Dorin was quiet. As a slime, I didn’t have to breathe, but if I did, I’d have held my breath in anticipation. The news was grim, and I had no other way to soften it. Yet, to see a man’s entire world crash down around his ears, I wished nothing more than to lie and tell him it would be alright.

  He stood and began pacing. His mana flickered and flared erratically as he wrestled with the problem. His son was dying, and he was no healer.

  “How long?” The words were low and short.

  I shrugged awkwardly, doing my best to replicate the human behaviors I’d observed. “I couldn’t even see it until I enhanced my sight.”

  Leaning back against the table, I considered the problem. Samri was dying, and any convenient solution I might have provided was rendered useless by the simple fact that he was human. I could heal the entire colony of harpies, but a single human boy posed a far more difficult challenge. I didn’t even know if it was possible.

  My hands squeezed tight into fists, and I became suddenly thankful for the forest green tunic Arcane Ascendant clothed me in. I gripped the lower hem of the cloth, wrinkling the clothes in a way that I had to admit felt a tiny bit satisfying. The tactile feel was not unlike dissolving grass in frustration, and helped me feel just a little more grounded and a little less helpless.

  “He’s not showing any of the other traits shamblers do, right?” I asked Dorin. If anyone would know, it would be the boy’s father. “They tend to have rotted flesh and dead eyes. Samri has neither. Maybe he still has some time?”

  “His skin isn’t as pale as theirs, either,” Jaden added.

  Having never actually seen the color of shambler skin, I took his word for it. The small bit of hope seemed to relax Dorin’s shoulders, even if the difference was miniscule. He sat back down, put his head in his hands and stroked his horns, as if that would somehow coax the ideas out of his head.

  “Is there anything at all you can do, Suri?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Unless you want me to do to him what I did to you, no, there isn’t. My mana is not compatible with his.”

  I didn’t even know if I could trigger a similar transformation in Samri. Turning Dorin into a draken had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d done it in the first place, let alone if I could replicate it on a child.

  If I had to guess, that difference had something to do with the fact that humans had little mana of their own. If they used a rune in order to produce levels of their own, then they would be less receptive to external influences, especially those that didn’t share an origin with their own mana. That wasn’t something I could work around, not without a lot more power than I had access to.

  Dorin shook his head. “If we can find another solution, I’d prefer that. It’s bad enough that he and Tanev will grow up with an ostracized father. I don’t want to force that life onto him if I have an alternative.”

  “That’s silly, Dorin,” Samara said. “We are refugees running from walking corpses, seeking sanctuary with harpies and sharing meals with a slime. We’re a bit beyond working within the social status quo, don’t you think?”

  “And when the kingdom sends someone to help? When Duke Regent Pelslow sends a search party to find his missing nephew? When that time comes, you’ll all be taken back to safety,” his eyes drifted to the ground. “I’ll write a letter to Fallia’s family for you. My father-in-law will make sure you’re taken care of, but that’s not somewhere I can follow; not like this.”

  “But, what if we could be like you?” Tanev said softly. In one hand, she twisted a strand of platinum hair, all the while refusing to meet Dorin’s gaze. “I know Samri wouldn’t mind. He thinks you’re cool.”

  Dorin’s expression twisted as he looked at his daughter. Fear, uncertainty, and utter anguish danced across his features.

  “Tanev, you don’t understand the gravity of this change,” he murmured gently.

  “So?!” she cried. She raised her head to reveal tears streaming down her cheeks. “I don’t want Samri to go away like mom did!”

  I couldn’t stand the girl’s suffering tears. Without thinking, I tried to hop towards her, forgetting for a moment that Arcane Ascendant was still active. My knees jabbed painfully into the ground before I could catch myself, leaving me sprawled along the ground.

  “Stupid, inconvenient legs,” I grumbled.

  Dorin and Samara raced to my side, but before they could reach me, Arcane Ascendant ended on its own. Color faded from my vision, and I gathered my slime back into a ball. Back in a form I understood, I hopped around the table and onto the bench.

  Tanev pulled me into her arms and gripped me fiercely. Her face pressed against my top membrane as she shuddered and cried.

  [Warning: Salt detected on outer membrane. Immediate attention required.]

  The droplets splashed onto my top membrane. I fought the urge to recoil. The salty projectiles were tiny, and I could withstand the burning sensation for a little while. Tanev all but curled herself around me. I didn’t know what else to do, but I let her hold me tight. After a few moments, Samara joined us, putting a gentle hand on the girl’s back and stroking her gently.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Shh, it’s going to be okay, Tan. Samri will be just fine; you’ll see!”

  Her comforting words soothed Tanev slightly. She leaned back into her aunt’s touch, leaning against her chest as the sobs slowed. Nearby, I could see Jaden studying the wood grains of the table, no doubt trying to keep himself together. Dorin watched the whole scene, helplessness plain on his face.

  The next morning, I rose from my fruit bowl before anyone else. In the night, I’d moved my bowl across the shack, settling down between Samri and Jaden’s sleeping mats. Even if there was little I could do to heal a human, I wanted to be close…just in case.

  As I slipped from the bowl and slowly oozed my way around its occupants, I noted that Feydian had returned sometime in the night. However, his blanket still lay folded to the side, as if he’d forgotten about it entirely upon his arrival. Worried about his health, I did my best to pull it over him with a pseudopod. It wasn’t great, but he seemed to relax.

  Much as I wished I could stay with them, or maybe keep an eye on Samri’s condition, I was needed elsewhere. The palisade wouldn’t man itself, and the defense treaty dictated that at least two Tier 2 monsters—or humans of at least Level 7—be stationed on the walls at all times. K’esil and I were scheduled for the morning, since I didn’t need to sleep as much and she had to keep an opposite schedule to her husband so someone could always care for their nestlings.

