Ooze Am I?
Ooze Am I?
By Geoff Bottone
The Red Dragon Inn 10 Kickstarter is live!
I woke up in the dark, on a very sticky floor.
The stickiness bothered me, but a quick tactile survey made me realize that it wasn’t my stickiness, so that was all right.
I got up off the floor and, in doing so, felt my foot kick against something that rattled and clattered away into the darkness. I again put my sense of touch to good use and felt around on the floor until my hands touched something that felt not unlike a very sticky, very skull shaped object.
That bothered me a little more.
Further exploration revealed numerous bones in my immediate vicinity. I didn’t know much about bones, but I did realize that there were probably just about enough of them to make up a bipedal skeleton.They were also all covered in the same sticky film that covered the immediate area.
I also managed to lay hands on a sword and a shield. Although they were just as sticky as everything else, I happily picked them up. I didn’t know much about where I was, but considering certain environmental cues, arming myself seemed like a really good idea.
It occurred to me just then that, not only did I not know much about where I was, I didn’t know anything about how I got there, why I was there, or who I was.
That made me so bothered that I nearly stepped across the line into full blown panic. I tried, with limited success, to rein myself in. Panicking in this situation, whatever it was, would not improve matters.
I tried taking a deep breath, which didn’t work very well. Then I tried to mentally organize my current predicament into a list of pros and cons.
Pros: I was unhurt. I was armed.
Cons: This was a much longer list and, after the first ten or so items, I decided to stop adding to it.
Since that didn’t help as much as I was hoping it would, I decided to be a little more proactive.
What Will Help Get You Out of This Mess: Get some light. Find out more about the area. Find a way to leave the area.
My borderline panic raced up from the back of my head to pen a final addition to the list: Don’t get eaten by the slime monster that’s obviously down here.
Thanks, borderline panic.
After some exploration–and a few bumps in the dark–I discovered that I was in a pretty large, circular room. Most of the middle of the floor was sticky, but the edges were blessedly clear. I found several torch sconces by using my head–ow–but no torches. I also found a passageway leading in a direction that I arbitrarily decided to call north.
I entered the mouth of the passage and spread my arms wide. My plan was to keep both hands–well, a hand and an edge of a shield–on the passageway walls, so that I could feel for side entrances. I’m pretty big, so usually that’s not much of a problem for me, but this passageway was so wide that I couldn’t keep in contact with both of the walls at once.
I wouldn’t say I was bothered by this, but it was a little disconcerting.
I decided to hug the left wall and double back if I didn’t find anything interesting. Creeping carefully forward, I found the passageway clear of obstacles. No more bones and sticky residue, no torch sconces, not even an errant cobweb. Whatever lurked down here liked to keep the place tidy, at least.
The wall dropped away from me as I stepped out into a room. My footfalls sounded a lot more echo-y, which meant that I had stepped into a very large room. I stretched both my arms out in front of me and proceeded forward, only to double over as my stomach collided with the corner of a table.
Something rattled on the table, bumped, and then fell to the floor with a tinkling crash.
I remained doubled over in the tense silence that followed, listening for any signs of approaching monsters–slimy or otherwise. But there was nothing.
After a moment, I straightened up and felt for the table. It was pretty big and made of stone. There were a lot of strangely-shaped pieces of metal arranged on top of it, and a bunch of strangely-shaped glass vials arranged precariously on top of them. Walking around the table, I found that it had a matching stone chair, in which sat–or, more accurately, slumped–what felt like another skeleton.
The skeleton no longer had flesh or connective tissue and did not survive my exploratory contact with it. I tried to catch it before it fell and managed, somehow, to keep most of the now separated bones in the chair. Unfortunately, plenty of its bones–mostly from its lower half–hit the floor with hollow thuds.
Once I was assured that nothing in the area had been alerted to the noise, I eased the bones in my arms down onto the floor. As I did, I discovered a small, circular piece of metal. I picked it up. I think it was a ring.
I realized at that moment that, even though I didn’t know who I was, I was starting to get a vague idea of who I might be. I realized that I might be an adventurer, because my first response to finding a mysterious ring in a dank, lightless dungeon was to put it on my finger.
