Cherry & Lime

When Mark fell, I was able to burn up enough of the goblin lord that Mallok could finish it off.

Mark was a nice guy, but he had always been a bit of a mystery to us. He refused to go into detail about his past, only saying that he didn’t have any happy memories from back home.

Since we had known him, he had also been saving up money for something that he claimed his life depended on. He refused to say what it was, but reassured us that it wasn’t anything that would bring us any trouble.

He had also always seemed kind of sad; immensely burdened by something, but fiercely determined to get whatever it was that he was saving up for.

But right now, I didn’t know what to think about what had happened to him. How in the hells a greater restoration potion could do that, I have no idea, although I’m sure an alchemist would love to lecture me about the nature of potions and life if I asked about it.

With the goblin lord dead, we all went to check on Mark. The chances of a slime saving his life like that were absurdly small, and we all panicked when it looked like it was eating him. We did what we could to get it off him and out of his wounds, but there was simply too much, and it was in too deep.

His body had dissolved into transparent green slime before our eyes, and we couldn’t do anything but lament his death. But then something incredibly absurd happened instead.

It turned out that the slime wasn’t eating him at all; it was converting him instead. Being the mage of the group, I was looked to for the explanation, but I could only make a guess that was barely any more informed than any explanations they may have come up with.

My best guess is that the potion was healing both Mark and the slime, but they were too mixed up with each other for them to be healed separately. …So it healed them together, in a literal sense. They were healed into one being.

But the strangeness didn’t end there. Mark, a human man, was now a woman made entirely of slime. I had no idea what the fuck that meant. None of us did.

Slimes are said to be sexless, but perhaps that isn’t actually the case? I really have no idea.

Would he still be himself when he woke up? Would he just be a regular slime in the shape of a person? If his mind is still there and intact, then how is he going to cope with such drastic changes? We each lamented that we didn’t have a dedicated healer in our party, as they may have been able to change this result.

Without answers, we decided to just remain in the camp for now. We didn’t want anything to do with the goblins or their fortress, so after collecting proof of death from each of the corpses, we moved them away. It still stank down here, but there wasn’t much we could do about that.

This cave had good airflow, so we decided to build a fire. The air flowing throughout the cave is also why I didn’t have to hold back during the fight.

Some of the wood came from the deep-trees that had previously been growing here, but the goblins used every single one of them. So wasteful and lacking in foresight, those creatures. When they began chopping down trees from the surface is when they were spotted.

There weren’t many people in the area, but goblins were like an infestation, and had to be exterminated before their population grew large enough to begin attacking people. At worst, that goblin lord may have even evolved into a goblin king, and that’s when it would’ve become a serious threat that required more than just an adventuring party. Had we come any later, our little group of four might not have been enough to deal with the threat.

I was idly wandering through the remains of the fortress while we waited, just in the off-chance that the goblins had had anything at all of value. As expected, there was nothing. Everything was trash, including the weapons. Those were more likely to give you an infection than be any more useful than be actually useful. A stick would be better.

I always make sure that I carefully control my flames, so that even during battle, there isn’t much collateral damage. As I walked around, there were only a couple small fires remaining, which I quelled. As a tiefling of the Flame Wastes, my control over fire was almost entirely instinctual. I pretty much just had to tell the flames to stop, and they would immediately go out.

“Allamyne, he’s waking up!” Sanor yelled.

I rushed back to the camp we’d made, and I could see that Mark was slightly moving his arms.

We gathered around him while also making sure to give him space. Not just so that he wouldn’t be startled from seeing us so close, but also in case… there was nothing left of Mark. I tried not to think about that.

Though Mark was now entirely transparent, he still had actual eyes and even eyelids that somehow worked. They were a lighter shade of green than the rest of his body was, and they glowed ever so slightly, similar to the way a slime's core does, though just a bit dimmer.

He looked at each of us, then said, “I’m a… live…? What’s with my voice?”

We all sighed in relief that he was still there, though we couldn’t entirely know how he had changed just yet.

Mallok, a person who believes in just getting straight to the point, stated, “The potion saved your life, but there were side effects. We can only guess at what happened, but we think it was healing both yourself and the slime, but it was so deep in your wounds that it healed you into one being rather than a human and a slime separately. Also, as if that weren’t ridiculous enough… it also turned you into a woman. Um… a slime woman, to be more specific.”

“A woman!?” He looked down at his body, but his armor prevented him from seeing much of the changes other than his decreased height. He then brought his hands in front of his face and could see that they were the distinct clear green of a slime. He then sat up and looked at the fire through his hands. “…I’m a slime now, too?”

Sanor spoke up, “Hey, we’ll figure out how to fix this, alright? We’ll go to the Magical Afflictions Order and we’ll each pitch in to get you back to being yourself.”

