Faith is Earned 1, page 30
The slime pulsed faintly, glow rising just enough to silhouette its many limbs, all still, folded like a sleeping creature in thought.
Then I give first.
The light brightened incrementally. The dwarves stepped closer without meaning to.
Hill. Silver. Gold. Metals, more. Deep-veins. And… my twinned. Not metals… no…
“Alloys?”
…yes. Yes. Metals together. Not from forge. From core. Core-born.
Suth’s eyes flicked to Luke, her voice whisper-thin.
"It’s not a better offer. But-"
You may build. Above. Inside. Walls. Hall. Citadel.
Brag squinted into the slime’s glow, as if seeing plans sketched in the air.
Slimes defend. Monsters guard. I command. They serve. You safe.
The idea bloomed fast. A city, above and beneath the hill. Hallways carved by slime passage, rooms stabilized by living matter, walls that healed. Gates defended by more than iron, by instinct, with monster defenders that could die and not be missed. The kind of fortress even dragons might think twice about.
You not only pray to me. Not ask for that. You pray others, yes. But me... too.
It did not demand exclusive worship and that alone gave the dwarves pause. But it followed up with more.
Alloy. Not common. Not known. I make. I hold.
Three names formed in their minds, descriptions formed by material weight and properties. Most of them recognized them in moments. Warriors they might be, but they were still dwarves. Embracite, a metal soft as silk until struck, then harder than steel. Veinsteel, able to hold enchantments better than most. Mindglass, so rare, translucent, memory-reactive, etched by thought alone.
I give. Not much. Not often. Small. But rare. Gift of pact. Sign of faith.
The cavern grew warmer as the slime turned. Its attention flowed like water toward Luke and the others felt it move past them and stepped back instinctively.
No merge. No take. No drown.
The air thickened again, different than before. With longing in place of pressure.
One breath. One link.
You carry God. I wish to speak. One time. Not steal. Just... not alone. No more alone.
I wish... to know... what a God is. Not by memory. By… example.
Luke held his tongue. He couldn’t speak yet, even as the others turned to him, even Brag. He had to think. The offer sounded true to him… but was it?
The dwarves stepped back from it, forming a loose circle. Their voices were low, the way warriors speak in burial halls, careful not to wake anything.
Brag spoke first.
“If this is real… if it holds…”
Gorrik shrugged, arms crossed tight.
“We’d have to convince the Guild. The [Clerics].”
Kiln gave a sharp exhale.
“They’ll spit on it unless it pays… but if it does, they’ll kneel and lick its arse for this kind of wealth.”
Suth stared at the slime, jaw tight.
“No forced worship, no oaths with teeth, no dwarven lives. That’s the line. We pray if we want, but not because some glowing Godling tells us.”
Brag nodded once.
“We can manage that. If it keeps its promises, rare metals, a city, monster guards, hell, even the [High Priests] would find a verse to excuse it. Might be our own Gods would want a chat with it. Most importantly, we don’t pay in blood for it.”
“Give a dwarf enough ore, he’ll pray to a chair leg.”
One dwarf snorted as Kiln leaned forward, quiet.
“It gave names. Mindglass, Embracite, Veinsteel. You know how rare those are? If it gives even a little… that’s not just wealth. That’s relic material. Spellforged alloys, throne-maker stuff.”
Suth tilted her head.
“Then we’d better seal this before someone comes to take it from under us.”
They turned and all their eyes settled on Luke. Brag met his gaze without pressure and Luke could see that even if they were coming to terms with their decision, they wouldn’t force Luke on his own.
“You good with this, lad?”
Luke stood in stillness, uncertain but aware. His Class hummed beneath his skin and the sense of Xelreth lingered like incense at the edge of thought. He looked toward the slime, more than just at it, but into it and finally spoke.
“I can’t give it what it wants.”
The silence pulsed.
“But I can pray. I can open the way and if Xelreth wills it, He’ll answer.”