There was a tingling around my eyes as tiny green sparks floated into view. They became more numerous, connected to one another, and grew into lines. The lines spread across my field of vision, linking, becoming shapes. The outline of a table resolved in front of me, followed by a tall-backed chair mired in a pile of bones. The green sparks traced the outlines of beakers and retorts, of test tube stands and strange alchemical instruments.
I looked down and saw the outline of my body, which had an outline of a shield strapped to one arm and an outline of a sword in the other.
Neat!
It took me a moment to adjust to my new night vision ring, but once I did, navigating the room became a lot easier. I noticed some very high shelves on one wall, which held rectangular solids I assumed to be books. I took one down at random and flipped through it only to find that, while the ring traced the outlines of the individual pages, it did not do so with the words on them.
I put the book back and continued searching. I saw a weird shape hanging in space at the far side of the room that turned out to be an old tapestry when I touched it. Pushing it aside caused green dots and lines to swirl before my eyes, which eventually resolved into a door. I felt like I was making real progress as I pushed the door open.
Ahead lay a small room with a staircase leading up. Dim light filtered down from above, which drew me onward and upward. Light either meant that I was getting close to being outside or to an area of the dungeon inhabited by beings who needed light to see and who probably weren’t awful slime monsters.
I tried not to think about the distinct possibility that they might be awful other types of monsters as I mounted the steps and began my ascent.
The more I climbed, the brighter the light got, and the more my magic ring vision faded into the background. By the time I reached the top, to a doorway that was partially covered by another old and faded tapestry, I could barely see the lines at all. But then again, by that point, I didn’t really need to.
I pushed the tapestry aside and squinted as I looked out into a corridor lit by a single, brightly burning torch. The corridor was much less tidy than the level I had just left, its corners decorated with cobwebs and drifts of grey dust.
As I crossed the hallway and reached for the torch, I happened to see movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned sharply and saw…
By the gods!
Standing a short distance away was a hideous abomination, roughly human in shape but larger than any human in size. It was a nightmarish rubbery thing, its greenish skin glistening wetly in the torchlight.
I was so repulsed and terrified by the creature’s appearance that I screamed and recoiled. The torch, which was half in and half out of the sconce, fell from my hand and hit the floor, extinguishing itself in a shower of sparks. I took a half-step away from the creature as the magic of the ring once again drew in the outlines of my surroundings. I raised my sword and shield, ready to give desperate battle.
But the creature wasn’t there anymore.
The far side of the corridor, where the creature had once stood, was now empty. The corridor dead ended a short distance behind where I thought the creature had been. Hanging on the wall where it had stood was a large ornate frame.
Maybe what I had seen was a painting of a hideous slime monster, but then why did it look so real? So lifelike?
I crept forward, aiming my sword point in front of me. Maybe the monster was still there, standing in front of the painting. Maybe the ring couldn’t show monsters. Maybe the monster had turned invisible. Maybe there was a secret door and the creature had fled through it, as startled by me and my sword and shield as I had been by it.
There was a loud tick noise as the point of the sword hit glass, and a new wave of horror washed over me. Because what I had seen was not an independent entity, but my own reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall at the end of the corridor.
“Oh no,” I gasped. “Oh no.”
I heard voices calling out from the opposite end of the corridor.
“Down here, hurry!”
“We’re coming! Don’t be afraid! We’re here to help you!”
The sound of running footsteps drew closer, accompanied by the brightening glow of torchlight. As much as I was glad to hear the sounds of other, seemingly friendly and well-meaning people, I was afraid of what would happen if they encountered me in my natural state. What would they think of me when they encountered a giant blob creature in a dungeon corridor? They certainly wouldn’t accept me as I was. In fact, they would probably think I was a monster and try to slay me. That’s what people in dungeons did, after all.
In a panic, I cut down the tapestry hanging over the doorway and wrapped myself inside of it as best as I could.
I had just pulled a flap of dusty fabric down low over my face–well, where my face would be if I was a person–and picked up my sword when three torchbearing adventurers came into view.
