A purple shimmer danced through the clouds, like a snake of lightning. The world around him rumbled. A distant creature roared.

  A Storm Land. A death wish.

  He watched the clouds and saw fire. He saw death. He watched it, knowing he had no way to return things to normal.

  Arz slowly opened his eyes. He was still leaning against the glass wall, and new aches had formed in his neck and shoulder. He wasn’t old, at least by his own standards, but sleeping in an odd position was never a great idea.

  “Are you still there?” Arz asked without even turning.

  “Yes,” the guard said in a high-pitched voice.

  “Oh, at least you responded this time.”

  “Oops,” the guard said quietly.

  Arz cracked a smile. He needed to wake himself up more. His mind needed to get moving. There had to be a way out. All he needed was some electricity. Hopefully. If the time bubbles were stopping his original return portal, then perhaps it would work fine aboard the Jumthin station.

  Perhaps.

  “Can you tell the scientist that I’m awake?”

  The guard didn’t respond this time.

  “Hello?” Arz said, loud enough to be obnoxious. He groaned and pushed himself up to his feet. Each movement cracked a new part of his body, with the loudest ones coming from his neck and back.

  Sleep had come so suddenly that it surprised Arz to wake up. But he would never show that surprise to another living creature. Surprise was the same as fear. If nothing could surprise him, then nothing could scare him. And what was more frightening than an enemy that you couldn’t intimidate?

  “How long have I been here?” Arz asked as he paced around the cell. His hand was mostly healed. It would scar, but he wasn’t worried about using it anymore. Any opening and closing movements hardly irritated it at all.

  “One day,” the guard said quickly.

  It wasn’t as bad as Arz thought. He estimated somewhere between one half and one full day while on Doumenus. Two days away from home wasn’t horrible.

  He paused and looked at the wound on his hand. Two days to heal that?

  “One Gargaxian day,” the guard said, almost idly thinking it out loud.

  “Whoa, hold on.” Arz pressed himself against the glass and stuck his face in front of the little slime door. “How long is a Gargaxian day?”

  “Roughly three Jumthin days.”

  Arz blankly stared at the guard. “I want you to know that that information isn’t helpful in any way. Literally nothing about that is helpful.”

  “My job isn’t to teach you.”

  Arz pointed at the slime. “I will give you credit there. That’s fair, actually. How long is a Doumenus day?”

  “Why would I know?”

  Arz sighed. At least he got the guard talking. Even if the guard didn’t seem very excited about the conversation. He tried a series of other questions with varying levels of success until the door hissed open and a new slime appeared.

  There was a tense silence as Arz stared at the slime, and he could only assume that it was staring back.

  “What was your name?” the new slime asked.

  “Arz Kurana.” He took a deep breath. “Wildil?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, good.” Arz thought the voice was familiar, but they were all higher-pitched. And with everyone looking the exact same, it wasn’t ever easy to tell anyone apart. “Am I getting out?”

  “Not exactly.” Wildil slowly moved closer to the glass wall. “While you are not officially our prisoner, we need to understand you better before we can allow you to leave.”

  “That makes it sound like I am your prisoner.”

  “Not officially.”

  Arz rolled his eyes. All he needed to do was wait until he passed one of the guards. The electrical charge would likely be enough to fuel his return portal.

  “I will allow you out once you hand over your portal potion,” Wildil said, as if he could read Arz’s mind.

  “Not interested.”

  “We will be traveling to Xylaphus where your human abilities will be tested.”

  Arz put his hand in his pocket and moved the return potion around. The only other alchemical ingredients he had were Darkfire oil, the reeds, and some parts of the Spiralwood roots. The best those could do would be to start a campfire, and it sure didn’t seem like the slimes would care.

  “I want to assure you that humans don’t have abilities,” Arz said.

  “How can we be certain? This is precisely what testing is for.”

  There was a possibility that a return portal would react strongly to fire. It was not something Arz had previously considered. There was a chance that perhaps the heat from the electricity was the real cause of the reaction that could tear those portals open. But it was only a possibility, and Darkfire oil barely burned hot enough to boil water.

  It was something he would need to test, but only once he had more return potions put together. A trip to the Storm Lands would have to be his first trip after returning home. Or, he remembered, it was called Glacirith.

  “Will you leave the vial untampered with and return it after your tests?” Arz asked.

  “You have my word as a fellow scientist.” Wildil extended a short, tentacle-like arm toward the slime door.

  Arz scowled as he passed the return potion through. He had considered sending the Darkfire oil, but he assumed slimes weren’t colorblind, if they could see at all. Plus, the oil burned hot even while in the vial.

