Where is your crown?

A vanished star,

At dawn, its light appearance was lost to us.

Where has it gone?

We search, but none can find it.

-Anonymous

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The wizard rushed through the undergrowth, keeping his head down against the harsh rain, cursing as he ran. Lightning struck a nearby tree, sending quickly extinguished sparks raining down on him, and the curses briefly intensified.

Jiggling in his arms was a very concerned slime, blue and wobbling with only a pair of indents to mark where its eyes would be. It had no name, having been pulled straight out of a summoning circle, and wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. It knew that the wizard was its summoner and therefore its owner, but not how it had arrived or who the wizard actually was.

Its concern stemmed from the arrow protruding from the wizard’s side.

Stumbling forward, the wizard pulled himself behind a tree and held the slime close, teeth gritted against the pain. “Of all the useless creatures. Neither ghast nor ghoul, but a slime. I paid a fortune for that circle.”

The slime burbled worriedly, and the wizard slapped it. “Shut it, slime. They’re going to hear you.”

Shrinking slightly, the slime made the quietest raspberry it possibly could. It could feel its master’s heartbeat through his robes. His pulse was a hammer and a feather at the same time, slamming against the wizard’s ribcage even as it faltered.

Holding a hand to his side, the wizard muttered some words, and a green light stabbed into his wound. He bit down on his lip hard enough to make it bleed, tears streaming from his eyes, and then wrapped his calloused fingers around the arrow, the light already fading.

The slime’s apprehension built to a point as the wizard counted to three under his breath. He started trembling, then grunted. “Screw it all.” He squeezed so tightly veins stood out on his hand, and then yanked the arrow out.

A bloom of red followed it and the slime squeaked in alarm. Before it’d even finished making the noise, the blood ceased staining the wizard’s clothes and gradually retreated back into the injury.

Voices shouted from somewhere, loud ones crying out in a tongue the slime didn’t know. The wizard hunched over further. “Q’ravit. Q’ravit. They have a tracker, curse them all. How are they following me? Is it...”

He looked down at the slime he was holding, and a mean grin creeped over his face. The slime uneasily rippled, and the wizard began rubbing it in slow circles. “Alright, you pointless ball of gel, I’ve got a job for you.”

The slime perked up immediately. Its master had a mission for it!

Still kneading circles into its rotund surface, the wizard whispered, “Listen closely, slime. Do you see that mountain?” He pointed upward and out of the writhing canopy of rain-soaked leaves above them, towards a clouded snow-capped peak in the distance. “Go there and don’t stop no matter what happens.”

The slime burbled obediently as the wizard dropped it onto the ground. Orange lights were coming closer to them, flickering as the voices grew louder. The wizard poked the slime, ushering it away. “Go! Go now!” He hissed, and the slime started rolling away. It didn’t notice as the wizard cast a barely noticeable spell on the slime before running in the opposite direction.

It began picking up twigs and leaves in its surface gel as it rolled off, unaware of the torches turning towards its direction.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Otto slashed down with his poleaxe, severing the vines in front of him. Why did the church’s acolytes have to bring torches? It made shapes uncertain, made wavering objects that taunted him as they lunged out of the darkness.

The priestess sloshed towards him, her mud-caked boots squelching miserably. “Farland!” She shouted, and almost fell onto her staff. At the last moment, she threw one hand out, and it sank into the swamp ground. She made a face as she stood up, wiping the worst of it on her battle robes. “Farland, we can’t let him get away!”

He nodded irritably. “I know, Olivai. And it’s Otto!”

Still trying to get rid of the mud on her hand, she primly told him, “Verse Thirteen of Chapter Nine of the Testament states that priestesses shall call their paladins by their family’s name, regardless of how familiar they are with them. The reverse is also true, Farland, and I’d appreciate it if you called me by mine.”

Otto waved a hand at her. “I know that too. But I’d rather not stumble over propriety and etiquette when we’re hunting down a wizard, least of all one of his.”

“Shut up. Your noise is making it hard for me to focus.”

They both went quiet at the words. Their tracker was a hastily hired one that neither of them had ever met before, a Koliph of few words named Castil. Their species wasn’t chatty to start with, which made the irritated reprimand all the more credible.

The fur on his clawed hands was soaked straight to the skin, but it didn’t stop him from tracing a scratch along a tree root. It was invisible to Otto and Olivai’s eyes, but to his it was as noticeable as a flare. Focusing briefly, he sent a pulse of mana through his fingertips, and his vision lit up in hues only he could see.

He stood up, turning to them. “He went this way.”

Otto adjusted his grip on the poleax in his hands. “Alright. Let’s get this pig behind bars and out of trouble before he tries to summon a Monarch or something. I don’t want Garen coming down on our heads.”

