And so, walked along the outskirts of Catharsis, B.B. Santvic and her faithless knight, Daric Vanhallow. Both wore blades at their hips; Hallow also carried a small lantern hooked to his belt, recently christened the Arcane Curator's walking lamp.
Afternoon was already giving way, and in Catharsis that meant darkness arrived well before nightfall, a lesson they had learned the day before. The lands around Tertiary only worsened it. Dead trees ruled the landscape, stretching as far as the eye could manage before dissolving into a fog that drifted naturally down from the mountain. There was a constant, nagging sense of being watched, as if at any moment some beast might emerge from the shadows just beyond their vision. Firefly lanterns hung beneath the branches along the path, marking the way back to the village. Tertiary's peasants must lose themselves here often.
"This isn't normal," Hallow said, keeping his hand close to the sword's hilt, guard raised. "I've never seen fog like this."
"Remember what I told you about how a society's perception shapes its environment, knight," Santvic replied, never slowing her pace. "That will tell you everything you need to know about this place's sadness."
Despite the dead trees, grass still carpeted the forest floor. A steady drizzle turned the ground into thick muck, threatening to send them sprawling with every step. Mold clung to the rocks, insects scattered and vanished, birds took flight at the sound of their movement. As they pressed on, the forest revealed its own stubborn life.
They stopped beneath the shadow of a large tree near a stream. There, they heard it: the wet, viscous sound of the creature they were tracking. Without a word, they slipped behind the trunk and watched, careful and silent.
A bluish mass, shapeless, gelatinous, opaque. Its interior moved like a thick liquid held together by something unseen; bubbles formed on its surface, swelling and bursting like boiling water. It dragged itself toward a shrub, its body struggling to advance, warping as it absorbed grass, stone, and soil along the way. Everything it touched was swallowed, floated briefly inside it, then dissolved, becoming part of the blue monstrosity.
Slimes are usually small creatures, killed before they grow large enough to become a real problem. Little more than stains that crawl in blind desperation. No eyes, no mouth, no nose. No face, no mind. This one, however, was already approaching the size of a man. One misstep would mean a slow, agonizing death. Santvic's heart raced, and she cast an uneasy glance at her knight.
"Ready?" he whispered. The slime had no ears, but it sensed vibrations. Anything that resembled food would draw it without hesitation.
"I'm not hunting that thing. I didn't expect it to be this big." Santvic frowned. "Go. Do your job."
"Then you'll be leaving without your samples. And trust me, this one's valuable." He tilted his head slightly, appraising the creature. "It's not complicated. Reduce its vitality to zero and it melts, like any other anthemic beast."
"By cutting it? I'm not killing it. Ever."
"How hard is it to dodge a slime?" Hallow gave a crooked smile. "I'm right here. If you fall into it, I'll pull you out. Just hit it until it drops."
Santvic looked at the beast again.
The creature's body engulfed the shrub it had been so intent on reaching. The mass warped until it wrapped every leaf in its vile, viscous embrace, fighting against its own form. Slowly, the green vanished into the translucent blue. Santvic watched the slime grow as the leaves turned to pulp, absorbed into the creature, joining its movement, becoming part of its advance. She imagined her own skin, her bones, her face, all giving way bit by bit, melting as her screams faded, while the creature swelled and consumed her. In an instant, she would be gone. All her work, all her progress. Everything she loved erased, reduced to part of that crawling, sticky blue stain.
"What's with that look?"
"I'm not dying to that thing." Santvic couldn't look away.
"Well, I'm not killing it."
She thought. Thought again. Thought until the thoughts unraveled, until her mind emptied while the beast found another target. Nothing came. No image formed. Was it fear? The urge to scream without being able to? The tightness in her chest, her legs giving out? The impulse to run, to quit? She had always believed herself incapable of something so fragile, so irrational, so foolish as fear. Something she should, by all rights, be able to face. And yet she couldn't. Her body locked in place, rooted to the ground like stone.
Useless. A useless statue.
As the slime drew closer, now aware of their presence, Santvic remained there, useless. Weak and cowardly, despite trying to defy the world. How foolish she was to challenge it, only to die to a slime. How foolish, carrying the suffering of civilizations, only to be smothered by something so stupid.
"Alright."
She drew the blade from its sheath in a sharp, decisive motion.
"I'll die here, knight."
"I'll congratulate you if you manage to die to that thing. Go on."
Hallow laughed as he watched her grip the saber with both hands, already bracing himself to step in if needed.
Santvic planted her feet and faced the advancing creature. The image of the shrub being swallowed would not leave her; she saw the leaves breaking apart, felt that same fate awaiting her as the slime's body warped toward her. Now it was close enough that she could hear it: a muffled, viscous bubbling, accompanied by the trail of slime scraping across the ground, like the inside of a stomach. She sensed its heat. Hot enough to burn skin before dissolving it. The pain would come first, long and slow. The more she thought, the closer it got. The larger it seemed. The louder it sounded.
Santvic clenched her teeth. There was no plan beyond the decision not to stand still. Strike at least once. One single blow, just to prove she wasn't a statue waiting for the end. How hard could it be? Her chest hollowed out, leaving behind an aching emptiness. Anxiety. The urge to move. A spark of hope born in the middle of despair.
She would not die to a slime. Not like this.
She raised the blade, clumsy. Grip tight, arms high, stance wide open. Eyes shut, gathering every scrap of courage she had, she imagined herself before that hot, sticky, revolting death, the blue creature looming, only a weapon between them. With all her strength, she brought the blade down, wielding the elegant weapon like a baseball bat. Gravity did the rest. Her arms fell with their full weight.
