seen today.

“If the evidence contradicts the hypothesis… Maybe we reassess the hypothesis.” Luna suggested, her mind already working to distract her from the pain in her body.

“They can think.” Sol concluded. Luna nodded in agreement. “That’s ridiculous, this whole time?” He muttered.

“Maybe the cores are like brains?” Luna theorised.

“Wait. If they can think, then…” Sol swung around, eyes wide as he looked for Clint. He found him fast. He stood firm with the branch in hand, waiting for the slime’s charge. “Clint, don’t do it! It knows!” He roared, his words as loud as his weary lungs could manage.

But his words fell short.

Clint remained planted, awaiting the slime’s attack. The plan was basic to the point of foolishness, but that’s all it needed to be. A simple plan for a simple enemy. The slimes clearly knew to target magic, therefore all he had to do was bet on them being stupid enough to fall for a fake. From there, his approximation of a staff doubled as a spear, and it’d be a simple matter to use his vision to find and pierce the beast’s core.

As the sickly green orb trampled its way toward Clint, he set himself. His boots sank slightly into the mud beneath him. His inhale was sharp and firm. His exhale was smooth and slow. His searching yellow eyes studied the increasingly opaque body of the slime, scanning for any sign of discolouration.

But though his eyes scanned and scanned and scanned, still he found no core. For the first time in his life, his eyes failed him…

The gelatinous mass was lunging at him now, its liquid body bursting forth like a geyser. Clint had no choice, he had made his bed and he had to lie in it. Clint had gambled his life on his precision, believing he could strike the core, but with no core, his strongest capability had withered and died, leaving him a mere mortal with an impossible task: Somehow he had to make this feeble, small piece of wood, strike decisively enough to keep the lumbering slime at bay.

Precision was merely Clint’s strongest capability. Not his only one. For all his eyes could do, his body and brain were impressive allies, and he made use of them well. His mind had already raced ahead, forming another desperate plan in a fraction of the time it had for the first. His body put it into effect immediately, his muscles springing into action like the hammer of his revolver. Clint leapt into the air, branch still in hand, just high enough to clear the slime, which then came crashing like the tide against the space he had inhabited moments ago. Gravity was on his side now, and he used it well, striking the slime straight through and pinning it to the ground.

The slime writhed and warped beneath the wood, ripping itself to pieces to pull away. It was forced to spend precious time reforming as Clint made his escape.

Sol stared at Clint in utter bewilderment as he returned, looking between him and the slime repeatedly. “I can’t tell if you’re really smart or that thing’s really dumb.” he muttered.

“Thing’s stupid.” Clint surmised. “If it were any different, I wouldn't'a made it.”

“No, but it can’t be. It knew to target my staff! It even knew to target your decoy trick!” Luna protested.

“If it were smart it wouldn’t fall for a decoy to begin with.” Clint kept an eye on the slime. It was back to its original, gargantuan size, despite all the slimes they had slaughtered since its arrival. It seemed to be luring in more of its kind from across the woods, its very being acting as a beacon to summon its brethren to join its neverending expansion. “It’s just a mob. Stupid, like any other.” He rose to his feet, hand hovering over his pistol. “Don’t matter if they’re all squished together. A mob's a mob, they all run offa one thing.”

“Anger? You’re not gonna suggest they have feelings next?” Sol asked.

“Shared experience. They all suffered the same thing, so they united to destroy it. That’s why they all went for the stick. Musta hurt like hell getting blown up by that thing.”

Sol elevated to stand next to Clint, resting his sword on his shoulder. “They all share memories?”

Luna remained floored, clasping her limp wrist like she was trying to contain the pain radiating from it. “That shouldn’t be possible. They shouldn’t even have the capacity for memory. Thousands of years of study…-”

“If the evidence contradicts the hypothesis…” Sol’s red eyes looked at her, wide, curious, confident. “You said it yourself. Maybe we were wrong.”

“We can be wrong, sure, but the entire field of Slimology?” She contested, the debate distracting her wounded body enough to jolt her to her feet.

“Maybe… For now though, we have to assume we’re right.” Sol’s eyes snapped forward, focusing on the slime again now.

“Why? The idea of them having a little intellect makes some sense, but I don’t see why we should jump to conclusions about a supposed collective memory.” Luna protested, circling around her brother to try and parse why exactly his eyes had shifted, why they now stared forth with such determination.

“‘Cause if we’re right, that thing won’t stop.” Clint stated, his gun now at its rightful place in his hand.

“Exactly. We can’t risk leaving it and letting it get more powerful. If it’s experience compounds for each slime, and if all these slimes have experienced fighting adventurers like us…” Sol muttered.

“It’ll become a killing machine.” Luna muttered, her mind clear for the first time since her wrist broke.

The slime had consumed all it could now, warping and bubbling, as if something inside was fighting at its walls to get out. It was on the verge of something, and Clint didn’t want to find out what.

“I can’t see its core. There must be too much flesh in the way. I need you two to clear me a path. Cut it open, blow holes in it, whatever. Just get me a line of sight.” Clint ordered, raising his revolver out in front of him. Now was no time for quickdraws. He had to focus solely on delivering a one shot kill to the core. As much as it pained him to spend one of his most precious resources, a beast of this calibre was something impossible to kill any other way.

“Got it!” Sol looked back at his sister, eyes softening slightly. “Luna, can you still fight? I know it’s hard without your staff.”

“I’ll be fine. It’ll be messy but…” Luna loosened her shoulders, spiralling her good arm. “If you can do it staffless, I’m sure I can.”

“Hah, guess that broken wrist hasn’t got you too down.” Sol chuckled.

“It wasn’t a joke, Sol.” She smiled teasingly at her brother. “I’m better at magic than you.” she taunted.

“Yeah, yeah. Who needs magic anyway? All it’s good for is lighting campfires.” Sol waved her away, flaunting his shimmering blade with a cocky smile.

Luna sighed. “Just because you can only cast Fireball doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it.”

“I did tell you two to attack that thing, didn’t I?” Clint said flatly.

“We’re just lightening the mood, jeez. If I’m gonna die I wanna at least joke around one last time…” After he spoke, Sol gave a last reassuring smile to Luna. When he turned away, the kind look he reserved for his sister hardened into the focused gaze he had before. The glare of a warrior.

“Lame last words.” Luna mocked. Though she jested, her own near death experience was still fresh in her mind. Her weakness in that moment was a wound perhaps worse than her snapped wrist. “Not that it matters. You won’t be dying anyway.” she sighed with a smile. Even if she doubted herself, she had faith in Sol.

With Luna’s focus being on her brother, it’d be a natural assumption that his mind was on his sister in return. It was not. Sol had no doubts about his sister’s strength, he was too arrogant to have doubts about his own, and he already revered Clint as a hero. No, Sol’s mind was entirely focused on the only unknown quantity in this battle, on the thing that had once already defied all known reality before his very eyes.

“What the hell could that slime do next?”

Current Party: Clint Morgans, Sol Dragoneart, Luna Dragoneart

Bullets Remaining: 5