  “In return for my cooperation, can I have a vial of your slime?” Arz asked, poking his finger at the slime door.

  “Those doors are actually made from an entirely different type of slime,” Wildil said. The little arm pulled the vial back until it floated in the middle of Wildil. If nothing else, Arz could now easily recognize the scientist because of the floating portal mixture.

  “It looks the exact same,” Arz said, still poking the slime.

  “Science isn’t all about appearances. Perhaps you will learn more from this than I will.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Is he calling me dumb?” Arz muttered. “Where is this from then? Let me guess, the Jumtha.”

  “Correct.” The glass door opened, letting in a gust of fresh air that smelled faintly like swamp gas. “Accompany me to the transport.”

  “You know, if I had the right ingredients and some time to prepare, I could maybe open a portal to Xylaphus instead.”

  “Jumthins are not interested in portal transportation.” Wildil left the room without saying anything else. It almost felt like he was running, though it was impossible to tell with a slime. Were they running or just scooting along a little faster than before? Could they run? Would they run? Should they run? Too many questions and no answers. It was unlikely that any of the slimes would be interested in answering personal questions, if those were considered personal.

  The guard followed behind Arz as he caught up with Wildil. Following the suspended return potion made it significantly easier than if Arz was trying to follow the scientist blindly. There were so many Jumthins around that it was nearly impossible to tell anyone apart, other than the guards who wore armor and carried spears. The rest, when they were unadorned, were all piles of green slime.

  “Why don’t you want to travel by portal?” Arz asked. He caught up enough to walk alongside Wildil, rather than behind him.

  “Unpredictable. Look at you, for example. You are a prisoner aboard a Jumthin space station.”

  “I thought you said I wasn’t a prisoner.”

  “I say what the lord of Gargaxia tells me to say. Do you feel like a prisoner?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are capable of thought. You can figure this out yourself.”

  They walked through the long halls of the space station. Wildil greeted most slimes he passed, though they all moved out of his way. It seemed like the scientist had a lot of respect, if Arz was reading the interaction correctly. He could only dream of getting so much respect from the people around him.

  A massive green slime door sat in the middle of the wall, leading to a cylindrical object floating out in the darkness beyond the door. Wildil didn’t slow down as he passed through the door, scooting across a short tunnel of slime before disappearing inside the metal cylinder.

  “I’m not doing that,” Arz said.

  “That is a spaceship,” the guard said calmly behind him.

  “Okay. I’m still not walking across that.”

  The tip of the spear cracked with electricity. It slowly drifted in Arz’s peripheral view.

  “Fine,” he said, throwing his arms in the air. “If I float away and die, you can live with it on your conscience.”

  “It won’t bother me.”

  Arz pulled out his notebook as he slowly approached the slime tunnel. “What was your name?”

  “I am officially Guard One while on duty.”

  Arz scowled. That wasn’t what he expected.

  New enemy

  Guard One of the Jumthins. I don’t know what his real name is.

  Fuck that guy.

  The slime was stable and felt just like the metal flooring inside the space station, despite being obviously made of slime again. For slime people, they sure did use slime in a lot of things. Arz figured it would be a lot like him decorating his study with the skin of Higgrion and Jaralath.

  The thought made him chuckle and analyze his own thoughts with a bit of concern. That was dark, even for them.

  Guard One followed behind Arz and stopped just inside the door. There were other slimes inside at various glowing panels with Wildil stopped near the front. Big glass windows covered the angled front of the ship where two slimes poked at glowing panels with their tentacle arms.

  “Where do I sit?” Arz asked.

  “Sit?” Wildil asked.

  “You know,” Arz said, squatting down, pretending to sit.

  “Ah, we don’t do that. Ready for transport.”

  The ship undocked from the space station, shuttering as a door closed, shutting off the green slime tunnel. Arz was able to watch out the window, seeing Gargaxia spinning slowly like a gargantuan marble beneath them.

  “Is that all you have?” Wildil asked.

  Arz looked around. “What?”

  “You know . . .” Wildil moved a little closer. “The sticks on both ends.”

  “Sticks?” Arz stuck his arm out. “My limbs?”

  “Is that the word you use?”

  Arz fought the urge to sigh and rub at his face. He was talking to slime creatures. Of course they didn’t know what limbs were called, even if they were technically speaking the same language.

  “You’ve never heard of a limb before? Like a tree limb?”

  “Trees have sticks,” Wildil said confidently.

  “Sure. Why do you ask?”

