“Lay-Maker. Depth-Strider. Truth-Seeker.”

Cheery, clacketing words echoed from the squelching sounds, a disgustingly mechanical contrast, now that Apexus could see the demon. To call it a creature would have been an affront to living creatures. It was a physical impossibility made flesh and that meant quite a bit said by a slime.

“Skin-Bringer. Dark-Stalker. Spell-Flinger.”

It continued to rant on, always three batches of two connected words, spoken in a steady rhythm, all while Apexus still tried to understand what exactly he was looking at. It was like a carpet of human skin, stretched out in a grotesque way and stitched together with tiny legs, like a centipede’s, still wiggling around at times.

“New-creature. Lightless-Reaper. Bone-Creeper.”

It was wider than some houses, a show untypical of its kind, showing just how many people it got to consume over the years. Laying on the floor like a fleshy carpet, the surface of white, brown, black and all different kinds of skin moved eternally like an unsteady ocean.

“News-bringer. Freedom-Ringer. False-Speaker.”

The rippling had the same source as the squelching sound. Apexus could see this when managing to glance under the surface, seeing yet more of the thin legs of varying sizes wiggle in the little ways an exoskeleton allowed. The legs were directly attached to some sort of semi-liquid membrane, to which the human skin was attached.

“Hello-Monster. Greetings-Creature. Salutations-Friend.”

Apexus took a step backwards as the demon rose, the centre of it thin body pulled upwards by some invisible hand. A centre patch of skin as black as tar was now clearly visible, towering far above Apexus as the horrid monstrosity transformed from a carpet into a tower. The ground it had previously covered revealed withered moss, the shreds of torn, blood red robes, and a number of decaying bodies.

None of them had even a single bite taken out of them. Indeed, it seemed like they hadn’t been harmed whatsoever. Save for their skin, which had carefully been removed by the longer legs of the creature. Like a worm knew to dig, a bird how to sing, so did the Skinwalker demon know how to perfectly rip off the human epidermis.

It rose to be as tall as the ceiling allowed it to, its body a grotesque warping of a humanoids under a robe, legs protruding outwards. Short and thin, curved like sickles, they stretched out the gaps between skin patches and the holes where mouths and eyes of its victims had formerly been.

It was the sheer amount of murder that Apexus saw stitched together that managed to make him sick to the acid. All while the cheery, clacketing voice continued, barely overpowering the squelching of the demon’s singular internal organ continuing to cling onto the skin and birth more and more legs.

“Friend-Foe? New-Apprentice? Demon-Tamer?” the Skinwalker spoke from that central, pitch black patch, piece. Now that it was fully upright, it looked like an armless, cowl-covered torso. The head had all the right pieces of human exterior, lips, nose, ears, but they all had a smoothness to their surface that made it seem more like polished stone than proper skin. Furthermore, the sockets of its eyes were empty, and its mouth only filled with more centipede legs.

Apexus continued to back up, now in search of a way to defeat this thing. They both seemed to have bodies with similar baselines. Large, slow, heavy and flexible, but the Skinwalker had two clear advantages over the chimeric slime. The demon was the superior in all of them and his killing method, those sickle-like legs, had a tremendously longer reach than Apexus’ acid.

‘Own advantages,’ the slime thought as he continued to analyse his way around the battlefield. The Skinwalker followed, more curious than hostile. It seemed the superiority in all aspects included being the slower of the two of them, at least as far as ground movements were concerned. There was also the obvious thing, the demon wasn’t the dullest thing Apexus had ever encountered, but he clearly wasn’t nearly on the level of intellect the evolving blob was.

Taking a protruding sickle, Apexus ripped at it while he took another step backwards. The leg came off easily, the demon didn’t even seem to notice the loss. A new one didn’t immediately spring up, so it didn’t seem like the Skinwalker had enormous regeneration. Regardless, it had several hundreds of these legs, so yanking them out one at a time didn’t seem like a proper strategy.

‘Would it follow to shallower areas?’ Apexus wondered, always careful to follow his own steps backwards to avoid suddenly finding himself back to the wall. Where they currently were, the ceiling was quite tall, allowing the Skinwalker to use its size for a range advantage. Better to spread it out, that black tar in the middle was clearly the centre of the demon.

“Boring-Walker. Slow-Tracker. Yawn-Inducer.”

Apexus decided that he would see what chattering back would cause. “You are odd.”

“Odd? Yes. Odd? Yes. Odd? Yes.” A different rhythm, but the same structure, a sudden red light flaring up in its empty eye socket. “Demon my kind. Impreh my type. Skinwalker my like.”

“Your red eyes remind me of an old man in the woods,” the slime stated carelessly, just wondering what reactions he would get out of the demon. It suddenly froze. Every last leg, every last facet of its being, stopped moving. Even the squelching became silence.

“Aaaaapooooothooooooooo,” it’s voice was suddenly deep and revering. “Sparkless-Master. Endless-Desirer. Deathless Greed, his work of Art.”

Apexus felt like he was talking to an ant who had just picked up the scent of its queen. There was a slight sense of dread he felt himself at the idea that the Warlock had this sort of effect by just being mentioned to this sort of creature. Regardless, this was a potential upside the slime wasn’t just going to leave untested. “Apotho would like for me to kill and eat you,” he bluntly stated.

“As-desired. Skinwalker-dies. Hull-decays. Spark returns to roots far down, for the demon shall return to haunt,” the abomination spoke that last sentence in an untypical smoothness. Less like something said and more like a song studied in advance and regurgitated without understanding the words. Then the entire thing just laid down.

Meanwhile, the slime could not believe that worked. He had hoped for it, for sure, but in the same way a lazy man in his bed just hopes a cup of hot tea will just appear on his nightstand. It was so good that Apexus at first didn’t dare to approach at all, first tearing off some pieces of skin along the rim.

Wherever skin was ripped from the demon’s body, a sticky liquid oozed out. Once in contact with air, it quickly evaporated, leaving only a clotted, black crust that stayed on top of the squishier main body of the demon, to which the legs were attached. No matter how often Apexus did that, the Skinwalker just remained motionless.

Once Apexus had shredded and torn enough skin to feel secure, that the Skinwalker wasn’t trapping him in some way, no organism would have to taken that amount of damage when they were already at an advantage, he approached the centre. The demon remained still, Apexus rose up and began to expand his stomach around the heart of the creature. He would feel safer once that thing was for sure dead and he could eat all of him in peace.

The second the head started to be dissolved, however, there was a sudden shift in the Skinwalker’s behaviour. The body that had laid still rippled in a panicked burning of energy. Apexus was thrown off when the demon rose tall again, ripping a hole into the slime’s stomach, out the side, as the enveloped head was suddenly freed again.

The legs ripped at Apexus as he fell, creating thin, shallow cuts that healed quickly. Only that central loss of mass was a bit concerning, but even it closed to satisfactory degree once there was distance between them again.

“SPARK-EATER! LIFE-DEVOURER! ALIEN-MONSTER!”

It wasn’t that the Skinwalker was suddenly disregarding his respect for Apotho. There was a different, much deeper sitting reason that the demon no longer dared to risk being devoured by this being. With all of his legs, the Skinwalker rushed towards the chimeric slime.