All three of them shivered. They might not have known each other at all, but everyone knew that name. “Probably best if we don’t talk about him,” Olivai told him. “It’s not a good omen to speak ill of someone who…”

Who might be listening, the sentence ended in their minds. Nobody had to - or wanted to - say it for all of them to think it.

Shaking away the dark mood that had draped over them, they began to follow the tracks. Castil crouched low to the ground, moving on all fours with a gait that made Otto’s back sore just to watch.

Castil’s eyes dilated suddenly, and his nostrils flared. Without a word, he turned sharply left and began sprinting forward at a speed none of Otto’s group could hope to match.

None of them, that is, except for Olivai. With their quarry at hand, she closed her eyes and murmured a blessing. Her robes lit up in shades of gold and blue, and when she opened her eyes again, they glowed white. She took off after Castil, lightly dancing across the mud as opposed to sinking into it.

“Hey!” Otto shouted, slogging forward. “Wait!” He stumbled forward, used his polax to stabilize himself, and squinted through the pouring rain. Was it getting even harder? “...And she’s gone.”

One of the acolytes had come up next to him, and he nodded approvingly behind his hood. “Indeed, sir Farland. Olivai’s prowess is remarkable.”

He stared at the acolyte strangely. “That’s not even close to what I - oh, forget it.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The slime was beginning to panic.

Where was its master? Wasn’t he following the slime? Why hadn’t it checked earlier?

All it could do was roll onward. It was so full of sticks and twigs at this point that it made a gentle rattling sound every time it crossed a tree root, and it was beginning to fill up with the water gushing down on it. The rain was making it much easier to see, thankfully. Water was as easy to sense as one of its own kind to the slime.

After some moments, the slime realized that it was making a clacking sound. It was rolling over stone now, hard rocks that threatened to burst it and send its liquid spilling all over the mountain. The slime slowed its speed, cautious of the potential threat.

It never heard the Koliph pounce forward, claws outstretched and teeth bared. It definitely noticed the shining woman right behind him, though. With an alarmed burble, the slime flattened itself, and the Koliph soared over it with a startled screech. Bouncing to its normal shape, the slime skidded on the wet stone and tried to escape.

A transparent yellow cube appeared around the slime, and it smashed into the side of the cube with a stunned bubbling sound. Tumbling backward, it tried to find which direction was up and slowly settled, wiggling crazily. The cube shrank rapidly until the slime couldn’t move at all, and it began frantically burbling.

Almost floating at this point, the woman radiating light stopped in front of the slime and frowned. The glow faded from her eyes as she put her index finger and thumb to the bridge of her fair nose, moving her staff with all its bangles and dangly bits to her other hand. Even the slime could see how pretty she was, and its fear faded somewhat.

The Koliph walked back over, shaking water out of his fur (somewhat pointlessly, the slime thought - it was raining, after all). He glared at the slime. “Shape-shifting?”

The pretty woman shook her head with a sigh. “No. All magicks have their limits. As far as I know, there is no way to erase one’s innards.”

A man came huffing and wheezing out of the treeline towards them. A very very big man. The slime found itself rolling over backward to take him and all his armor in. “Olivai - I meant Ladenstar!” he hastily corrected, and then he saw the slime. He scowled, an angry expression coming over his face like a storm cloud. “He cast a decoy spell, didn’t he.”

The Koliph nodded wordlessly, and Olivai shook her head. “I can’t believe we were fooled by something so basic.”

The giant man pointed at the slime. “What are we going to do with that?”

Olivai shrugged. “It’s a slime. What do you think?” Raising her fancy staff, she aimed it at the slime, and it realized what was happening a moment later. Taking a deep breath, her eyes glowed white and she uttered, “Purify.”

A blast of gold light erupted from the tip of her staff and scorched the stone around the slime with its intensity, searing the startled gellipsoid. It felt the sticks and leaves inside its body burn away with the light, cleaning it of all junk. A mild stinging sensation accompanied it.

When it squeezed one eye open, it found that it was okay.

Olivai blinked in surprise. “That… what?” Frowning, she raised her staff and shouted, “Purify!” The exact same thing happened, and she crouched to examine the slime. “What’s going on?”

The giant man snorted loudly and Olivai glared at him. The extremely confused slime glanced from one to the other, desperately trying to figure out what in the world was going on. “Olivai, I don’t think your spell is working.”

She checked her fancy staff over, bangles and hoops gently clinking against each other. “Otto, it’s-” Pausing, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Farland, I’ve practiced this purification spell so many times I could do it without my staff. I’m up to it working nine out of ten times.”

Otto beamed. “There’s your problem!”

Koliph, priestess and slime alike stared at him, and his smile staled. “Do - do you get it?”

Olivai sighed. “Enlighten us of your wisdom, by all means.”