“NO!” he yelled, and we were all taken aback. Seeing our shocked and concerned faces, he got up and stated, “I’m going to walk around a bit. I need to think.”

Once she was a good distance away from us, I asked the others, “What was that about? Some sort of survival instinct maybe?”

“Since when do slimes have survival instincts?” Mallok asked. “I think he’s just freaked out. I mean, there’s no telling how I would react in his situation, and it’s only been a few minutes. Let’s give him some time.”

I lightly nodded but didn’t reply. None of us said anything, but we each regularly glanced at Mark as he aimlessly wandered the wreckage. His boots were too big now, so his footing was clumsy, and he would frequently stop to look at his hands and pull his hair to his face.

His hair was more of a suggestion of hair than actual hair. It was in the right shape and behaved similarly to the real thing, but there were no individual strands except for whenever he pulled some of it forward. At some point, he stayed behind a wall for a while, and we could hear some faint sobbing.

Eventually, Mark returned and sat back down, looking much calmer than before.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

Rather than replying to me, she quietly asked us, “Have any of you ever heard of the Elixir of Within?”

When we all shook our heads, she continued, “It’s an incredibly rare and expensive elixir that, upon being consumed, will transform the drinker’s body into how it’s supposed to be. Or, who they are ‘within’, as in the name.”

“Oh!” Sanor exclaimed, “So you already have a potential solution to get back to normal? That’s-”

“That’s not it,” he interrupted. “I guess… I guess it’s time for me to tell all of you something about myself that I’ve kept hidden. That elixir is the thing I've spent the last seven years saving up for. Mark,” he spat the name, “is someone I never wanted to be. Someone always hated being. Someone I was trapped inside of.”

We were all silent for a bit, but then I remembered his reaction from earlier. “So…” I began, “is this closer to who you are ‘within’, like you said?”

He nodded, “Yeah. I…” he started choking up a bit. “I should’ve been born a girl. I haven’t told that to anyone since I was little. Saying it to someone… I got beaten for it. And… And just so much anger and disgust from everyone. I’m only telling you now because you’d all question why I would refuse to go back to… anything like how I was before.”

She curled into a ball and wrapped her arms around her knees. She quivered in fear as she looked at the ground, eyes watering and too scared to meet any of our gazes.

That… actually explains so much about her. Of course she’s a woman. So much of her past behavior makes sense now. And right now she’s terrified. She has a bad history with other people, so she might not be okay with physical contact at the moment. So then what else could I do to comfort her…?

“I’m an exiled noble,” I blurted out.

“Huh?” she said, clearly taken aback. As were Sanor and Mallok.

“Um, well, I was trying to think of a way to comfort you without giving you a hug since I wasn’t sure if that would be a good idea right now, and I thought that since you revealed such a deep secret, then I might as well, too.”

“You’re a noble?” Mallok asked incredulously.

“Exiled noble,” I clarified. “I honestly didn’t care much for the aristocratic life, but when my family arranged a marriage with an obnoxious man without allowing me to have any input on the matter, I publicly embarrassed them so they would have no choice but to throw me out.”

The two men looked at me, then at… whatever her name is now, and then at each other. They locked eyes for a moment, then nodded.

Mallok stated, “We’re not actually sworn brothers, we’re in love with each other.”

Wait, what!? So I’m not the only one who…?

Slime Girl was no longer shaking — really need to get her name — said, “So that’s why you’re always hugging and all over each other. I thought it was weird even for brothers to be that close, but just decided it was none of my business, so I didn’t say anything.”

They laughed and put their arms over the other’s shoulders, then kissed.

“Oh, it feels so good to not have to hide that now,” Sanor said with a wide grin.

Slime Girl laughed, all fear seemingly gone. “Hells beyond and gods below! I could’ve just said that years ago and it would’ve been okay? This society sucks.”

I nodded in agreement. “Hey, Slime Girl, tell me your name so I can stop calling you ‘Slime Girl’ in my head.”

“O-Oh! Um… J-Jade,” she muttered, her cheeks glowing softly as she blushed.

I gasped. “Cute.”

She whipped her head to meet my gaze. “Wh-What!?”

“Ah, um, your cheeks were glowing a little bit when you blushed. It was super adorable.”

“I- You- I- …Huh!?” she stammered, cheeks glowing much more strongly than before.

I actually had to turn my head and cover my mouth. That was the cutest damn thing I have ever seen. Who knew my friend was actually that cute?

“So… ‘Jade’?” Mallok asked, deciding to help her out. “Like the color?”

“Well, the mineral or the color, but yeah… Might have to use something else to use for as long as I’m stuck being green and gooey.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with being green.”

“Yeah,” Sanor interjected, pointing at Mallok. “He’s green, and I love it.”

