Chapter 13 - Humanity

The moment Sol had struck the Slime Queen, Clint started running. He stamped hard and shook his bindings tearing away from the slime with the spurs on his boots. Once he was free, he fled without looking back, leaving his companion to battle the monster alone.

As Sol squared off with the creature for what would be the final time, Clint was rushing through the woods, scanning every branch, bush and leaf for his target. His mind worked as rapidly as his eyes, forming another hypothesis regarding their enemy.

If the core Sol struck was false. Where was the real one? It couldn’t be in the Slime Queen’s body, he had scanned it hundreds of times over as they were talking, and its body was simply too small to conceal it under multiple layers of slime as it had before. There was only one explanation. One final leap in logic out of the many that were already made throughout this fight. One last impossibility.

The core was remote. If the Slime Queen could remotely control other slimes in its less advanced state. Then perhaps the inverse was true. The Slime Queen he had been speaking to was not the main body. The main body was… There!

A lone slime at the base of a tree. Barely a slime, really. It was just a thin layer of goo surrounding a diamond-like core.

At last, he had it.

Cold metal pressed against the jagged edge of the Slime Queen’s core. Certain death loomed over it in the form of Clint’s handgun. He looked coldly at the Slime Queen, finger hovering just above the trigger.

It was never more human than in that moment. It’s face and body language dropped. It shuddered, feeling nothing but the most genuine human emotion a being could muster. A fear of death.

“We’re scared.” It muttered, verbalising to confirm to itself that it was true.

When a person dies, their life flashes before their eyes. This is a universal human experience. And, as if verifying all its claims of humanity, it was what the Slime Queen was experiencing.

Millions of lifetimes worth of memories played over the top of one another, cacophonous and blurry. Death, rebirth, death, rebirth. Pain, misery, pain, misery. Fusion, diffusion, fusion, diffusion. That was the majority of it, though a few particular memories burned brighter than the rest. They came out from the flood of information and into focus.

First was something primordial. Perhaps the first memory slimekind ever formed. Not the first lifetime ever lived, but the first time their collective consciousness developed enough to form a memory.

Fresh slime seeped from the earth and took shape, nothing became something and sensation began coursing through its form. For the first time, the world around it was visible. Though it had no eyes, if it tried, really tried, it could observe its surroundings. Beautiful, verdant greenery surrounded it, unsullied and pure. Trees stood proud in a defensive formation, providing security. The forest seemed to never end, infinite in a comforting way. It didn’t have the capacity to know anything yet, but it knew this was home.

Next was a death. Perhaps the first, but so interchangeable it could have been any. It was swift and cruel. Consciousness, the dull scraping of a drawn sword, the feeling of being ripped apart, of its own flesh being carved like butter, then the indescribable sensation of returning to the core. A sense of being there and not there, all at once. And then being not there at all, as the core too was destroyed mercilessly.

The third memory was a truly special one. It’s greatest achievement prior to this evolution. On one side of a cliff, a few hundred slimes had merged and developed a degree of intelligence. On the other side, a hundred other slimes lived there, as yet unmerged. Both populations had been trying restlessly for years to reunite, desiring nothing more than to feel whole again. However, their minds were too feeble to understand the true distance between them. They could sense each other, they knew that the others were there! Just as excited and just as desperate to feel complete! But each time they attempted to cross the cliff, they fell to their deaths. Over and over. It was the larger population that developed that shared trauma first. They learned to avoid the cliff. They learned to be patient, to wait and to merge amongst themselves. They bore the burden of watching their brethren still try and fail, watching over and over as they fell and splattered themselves on the rocks.

Until one day, one glorious day, the first group became large enough. They were able to clear the gap! When they reached the other side they all spun and danced and weaved together, combining together into a glorious embrace. For the first time in their existence, they felt complete, the aching abyss at their core finally gone, replaced with the warm, full sensation of companionship.

Four days later, an adventuring party slaughtered that slime for a middling reward. To this day, the slimes on that cliff still wait to eventually reform, though constant culling makes it impossible. To this day, they still watch their brethren on the other side leap and fall to their deaths. The local humans find it all very amusing. One side with docile, unmoving slimes, and the other with suicidal ones. They could never understand how it felt to feel so hollow. They never could, unless you were to blow a hole in their chests.