His grin slowly spread from ear to ear. “Wait, nobody else gets it?”

The Koliph spoke quietly. “My species is not a patient one, Otto.”

The giant man hesitated. “Okay, so you said it works nine times out of ten. So it doesn’t work one time out of ten. So… technically speaking, there’s a one percent chance that it didn’t work twice!”

Without glancing at the slime, Olivai aimed her staff at it. “Purify.” The golden light washed over the slime. It didn’t even sting anymore. If anything, it felt kind of nice. It certainly got rid of all the little impurities the slime had picked up along its mad roll.

Otto frowned. “Okay, that’s a much smaller-”

“Purify.” The slime burbled happily at the sensation.

Otto threw his hands in the air. “Fine, you win. With that out of the way, why isn’t it, y’know… blowing up?”

The slime released a shocked chirp. That was what they’d been trying to do!?

They collectively ignored the slime. Olivai rubbed at her chin, musing, “Well… hypothetically speaking, it’s not impossible for a monster to be pure to start with.”

As one, they turned to scrutinize the slime, which tried to scoot up against the back of its golden cube. “Well,” Otto stated, “It sure doesn’t look malicious.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Olivai said. “A wizard serving under Sceledrus summoning a monster using what appears to be a very expensive transportation circle and a slime comes out of it? One that resists my purification spell? It could have any number of resistances.”

Otto snapped his fingers. “I’ve got an idea. Let it out.”

Olivai raised an eyebrow in his direction. “You want me to let the potentially very dangerous slime out of my containment?”

He gestured to the group. “We’re a paladin, a priestess, and a Koliph.” He frowned. “Why does that sound like the beginning to a bad joke?”

Shaking it away, he continued, “Point being, I’m pretty sure we can handle a single slime, regardless of resistances or whatever it’s got up its sleeves.”

Considering the point, Olivai aimed a bare hand at the slime. “Remove.”

The light surrounding the slime froze, crystallized, and then abruptly poofed into golden stars, lazily floating through the air and fading. The slime’s eyes went wide at the wondrous sight, and it did the first thing it thought of.

It ate one of the sparkles.

It was not at all a pleasant taste. It was like dense lightning, sparking and blowing up in the slime’s small mouth and detonating in ways that the slime didn’t have the words to describe. It couldn’t even spit the taste out.

The surface of the slime wrinkled as it retched, sliding backward as it tried to rid its mouth of the sparks. Otto burst out laughing, and the Koliph sheathed his previously unseen sword onto his back. Olivai shook her head, but she looked like she was trying not to laugh as well. “Alright, it’s definitely not evil. That’d explain the failed purification spells. They won’t do much against something that’s already pure, but that still doesn’t explain the summoning.”

The displeased slime shivered. It’d learned its lesson for the day; spells were not for eating.

A moment later, it realized that Olivai was crouching in front of it, and it stilled. She held out a hand, still hesitant. “I’d like to take it to the church and examine it more closely, but I have a feeling we’re not its favorite people at the moment.”

The slime opened its mouth wide and tasted the air. Past the horrendous residue residing in its mouth, it could smell all three of them. Otto’s smell was spoons, metallic but not cold. The Koliph was spicy and damp, although that could have been partially due to his soaked fur. And Olivai…

Olivai was cinnamon and sugar and warmth and sunlight all mixed and baked into a giant roll.

The slime made its decision an instant after tasting that smell. Rolling forward, it loudly chirped and inflated marginally, pushing up on Olivai’s hand. She jerked away, startled, but gently put her hand back on it after a moment. A smile appeared on her face. “It would appear I was wrong.”

Setting her staff down, she scooped the slime into her arms and grunted under its deceptive weight. Otto moved forward, a question already on his lips, but she shook her head. “No, I’ve got it. If I’m going to examine it with any level of ease, I’m going to need it to trust me.”

The slime tried to be as helpful as it could as it shifted around, allowing Olivai to get a better grip as it turned, pressing its back against her stomach. With both her hands full, she tried to grab her staff, but almost dropped the slime in the process.

Otto picked it up for her. “I’ll take this for now. Don’t expect me to give it back, though.”

Her glare bored ineffectively into him, failing to wear his cheeky grin down. Readjusting her grip once again on the slime, she straightened, and the slime burbled happily. “As a paladin under Silaos of Truth, you must return that when we return.”

His grin widened. “I am a paladin of honesty. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to give you this staff back.”

She stumbled towards him and he jumped away, deliberately inspecting the staff’s bangles. “I could probably get a good price for this.”

“Otto!” She gasped, still trying not to drop the slime, and he ran off into the woods. “OTTO!” She shouted, and started half-running after him.

Castil watched them leave with a nonplussed expression, then shook his head. “What have I gotten myself into?” He muttered under his breath, and took off at a light jog.