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Tommy was a nice kid.
Yeah, he has a knack for stealing and swore a lot, and was apparently a super cool assassin now, but he was a nice kid.
And he never really made fun of Slime, not even when Tommy scared him so bad that he sunk halfway through the floor. He laughed, but it wasn’t mean. He always made sure he got back out.
Tommy was a nice kid. A good kid.
So when he asked for the Syndicate’s location and dodged the question of his intentions, Slime still had the inclination to believe him. To help him. Tommy was a good kid.
And then he opened the door behind him and told Slime that he and his brothers just wanted to be free.
One had so many scars, one cradled rings in his hands with a heartbroken smile, and one was so much skinnier than he should be. They all looked like they had seen the world around them burn and get rebuilt and burn again.
They were Tommy’s brothers. Slime knows how much brothers mean.
So he tells them where to go.
And he wishes them the best of luck.
(Slime knew that there was something primordial inside him.
He could feel it, bubbling just underneath the surface, splashing on the edges of his conscious mind. Others may have looked at it, dug their hands into whatever it was that boiled beneath their skin. But not Slime. He suspected, he knew, that as soon as he embraced it he could never return to himself.
And he liked himself, the goofy, silly, helpful creature he was. He liked Quackity, he liked Tommy, he liked his job at Las Nevadas. And so though he felt an ancient importance sloshing in his bones, aching to spill over the sides and into the world, he let it simmer.
His gelatin skin could tear down kingdoms, but he was content with the role of court jester.)
Before the spiders, the widows and the huntsman alike, there was still power in the world.
Not just before the heroes and villains ruled cities, but before the concept of heroes and villains even existed.
Not just before L’Manburg, but before any city.
Before the concept of cities.
Back when adventurers built ships with horns on their helmets and held funerals with burning arrows and horizons and a return to the sea.
After Death fell in love, yes, but before Creation started her plan for revenge.
Back then, there was a creature that became known as Slime.
Slime was not a hybrid. He was not a man, either. He was something that oozed and slipped and refused to take a solid form. He wasn’t sure what he was, exactly, but he knew ever since he found out that he could think that he wanted to be like the humans.
He watched them, you see. He listened, he watched, and he learned. He took their shapes, he mimicked their speech, he taught himself to see the world through eyes.
Sure, sometimes his skin dripped off in green glops, and sometimes he forgot that humans typically chewed as they ate, but he was still learning.
(Sometimes, after he met the others, he talked about time. About the blood and the bones that people were made of. About how, eventually, even the strongest among them would decompose back into the dust they had been born from.
Slime knows. He’s watched the worms do their work. He’s watched mushrooms grow from skulls and bones erode under the weight of the rain. He’s watched the birth of flies from maggots grown from the fertility of a rotting, decomposing corpse.
They didn’t like it when Slime talked about that. So he tended not to.)
Slime doesn’t know when he started. One day he simply was, and then one day he could think. He doesn’t know where he started, either. He moved, watching the people, observing.
(Always observing, because he was never noticed, never invited to interact. He knew he wasn’t like them.)
He studied how they interacted with each other, enemies and friends and coworkers and family.
He always enjoyed the concept of family.
He learned about the perception of good and the perception of evil and that neither really meant anything. He learned of right and of wrong and both depended on who was doing what.
He liked their stories, and he was content to watch and listen.
But as he watched and listened, he learned that “content” did not mean “happy”.
“Content” did not mean “loved”.
Condi was running.
“Condi” wasn’t his real name, he knew, but it was the only one he knew anymore. He was born from hell and the void and both decided they were better off without him.
He thinks that he’s still human. He hopes he is.
He’s met others who were human and could do extraordinary things. A man who caused miniature natural disasters everywhere he walked, a girl who could make the ground jump up and chase after you, a boy with a demon growing from his arm and a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
Condi didn’t know exactly what he was running from. It was easy, of course; he could tear the space in front of him and step through into somewhere else. It was easy to get far, far away. But for Condi, no matter how far he ran, it was never far enough.
He talked to a boy who could walk on walls and ceilings. He bought food from a woman with purple skin and eyes that looked more dead than alive. He sold supplies to a creature with sharp horns and sharper eyes and a strange love of apples.
He left all of them behind and kept running like the void was at his back and hell was nipping on his heels.
Grizzly was hiding.
He wasn’t, really. His home was in the forest surrounded by the tallest trees, far up in the branches above where anyone could see him. He stayed alone in the forest because that's where he wanted to be. That’s what he told himself, at least. It’s not because he was afraid.
The farthest Grizzly ever went was to the towns on the edges of the forest. He crept in at night, staying away from prying eyes, and helped.
He gave them food when they were starving. He slayed monsters that lurked too close. He summoned tools and weapons from the air and filled their armories and sheds with everything they could need.
They only caught glances of him at night, and the children thought he was a bear. Grizz had the ears and tail of a wolf, but he never bothered to correct them. This is where his name came from.
The town would thank him every so often, leaving notes in his path and signs on the houses.
And he loved that he could help. But at least some part of him was wolf. Wolves needed a pack.
And Grizzly was so, so lonely.
Bizly was fighting.
It was all he’d ever really known. Ever since he could remember, he’d been fighting for something. Food, money, a spot to sleep, pride. He was rather good at insulting people who returned their offended egos with punches and swords. Bizly was happy to oblige.
He fought in rings, his form changing fluidly as his opponents struggled to land a hit on him. One second he was a bear, the next a hawk. Sometimes he was a fly and sometimes he was an elephant. Occasionally he was a monster.