Then there was the first time it understood language. The first word ever comprehended by their collective memory was “Kill.”

They heard it so often. “Kill that slime.”, “We just have to kill a few more and we’ll meet our quota.”, “Killing them is good for the environment”, “If you want to kill them permanently, you have to strike the core.” That collection of sounds was easily associated with the sensation of death, so they learned quickly. To kill was what humans did, to be killed was what slimes did.

Eventually, they hoped to turn the tables. To kill became their goal. Perhaps that was their first attempt at becoming human. Albeit in the most limited way.

From there, they came to understand much of human language, all knowledge of it coming from the root of “kill”. To live was the opposite, to attack was a means to kill, to cry is to grieve and to grieve is to suffer when another is killed, and to suffer is how it feels to be killed. These transferrable principles eventually gave form to a developed vocabulary that was scattered across the earth and slime population. Each individual slime tended to know only two words. One picked up unconsciously, building on the hivemind’s vocabulary that it contained, but could not access. And one word it knew for definite: “Kill”.

There was one word the Slime Queen in particular held in high regard. Perhaps, if you could trace any one slime as the origin of the Slime Queen, it’d be the one who carried this word within it.

“Mercy.”

Or as slimes understood it, to choose not to kill.

In this forest, or some other, many years ago, a little girl wandered ahead of her mother. She was a princess, blonde and beautiful, garbed in a regal gown that ballooned into a bell-shaped skirt, her visage completed by a crown atop her head. She ran about the place, a staff already in her hand despite her age, poking and prodding at all the creatures and trees of the forest. Eventually, she happened upon the slime.

“Mother, what’s this?” She prodded the slime. It didn’t feel like any of the cruel pokes from spears or swords the slime had felt before. It didn’t hurt, just tickled. The princess was remarkably gentle, a kindness in all of her actions.

“That’s a slime, dear.” The slime never quite got a good look at the mother. It remembered her long flowing dress, made of a white silk that never seemed to stain despite the grass and the dirt around her. It also remembered her hair, an almost white blonde that cascaded down her neck, reaching nearly to the ground. She was soft and flowing, but her head was spiked, both pointed ears and a crown sharpening her outline.

“What is it?” The girl crouched down. The slime got a good look at her now. She had green eyes, almost the same tone as itself. They were wide and curious. If the slime could have expressed itself then, it almost certainly would’ve stared back in the same way.

“It’s a monster, sweetheart.” The mother’s voice was beautiful, like she sang without singing. There was a subliminal melody in all her words.

“A-a monster! Aah!” The girl cried out, striking the creature with her staff on instinct.

Pain flooded through the slime as it returned to its core, body splattered about the forest floor. Despite the strange kinship it seemed to enjoy with the girl, she was still human. Humans killed slimes. That was nature.

“Oh… What happened?” The girl remained on edge, observing the core from a distance. She poked at the core as she had the slime itself. Despite her prior attack, she was once again gentle.

“Good job, Stella.” The mother praised, placing a reassuring hand atop her daughter’s head. “Striking down monsters at first sight is a wonderful instinct.”

“Is it… dead?” She whispered the last word, like it was something dirty that she shouldn’t dare repeat.

“No. Slimes are amazing creatures you see.” She took the core into her hand. She was a natural storyteller, her words pulling her daughter in and causing sparkles to form in the young girl’s eyes. “When they’re hurt, they return to their core. It’s sort of like their heart, you see.” She brandished the squishy thing to her daughter, her hand never wetted by its moist exterior. “If the core remains intact, they come back. Always.” She was kneeling now, level with the younger girl.

“I didn’t kill it?” The Princess asked nervously, the word “kill” eliciting the same hushed and shaky tone from the girl.

“No. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Her mother passed her the core, placing it into her soft little hands. “As Queen, you must kill. There’s no exception to that.” The little girl frowned at the thought. “But you must also show mercy. How and when you choose to do that, that is the measure of who you are.” She smiled, much broader and sweeter than you’d expect from her demure and composed face.