The impact was not what she expected. When she opened her eyes, the blade was buried in the ground. The slime was not.
Her heart skipped. Santvic turned her head in panic, already feeling tears well up, and shut her eyes again, surrendering to the inevitable when she saw the massive blue form, closer than ever. The stench was unbearable.
Had it dodged her? How? How could Santvic be so useless as to miss something so easy, a slime, a creature without even a brain? Had it, in the final instant, thrown the full weight of its body aside? Warped itself around the blade just to avoid it?
Before she could finish a single thought, Santvic was swallowed.
She fought to claw her way out in blind panic, digging her hands like useless talons into the resistance of the slime as it closed around her arms. Trapped, drifting as if at the bottom of the sea, buried beneath the mass as it pushed into her nose, the urge to scream in pain was smothered by the lack of air. She tried to open her mouth. She couldn't. She could see nothing, unable to open eyes that burned so badly she wanted to tear them out. Her skin felt as if it were peeling away from her body; her pores bled as they struggled against the heat. She thrashed, twisted, struck at the inside of the slime. All of it was useless.
She fought the way one fights quicksand. The more she moved, the more she struggled, the more her body burned. There was no escape. She would die in there.
Until something clamped hard around her wrist. She was yanked free, violently expelled from the viscous mass, thrown clear by brute force. Daric Vanhallow caught her as she came out, already half-conscious, and dragged her away from the creature without slowing.
Santvic dropped to her knees, held upright by the knight's hands. Air finally forced its way back into her lungs in harsh, tearing gulps, expelling what remained of the blue mass. Breathing now demanded effort, conscious and deliberate; every inhale cut like a blade, a dry, painful spasm. She opened her still-burning eyes. White specks drifted across her vision, obscuring the only thing she could see: grass and mud. Her head throbbed, heavy, the world distant and muffled. She could think of nothing but pain.
Slime still slid down her skin, dripping from her clothes, her face, her hair in thick strands. When she spat onto the ground to rid herself of the bitter taste in her mouth, the strand of saliva came out completely blue, stretching unnaturally before snapping.
"Hell… hell, hell, hell," she sobbed in short, broken bursts. Tears streamed down her face, burning against skin so raw it felt like exposed flesh. For a few seconds, she had been absolutely certain she would die buried alive. She had felt the last threads of her Vitality drain away during the longest moments of her life, torn from her by pure desperation. It had been years since she had faced her own mortality so directly.
Her body remembered. It trembled, rigid, as if it still feared being trapped inside the creature. To be reduced to that state, humiliated so completely, under the weight of such responsibility, hurt more than the air scraping her lungs. The naked realization that she was not ready, delivered by a creature without even a brain, cut deeper than anything else.
"Are you alright?" the knight asked. His voice sounded distant, muffled by the slime still clogging her ears. Santvic tried to answer, but her throat closed.
How could she protect this village if she couldn't even defeat a simple slime? If, at the most basic test, she had panicked, failed, screamed for help? Her entire body still shook. The fear felt permanent now, embedded in her skin. Santvic did not belong here. She never had. The looks she received, the desperate calls to the Capital, the nights spent awake, the constant effort to believe she could touch the world on her own terms. All of it now felt like a lie, propped up by ignorance and stubbornness. Maybe this was what she had been made for after all. To suffocate. To disappear.
That was all she wanted in that moment.
For the pain to stop. Somehow.
"Damn."
Damn?
The knight's voice cut through her grief, through the sobs and broken sounds she was struggling to hold back. Santvic turned on him, hatred burning in her eyes. Was that it? Pity? Mockery? Her contempt for the knight and his cynicism surged up her throat, along with a flood of insults that would never make it past her lips. Go on. Despise me. Laugh. I deserve it. The thought pressed down, heavy and insistent, drowning out everything else. Despise me, knight.
"You're still holding the sword."
She lowered her gaze to her left hand.
She indeed was. Her grip was still locked around the hilt, the blade buried in the ground, using it as a crutch to keep herself from collapsing completely. She was squeezing so hard that blood ran from her palm, dripping onto the grass. The skin had split open, cuts that hadn't come from the slime's burns, but from her refusal to let go. A blunt, instinctive act of resistance she hadn't even noticed. Her body fighting on its own, refusing to fall, refusing to release the last thing keeping her upright. The only weapon she had left.
Even in pain. Even in despair. Even if it cost her the blood in her hands, she clung to the blade, and the blade held her in return. She looked up at the knight, as if searching his face for an explanation. He gave one immediately.
"That's tough."
Hallow couldn't look at Santvic with pity. There was no room for it. He was an Antebeing, after all. What he saw instead was her stripped bare, unfiltered by emotion, the kind he struggled to feel even when she went looking for it. He wasn't someone who felt before acting, or thought before seeing.
And what he saw, as an Antebeing, beyond an exhausted woman stubborn to the point of ruin, was something rare. A kind of courage that didn't rest on victory, only on refusal. Even against her own failure and incapacity, she remained standing. That deserved respect.
It was also absurdly funny.
The laugh escaped before he could stop it.
Santvic flushed with anger and shame, nearly losing her balance.
"Stop laughing, you idiot! Fool! Absolute fool of a man! Worst knight alive!" Her stream of insults broke off into a painful coughing fit. "…it hurts…"
"Oh, come on, give me a break!" He was still laughing. "The thing swallowed you and you started trying to swim inside it. How am I supposed not to laugh?"
Santvic tried to shout more abuse, but only hoarse murmurs came out.