Rurik and the Slimes

  Rurik liked slimes.

  Slimes, as a general rule, didn’t yell at you. Didn’t slap you upside the head. Didn’t tell you, “Rurik too big, too slow, too stupid for tribe.” Slimes just were. They glided around the caves, glowing soft blues and greens, like they’d swallowed a bit of sky and were saving it for later.

  Rurik watched them now, chin on his knees, scales dull in the low light. A slime oozed close to him, quivering slightly, and he nudged it with one big clawed toe. It jiggled in response, and he grinned, a little flash of fangs. “Good slime,” he muttered.

  “Rurik!” His mother’s voice echoed down the cavern, soft but insistent. “What you doing? Come home.”

  “Watching slimes,” he called back.

  “Slimes boring,” she said, appearing from the shadows, her arms full of mushrooms. She paused when she saw him sitting there, too big for his own body, his long tail curled around his feet, the curve of his horns catching the dim light. She smiled. “But not to you, eh?”

  He shrugged, narrow shoulders rising beneath scaly skin. “Slimes nice.”

  “Slimes are slimy,” she teased, sitting beside him. “But if you like them, then good.” She put a hand on his shoulder — clawed, like his — the quiet, familiar comfort of one kobold to another. “Still, no more slime-watching today. Your father’s waiting.”

  The smile slid off Rurik’s face like a dropped stone. “For what?”

  Her voice softened, but not enough to hide the worry. “For sparring.”

  “I hate sparring.”

  “I know.” She stood, brushing cave dust from her knees. “But better to spar with him than fight him, no?”

  Rurik didn’t move. The slime nudged his foot again, as if encouraging him to stay.

  “Rurik,” his mother said gently. “Come now. Be good boy.”

  With a heavy sigh, he rose to his feet, claws clicking lightly on stone. The slime jiggled, like it was waving goodbye, and Rurik gave it one last nudge before following his mother out of the cavern.

  Rurik followed her through the tunnels, his steps slow, dragging, like the weight in his chest had sunk into his feet. The slimes were behind him now, their soft glow swallowed by the dark. Ahead, the torchlight flickered, casting jagged shadows on the stone walls carved by generations of claw and fire. The air grew hotter, the scent of sweat and iron pressing against his snout.

  His mother adjusted the mushrooms in her arms. “Don’t drag feet,” she murmured. “Makes you look like prey.”

  Rurik scowled but straightened, spines along his back bristling slightly. “I hate sparring.”

  “I know.” She stood, brushing cave dust from her knees. “But better to spar with him than fight him, no?”

  Rurik didn’t move. The slime nudged his foot, as if encouraging him to stay.

  “Rurik,” his mother said gently. “Come now. Be good boy.”

  With a heavy sigh, he rose to his feet. The slime jiggled, like it was waving goodbye, and Rurik gave it one last nudge before following his mother out of the cavern.

  Rurik followed his mother through the tunnels, his steps slow, dragging, like the weight in his chest had sunk into his feet. The slimes were behind him now, their soft glow swallowed by the dark. Ahead, the torchlight flickered, casting jagged shadows on the walls. The air grew hotter, the scent of sweat and iron pressing against his skin.

  His mother adjusted the mushrooms in her arms. “Don’t drag feet,” she murmured. “Makes you look like prey.”

  Rurik scowled but straightened. “I hate sparring.”

  She sighed. “I know.”

  They stepped into the sparring pit, where his father stood waiting. Thick arms, jagged blade, eyes like flint. He barely glanced at Rurik before turning his glare to his wife.

  “Too late,” he growled. “Boy slow. Weak.”

  Rurik stiffened, but his mother just tilted her head, unconcerned. “Boy was helping me.”

  His father scoffed. “Helping. Helping is excuse for weaklings.”

  Without warning, he snatched a small rock from the ground and hurled it at her head.

  She moved like lightning, ducking to the side. The rock sailed past, clattering against the cavern wall. She bared her teeth at him, eyes flashing. “You throw things at me now?” she hissed.