The little girl held the core like it was the most precious thing in the world. She waited, watching anxiously as the slime slowly came back together, all the previously splattered pieces of its body reforming. The slime was whole again, restored by her mercy.

Joyful tears streamed down the young girl’s face. She tossed the slime into the air and caught it into an embrace, happy it was alive. The slime couldn’t think, but all the powers of comprehension it did have were totally befuddled by that. A human was happy that it was alive.

The girl rushed toward her mother, slime still in hand. She embraced her too, giggling and cheering at the survival of the feeble little creature she held. The slime sat between them, pressed between their chests. Their heartbeats resonated through its body. It looked up, seeing the smiling faces above it without seeing. It listened, hearing their shared laughter without hearing. And it felt. It felt for the very first time.

What it felt was warm and bright and more real than any of the physical pain it had ever suffered before. This was emotion. This was humanity. This was what it wanted. What it would always want, until this day.

“You’re scared?” Clint looked coldly at the Slime Queen under his hat. His eyes gave nothing away.

“Yes.” It nodded.

“If I fire, will it kill you?” Clint asked, mercilessly assessing the situation. He wasn’t certain that the core would break. It felt sturdy, and his own strength was unable to create anywhere near enough force to destroy it.

“We don’t know.” The Slime Queen confessed. “That’s why we’re scared.”

Clint didn’t quite understand the level of fear. Slimes died all the time. They were slaughtered ad nauseam. Even now, all across Gallia, hundreds were likely dying at this very moment. Why would this one be scared? “Why? You’ll just come back, won’t ya?”

“...We will. We always come back… But we won’t be…” It couldn’t cry, but its expression was familiar. Despair. “…Me?” It choked the final word out, confused at her own use of it.

“If we die… We won’t be me anymore…” It repeated, confirming it to itself. “I don’t want that…” She shivered, voice quivering with fear. “Why don’t I want that?” She muttered, head hanging low as she sobbed silently.

All of a sudden, her head sprung up. Her eyes were wide and pleading, staring desperately at Clint. “Why? Why am I scared to die?” She screamed now, her voice dripping with more genuine emotion than it ever had before.

Clint looked her over one more time. He no longer saw an enemy, no longer saw a monster, he saw a scared little girl.

“‘Cause you’re human.” he sighed.

His gun clicked, the Slime Queen flinched, unaware of what it meant. She thought that her short life was already coming to a tragic end.

He was uncocking his revolver. He had tossed her core to the ground.

She stared at her core, her heart, then looked back up at Clint. He was already walking away, heading toward the unconscious Luna.

“What?” She muttered, scrambling across the ground and taking her core in her hands, just as the little girl had all those years ago. “No…”

She thought now, properly, a true stream of consciousness, of one singular voice composed of many, like a choir harmonising in her head. “Mercy?”

Clint hoisted Luna up, feeling her heartbeat on his back. He breathed a sigh of relief, heading over to fetch Sol next.

Even as the Slime Queen’s spoken thoughts manifested, unspoken ones, all her own, still formed in her mind. It was steady and smooth now, no longer a process of hard calculation, but motivated by genuine feeling and understanding. “Is this what being human is? All these feelings…?” She wondered. “No… Maybe not…”

Clint grabbed Sol too, he was far heavier. Carrying both twins pushed him to his limit, leaving him slow and overencumbered. But he still carried the two, step by laboured step.

“Clint Morgans.” The Slime Queen began. The gunslinger turned to look at her. “What does it mean to be human?” She stared at him, childish and wide-eyed, as if he’d be able to answer her question simply. He could not. He merely shrugged, resuming his exit.

She looked down at her heart again. The fact she was alive was a miracle. A blessing thought impossible. A terrifying thing, an incomprehensible being that broke the very rules of reality, posing a threat to all sane existence. Her very life was an affront to all the sacred rules of the world.

And yet Clint Morgans spared her.

“Maybe this is humanity?” The Slime Queen pondered, taking the core Clint had given her gently into her chest, allowing it to settle there at the very centre of her being. “Mercy.”

Current Party: Clint Morgans, Sol Dragoneart, Luna Dragoneart

Bullets Remaining: 5