The ground receded beneath me until only the very tops of the trees were visible in my sight. I trembled, unsure of what to do. Instinct raged against instinct. I had to get down. Slimes were creatures of the earth. We were never supposed to be this high in the air! I couldn’t even see the ground, but if I fell it didn’t matter how much of my recent abilities were put into survival. All that would remain of me would be a puddle of green and a shattered core.

  Yet, if I stayed…

  These harpies—women with wings for arms, talons for feet, and a reputation for dark magic that even made other monsters tremble in fear—were going to eat me for sure. I could feel it in my core. Why else would you go through the trouble of slime-napping me right out of Dorin’s clutches!? They’d been waiting for us. There was no other way they could have been there so quick. And, for that level of pre-meditation, they had to have known what they were after. They wanted me, and not to make me their adorable pet.

  What should I do?! My core pulsed with mana in a quick but steady rhythm. I just needed to think. I was a slime with a mind. It was time to put it to good use.

  If I struggled, I would fall. Maybe I’d catch the top of a tree to break my fall, maybe I wouldn’t. In my current state of injury, the chances were good that I’d end up worse off than I had been in the dungeon. But, if I waited, there was no guarantee that I’d find a chance to escape. If they dropped me straight into a slimy stew or fed me directly to their chicks, I’d never get the chance to flee.

  Put in those terms, I was torn between two gambles. Fall to my certain death with little chance of slowing my descent, or wait in the less-than-likely scenario that I get the chance to flee later.

  In the end, the fear of being eaten outweighed my fear of heights. I shifted my core to Slayer’s Stance and let my acid burn with the full strength of my magic. The harpy holding me shrieked in agony as her talons melted under my touch. Her keening voice rang over the forest, drawing the attention of the rest of the flock flying in formation around her.

  “E’rina!” cried the one at the front, who slowed the column to accommodate the flailing harpy.

  A moment later, her talons were completely destroyed. Her grip on my body and core failed and I slipped free…

  Only to fall.

  “Catch that slime!” cried another voice, but I couldn’t tell which one it was.

  My world was spinning. I dropped like a rock, tumbling slime over core towards the ground. Trees were above me, then below. The empty void of the sky chased the branches round and round until I was dizzy and nauseous. I didn’t know slimes could be nauseous, but the wrenching discomfort in my core could be nothing else.

  This is why slimes aren’t meant to leave the ground. Things are safe down there.

  There wasn’t time to think. I activated Stoneskin, and prayed it would be enough. My slime barely had time to harden.

  I slammed into a branch, desperately trying to cling to it, but my momentum was too great. Green slime peeled away from my central mass, and I briefly noted that it didn’t hurt as much as before. That thought was quickly dashed as I hit another branch, then another, losing slime with every impact before finally landing on a thick branch.

  The world stopped spinning just in time for a harpy to land on the branch next to me. Her magic was brilliant blue, shining with the same shades as the wind that carried her to alight next to me. Though I hadn’t gotten a clear look at the other harpies, clutched as I was in their talons, I had the distinct impression that this one was the strongest of the group. Her hair was braided in a messy bundle of voluminous feathers, and her eyes were hard as stone.

  “Try that with me, and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground.” Though she spoke the same language as the humans I’d met, her tone was far more formal and proper. Somehow, that just made her even more terrifying.

  I recoiled, falling back into the act of a meek slime in the face of her intimidating visage. There were zero doubts in my mind that she was capable of delivering on her threat, and injured as I was, there was no way I could fight her off.

  Though I successfully broke my fall, the experience had been truly one of the worst in my limited life. Even fighting the boss drake and overdrawing my mana in order to heal Dorin wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as falling through the sky had been.

  I nearly died! My core could have hit this branch and shattered! What was I thinking?! This was a terrible idea!

  Worse still, it ultimately amounted to nothing. The leader of the harpies snatched me off the branch with a firm talon and we were in the air again. This time, however, I didn’t have the will to fight back. Instead, I curled my slime around her talon, praying that she wouldn’t let go of me out of spite.

  It was both an eternity and the blink of an eye when we finally reached our destination. Rather than counting the passage of time or studying my captors, my mind was fixated on the lack of ground beneath me. Underestimating gravity had been a mistake…a massive mistake, and one that I would not make again. By the time the harpies landed, I was genuinely unsure which would be worse: death in a stew, or death by fall.

  The harpy around whose talon I was curled landed on one graceful leg within some kind of cave carved into a high cliff. Within, many more harpies waited. They raised their voices in cheer as the rest of the party landed nearby.

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  “The wing mother has returned!”

  “Wing Mother! Was the mission successful?”

  “Is the scout sister injured?”

  The intimidating harpy cleared her throat and raised a wing. “Sisters of the colony! The mission placed before us by the Great Mother was successful!” She held up the talon that still gripped my slime. “As the stars and the entrails predicted, the instrument of our salvation has fallen into our talons! By the time the moon turns, we will no longer fear the decay that eats at the colony from within!”

  The idea of being boiled into a stew was looking more and more appealing by the minute as the harpies glowered at me with predatory eyes. Visions of wicked rituals filled with blood and dead creatures filled my imagination, and I trembled with fear.

  Best to remain quiet, I decided. If they think I’m a dumb slime, maybe they’ll let their guard down and I can escape!

  As the cheers of the colony rose around us, the wing mother turned to another harpy that tasted like blood as her magic reached my slime. It coated her magic and stained every feather. She was supporting the one whose talon I melted through, trying to guide the hopping harpy further within.