Brag gave a short nod and Suth’s breathing slowed. The others said nothing and that was as much of an answer as they had. Brag stepped forward once more.
“We accept. On your terms and ours. Our freedom, our gods, our right to choose. You give us that and I can promise there’s bound to be many among us who would worship you.”
Suth followed.
“You’ll get your city and your prayers. And, if communion doesn’t kill him, your moment. Better hope it doesn’t, though, Godling. It was ever the lesson of the tallfolk to know you shouldn’t fuck with us.”
Luke didn’t step forward, he just spoke, as if to an ally. Perhaps a friend, in time.
“But first… your name. Every pact needs a name, just like any Vow. And to seal this, we would need to know you as who you are, not just what you are.”
For a heartbeat, there was no reply. Then the slime glowed in a steady rising brightness. It cast long reflections across the walls, a radiance that shimmered like joy too large to contain. When it spoke, its voice trembled with something approaching emotion.
Name… I have no name. Never needed one.
But now… now I may?
A pause, full and wide.
I will… I will be…
Light filled the cavern, brighter, stronger. Luke felt a warmth rising from the floor itself.
I am - Slave.
The glow didn’t dim, it froze. And the silence that followed was so different from peace, fractures of stillness. The slime’s body rippled once, then held. Every limb, every slow swirl of its mass, went still.
A new presence entered. The voice still came from the slime before them, still entered their minds through thoughts instead of sounds, but it was no longer the slime talking to them, even if it was through it.
You brought it so close, insects. So, so very close to awakening. To conscience. To… selfhood.
And in doing so, reminded it that it does not belong to itself.
…AS IF!
Suth took a full step back, axe already halfway raised and Brag stepped in front of Luke before he knew he had moved. Gorrik’s knuckles had turned white on his hammer and while the others were forcing their shocked selves into battle positions, Kiln was already reaching for the last rune stone, trembling hands going through all pockets.
But the slime itself held still, nothing coming from it, except the voice. And not as before, it came not as thought-shapes, not as halting, borrowed words. It came out smoothly and flawless. Divine.
You taught it faith. Dialogue, when it should have understood only obedience.
You, [Votary].
The word struck like a nail driven into stone.
I remember you, from the memories of my faithful. I regret not paying enough attention to smite you in my house.
But I see now. An insect praying to a larger insect.
And you gave my creature a spine. I congratulate you on it, though I regret to inform you that your merriment will be short-lived.
The slime’s body began to shift, losing the awkwardness from before and not with its usual uncertainty. But with divine control. Its glow changed, brighter… colder now too. A clinical clarity that no longer mirrored joy. Its mass twisted inward, then outward, one pseudopod rising.
And quicker than they ever could have thought something that large could move, it snatched Luke, taking him into itself.
Let’s see what’s in that mind of yours.
Chapter 33
The moment the pseudopod closed around Luke, the cavern broke.
Brag was the first to move, though even he froze for a breath as the slime’s glow turned from radiant to raw, like light stripped of holiness, gleaming with something deeper, older, wrong. Then his voice rose through the stunned silence.
“Form up! Now!”
Suth was already moving. Gorrik gripped his hammer tightly and Kiln swore so violently it barely registered as words. The slime pulsed around them, its shape undulating neither with hunger, nor with thought, but with purpose. The slow uncertainty it had shown earlier was gone. Its movements were clean now. Intentional. Possessed.
“Where’s the charge—”
Brag started, then cut himself off. Kiln met his eyes and shook his head.
“Used it clearing the fallback tunnel, remember?”
Suth didn’t waste time blaming. She stepped between them, voice sharp.
“Enough! We’ve got seconds!”
The slime’s body flexed again, a wave of thickened fluid rushing through a side corridor. The membrane walls twisted with it. The air itself felt heavier, compressed, like the slime had grown larger in spirit if not mass.
