"What do you mean you're not up to it, Blobby?" Geline whined slightly, Blobert's face tilts slightly towards the ground, one of the few emotional indicators he has. Poor Blobby, he's still torn up about leaving the kids.
"It's okay, to be sad, big guy." I pat him on the back. "We'll get there soon enough."
Moments before, Blobert had refused to participate in their tag-team technique for hasty travels. I had taken to calling it the Blob Special.
"Cedar, if everything you told me is correct, we should head there as swiftly as possible!" Geline frowns, folding her hand over her chest. Her face is flushed with irritation, but I know she's upset about leaving the village behind as well.
"Just let him get out his funk, Geline." I say,continuing to try to comfort Blobert. He creates a flipper like appendage and smacks the ground,turning away from Geline as she scoffs. Uh oh.
"Don't you take that tone with ME young man! Ipractically raised you!"
Smack.
"C-Come on guys-"
"That's it! I shall be scouting ahead!" Geline slithers ahead in a way that my human brain was still getting used to.
Thorn burrows into the ground, clearly not planing on being much help. Looks like It's up tome. Let's start with Blobert.
"Did you really have to smack the ground twice? You know she's upset too."
A softer smack.
"Hey I'm just trying to look out for ya. She misses them too, she just shows it differently okay." As I rationalize to a massive slime kaiju, I wonder how boring my life was before this.
Blobert seems to relax, his flipper-like appendage folding back into his slime body.
"I'll go talk to her first, but, think about what you're gonna say okay?"
Ugh she probably got at least a mile ahead by now. Well, Shadow Step!
Appearing just under the canopy of a tree around five hundred feet ahead, I climb a few branches and peer out of the top.
"Geline… Geline…" Scanning the horizon, I can see a small dust cloud kicking up. I decide to try something out. I use wood transformation to change my hands into hooked, scythe like shapes, and lead forward.
Catching one of the branches with my right arm, I swing forward, catching another branch with my left. This is kinda fun, but not nearly fast enough, so I sprinkle a few Shadow Steps in. By the time I reach Geline I'm just getting the hang of it.
"G-Geline wait!"
"No!"
"Geliiiiiiine!" I whine, spinning around a branch to build momentum and launching myself towards her. I hit the ground hard, rolling a few times before I bounce against her snake-tail like lower-half.
"C-Cedar are you okay? What did you do that for?!"
"Haha… Caught up to ya." I say slightly dazed, mostly from the around-the-world I did on the branch. "Are there three of you…?"
"You fool. I was going to be back in a bit." She crosses her arms.
"Blobert says he's sorry okay, he wants to apologize."
"Well…" She fumbles around for a second, turning her back towards me momentarily. "H-He's just being unreasonable."
"He's upset for the same reason you are, Geline. He's just showing it differently. He probably wants to stay as close as possible for a while."
"Well… It's better to just move on fast." Her voice cracks slightly. "We should put as much distance as we can between us as fast as possible."
"Geline-"
"And then I'll kill a bunch of things and b-become a demon lord-"
"Geline-"
"A-And i'll be the demon king even that is my goal, that is w-"
"What really happened to your parents, Geline?!" I blurt out faster and blunter than I intended and I am met with Immediate waterworks. "You can tell me, we're friends now right, you don't have to carry it all with you. I know it was humans but these something you're not-"
Geline hugs me tight. I freeze up for a second as she sobs and holds me. I tentatively wrap my hook appendages around her before quickly changing them back to hands.
We stay like this for a moment, her tears streaming down my wooden form. Eventually she pulls back and wipes her face, making choked sounds.
"I… I… No… I'll tell you eventually, forest guardian." She says, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "One day I shall take you there." Geline heads back in the direction of Blobert, but nearly as fast as she left.
"Well that was ominous." The empty space where she was doesn't have anything to say about that, pity.
Blobert and Geline talk for awhile, I hear a few soft smacks and slight raises in voice but they seem
to come to an understanding. I of course had been in a tree far away. Like I said, I'm not really the comforting type.
As we're chatting after their make-up a loud bang is heard in the distance.
"The village?!" Geline immediately transforms her arm into the sword shape again.
"N-No listen… It's coming closer…."
I put my wooden head to the ground, and briefly wonder if that even works without proper ears, before hearing it, closer, and coming from over the mountain.
"What the fuck is that…" Slowly standing up from the ground, I see the single largest snail I have ever seen in my life. Climbing over the Kessler mountains far ahead, at easily half the siz of the largest peak is a purple snail with a shining, metallic black shell adorned with gold accents and spirals atop it. The worst part yet is that it seems to be headed towards the village, and the only thing in between the village and that monster is us.
"So uh… Is this a common thing?" I ask, keeping my eyes glued to the behemoth.
"I have… Never seen that before…" Geline says, doing the same.
"Probably could kill me in one shot right…"
"And I as well."