  His father smirked. “If you slow, you deserve to get hit.”

  Rurik’s fists clenched. His mother just exhaled sharply through her nose, shaking her head. She turned to Rurik and reached up, patting his arm, a small touch, barely anything, but it said I see you. I’m here.

  Then she walked past his father without another glance, her tail flicking behind her.

  His father turned back to Rurik. “Pick up spear.”

  Rurik swallowed hard. He opened his mouth to protest, but the words stuck in his throat. The slimes would never treat him like this.

  “Fight,” he barked.

  Rurik raised the spear hesitantly, his grip awkward and loose.

  “Wrong!” his father snarled. He lunged forward, slamming the flat of his blade against Rurik’s spear so hard it clattered to the ground. “Too slow! You like slime, weak, useless!”

  Rurik scrambled to pick up the spear, heart pounding. “Not useless,” he muttered under his breath.

  “What you say?”

  “Slimes not useless,” Rurik said louder, gripping the spear tighter now.

  His father roared with laughter. “Slimes not useless? You idiot boy. Slimes no fight. No hunt. No kill. Just goo!” He lunged again, the blade flashing in the dim light. Rurik barely blocked the blow. The impact sent vibrations through his arms.

  “Slimes don’t hurt nobody!” Rurik shouted, his voice cracking.

  His father sneered. “Exactly. Slimes do nothing. And you wanna be like them? Then you useless too!” He feinted left, then slashed right, the blade catching Rurik’s face.

  Pain shot through him, sharp and blinding. He dropped the spear, clutching his eye as warm blood dripped between his fingers.

  His father stood over him, blade resting on his shoulder, shaking his head. “Too soft. You no chief. You no fighter. Just big slime.”

  Rurik didn’t cry. Not in front of him. But later, when he was alone in the cavern, the slimes gathered around him, pulsing softly in the dark. He let the tears fall.

  The problem with being big was that it didn’t mean you couldn’t feel small. It’s just that everyone else thought you couldn’t.

  Rurik stumbled through the tunnels, unfamiliar walls closing in around him, his hand still pressed to his face where the blade had caught him. The pain was sharp, deep, but the ache in his chest was worse. His father’s words sat heavy in his ribs, settling there like stones.

  Too soft. Too slow. Too nothing.

  Blood dripped between his fingers, warm and sticky. He ignored it.

  The air changed.

  It wasn’t the stale damp of the deep tunnels or the cool stillness of untraveled paths. No, this was something else. The kind of wrong you didn’t notice at first, not until you realized your body had been tensing for minutes without you meaning to.

  The stone here was slick, but not with water. Something darker. Something fouler.

  Then a groan. Low, wet, bubbling.

  Rurik’s breath hitched. He turned toward the sound. What was he expecting? A wounded tribesman? A stray beast? Something that belonged?

  But nothing about what stepped into the torchlight belonged.

  It had been something once, but it wasn’t anything anymore.

  Its body was twisted, hunched, as if it had forgotten how to stand properly. Skin hung from it in wet, yellow-brown sheets, loose where it should have been tight, torn where it should have been whole. The lower half of its face was missing. Torn away. What remained was worse: blackened flesh, a tongue dangling uselessly, twitching like it was still trying to form words.

  And its eyes. Its eyes.

  Red. Bright. Burning in the dark like coals that refused to die.

  It saw him.

  And then it ran.

  Rurik barely had time to throw his arms up before it slammed into him. It was fast. Faster than it should have been. He hit the wall hard, breath leaving his lungs in a rush. Claws scraped against his arms, his chest, searching for something soft, something vital.

  He struck back, one solid punch into its ribs. Something cracked beneath his knuckles, but it didn’t react. Just pushed harder, its fingers tightening like it had already decided he wasn’t a person, just meat.

  Rurik’s panic sharpened.

  He had never fought like this before. His father trained him, sure, but training had rules. This didn’t. This wasn’t about proving something. This was dying or not dying.