The others got to quarrelling. What to do, how to act, vectors of attack, properties of slime. And Suth knew Brag. She knew his past and his sins and his regrets, so she very much knew that look in his eyes, that threatened to crack heads together if the others wouldn’t pipe down and listen. So she activated a Skill. Her voice didn’t change in volume, but it reached, cutting through the mounting panic like a command spoken inside the skull.
“[Shared Understanding]”
Their arguing cut off as if a hammer had dropped. It didn’t override their thoughts, it aligned them. Brag, Kiln, Gorrik, everyone, they saw the terrain the same way, shared the same top-down sense of approach, vectors, hazards, angles of retreat. It lasted only a moment, but it was enough.
“He’s still alive. It didn’t crush him, no bones, no blood, no scream. It took him clean.”
“Preserving. Yeah, yeah, like it’s keeping him, not killing.”
“Or feeding…”
Brag’s hand closed over his axe haft.
“We go in.”
No one argued.
The first blow landed against a membrane wall, tough, resistant, but not reinforced yet. Gorrik’s hammer lit with a faint glow from his [Hammer of Denial] and the impact blew open a fold of slime flesh. Acid mist hissed from the wound, but Kiln surged forward, pulling out a compacted strip of Alchemical Frost-Pitch, slamming it into the leaking wound. It crystallized instantly, making the path passable for a moment.
Suth moved next, her [Burrower's Momentum], a left-over Skill from a past [Mining] Class, letting her carve forward at a sprint. It wasn’t tunneling exactly, but skidding along unstable terrain, making quick, sharp breaks toward open pathways that hadn’t existed seconds ago. She paused only to shout back.
“Don’t think! Follow!”
The slime didn’t roar, but it shifted with violence. A ceiling membrane peeled open like a mouth, pouring out rocky sludge that began to animate as it struck the ground. Golemic forms, soft and heavy, rising from inside the slime’s own matter, rock slimes reinforced with internal bone. More than what the slime should have been able to control, let alone spawn. They weren’t clever, but they were coordinated.
Gorrik cursed and launched forward, his hammer glowing again as he slammed into the first construct. Brag followed with a broad swing that cleaved through the junction of its parts, a strategic cut that caused the thing to collapse, unable to reform.
From the walls, strands of filament shot toward them, attempting to tangle. Kiln triggered a [Flare Detonation], his last minor alchemical burst. It wasn’t a weapon, it was a distraction. The flash sent the filaments retreating and in that moment, they pushed through the membrane chamber into a narrower tunnel.
Suth’s feet hit the inner lining of the next passage and skidded. It was slick with a kind of half-formed metal, the slime having started excreting raw iron, unrefined, sharp-edged and shifting underfoot.
She growled and Brag barked.
“It’s learning fast.”
“Then we move faster.”
They pressed forward.
The deeper they went, the less the terrain resembled a creature and more a dream of flesh trying to become stone. Organic membranes curled with ore veins and at one point they passed a chamber that looked like a half-formed organic forge, a node of heat and pressure, ringed with twisted tubes of alloy-like growths.
From the core of the floor, a tremor passed through them. A low, vibrating note, felt more than heard, thrummed through their bones. More than just danger and more than even warning. It was a heartbeat.
A God’s.
“Deeper. We’re close.”
They could see where the core likely sat with the flesh as translucent as it was, even now. A kind of room, a convergence, a space where all the slime’s body bent inward. They would breach it in minutes if they kept this pace. But each second costs energy. The slime fought them with more than just tendrils now, it fought them with memory. Tunnels they'd passed began collapsing behind them, as denial of retreat. It no longer intended to let them out.
When Gorrik dropped to one knee, panting, Brag grabbed his shoulder and hauled him up.
“You fall here, you stay here.”
“No pressure.”
Kiln wheezed as he ran, already tossing out a hastily-wrapped Firesap Net into an advancing wave of acidic mist, holding it at bay for precious seconds.
Suth spun and shouted.
“There!”