  “Ricarun had four sticks out of their top. It seemed more versatile than what you have.”

  Arz felt the need to cover his shoulders from the nonexistent eyes of the slime. “I didn’t choose to have two arms. That’s what most people have.”

  “Not everyone?”

  “Well, no. Not necessarily. People can lose them or be born without limbs. It’s uh . . . I don’t know. This is odd. Are you going to have a lot more of these questions for me or are you running low at this point?”

  “How do you humans procreate?”

  Arz sighed loudly and sat heavily on the floor. They had been floating along, drifting farther from the station and from Gargaxia, until finally the space before the window flashed white and blurred. Arz felt like he was going to be tossed backward with the sudden speed, but he didn’t really move at all.

  Wildil and Arz chatted casually the whole time. Guard One seemed to be the only guard aboard at the time. Every other slime was preoccupied with whatever the glowing panels were before them. Tentacle arms reached out to poke different icons and images that flashed and disappeared quickly.

  Their conversation meandered until it eventually fizzled out. Arz lay back and stared at the metal girders along the ceiling until the ship lurched to a halt. He wasn’t sure quite how much time had passed, but it felt like hours.

  By the time he made it to his feet, Xylaphus was in full view of the front window. The planet was densely green with stark white poles on the top and bottom ends. A few large rivers were visible passing through the deep green, but there weren’t any massive bodies of water that Arz could see.

  Xylaphus grew bigger and bigger as the ship flew closer. Arz was glad he was sitting as the weight inside changed and he suddenly felt like he was being dragged down toward the floor.

  Arz slid over to the wall, pressing his hand against it beside Guard One. The slime was probably bothered, but without seeing his face, there was no way to tell. Arz hoped the guard was bothered.

  The ship moved closer quickly and soon the deep green became a dense forest of grand trees. They flew over the canopy, drifting slowly down until it felt like Arz could reach out and brush the tops of the leaves.

  A clearing opened up below them and the ship set down gently, ending with a thud that shook the walls. At the same time, the door hissed open and revealed the green slime door.

  “Will you take me home in one of these?” Arz asked.

  “What was your home called?” Wildil asked.

  “Earth.”

  “I have no idea what that is.” The scientist left the ship first while all of the other slimes waited. Arz glanced around, hesitating, but hopped out the slime door when nobody else moved.

  Having natural ground beneath his feet was refreshing. It was even better that this ground was covered in grass rather than the rough, rocky ground of Doumenus. There also seemed to be fewer robots around, though that wasn’t certain yet.

  A domed building made of wood filled most of the clearing ahead of them. It was smaller than the Prime Wizard building, but it still felt massive compared to the landscape around it.

  Slimes moved about, mostly following trails where the grass had burned away, worn down by their slime residue. These trails led from the green slime doorway of the wooden building out into the forest beyond in branching paths.

  “What are we doing here?” Arz asked.

  “Testing your abilities.”

  “I wish you would believe that I have none. You have seen about everything. I’m best at solving puzzles.”

  “Solving what?”

  “Puzzles? You don’t have those.”

  “I’ve never heard the word.” Wildil led Arz away from the wooden building, instead turning toward the woods. They walked silently with Guard One following closely behind. At the base of an ancient tree waited three slimes. One had an electric spear and a helmet identical to the Gargaxia guards, while the other two were unadorned.

  “Scientist,” one of the unadorned slimes said excitedly.

  “Lord Yuther, are we ready to begin?” Wildil asked.

  “Absolutely. Guard Fifty Six is eager to show you what he has learned on Xylaphus,” Lord Yuther said.

  “What’s happening?” Arz asked.

  “Oh, this one is disgusting,” Yuther said.

  “Why is everyone so negative here?” Arz asked loudly.

  “I see what you mean,” Yuther said. “This is a wacky one.”

  “You don’t know what limbs are but you use the word ‘wacky’ like it’s normal? What are you expecting me to do? Am I going to fight this oddly named guard?” Arz asked sarcastically.

  “Yes,” Wildil said, obviously thinking it was an earnest question.

  “I’m not a fighter!”

  “Not yet,” Yuther said.

  The other unadorned slime scooted around in a circle, carving out an arena for Arz and Guard Fifty Six. Arz watched the agonizingly slow process and tried firing up his mind. He was desperately thirsty, and the hunger was an unending pain in his stomach. With each passing hour, it was getting more difficult to think clearly. And if Arz needed anything at the moment, it was clear thoughts. How would he get around the electric spear? One stab, and he was done for.

  Luck had gotten him far, but he couldn’t rely on it forever.