  He tried to twist free, but it was stronger. Faster. He could feel it pressing him down, feel the heat of its ragged breath against his neck, smell the stench of rot and bile.

  Then a wet plop.

  The creature stilled.

  So did Rurik.

  Something small and round wobbled at his feet.

  A slime.

  It hesitated for only a second. Then, with the slow, determined movement of something that didn’t know it should be afraid, it climbed.

  Up the creature’s leg.

  Up its back.

  And then onto its skull.

  The hiss came first.

  Then the sizzle.

  The thing shuddered. A horrible, rattling sound rose from its ruined throat. Its flesh, already loose and rotting, peeled away beneath the slime’s touch, burning, dissolving. Smoke curled from where the little creature clung tight.

  Rurik didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate.

  He drove his fist into the ruined, melting section of the thing’s skull.

  It screeched, a high, strangled sound, half-breath, half wrong. It thrashed, fingers scrabbling against his shoulders, but Rurik didn’t stop. He struck again. Again. Again. Bone cracked beneath his knuckles, then gave entirely.

  The thing collapsed.

  Its body twitched once. Then nothing.

  Silence.

  Rurik’s breath came in ragged gulps, his chest heaving. He looked down at his hands, shaking, covered in something far worse than blood.

  And then he looked at the slime.

  It pulsed faintly, still resting on what was left of the thing’s head.

  Rurik swallowed. His throat was dry.

  “…Good slime,” he muttered.

  The slime jiggled, like it agreed.

  Rurik ran.

  His feet pounded against the stone, heart slamming against his ribs, the wet, awful mess of his face barely registering in the rush of panic. He had no idea how far he had gone, only that the dark was behind him, and the tunnels of home were ahead.

  He wasn’t sure when he started yelling.

  “Something in the tunnels!” His voice echoed, cracking against the walls. “Something’s down there!”

  Shapes flickered in the firelight as he burst into the main cavern. Kobolds turning, eyes glinting in the dark. The sound of work slowed. Hushed voices rose.

  His father stepped forward from the sparring pit, arms crossed, already scowling. “What this?”

  Rurik heaved in air, struggling to breathe, to think, to make them understand.

  “I—something—it attacked me!” he gasped, still shaking. “Not—not a beast, not a person—something else. It ran at me, grabbed me, it—” He faltered, suddenly realizing how insane he must sound. He looked around, eyes darting to the others. “It was rotting! Its face was gone, and its eyes—they were red, burning—”

  His father snorted. “Pah. Just skeleton.”

  Rurik’s stomach dropped. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, it—”

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  His father waved him off with a sharp gesture. “You make big fuss over nothing. You see bones move and run like scared hatchling?” He spat on the ground. “No son of mine this weak.”

  A few chuckles rose from the others.

  Rurik felt something cold curdle in his stomach.

  He turned to the crowd, desperate. “It wasn’t a skeleton,” he pleaded, looking at anyone who would listen. “It—it was fast! It was strong! It nearly killed me—”

  No one moved. No one believed him.

  No one except his mother.

  She wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t scoffing. She was watching him, her eyes sharp and knowing.

  “You sure, Rurik?” she asked quietly.

  He swallowed, nodding.

  Her hands tightened around the basket she held, claws flexing against the woven reeds. “Then we listen.”

  His father scoffed, stepping closer, towering over both of them. “We do not listen,” he said. “We fight. If he saw something, then we kill it. Simple.”

  Rurik clenched his fists. “You don’t understand—”

  His father jabbed a clawed finger at his chest. “What I understand is that you come running, whining, shouting, instead of fighting.” His lips curled, baring teeth. “Weak. Just like—”

  Rurik nearly hit him.

  For a second, just a second, the urge boiled inside him. His father’s sneering face, his words, his complete refusal to listen, to see him. It all twisted up inside Rurik like a storm, and he almost let it loose.

  But he didn’t.

  Because he was still scared of him.

  His father must have seen something in his face, because he snorted, stepping back. “Hmph. Thought so.”

  Rurik’s chest burned.