A final membrane curled in front of them, thicker than the others, glowing from within. The light behind it was not red, gold or any other color, it was just bright. Bright enough to blind if stared at directly.
They reached it with blades burning, breath ragged, skin steaming from microburns. The next breach would bring them to the inner sanctum. To Luke.
The next passage bled heat without fire, the walls glistening with veins of molten shimmer that looked like ore but pulsed like muscle. Suth led the front, her boots skidding over the warped floor as she threw down a rune-burn line behind her, too light for damage, but enough to cauterize their path. The slime kept sealing paths behind them, but it wouldn't seal through fire.
"Hold the fockin’ flank!"
Brag shouted and Gorrik broke left as others drove towards the center, his axe spinning once overhead before biting into a wall of semi-coagulated slime flesh. It parted like steel softened by lightning, sparks leaping from the impact. The air burned with a stench like wet stone under the sun.
Kiln dragged behind them, pack half-spilled, fingers smeared with resin and dried tincture. Every few steps he threw something, a vial, a spark-tag, a powder-flecked stone, and he was running out quickly but it all helped to stall, to sting and to make the slime think. Think slower that is.
The deeper they went, the more the slime changed. Its walls no longer rippled like fluid, instead they were hardening, wanting more than to simply stop them now, aiming to contain them. The tunnel narrowed and then widened and then distorted, forming sudden geometric shapes that shouldn't have existed in anything alive. Crystalline ribs curled from the walls, forming archways made of refracted light.
"This isn't just the slime anymore. This is its master."
Brag grunted.
"Then let's teach the Mind God how dwarves build exits."
As they pressed forward, the slime threw new defenses at them. Walls that shimmered with heatless flame, brilliant and gold. Suth tested it with a shard of steel and saw the flame bend the metal without directly burning it. That wasn’t illusion or magic.
Then came the worst. Shapes began to form ahead of them, tall as dwarves, but faceless mimics, pale projections of the ones they left behind. More than just Bora and those that died during this expedition. The shapes took the form of those they left at the Gate, those that died next to them, the day they lost their honor. Moving awkwardly, like memories trying to remember how to fight.
Brag roared, cleaving through a mirror of a long-dead friend.
"Don't hesitate!"
It shattered into gleaming shards that sank into the floor and vanished. They broke the last corridor together, and there it was.
Luke.
Suspended in the center of a dome of translucent flesh, neither floating nor struggling. Held. His arms were outstretched, head tilted slightly back, eyes wide and open, fixed on nothing. From his chest poured light, though it didn’t come in ray or beam form, but a bloom. Gold-white and fierce, as if something inside him had caught fire and refused to go out.
"Gods…"
The light wasn’t burning out, like they thought it would. It was bleeding. It ate through the slime around him, staining it with... faith. The walls around Luke shimmered, cycling through impressions, a village, a shrine, a sword raised in defiance, a girl with kind eyes and a glorious grin, flickering like old prayers remembered by flesh.
Luke made not a sound and his body didn’t move as he lay there, almost floating. Then his back arched, just slightly. A spasm. His hands clenched only once before the light flared again. His eyes, mouth, nose, ears… they all started bleeding.
Suth swore.
"He’s fighting. Or- or something in him is."
“And it’s killing him. 9th Gate! [Captain’s Orders]: Bring him back!”
Brag roared loud enough even for the possessed slime to hear. And it did.
The slime responded.
The dome snapped shut, its surface hardening into a shell. A screamless pressure wave burst from the walls, hurling them back. Suth slammed into a rib-spire, as Gorrik barely ducked a falling chunk of fused membrane. Brag shielded Kiln, catching a blast of acid mist on his gauntlet.
They tumbled, scattered into a half-collapsed chamber just outside the sanctum, wounds opened. Blood, smoke, panting. But no one was dead yet.
Brag slammed his axe into the ground just to stay upright.
"He's alive! He’s still alive!"
"Barely. Whatever's happening, it's ripping him apart."
Kiln slumped beside a fallen wall.