They were all relatively young humans, dressed in the usual assortment of boiled leather, rusty mail, and ratty brown cloaks. They were armed with a variety of weapons, all of which looked better cared for and much more dangerous than my sword. One of them toted a big, thick book under one arm, which glowed faintly with magical energy.
They stopped short about a dozen feet in front of me, scrutinizing me warily.
After a moment, one of them coughed.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” one of them said.
This was good, I tried to convince myself. This was going well.
“We heard a scream,” said the one with the book. “We came to help.”
“That was me,” I said. “I was startled by…something. Sorry to worry you.”
“That’s all right,” said the third one. “We’re just glad you’re okay.”
“Me, too.”
There was another long pause.
“What are you doing down here all by yourself?” asked the first adventurer, who was a brown-skinned woman with short hair and several lip rings.
“I don’t know,” I said, glad to be able to be entirely honest. “I woke up down there. I’ve been trying to find my way out of here.”
The three adventurers looked at one another. The one with the book, who was a man with stooped shoulders and braided hair, shrugged.
“Why don’t you come with us?” asked the second adventurer, whose face was, much like my face-analogue, disguised beneath a deep hood.
“Would that be all right?” I asked.
“I think so,” said the hooded man, although I could tell by his voice that he wasn’t sure about that. “This place is dangerous, and it’ll be safer if we all travel together.”
I wasn’t sure how long my disguise would hold up to intense scrutiny, and traveling with the three humans would give them ample opportunity to discover that I wasn’t, in fact, also a human. On the other hand, it might make them suspicious if I didn’t go with them. And besides, I was lonely.
“Well, I’d like that very much. Thank you for the offer.”
The adventurers looked at one another again. Then the man with the book looked up at me.
“I’m Dehn. That’s Agara. The guy in the brooding, mysterious hood is Tal.”
“Shut up,” said Tal, with a little snorty laugh.
“Hello,” I said again.
“Who are you?” asked Agara.
“Oh.”
I tried to think of a name. Any name that wasn’t Dehn, Agara, or Tal.
“Um.”
If I had a name, I certainly couldn’t remember it.
“Well, I’m…”
Dhara? Tehn? Aal? No. No good. Think. Think!
“Human,” I blurted out. I immediately regretted it.
The adventurers stared at me. They blinked.
“You’re human?” asked Tal, somewhat dubiously.
“Yes!” I said, nodding vigorously, desperately hoping that enthusiasm would make up for my lack of creativity.
“Do you mean that you are a human,” asked Agara, “or that your name is human.”
“Both,” I said, without thinking. “It’s a funny story, actually.”
“Is Human your first or last name?” asked Dehn, raising a bushy eyebrow.
Oh no. I was not prepared for this. I was blowing it. Blowing it!
Desperate, I blurted out, “It’s both! I’m a human named Hugh Mann!”
Tal sucked on his teeth, which was an action I was bizarrely and inexplicably envious of. “How about we call you Hugh?”
I smiled in relief. I had convinced them of my humanness. Everything would be all right now.
“Hugh. Yes! That’s fine. All of my friends call me Hugh!”
“All right then, Hugh,” said Agara. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Getting out of here was proving to be just as much of a problem for my new adventuring friends as it was for me.
“We came in that way,” said Dehn, pointing at a formidable, rust-eaten and spike-covered portcullis that blocked a large doorway. “But this came down and trapped us in here.”
“Yeah,” said Agara. “Because genius over there stepped right on the trigger plate.”
“I said I was sorry,” said Tal.
I walked up and pushed my face between a gap in the bars. On the other side was a staircase going up, with a big, rusty lever beside it.
“Do you think that lever controls the portcullis? Maybe if we flip it, it’ll go back up.”
“We tried. We can’t reach it. Not even with our weapons,” replied Tal. “And Dahn doesn’t know Wizard’s Grasp.”
“I told you, that’s something you learn in third year.”
“But you have much longer arms than both of us, Hugh,” said Agara, an encouraging tone in her voice. “Maybe you can reach the lever?”