  Then a sound.

  A long, rattling moan.

  It echoed from the tunnels.

  The laughter died.

  Kobolds turned toward the dark, ears flicking, tails stiffening.

  Another groan. Wet. Thick.

  Then the smell hit.

  Rot.

  Rurik barely had time to breathe before something lurched from the tunnels.

  Not one.

  Not two.

  More. Too many.

  Their bodies shambled forward, hunched and broken, pieces of them missing. Skin blackened and peeled. Red eyes gleamed in empty sockets. Mouths, some missing jaws, twitched, as if still remembering what it was like to chew.

  They rushed. Screams erupted.

  Rurik barely had time to think before one slammed into a kobold near the entrance, knocking him flat. Claws tore through scales. Teeth sank into flesh.

  Blood hit the stone.

  His father roared. Rurik moved.

  The first one hit him hard, and Rurik barely managed to keep his footing. It was fast. Strong. Not alive, but not bones, either. He grabbed its arms, its flesh sloughing off beneath his grip, and for a moment, they wrestled like animals. Its breath stank like something long buried, but its strength was real.

  He threw it off, sending it sprawling into the cavern wall, but before he could catch his breath, another one rushed him.

  He fought back with his fists. His claws. His teeth, when he had to. They weren’t like the beasts of the caves. They didn’t stagger when hit. They didn’t bleed like things that were supposed to be dead. His blows landed, but they never stopped.

  His father roared, cutting through them like a warlord of old, his jagged blade carving deep into rotting bodies. He moved like a creature that had waited his whole life for this kind of fight. No hesitation. No fear. Just raw, relentless power.

  But even he could only hold them off for so long.

  They overwhelmed him, pouring over him like a wave, clawing, snapping. Rurik heard him grunt, a sharp, short sound of surprise as the weight of them dragged him down.

  That was it.

  No scream. No last words. Just a sound, and then he was gone beneath them.

  Something twisted in Rurik’s stomach, but he didn’t have time to feel it.

  His mother was still fighting.

  She was fast, moving between them with a hunter’s grace, her spear darting in and out, striking before they could touch her. She didn’t fight like his father. She fought like someone who knew she couldn’t take a hit. So she never did.

  Until her foot slipped.

  She had just run one of them through, twisting the spear to make sure it stayed dead, when another caught her from behind. Not a full grab, just a hand at the back of her neck, but it was enough.

  She jerked, lost her balance for just a breath. And when she turned.

  Teeth tore into her throat.

  There was no time for her to react, no time to stop it. Her spear dropped. Her body sagged.

  Her hands lifted to the wound like she could press the life back in.

  Rurik saw it all, and his body locked up.

  It didn’t feel real.

  His father dying had felt inevitable. Expected, almost. It was always going to be like that with him. Swinging until something finally swung back.

  But not her.

  Not the one who had sat with him in the dark, who had believed him when no one else did.

  She gasped once. Not a scream. Not even pain. Just surprise, like she hadn’t realized she could die until now.

  Then she collapsed.

  And something in Rurik broke.

  The moment stretched, long and distant, like he was watching from far away.

  Then something touched him.

  A hand. A claw.

  His vision blurred red.

  He moved without thinking. His claws sank into something soft, and he pulled. Hard.

  The thing in front of him tore in half like wet paper.

  He didn’t stop.

  He surged forward, his fists breaking bones, his claws tearing flesh. He ripped them apart, one by one, scattering limbs, crushing skulls. He smashed through them like they were nothing, like he had never been afraid in his life.

  By the time he stopped, the cavern was silent.

  His breath came in heavy gasps, his whole body shaking, covered in something thicker than sweat.

  Then he turned.

  She was still there.

  Still.

  He stumbled to her side, his hands reaching, hesitating.

  “Mom,” he said. Quiet. Almost stupidly.

  She didn’t answer.

  He touched her shoulder, shaking her just a little. Too gentle. Like she was only sleeping.

  Her head rolled limply. Her throat, gods, her throat, was a ruined thing, and he could see the last breath that would never come.