"Definitely gonna destroy the village if we don't do anything?"
"And leave no survivors." She says, turning her other arm into a blade as well. "You'll back me up?"
"Naturally." I turn my hands into the hook like appendages.
Before we can begin our valiant charge and loud "FWOP" is heard from directly behind us. Blobert He had skyrocketed himself towards the snail.
"BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" He yells his battle cry, the g force rattling his some form. The slime kaiju's round form impacts like a cannonball into the side of the snail, a crack erupting on its shell. The monster makes strange high pitched screaming sounds for such. large beast. Blobert ricochets into the kessler mountains, and bounces back up into the air. He crashes down atop the snails shell with mother loud crack, the snail keeps screaming.
"J-Jesus fucking christ Blobert is a demon." I say covering my mouth with my sickle.
"I-I didn't know he had that in him."
Fwop. Crack. Scream. It repeats for a few more times before the snail starts to shrink.
"It's changing form, quick!" Geline throws me atop her tail and puts her arms behind her, air rocketing out as we slide forward on the ground at breakneck speeds.
When we arrive, Blobert is next to a figure about the size of me wearing something that resembles some sort of ceremonial black and gold dress, and he looks… Guilty? Maybe this person had gotten in the way of Blobert's assault. We could deal with it in a moment.
"Blobert, where's the snail?!" I ask looking around as I hop off Geline's tail. I cast Minor Bless on the unconscious person as I circle around the clearing made by Blobert's impacts.
"Oh no… They didn't…" Geline slithers forward, and lifts up the figure. It appears to be a young woman somewhere in her twenties. Her hair is curled on either side to resemble a snail spiral shell.
"Wait.. That's the snail…?" Cautiously steeping forward, I look at the figure again. She has a light purple hue to her skin, and the kind of interesting face you'd see in a history book. It wasn't just that she was pretty, it was that she was original, she didn't look like anyone else in a way he couldn't explain.
"This is Esna, the High Priestess for our patron god Sul." Geline is teary-eyed as she explains. "S-Someone forced a transformation on her…" Geline hugs her tightly.
"My lady, my brother had no idea.." Oh so that's why Blobert looked so guilty. This Esna was an important figure in Geline and Blobert's religion. The epiphany that slimes had religions was honestly lost on me at this point.
I cast Minor Bless until my magic power is dangerously low. Esna seems to stable but she still doesn't wake up. Geline hasn't left her side, holding tenderly and whispering apologies. Blobert paces, well rolls, the clearing and keeps a look out for any noise.
Starting to feel like I'm intruding, I offer to set up camp and use my wood transformation to slowly create a curtain and canopy out of the trees around us. During this time I experiment with trying to make different plants grow. I remember seeing a. few luminous plants before and recreate them along the makeshift canopy for a source of light.
"Thank you Cedar…" Geline says, still looking down at the priestess.
"She'll wake up." I reassure her.
"I am awake…" A soft raspy voice says. Geline's eyes go wide and she quickly removes her hands and folds them to her sides, as Esna sits up but still leans against Geline.
"Thank you for stopping me, Geline."
"P-Priestess y-you remember me?" Geline blushes deeply.
"I remember you and your brother very well." Esna says warmly, patting Geline's shoulder. "Not every such large slimes come to pray at my temple."
"Y-Your highness-"
"I am not royalty my dear, only a priestess." She breathes out. "I thank your brother there for stopping me." She smiles at Blobert who blushes just as hard as Geline, which I wasn't aware he could fully do.
"And you… You're new." She looks at me with slide wonderment."You're brand new aren't you." She reaches out and touches my wooden hand.
"U-Uh… N-No just uhm…"
"You don't need to lie to me, Traveler. It's very obvious that you're not where you belong."
"And here I thought I was being a perfect tree thing…" I sigh, hopefully this priestess is on our side.
"Haha.. You are also funny like the Travelers…" She smiles wistfully. "I met one a long time ago… Charming young man, lovely kisser-"
"P-Priestess!"
"I was young once." She smirks and I wonder how old she really is. "Hmm…" She grabs my cheek and turns it left to right. "No, it must be a different one." She smiles warmly as Geline looks at me like it's my fault.
"Uh yeah… Anyways, what caused your whole massive transformation there, miss priestess sir?" I blurt out, trying to get her attention on anything but me before Geline turned me into home decor.
"An elf… I know not who he is or who he works for, but he is the one at fault. Though truly, it is I who should be blamed. I thought I could overcome his plans with my gift of foresight, but I only see possible futures and choices, and those change all the time.
"An elf? But why?! They've been solitary and alone since the wars!!" Geline says, thankfully turning her ire towards this unknown assailant.
"I'm not sure, he managed to keep his motives hidden in every future I saw. But now…" She looks back at me. "Well now I have you, my little traveler."
Great, another super powerful woman who wanted to use me to get what she wanted.
Did I have a sign on my head or something?