“Okay, not the green thing, then,” Jade replied with a roll of her eyes. “Still though, I’d like to be human again. I’m actually pretty close to being able to finally afford that elixir, which… shit.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“My Guild account belongs to a human man.”

“Oh. Yeah… That could be a problem.”

“Hmm… What if I died?”

“What!?”

“Wait, not for real! I mean, like, as his party members, you’d be able to collect his savings. I had you all written as my next of kin.”

“Okay, so problem solved, then.”

“Well, maybe. First, we’ll have to see if someone at the MAO can turn me back into a human. And specifically without making me look like I did before. But I would still take being a slime woman rather than a human man any day. That guy can die for real.

“Anyway, if that doesn’t work, then I can try the elixir. But I don’t know if it could change me so drastically. I’m pretty far from human, right now.

“Oh, and there’s also the fact that a decent chunk of my savings, once you’ve collected them, will be spent on like, clothes and armor… and whatever changes to my gear that I’ll be needing. Plus other stuff. Girl stuff. I don’t know what that stuff is yet, but now that I feel like I can finally exist, I’ll probably go a little wild. Allamyne, I, um, hope you’ll be willing to help me with some of that.”

I smiled. “Of course! Anything for a cutie like you!”

Her mouth was open and she was blushing intensely again. Who knew complimenting someone could be so entertaining? …This might become a problem for me.

“Those are all good points,” Mallok said. “But what about the fact that you’re, at least for the time being, a person made of slime? That might get you some negative attention.”

“Actually, it probably won’t be a big deal,” I said. “With all the different peoples out there, I don’t think she’ll stand out to a significant degree. At least not in larger cities. People also might just think she’s hexed or something.”

“Okay, so that might not be a huge issue, but I guess we’ll see when we get there,” Jade said. “But that does lead to a different problem. In a human-centric city, having a human doing the talking for the group made things faster and easier. We dealt with the same issue when we were in an orc-centric city.”

“Yeah, that’ll be annoying to deal with, but it’ll mostly just slow us down a bit sometimes,” Sanor said. “Maybe we could go to one of the tiefling domains after this? Or, wait…” he trailed off, looking at me.

I shrugged. “Any of the domains other than the Flame Wastes should be fine. I doubt anything would happen even within the Flame Wastes, but I’d rather not go back. Wasn’t exactly a happy place for me.”

Jade nodded in solidarity.

“Why is it called the Flame Wastes anyway?” Sanor asked. “I heard it’s a massive jungle there.”

I nodded. “That’s how it is now, but thousands of years ago, it was just a scorching desert. Flame tieflings thrive in such heat, so they settled and cultivated the area. So it’s called the ‘Flame Wastes’ because it was the homeland of the flame tieflings and was originally a wasteland.”

“That’s interesting,” Mallok nodded. “I’ve always sort of wondered, but how do you fare in, well, anywhere other than there?”

“It’s not a significant difference, but compared to other races, we’re affected by cold more. That’s about it. Now that I’m thinking about stuff like that, we’ll have to figure out how much of slime biology applies to you,” I said, looking at Jade.

She looked a little saddened by that. “Yeah. It’s not like they live only in super poisonous swamps or anything, but I might need, like… moisture maybe? And slimes eat pretty much anything, I think.

“Oh, speaking of, I feel… well, hungry wouldn’t be the right word, but I just have this knowledge of needing to eat? It’s difficult to describe. Oh, I hope I can still eat like a normal person…” she trailed off.

“Please don’t remind me of that swamp. Just thinking about it brings the smell back. That place was beyond rank,” I shuddered at the memory. “Speaking of, this place is also rank, and I think now that Jade is recovered, we can finally leave and eat something away from all the smell.”

———

After picking up our things, we began the journey back out. As we walked, we passed a few slimes along the way, as well as one cowering goblin who seemed to have run away. It was killed indiscriminately.

“So Jade,” Mallok began, after we had killed another slime. “Do you feel any sort of connection to these slimes? Or new or missing senses?”

“Nah, they’re still just dumb slimes. Even if I felt connected to them somehow, I still wouldn’t object to getting rid of them. As for senses… there is one minor thing. I didn’t notice it earlier because of the fire, but I can sort of just tell where you are because of the heat you give off. Especially you, Allamyne.

“It’s not super precise or anything, but I can just feel where there’s something warmer. It even feels a little pleasant, I suppose?”

“Pleasant how?”

“Hmm… If I had to compare, I guess it’s sort of like sitting in front of a warm fire on a chilly day. Just this cozy sort of feeling.”

“Huh. Maybe it’s because of your human half that you don’t equate warmth with food? But it makes sense that Allamyne would seem warmer, she is a flame tiefling, after all.”