  The world shrank.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn’t stop the burning in his chest. Didn’t stop the scream clawing its way up his throat.

  And then, finally, it came.

  Raw. Shaking. Ripped from his ribs like something dying inside him.

  His mother was gone. And so was the part of him that had needed to be anything else but this.

  Rurik didn’t know how long he walked.

  The battle was behind him, but it had sunk into his bones, into his chest, into the cut across his face and the dried blood between his fingers. He felt the weight of it in every step. His mother’s body, still and silent. His father’s last words, as much a command as they were a farewell. The way the others had looked at him when the fighting was done.

  He didn’t want to see them anymore.

  So he kept walking, through the tunnels, deeper, until the heat of the battle was gone and the air was cool and damp again. Until he was surrounded by something softer.

  The slimes.

  They pulsed and jiggled in the darkness, moving with that slow, unbothered calm, glowing faintly like swallowed bits of sky.

  Rurik stopped, staring at them.

  He dropped to his knees.

  He didn’t mean to. His legs just gave out beneath him. Too much, too heavy, too everything.

  The slimes bobbed gently, unafraid.

  One of them wobbled closer, stopping just at the edge of his vision. Another followed. Then another.

  He let out a breath, shuddering, and closed his eyes.

  His mother should be here. She should be the one telling him everything was okay, even if it wasn’t. She should be patting his arm, telling him, Good boy, Rurik.

  But she wasn’t.

  His father’s voice echoed instead. You chief now. Big chief.

  And he hated him.

  Hated him for never listening. For never seeing him. For making him spend his whole life clawing for approval that would never come, until it was already too late.

  But…

  Rurik’s fingers curled against the stone.

  But his father had smiled at him.

  At him.

  Like he had done something right.

  Like, in that last moment, Rurik had finally been enough.

  A sound built in his chest, raw and aching, but he didn’t have the words for it.

  His face was wet.

  He hadn’t realized he was crying.

  The slime in front of him jiggled, shifting closer, nudging at his knee with a quiet, slow patience.

  And for a moment, he let it happen.

  He let them crowd around him, glowing soft in the dark, the only things in the world that had ever just been there for him, without asking for anything back.

  But then something inside him snapped.

  His hands clenched into fists, his breath came hard, and his father’s words hit him again, Big Chief no need slimes, and suddenly it hurt to look at them.

  “No,” he said, voice thick, hoarse. He shoved at the slime nearest to him, sending it wobbling away. “No, no, go away.”

  The slimes wiggled, uncertain.

  “I said go!” His voice cracked. His tail lashed behind him. His breath was uneven, shaking. “No more slimes! No more stupid, weak things!”

  They didn’t understand. But they understood him.

  One by one, they began to glide away.

  Rurik sat there, breath ragged, fists tight, shaking as the last of them disappeared into the dark.

  And when he was finally alone, he curled his arms around his knees, pressing his forehead against them, and didn’t move.

  A Slime’s Story

  The slime was.

  This was, by all accounts, a very good thing to be.

  It had not always been, and it would not always be, but for now, it was. It wobbled happily in the damp, dim tunnels, where the stone was cool and the air hummed with the slow, endless drip of water from somewhere above.

  It moved. Moving was good.

  It ate. Eating was also good.

  It did not think, not in the way bigger things thought. It did not wonder where it came from, or where it was going, or whether life had meaning beyond dissolving things that could be dissolved and going around things that could not.

  But it did know one thing.

  It knew Rurik.

  Rurik was big. Rurik was warm. Rurik had been kind.

  Rurik had touched slime, and slime had liked that.

  So when Rurik was in trouble, when not-good had attacked him, slime had done the only thing slime could do. It had moved.

  It had burned not-good.

  And Rurik had lived.

  That had been the best thing slime had ever done.

  But then, later, Rurik had made sounds. Loud, sharp, wrong sounds.

  Go away.

  Slime did not know what go away meant. Not in the way Rurik did.

