"Ugh...c-can't...breathe..."
In a huge ruined castle hall, a girl with pale blue hair wearing a white long-sleeved tatter robe with blue patterns,
was being held up by her throat by a man wearing white armor.
Bodies were lying on the castle floor, from monsters, and half-beasts, to what seemed like humans with horns or wings.
The scenery was tainted red by not just the blood of the bodies lying around,
but also from the glow of the red moons above the dark reddish sky.
"Somebody...help me...!"
She was struggling, trying to get free by kicking the armored man, but her actions proved futile.
She struggled to talk while being choked.
"W-why...did...you...be...betray...me...?!"
"*o** **ig* ** **e*."
The man spoke something, but she could not listen clearly.
"AH!!!"
Regina woke up from the bed, sweating profusely from the dream she just had.
She looked to her side and saw Richard sitting on a chair by a table, looking at her,
then turned his attention back to what he was doing.
His gun and bullets were laid out on the table, as well as some pouches with powders inside.
He appeared to be in the middle of doing something with his items.
She then turned her head and looked around the room, finding a very unfamiliar room.
Then she looked down and noticed she was wearing a different dress and a clean one at that.
"What happened? Where am I? Did you change my clothes? Is this an Inn? Will I get into trouble?"
Regina blasted Richard with many questions without giving him a chance to answer.
"Talk slowly, you are fine for now."
"We are on a ship heading toward Acacia, and I got the ship attendant to change your clothing, your old one was dirty."
Richard calmly replied to Regina, putting her somewhat at ease.
She then got out of bed and looked out the window, noticing the endless blue sea.
She seemed mesmerized by the view, as she was just standing by the window, looking out at the sea.
"Do you want to have a look outside?"
Regina nodded quickly.
"There shouldn't be any danger here, go look around if you want, just don't enter any other rooms."
Regina ran out of the room, and up the stairs to the ship deck like an excited child.
She had never seen the sea before, or taken a ship according to her memories.
She got excited whenever any fish would swim near the surface, so she stayed on the deck for a long time.
Sometimes, Richard would get up to the deck to check on her silently to confirm she was fine,
then head back to their room to tinker with his equipment.
As the sky grew darker, Regina got afraid and started to head back to her room.
She accidentally climbed down one more set of stairs and got lost on the lower floors of the ship.
As she was walking along the ship hallway trying to find her room, she heard a whisper.
"Mama..."
She started to shiver and lower her walking posture as if she was trying to hide while walking.
"Mama..."
She heard the voice again.
"I-i-i-it must be just a child looking for his or her mother..."
Regina tried to think of a logical explanation for what was happening.
She tried to find the source of the voice as she walked down the hallway.
"Mama..."
As she moved closer to the source, the voice got clearer.
She timidly opened the door of the room the voice was coming out from.
Regina fell on her knees and quickly covered her mouth with her hands to stop herself from screaming when she saw the silhouette of a child in a cage with weird papers stuck onto it. The walls of the room had similar weird papers stuck on too.
"Mama..."
What was repeating 'Mama' non-stop was not a human child, it was a monster with a humanoid body looking translucent, gelatinous and blue. It was also waving around a wooden stick.
As Regina tried to crawl backward while still facing the monster, she bumped into someone's legs, she turned around to see an unfamiliar face staring down at her, behind him stood two mercenaries.
"So you saw it, huh."
The man looked at Regina with such cold eyes, as if he was not looking at a human.
"Lock her up."
Upon giving out the command, one of the mercenaries behind him moved forward and hit her on the head, causing her to faint.
"I wondered which rat sneaked into the room, it's just a human girl."
The man then took a closer look at Regina.
"She looked decent enough, we will just break her mind first, then sell her off to a brothel in Nyx's Haven."
The person who spoke was a smuggler called Galen. He smuggles monsters to other continents, often selling them to nobles or rich merchants on the black market for a huge profit.
"I was beginning to think that I was scammed by the merchant selling these [detection charms], there was never any alarm since I bought them. Turned out they worked perfectly after all."
Galen was about to confront the merchant who sold him these charms when he returned to his base of operation, in Nyx's haven, but upon realizing they worked after all, he decided not to.
"Sir, this girl appeared to be the companion of the new temporary guard you hired."
One of the mercenaries spoke out after looking closely at her face.
"Doesn't matter, just tell him the girl disappeared when he looks for her. Blame her bad luck for finding this room."
"Yes sir."
The mercenaries then locked her up in another similar cage as the monster in the same room.
Upon sensing something amiss after not seeing Regina on the ship deck, Richard started to check around the ship looking for her.
Richard then took out a pouch and opened it, powders spiraled out and then went back inside.
“Her location can't be detected…she must be inside an area negating [search magic], somebody must have kidnapped her.”