“And, ideally, it will raise the gate and not trigger something else nasty,” said Tal.
I nodded, excited to be helpful. “Let me see if I can.”
I threaded my arm through the gap in the bars and stretched out, flexing my fingers as far as I could. My forearm was no longer covered by the concealing tapestry wrapped around my body, so I hoped that the shadows in the area beyond the portcullis was enough to conceal it. I glanced back at my new companions and, to my relief, they seemed not to notice that my arm was green and sort of shimmery. They were much more focused on the lever.
Which was, unfortunately, too far away.
“I can’t get it,” I said, feeling dismayed.
“What if you stretched?” said Agara.
“I think I am stretching.”
“Can you stretch a little more?”
She looked so hopeful that I couldn’t let her down. I pushed myself into the gate so hard that the rusty spikes dug into my side. I grunted. I strained. I reached. I gritted my…teeth? Did I have teeth? Maybe I didn’t. I don’t remember seeing teeth when I glanced at myself in the mirror. I realized that wondering about the state of my dentition was a distraction and redoubled my efforts.
The lever was only just out of reach. I felt my fingertips brushing against it.
“Go, Hugh, go!” whispered Tal.
I grunted some more. The spikes in my side really started to hurt. I felt something inside of my arm begin to twinge in a really uncomfortable way. I let out a little cry of pain.
“Almost got it!” said Dahn.
He was right! My fingertips curled around the lever! I had gotten a grip on it. I tried to give it a good, solid pull, but my arm quivered with something like exhaustion. I had the lever, but I also had no leverage. I couldn’t move it.
“Let’s help him,” said Agara. “Everyone together!”
They clustered around me, grabbing me about my waist. Agara counted down and they pulled against me in unison. My arm let out a weird twanging sound, and for a moment I was afraid it would pop right off of my shoulder. I panicked, wondering what would happen after that. I wasn’t really solid, so maybe I could reattach it. Or grow a new one. Or maybe I couldn’t do either! What was I going to do then?
It turns out I was overthinking it, because my arm remained attached and my grip held. The lever gave a loud, rusty squeak and slowly moved downward. I was relieved when it flipped downward in my hand and slotted into place with a satisfying click. Then it was all I could do to pull my arm back before the portcullis began to rattle its way back up into the ceiling.
“Yes!” shouted Dahn.
“I can’t believe that worked!” cried Tal.
“Hugh, you’re the greatest,” said Agara, patting me on the back.
“Thanks,” I replied, clutching at my elbow and hoping that my new friends didn’t notice that–for the moment–my right arm was almost twice as long as my left.
My arm had finally returned to mostly normal size when Tal, who was scouting ahead, came running back.
“We’re on the right track! The exit is this way!”
Dahn and Agara quickened their pace and followed Tal as he turned and ran up a short flight of stairs and around a bend. I caught up to them as quickly as I could, and found myself standing in a tall, wide hallway with a peaked roof. It was lined on either side with stained glass windows of intricate design, through which bright and colorful light shined. At the far end of the hallway, a much brighter light shone through an arched doorway.
“We made it,” said Agara, sounding relieved. “We’re finally going to get out of here.”
Just then, something stepped across the far end of the hallway, blocking out the light. It was big. Bigger than me. Its footfalls echoed with every step, and its joints made horrible grinding noises as it moved.
“What…is that?” whispered Dahn, raising his fingertips in a mystical gesture.
The massive figure thudded forward, raising a stone maul with both hands.
Tal drew a pair of knives. “It looks like the statue from the courtyard.”
“It is,” said Agara as she readied her sword and shield. “Did you step on any more unusual looking floor tiles, Tal?”
“No,” he scoffed. “I mean. I don’t think so…”
The living statue continued its slow advance. I could see it much more clearly now. It looked only slightly more like a person than I did, with roughly hewn limbs and a craggy, impassive face.
Not sure what else to do, I took up a position on the other side of Tal and hefted my own sword and shield.
Oh dear.