  But it had understood the way Rurik felt when he said it.

  So it had gone.

  It had wobbled away into the tunnels, and Rurik had stayed behind, and that was that.

  The dungeon was vast. Bigger than big. Big in a way slimes did not need to understand.

  It found things.

  Mushrooms, mostly. Those were easy. A soft, slow dissolve, spreading warmth through its body in the way that meant good, good, keep doing this.

  Sometimes, eggs. Frog eggs, tucked away in damp corners. Those were harder. More delicate. They wobbled like slime wobbled. But they were not slimes, and slimes did not think too hard about the things they ate.

  Other times, adventure-shoes.

  Adventure-shoes were dangerous. They stomped. They squished.

  Slime had learned this the hard way.

  One day, while happily sliding across the stone, it had encountered one such adventure-shoe. A large one, heavy, moving fast. It had stepped on slime, pressing down with an awful, impossible force.

  This had been very bad.

  But slimes were small, and slimes were quick (when they had to be), and before the adventure-shoe could press hard enough, slime had found a crack in the stone and gone.

  That had been close.

  Slime did not want to meet adventure-shoes again.

  And yet, as time passed—days, months, years, none of which slime counted—it felt something.

  Something not good.

  Slime did not have words for it. If it did, it might have called it lost. Or maybe lonely.

  It found food. It found water. It found places to hide.

  But it did not find Rurik.

  It wobbled, and it moved, and it was, but it was not the same.

  And then, one day, something new happened.

  Something picked slime up.

  It had been moving along as it always did, dissolving a particularly plump mushroom, when claws—small claws, but firm—scooped it up and held it aloft.

  Slime jiggled, confused.

  “Boss!”

  A sound. A new sound.

  Slime did not understand sounds, but it knew tone. And this tone was excited.

  “Look! Tiny slime!”

  The hands holding slime wobbled it in the air. Slime did not like this.

  “That’s... great, Grib,” said another voice, drier, lower, like it had already given up on something it had yet to define.

  “Grib think slime has potential,” the first voice—Grib—announced. Slime wobbled uncertainly.

  Grib squinted at slime, tilting it from side to side.

  “Maybe fight?” he mused.

  Slime did not fight.

  “Maybe friend?”

  Slime did not know what friend was.

  Grib licked his lips.

  “Maybe... snack?”

  Slime knew snack. Slime wobbled very hard in protest.

  The hands holding slime did not let go.

  Slime wobbled, uncertain. It was not used to being held. Slimes did not hold. Slimes did not get held. Slimes simply were, and being was very rarely an event that involved being picked up.

  The not-big-but-not-small thing holding it—Grib—frowned. His ears drooped, his grip slackened, and for a brief, wonderful moment, slime thought it might be going back to the floor, where all sensible slimes belonged.

  But no.

  Grib’s grip firmed. His face tightened in an expression slime did not have words for, but if it did, it might have been “Decision Face”.

  Then, with a solemn nod, Grib did something entirely new. He tucked slime into his tunic.

  Slime made a faint, wet squelch as it was squished between fabric and goblin, settling against the new, unfamiliar warmth of Grib’s chest.

  This was… different.

  Not bad, necessarily. Not good either.

  Just different.

  Slime had never been inside a thing before. Slime had been on things, near things, around things. But this was inside, pressed against warmth that was not Rurik but still warm.

  Grib patted the lump where slime now rested. “Grib keep slime,” he announced, sounding very sure of this fact. “Slime good for morale.”

  Slime did not know what morale was. Slime did not know what keep was, either.

  But slime knew warmth.

  And this was warm.

  The second voice—the lower, already-tired one—sighed. It was a sound that was long and dragged out, much like the way Rurik had once sounded when asked to do things he did not want to do.

  “Fine,” it said. “Just don’t let it eat anything important.”

  Grib made a new sound—sharp, loud, confident. “Grib won’t! Grib is responsible slime owner!”

  Slime jiggled at the words. It did not know what an owner was.

  But it had warmth again.

  And warmth was good.