But his favorite form was human.
Bizly fought his way through town and village with no regret or hesitation. He wouldn’t stop for anyone. He couldn’t stop for anyone.
He took a different form in every new place he traveled to. No one knew him.
He fought for nothing but himself and he hated it.
Once there was a cat. A pure white cat, fur as soft and cold as the snow on the highest mountain. Eyes a deep and abyssal purple that held more knowledge than any human had yet to hold.
The cat had no name and was the first to find them. It found Grizzly in the forest, cowering among the branches. It found Bizly in an alleyway, scratching and biting and grinning wide. It found Condi bartering wares in a town’s center, glancing around like he’d already been there too long.
And, like no one ever had before, it found Slime.
(The four of them never quite figured out the cat. It brought them together and disappeared, strutting confidently into a wheat field with a cherry blossom tucked behind its ear.
Bizly called the cat “Wheatie” after that. Condi called him stupid.)
Slime watched the cat, and it captivated him like nothing ever had. And so he followed it as he moved and studied, for the first time, with a direction.
Condi followed the cat, after it had rustled his wares, and found himself facing not just the feline but a slime creature roughly the shape of a man. He was curious and afraid and had already been there too long but this cat had brought him here. The slime creature lifted a hand and gave a gentle wave. And for the first time, Condi ran towards something.
Grizzly came down from his perch to help the cat and was met with a creature and a man instead. He wasn’t used to being seen, but the man was kind and the slime had no eyes and the eyes of the cat held something more than sight. He offered them shelter and tools and help, and they offered him help in return. They offered him a pack. And for the first time, Grizzly wasn’t alone.
Bizly tried to fight the cat, but the cat was smarter than he was. He didn’t try to fight the teleporting man or the slime creature or the wolf-man who could throw swords from nowhere, and he traveled with them, because they knew him more than he had ever known himself. And for the first time, when threats arose, he fought for someone else.
Slime had always enjoyed the concept of family. And the reality of it was so, so much better than he could have ever imagined. He spoke and was spoken back to, he waved and was waved at in return.
He smiled and they smiled too.
He had observed love before, but he had never known what it felt like. He thinks this is it.
Grizzly spoke of their bond as a pack, and Bizly turned into a wolf and knocked him over in response. Bizly spoke of a team, of defense and offense and protection and war. Slime asked him who they fought against, and Bizly didn’t have an answer.
It was Condi who first spoke of brothers, and they found that none of them could disagree.
Slime finds that each of them have stories to tell. They have all seen many sights and met many people, and shared a common love of weaving tales to excite.
They tell a red hooded man who hides his eyes about a group of warriors who failed, and whose story was never finished.
They tell a man with spider legs about a group of travelers searching for a golden egg, and how their fates were doomed by their ambition.
They tell a boy with pink scales about a group of pirates sailing on a flooded world, and a war brewing between order and chaos and whatever lurks in the deep.
And they tell more stories, a different one each time, to whoever will listen to them.
They are not content. They are not happy. They are love, and they love in return.
As misfortune arises, many curse the world as cruel.
They curse their gods and their demons, they curse mortals who went against them, they curse illness and weather and monsters and everything, anything that they can blame.
The world is not cruel. The universe does not care about you.
Fate and destiny and luck and fortune and prophecy and “meant to be” are nothing. They are shams constructed by those who want life to have a pattern, who want comfort in what is known and what can be prevented.
The universe does not care because it can’t. The universe is a place.
Fate does not care because it can’t. Reality is random.
The universe may not be cruel, but it is cold and it is unforgiving. It takes and gives unevenly, unfairly, because it does not care about the consequences.
Slime had brothers, once.
Three brothers, brought together by a cat that saw with more than sight. Born of hell and void, of wolves and gratitude, of violence and appearances, of something primordial and slippery.
But being born of hell and void does not make you immune to darkness and of flames. Being born of wolves does not make you immune to monsters of the night. And being born of violence does not make you immune to the tearing and ripping of flesh.
The universe is cold and unforgiving but it is not cruel. It took his brothers, one by one, with violence and sickness and time. But it did not take Slime.
Slime was born of something primordial and slippery. He is ancient and dangerous and something both more and less than life. And so he gets to live.
He put poppies on their graves. The poppies died too.
(Slime loves his brothers. He hates the word “loved” because it implies he no longer loves them.
They are gone, but love is not a past tense emotion. You cannot stop loving something just because it is gone.
Some people call it grief. Slime has learned that’s what people call love when it has expired into a twisting darker shape, into something uglier but still beautiful in a dark and sorrowful way.)
Slime does not find more brothers.
He finds friends, lots of friends, throughout his travels and adventures. And slowly he becomes more and more human, blending in until they cannot tell that he used to be a primordial puddle of consciousness.
And the more he wanders, the more he interacts with those around him instead of watching and listening and waiting for a day that almost never came, the more he feels like he has a place in this world.
He sees Condi in every merchant selling wares, in every careful and caring smile, in every flame and every shadow.
He sees Grizzly in every lonely hermit, in every sword and shovel, in every tree and every creature.
He sees Bizly in every half-glimpsed face, in every bloodied knuckle, in every scar and every laugh.
And he thinks that maybe the universe cares.
His brothers were not taken, they simply had to leave. And they did not choose it, and nobody chose it, because death is never a choice.
But the universe has gifted him this, his brothers in everything he sees. He loves his brothers, and therefore he loves the world around him, and therefore the world around him loves him back.
And the universe said I love you because you are love.