  The morning air was cool and damp as I slid beneath the shack’s door and made my way to the pile of excess rocks the humans collected. I picked my way through it, trying my best to find anything unusual. Most of it was granite from High Ridge, but every so often, I stumbled on something more intriguing. I was searching for something specific.

  I’d found some interesting rocks lodged into the base of High Ridge. They tasted a lot like the granite of the upper reaches but were richer. The crystals within the rock were less defined, and it was far denser than the rocks above. It was as if the granite had somehow evolved into this other kind of rock. I didn’t know how it could have done so—Dorin and I hadn’t gotten much farther in the geology book since the humans arrived—but it intrigued me nonetheless.

  How could rocks evolve? Was it like how monsters evolved? Give a monster a list of requirements, and even the dumbest slime could reach for the stars. If a slime could do it, could a rock? And if so, what would their requirements even look like?

  Luckily, I managed to find one such rock at the bottom of the pile. There was something nice about it, but I couldn’t put my pod on what. With one pod, I studied it while the rest of my slime ate through some of the less interesting granite chunks. When I came across a piece of the wrong-fire-rock, I pulled it aside, too, before making my way towards the palisade.

  To my great irritation, the knights were already there. They laughed as I hopped up each stair to the platform that surrounded the inside of the wall.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Sewer Sweep,” called one whose surname might have been Silvershield…or maybe that was Corvere. I wasn’t sure. I tried not to pay that close attention to them. “You finally made it to your shift. Glad you could join us.”

  It was going to be a long morning. Ignoring their jibes, I settled down on a small stool built specifically so I could see over the wooden stakes and into the forest. No shamblers lurked beyond, and all seemed well.

  The two rocks in my pod were far more interesting than the knights. After a cursory examination of both the dense rock and the wrong-fire-rock, I pulled them both into my slime, trying to get a feel for how they interacted. The denser rock was slow to dissolve, but as it did, I became more and more certain that this rock was once similar to the granite.

  What kind of mechanisms would alter a rock that way? Its crystals melted into each other, each taste blending with the one next to it.

  According to the geology book, granite was made of liquid lava which cooled underground until it was hard. As it solidified, individual minerals within that lava separated and congealed to create crystals. Granite crystals were bigger than those of other rocks, and I was told that Dorin could sometimes see the different colors.

  Could they have been squished together after the granite was cooled? I wondered. Maybe that’s why it’s so dense.

  “Suri! Good morning!” K’esil’s greeting was a welcome distraction, as my core was starting to ache from too much thinking.

  I waved a pseudopod as the blood sister came to perch on the wall. After she completed her own scan of the area, she settled in.

  “Anything interesting this morning?” she asked.

  For a moment, I wondered if I should tell her about Samri’s condition, and that of the other humans. It was a human problem, after all. Much like human politics, the harpies might not care much for the sickness of a human child, especially since they could actually receive treatment should any of them become infected.

  That said, I was the first to admit that my knowledge of medicine relied heavily on my magic. Hers did not. She had learned from her predecessor how to heal and care for the colony. Maybe she’d have more insights.

  “There’s one thing,” I said in a hushed voice. The last thing I wanted was for the knights to hear. “I think the humans are all infected with the decay.”

  K’esil’s feathers straightened, and the tufts of feathers in her hair stood up straight with alarm. “They are becoming death walkers?”

  I explained the events of the night before, starting with Samri’s coughing fit and ending with my examination of his magic. With every word I spoke, the blood sister’s expression darkened, and her mana turned turbulent.

  “This is grave news. I will have to inform the wing mother,” she said.

  “Were you ever able to find a poultice or ritual that could reverse any of the victims’ symptoms before they turned into shamblers?”

  She shook her head. “No. By the time symptoms showed in my sisters, it was already too late. We were forced to cast them out before they became a threat to the rest of the colony.”

  I wobbled several frustrated words. “There must be something we can do. Even if it only delays the change until we can find a better solution.”

  K’esil scratched her head with a wing claw and bit her lip in thought. “Your Soothing Touch is the only cure I know of. For the women, we could perform a Rite of Feathers. They would become part of the colony, then could be healed.”

  “And the men?”

  “The Rite only works on females. There are no male harpies,” she answered gravely.

  Silence fell over us as we continued grasping for a solution. Every so often, one of us would throw an idea out, only for it to prove infeasible. No known remedy could cure the illness or halt its spread. Eventually, I settled on the conclusion we’d danced around for almost an hour.

  “We wouldn’t be able to save them all.”

  K’esil’s gaze was sad. “Poor Dorin. To work so hard to save his hatchlings, only to lose them so quickly. And to something beyond his control. He must be beside himself.” She turned to me. “You should take him away from this. Perhaps a hunting trip would get his mind off it?”

  I wobbled in agreement. “We could hunt a drake or two in Dragon’s Gate. Maybe bring them back for the humans.”

  “An excellent idea,” K’esil praised. “A well-fed human is a healthy one. Perhaps the rest can fight off the sickness with full bellies and hopeful hearts.”

  “Hey! Sewer Sweep! I heard you like rocks!” The voice came only moments before a sharp rock—and not even an interesting one—embedded itself in my top membrane.

  My mana sparked as I finally snapped. “If you’ll excuse me, K’esil, I have some left shoes to eat.”

  FRIDAY, MARCH 13th to submit your reviews to be eligible for submitting material ideas for Lord Pelslow's boots! We've gotten some good ones, and I'm so excited to see what you all come up with. Reminder that all you need to do is submit a review (standard or advanced), then leave a comment with your selected material on any chapter after 29 to participate.