Interlude XVII – Haemish, Home Sweet Home

"So you're a creature that can camouflage in any terrain, you can mask your smell or change it or whatever, and you have wings and fins and legs, and you can speak and read and write, presumably, in Darfan? Perhaps other languages as well? You seem very proficient. Do you realise that you are a more capable scholar than almost ninety-five per cent of the population? -and you're a Slime ball…." Haemish's head was already shaking in disbelief and wonder as he watched the sludge monsters skin and eyes and mouth.

"Uhhh, yeah…and? I know what I know, but I'm not what you'd call smart. I know there is so much that I don't know." Aarav said in reply.

"It is the mark of a true scholar! Knowing that there is much yet to learn. I believe that you are indeed intelligent beyond your thinking!" Then he turned to the rest of the group. "Alright, gentlemen! Time to head home!" Haemish yelled to the rest of the group.

"Sir Haemish, do you mean the cottage in the woods or Brewyn?" Rion was quick to interject before they any confusion could happen.

"Ahh…right. To the cottage first, for a quick visit, we might as well take all the things we collected in the forest with us to the palace! It doesn't make sense to leave it at the cottage, we might not be back for a little while, and some of it might be useful!" Wow, it is exhausting talking over the wind in this manner. There has to be a better way than yelling like this.

Haemish then turned back to the new and most exciting addition to their little party of adventurers. What to make of this thing? I thought it was usually enough when it was just a bit of sentient "sludge", as Rion called it. Now it has a status that is perhaps almost as detailed as mine, and it speaks.

As they reached the peak of their ascension, they began making their way back to the forest cottage in earnest. There are so many questions I have, and it is going to take a while to get the answers I want from this thing. It is so guarded. What does this all mean? So many things I want to learn from this creature I have never met and never seen.

"So your name is Resh, you have been roaming the forest for a while now, and you had little to no Health. That basically sums up everything I know about…."

"Oh, and I am from another world, don't forget that!" Resh smiled first, then burst out laughing. "And I am the most epic being in the universe and –"

"Sarcasm…didn't think a slime would be capable… Okay, very funny, Mr Slime. However, on a more serious note, tell me more about you and your situation. I am inquisitive; I absolutely need to understand how you came to exist. You are unique, I assume, no army of slime creatures coming to take over the world…?"

"I honestly don't know. I know that I have been in this forest for a few months. I know that I have eaten and grown and eaten some more. Other than that, I don't know much else. I have a mental map of the area, and I have eaten a lot of insects. That's it. I don't even know what I am capable of, and I have been small this whole time."

"Okay, well, we need to start somewhere. Let me ask this then, what is your species? You are some type of Slime or Sludge creature. What is your Class? All sentient beings have a class, and all monsters have species. You seem to somehow be both. What do you have, and what is it?"

They were making rapid headway over the forest and back towards Hamish's forest home. We can clear it all out and take everything with us. My storage key will do the job. That way, we can make use of all of the ingredients we have found. Maybe some combination will be helpful.

"So…we are going to your cottage in the forest? Then to the palace. Hmm, and you expect me to just sit tight and wait for you to perform your experiments on me?" Aarav completely ignored the question and pressed on with his concerns.

"Ummm…yes we are going to my cottage…and yes, I expect you to sit-stay put, I mean. And no, we will not be performing those types of experiments. What do you think we are going to do? Cut you up and start testing acids?" truth be told, that was what Haemish had initially intended. But this creature was very obviously more valuable alive. There was no way he would cut it up now! The very idea was preposterous.

"Great! I knew you wouldn't do that to me." Aarav's words have been spoken with nonchalance, but his behaviour belayed that assumption. He seemed relieved.

"Now, if you had been a dumb monster or animal…." Haemish allowed the words to trail off but finished with a wide grin. "A bad joke Master Resh. A bad joke, my poor attempt to put you at ease."

Resh smiled hesitantly in return. It was horrifying. Haemish shuddered; it looked like he was ready to eat me! "Another thing, you should try not to smile so much…."

Resh closed his mouth with a click but kept it manifested. His eyes still shone with the swirling colours of the potions he had recently ingested. That did sometimes happen, some residual power remaining from the healing. What didn't happen and had taken him by surprise like nothing before with this creature was the hunger he saw in its eyes. He had never expected that crazed level of enthusiasm from the beast.

The only other time he had seen anything even close to that was when on an expedition, a berserker had been an inch from death. Survive by sheer grit. His Health had effectively been non-existent, and his Stamina and Mana had run out long since. His movement caused blood to spew from his mouth as he pushed his finished body when he should not have been able to move at all.

Haemish had produced the three potions of maximum healing as he had this time. The man almost ripped his hands off to get at them. Berserkers weren't known for their restraint after all. The man's crazed look had turned to happy, then euphoric, then reverent, and finally, he had collapsed to the ground and passed out from the sensation. Fluids had leaked onto the floor around him; he had lost control of all his bodily functions. The experience had been that overwhelming. And that had been a huge man with powerful muscles that dwarfed Haemish in a way he had never felt before. That had been centuries ago. If he didn't have Perfect Recall, he would never have remembered that far back.

This tiny ball of goop had had the same look, and it had handled the whole process with much more dignity. That was one of the reasons he had poured all three vials at once. He had wanted to compare the two subjects, and the Berserker had downed all three at the same time as well.

The perplexing thing was that only humans ever reacted to these particular potions in that way. The intensity of the reaction varied based on the proportion of Health, Mana, or Stamina lost. No other sentient being reacted quite as humans did, and no monster did either. That ravenous hunger was not there, and it was just simply another Health or Stamina or Mana potion to them. There was something in particular about these potions that made humans behave that way when they saw them, and the worse the need, the more intense the reaction.

Resh, the Slime with a drippy sludge-like body and grotesque mouth full of nothing but gapped canines, had reacted to them as a human would. The rest of his apprentices knew about the reaction and what it potentially meant. They had kept their mouths shut, though, after a quick look. Stare more like, not sure what to make in that situation, though. And the odd language that his status is in.

Something was seriously wrong with this creature. There were too many disparate aspects to this Slime's being: He spoke Darfan and was a monster yet he reacted like a human. Those are just a few of so many discrepancies. What did it all mean, though? I honestly have no idea. Hopefully, some of the tests I can conduct will give me some more conclusive proof as to what this thing is, once and for all.

"I am male, you know…not asexual…." Resh's words pulled Haemish out of his spiralling thoughts.

"What…?" Now sludge can have a gender? What's next?