“Search magic could only be negated by second-tier magic or above, searching for first-tier magic traces would be redundant.”
While still holding out the pouch, Richard started chanting.
“Type: Magic”
“Particle level: two and above”
“Trace on.”
The powders inside the pouch spiraled out and turned into five tiny arrows pointing in slightly different directions.
“All five of them are pointing to locations below me, she must be in one of those five locations...”
“a…”
“Mama…”
Regina woke up and saw the monster which appeared to be staring at her and repeating the word ‘mama’. She wasn’t sure if it was staring at her because it had no eyes.
Then she realized she was locked up in a cage, the same type of cage as the monster, with weird papers stuck onto it.
“Ouch!”
As she tried to touch the cage’s bar, she got zapped.
‘Clink!’ she heard the sound of something dropping on the floor, she turned around and saw somebody looking at her, with his eyes wide open.
“Y-you! What are you?!”
The man who dropped his cup on the floor, frantically asked Regina what she was, as if she was not a human.
“Those [Zap Charms] should be ineffective against humans, that’s why I was posted here to keep watch on you.”
“I have never seen a monster who looked exactly like a human except a doppelganger! I should report this to Mister Galen!”
As the man was about to leave the room, he bumped into Richard.
“Are you a monster too?!”
Richard then hit the man on the head without replying, knocking him unconscious.
“Are you fine?”
Richard asked Regina as he walked toward her, and unlocked the cage trapping her.
“Mmm.”
Regina nodded her head.
“What that guy said…is it true that I’m not a human…?”
Richard paused for a while then spoke out.
“You are not a monster.”
Once he got Regina out of the cage, he unlocked the cage containing the monster.
“Eh? Why did you let the monster out?”
“This monster is called a slime, it won’t hurt us. Although it seemed to be a special one.”
“Special…?”
“Usually slimes looked like water without any fixed forms, unable to talk.”
“Mama…”
The slime moved toward Richard and waved its wooden stick.
“A-a-are you it’s mo- ouch!”
Richard bonked Regina on the head before she could finish her sentence.
“Mama…”
The slime then moved toward Regina and waved its wooden stick.
“It must be thanking us for letting it out.”
Richard opened the window and the slime climbed through it and jumped into the sea.
“Remember this, just as not all humans are good, not all monsters are evil.”
Regina nodded to confirm she understood what he said and followed him out of the room.
The hallway they were on was eerily silent, Regina knew Richard must have done something to the mercenaries stationed on the floor, but she was getting used to it, so she kept quiet and followed Richard back to their room while tightly holding his hand.
A spot in the sea near a beach started bubbling.
“Plop” it goes, a gelatinous blob holding a wooden stick launched out of the sea toward the beach.
It then started to transform into that of a young child, then it moved toward the only house near the beach.
An old lady was sitting on a rocking chair outside.
When the lady spotted the slime, tears started to flow out from her eyes,
and she quickly ran toward the slime with the little leg strength she had left.
She did not care if she fell, all she wanted at that moment was to get to the slime as soon as possible.
“Rurumi, you are back!”
“I never thought I would see you again!”
She held the slime tight in her arms, hugging it like it was her beloved.
“Mama…”
“Rurumi…!”
The slime wasn’t her real daughter. It was just a monster she found on the beach many years ago, dying of injury. Its transparent core was broken and the lady nursed it back to health.
She did not do it for the slime, she thought the slime would kill her once she nursed it back to health, and was expecting it to happen because her daughter had just passed away, she wanted to die, but was too afraid of committing suicide.
But after the slime got nursed back to health, it did not attack her.
It did not go away either, it stayed with her and kept her company.
Every day, the lady would look at a picture of her daughter taken as a child and cry.
They were poor, so they could only afford to get it taken when a merchant visited a town near their home, and merchants rarely visited. So all she had was a picture of her daughter as a child.
The slime then tried its best to transform its body to mimic the girl in the picture. The girl in it was waving a stick and smiling, and it mimicked the girl waving a stick too.
The lady cried out when she saw the transformed slime, then she taught the slime how to say ‘mama’. At first, the sound the slime could make was only a bubbling noise, as the days went by, the slime managed to pronounce ‘mama’, which made her very happy.
She then started to treat the slime as her deceased daughter, even getting it to wear dresses her daughter once wore.
Deep down in her heart, she knew the slime wasn’t her real daughter, yet she could not let the slime go.
“Perhaps, this is my reincarnated daughter.” or “This is a gift from God to me.” she thought.
She was devastated when she saw unknown men taking the slime away.
“Mama…”
“Yes Rurumi, let’s not stay outside and head back to our house.”
They then strolled, hand in hand, back to their house.
Comments (2)
See all