The statue halted, taking up a fighting stance. Its mouth ground slowly open. A cavernous voice boomed from deep inside its head.
“I AM THE GUARDIAN OF THE STEADING OF MAXNANAN,” it said. “SURRENDER THE TREASURE YOU HAVE STOLEN OR BE ANNIHILATED.”
“Boys?” asked Agara. “How wedded are we to this loot?”
“Not very,” said Dahn, as Tal frantically tore open his belt pouches.
The adventurers dug around in their bags and packs, tossing gemstones, jewelry, coins of various denominations, a couple of nicely inlaid scroll tubes, and a few softly glowing weapons on the floor.
“That should be it,” said Dahn, glancing at me. “At least, I hope so.”
“YOU HAVE NOT SURRENDERED MAXNANAN’S GREATEST TREASURE!” the statue boomed.
Now Agara and Tal were looking at me, too, as if they were expecting me to do something. I started to panic. I didn’t have any treasure, did I? I don’t remember taking any…
Oh, right!
“Sorry,” I said, as I dropped my sword and shield on the pile. I took off the magic ring and made a big show of putting it on the top of the pile, right where the stone statue could see it.
“YOU CONTINUE TO DEFY ME. SURRENDER MAXNANAN’S TREASURE!”
I hope it didn’t mean the tapestry. I had it clutched tightly around my body and I wasn’t prepared to take it off. I expected there would have been a lot of screaming and fainting if I did.
“Uh, listen,” I said, trying to appeal to the statue’s better nature–assuming it had one. “I kind of need this, otherwise I’d be…naked! And you wouldn’t want me to go around naked, would you? Besides, it was kind of dusty and moldy when I found it and…”
The stone statue advanced, raising its maul.
“Oh, boy,” I said.
Tal and I went one way, Agara and Dahn went the other. The maul came down in the place we had been staying, blasting that section of the floor into dust. The pile of treasures flew into the air, glittering in the daylight as it cascaded down the hallway.
“Split up,” shouted Agara. “Outmaneuver it! Head for the exit!”
She ducked under a maul swing that detonated a stained glass window before weaving through the statue’s legs. It let out a roar like a mountain storm as it turned to follow her.
“C’mon, Hugh!” shouted Tal.
The statue was slow, but so was I. I think this was partially due to my size and, you know, gooiness, and partially because I don’t think I had ever run before. I gave it a good effort, since, you know, my life kind of depended on it, but Tal quickly outdistanced me, racing up the corridor.
“Hugh!” he shouted over his shoulder, “Hurry up! It’s right…”
I was very grateful for his shouts of encouragement, but he really should have been looking where he was going. Because, right then, he came to a place in the hallway where the tiles had shifted upward. I let out a sympathetic grunt as his toes smashed into the edge of one of the tiles. Tal screamed in agony and flailed his arms as his momentum carried him forward, leaving him sprawled on the ground.
“DEATH TO THOSE WHO STEAL FROM MAXNANAN,” roared the stone statue, swinging its maul back for a killing blow.
I urged extra speed out of my gelatinous limbs as I raced to beat the head of the stone maul to the head of my new friend Tal. I let out a little whoop of joy as I scooped him up in my arms and threw him clear of the statue’s attack. He tumbled in the air, landed on the floor, and skidded a dozen or so feet down the hallway, well out of harm’s reach.
I was about to follow him toward the exit when the maul hit me full in the chest.
I woke up in an alcove, surrounded by jagged shards of colorful glass. Looking up, I saw the partially intact lead frame of what had once been a stained glass window. I was vaguely aware that, somewhere beyond the opening, people were screaming.
It was difficult to process things at first. I was feeling lightheaded. Actually, I was feeling light everything. It took me a few moments to realize the problem. The statue’s stone maul had hit me so hard that I had been forcibly strained through the lead window frame. Tiny chunks of me were spattered all over the alcove, quivering in shock and confusion.
As I tried to get up, one of the larger chunks slithered up onto my chest.
“Parent?!” It said, its voice high-pitched and excited.
“Uh. No?”
The chunk wobbled frenetically.
“Sibling?”