  “Will E’rina be alright, K’esil?” the wing mother asked softly.

  The blood harpy sighed. “I am yet unsure, Wing Mother. I must examine the wound in my nest.”

  “Then I shan’t keep you any longer.”

  “If you could bring the slime, I shall assist the scout sister,” K’esil finished.

  Progress was slow as K’esil helped E’rina to an animal skin draped over a tunnel. It wound upward until we reached another cavern. On the far side, another animal skin, this one adorned with the bones of several large animals hung from a hook on the ceiling, forming a tent. The blood-feathered harpy pushed open the flap and set her injured companion on a rock covered by a soft leather blanket.

  “Put it in the basin,” she instructed the wing mother as she knelt to examine the melted talon.

  The wing mother hopped gracefully across the room on one foot before depositing me in a large stone pool filled with water. Before I could make a run for it, she threw another large animal skin over my prison.

  “Will you need me?” she asked K’esil gently. It seemed she was far kinder to her kin than to her slime-napping victims.

  “If I do, I shall call for you.”

  There was a pause, then talons clicked against the stone floor, indicating the leader’s retreat. As K’esil the blood harpy continued seeing to her patient, I took stock of my own situation.

  [Name: Suri Slimeheart; Lesser Guardian Slime, Tier 2

  Status:

  Health: 8/11

  Mana: 16/23

  Injury Index: 2 - Core damaged through mana exhaustion.

  Health and mana regeneration reduced]

  As I’d expected, the fall, while terribly uncomfortable and an experience I never wanted to repeat, wasn’t actually that damaging. Had I fallen further and lost more slime, I could have damaged my core even further, but as it was, Slime Sacrifice had saved me from the majority of the damage. It was a silver lining that gave me the tiniest sliver of hope for my chances of survival. Furthermore, I wasn’t boiling in a stew. That, on its own, did wonders for my chances at getting out in one piece.

  The basin was filled with water, but I didn’t need to breathe. For this single moment, I was relatively safe…so long as I ignored the blood-thirsty harpy only feet away from my prison who no doubt planned on using me for some terrible, profane ritual.

  Reaching up with a pseudopod, I tapped the leather that locked me in the basin. Using my acid, a tiny hole appeared, and I poked the tiniest pseudopod I could manage out the hole. Information filtered to me through my exposed slime, giving a clearer picture of the room around me.

  As far as wicked nests went, it was fairly tame. A slew of dead squirrels, lizards, and rabbits hung by their tails along the far wall, and stacks of dried herbs covered a nearby stone slab. At the center of the room, a circle of glowing blood pulsed idly. Yet, those were the only elements of blood magic I could see. The blanket over my basin, as well as the one upon which the injured harpy rested were both clean of blood magic, as was the nest-like structure of branches on the far side of the room.

  K’esil, the blood-feathered harpy, laid her patient on her back, dripping something powdery in her mouth. Crimson mana pulsed between the two and the injured one’s eyes closed in sleep.

  “This will likely be far more pleasant than if you were awake,” she muttered before turning to examine the wound. “The slime certainly was potent. I doubt she’ll ever walk on this talon again, not without evolving.” She shook her head. “She won’t like that. Not one bit.”

  With a sigh, she turned and crossed to the table of herbs. She pulled several from their piles and began crushing them, using the three long claws at the mid-joint of her wings to grip the rock. It was clearly clumsy work, and something that a human would do in seconds thanks to their hands, but K’esil did her best.

  She crossed to the basin, and I withdrew my pseudopod back into the water so as to remain undetected. After removing the skin, she dipped a poorly carved wooden bowl into the water, drawing it out and adding it to her poultice.

  “And you, little slime,” she mused as she continued mixing herbs. “You’ve caused us quite the trouble.”

  Is she actually speaking to me? I wondered, keeping my silence.

  K’esil set the poultice aside and returned to the basin. “While that cures, let’s get a look at you, hmm?” she extended a wing-claw into the water, poking at me gently. “Not quite what the entrails described. Your mana is smaller than I pictured. I wonder why?”

  I kept my composure, keeping still in the water to better convince her I was just a normal slime with normal slime intelligence. She didn’t even blink at my lack of an answer, and continued the conversation by herself.

  “The Great Mother has plans for you, did you know that?” K’esil explained. “Imagine my shock when the signs all pointed to a slime of all things saving us from the decay. I only wish they’d also mentioned how you were meant to do that. I know of no ritual that can do what the Mother indicated.”

  Did that mean I wasn’t destined to be a ritual component? But if that was the case, then why snatch me from Dorin without so much as a greeting first?

  “But, there will be plenty of time for that.” The soothsayer stood and returned to her poultice. Apparently, in the time she’d been speaking, it had cured enough to apply. She continued talking to herself in that same calming tone as she sat on the stone next to her patient and began treating the injury.

  This was my chance! With as much speed as I could muster, I ate a bigger hole in the cloth above me. Once it was wide enough for my core to squeeze through, I pulled myself out of the basin and oozed onto the floor.

  The blood-feathered harpy didn’t notice and continued muttering to herself, estimating the odds that her poultice would have any effect at all. Taking advantage of her distraction, I oozed my way to the tent flap and slipped out.

  In the wider cavern, cracks spread across the walls in a web of safe sanctuaries that beckoned me with the promise of safe earth and protective stone. I put on a burst of speed, hopping across the distance in four quick hops, then squeezed into a wall-crack and was gone.