“No. I don’t…I’m not actually sure…”
“Twin?” it peeped. “Clone?”
In a panic, I put my hands on the chunk and pushed downward gently.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “This is all a lot for me to deal with right now, and I’m not sure I’m up to it. Can we maybe talk about this later?”
“Sure!” it said, right before I fully absorbed it.
I lay there for a minute, in the throes of what I would later learn was something that philosophers call an ‘existential crisis’. I might still be laying there to this day if I hadn’t heard someone call out my name.
It was Agara.
“Hugh? Buddy? Are you still alive?”
“I think so?” I paused. “Are you?”
“We’re all fine. We’re good.”
“That’s good.” I suddenly remembered why I was on the wrong side of the window in the first place. “What about the statue?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Weirdest thing. Right after you went flying, the statue stopped attacking us. It said something about betraying its creator and harming his treasures, or something. And then it kind of…well, it sort of smashed its own face in with its maul.”
I remembered seeing all the gold and jewels and magical items flying every which way after the first maul strike. “Oh. Weird! I guess it should’ve been more careful.”
“Yeah,” she said again. “Do you need a hand up there?”
I looked around. Parts of me were still oozing around the alcove, and my concealing tapestry cloak was completely in disarray.
“No, I’m good. Let me just get myself together!”
I took a little time to collect myself and rewrap the tapestry before trying to climb out from behind the broken window. My adventuring friends helped out by pulling aside the lead framing to make my exit hole bigger.
“Thanks big guy,” said Tal, thumping me on the arm once I had reached the other side. “I would have been flatter than a crepe.”
“I’m just glad you’re all right,” I said.
“I am, and I definitely owe you one.”
“Aw,” I said. “You don’t owe me anything. It’s fine. I’m glad to help.”
We spent the next few minutes quietly picking up our various treasures. My magic ring was a little smushed, but my sword and shield were surprisingly okay. Once everything was packed away, we set off down the hallway toward the exit, carefully climbing over the broken ruins of the stone statue.
As we approached the archway and its beam of brilliant daylight, I felt my steps begin to slow. I realized that, out there, without the dungeon shadows to provide extra concealment, it wouldn’t take long for my companions to realize what I was. For a moment, I decided to risk it. Maybe I could pass my appearance off as a curse or a rare disease, or something. They might believe me.
Or they might scream. And point. And draw their weapons.
I didn’t want that. Better to be honest with them and part ways here than have it come to that.
“Uh. Hey.”
Agara, Dahn, and Tal all turned, and realized that they were several steps ahead of me.
“What is it?” asked Dahn.
“Before we go outside, I wanted to just say that…well. This has been really fun. And scary. But mostly fun! But I haven’t been completely honest with you about who or what I am.”
“I’m not a human,” I said. “I’m a…”
I let the ratty tapestry fall from my shoulders, revealing my true form to my companions. I was, however, really baffled that they were smiling at me.
“Slime person,” said Dahn, his smile widening. “Yeah. We know.”
I blinked. “How did you know? I was so careful!”
The three exchanged a look. Then Dahn said. “All right. For starters, humans aren’t usually eight feet tall. Aside from that…”
He pointed at my feet. I looked down and saw thick green, rubbery legs sticking out from underneath the tapestry.
Oh. Oops.
“Ha. Well. Now I’m embarrassed,” and with only a modestly further embarrassing slurping sound I wiggled about two feet of myself from height to width.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” said Agara, patiently. “And no need to be worried that we’re going to scream and flee. Like Dahn said, we’ve known you were a slime person when we first met you, but you’ve been very nice and helpful, and we’d love for you to come along.”
I was relieved to hear that, and said so.
“In fact,” said Tal, “we’re about to introduce you to our favorite part of the adventuring process.”
“What’s that?”
“Drinks at the Red Dragon Inn!” said Tal, grinning.
“Ooh, that’s fun,” I said, “I think I might like drinking!”
“I’m sure you will,” said Agara, giving me an appraising look, “but before we do that, we need to introduce you to the concept of pants. Maybe workshop that name of yours, too.”