Balthazar intended to ask what it was that they had forgotten to feed, but before the crab could even fully regain his footing from all the rumbling, Tom had already taken off back through the tunnel with Sal’s skull still in his hands.
“Hey, wait for !” exclaid the crustacean, following them out of the room. “Don’t leave down here, I don’t know this place!”
“This is bad,” the worried skeleton said as he rushed through the corridors.
“So bad,” reiterated the skull, bouncing up and down in the other undead’s hands. “How did you let this happen, Tom? Wasn’t it your turn to feed it today?”
“It was, and I was going to! But then Balthazar showed up, Jim called for , I went to go et them, and I just got completely sidetracked!”
“I hope you rember what happened last ti!” exclaid Sal.
“What are you two talking about?!” asked Balthazar, trying to keep up with the running skeleton as they passed through tunnels and corridors, moved down narrow ramps and underpasses, until finally arriving at a large atrium with a wide double gate on the other side.
The rumbling and ground stomping had not ceased, and was now even stronger, coming directly from behind the doors in front of the trio.
“Well, it’s kind of a long story, Balthazar,” the nervous skeleton said, eye sockets fixed on the gate.
“Can’t you give the short version?” said the apprehensive crab, unsure if coming all the way down there had been the best choice. “Start by telling what’s behind those doors?”
“Our unwanted tenant,” said Tom.
“What??”
“Let show you.”
The bony rchant pushed forward, towards the gates. Balthazar hesitated, wondering why he was following a spooky skeleton and a talking skull to a room that rumbled and shook the very walls around them. Nevertheless, he carried on behind Tom, not by virtue of courage, but by virtue of pure curiosity.
To his surprise, the skeleton cut to the right as he reached near the double doors, once again tapping the bricks on the walls in a specific order, which revealed another hidden passage into a side tunnel.
As they scooted into the small space, a small sliver of light hitting the wall revealed to the crab that there was a thin slit on the opposite side, allowing them to peek into the room behind the gates.
“This is our final chamber,” explained Tom in a hushed voice. “Most adventurers never make it this far, but if they did, this would be where we keep our best loot. You know, gotta have a nice lure to catch so fish.”
“Or skillful pincers,” said the crustacean.
“Anyway, one day we ca down here to dump so new loot into the pile, and we found out we had a little infestation problem.”
Balthazar frowned at the other rchant, and leaned forward to look through the hairline crack on the wall.
Just as he looked into the room, a new roaring rumble shook the dust off the walls, as the creature inside slamd itself against the stone floor.
A viscous ooze blob sat at the center of the chamber, partially attached to one of the four support pillars of the room. It was easily bigger than the crab’s gazebo back at his pond, and strangest of all, its whole body, made of a gel-like substance, had a translucent golden color to it.
“A sli infestation,” added Sal’s skull, still sitting in Tom’s hands.
“Woah,” exclaid the crab in a murmur. “It’s huge.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing,” continued the full-bodied skeleton. “At first we found just so small gray balls of goo around the room. We told Jim to get rid of them, but you t Jim… he’s not exactly great at doing what he’s told. Long story short, by the ti we looked again, that thing had already eaten almost all the stuff we had in the room and grown ten tis its original size.”
Balthazar winced. “Yikes. But then what? How did it beco… this?”
“Well, then ca the problem,” Tom explained. “The sli grew too big for us to get rid of it easily, and now it was hungry and demanding to be fed.”
“I tried to shoo it away with a broom,” said the bearded skull. “Back then I still had more bones than what you see now.”
“Yep,” Sal’s holder said. “That thing gulped up all of his bones when he tried to fight it. All Bob could save was his skull before the sli absorbed everything else.”
The crab peeked at the mass of ooze again, gurgling and bubbling in its chamber as it occasionally slamd the ground and walls near it in a hungry protest.
“So what did you guys do?”
“What else could we do?” Tom said with a shrug. “We kept feeding it as best as we could, so it wouldn’t gobble us all up and take the dungeon for itself. So long as we kept providing it with things to absorb, it stayed quiet and sleepy, digesting everything we brought.”
Balthazar glanced at his skeletal friend. “But let guess, that only delayed the problem?”
“You got it. The more we fed it, the bigger it got, and the bigger it got, the larger its appetite. That’s why I started having to work overti. We needed to fill the crypt faster and attract more adventurers here so we could keep feeding it.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not ant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Wait, you’re not telling you’ve been feeding adventurers to that sli, are you?!” said the slightly concerned crab.
“Oh, no, no, of course not,” Tom said.
“Ah, alright, good,” Balthazar said with relief. “I may have no big love for most of those dunces, but even I would find that just a little morally questiona—”
“We started feeding it gold coins instead.”
“You monsters!” the crab blurted out as his eyes nearly jumped out of their stalks.
“We were running out of any other junk,” said Tom with an apologetic shrug. “Adventurers always carry lots of money in their pockets wherever they go, and that thing seed to grow a taste for gold, so…”
“Can’t bla it,” said the crustacean. “Even I felt tempted before, but coins taste awful.”
“How would you know tha—”
“So anyway, you’ve been dumping coins into that blob of jelly this whole ti? Is that why it looks golden now?”
“Guess so. It used to just be plain gray,” Sal’s skull said.
Balthazar squinted harder through the peephole, focusing on the center of the creature’s translucent body, where he spotted a big pile of gold coins within, as well as so loose loot and a chest, surrounded by bubbling mucus.
Ew, but also… ooh.
His eyes widened with a mix of slight disgust and great want.
It’s just a sli, how hard could it be…
“How co you guys haven’t just found a way to get rid of it?” asked the crab, turning back to the other two. “Slis aren’t exactly the smartest foe to face.”
“You’d be wrong!” said Sal.
“Jim kept dumping whatever random loot he found into it,” the bony rchant continued, “including things like Potions of Intellect, and a bunch of Intellect boosting gear. Next thing we know, that thing has grown way too smart for our own good.”
The skull rattled angrily. “It started blackmailing us!”
Tom nodded. “That sli got smart enough to see every plan to get rid of it coming. We were outmatched at every turn, and then it threatened to collapse the whole dungeon around us if we didn’t keep bringing it loot and coins daily. This is our ho, we have nowhere else to go!”
Balthazar glanced at the sli on the other side of the wall again, a large portion of its body firmly attached to the surrounding pillars, likely supporting beams to the whole structure.
“But wait,” the confused crab said, “if the sli did that, wouldn’t it also be bringing the whole place down on itself?”
Tom brought his face very close to the crab’s, sad frown all over his bones.
“Yes, but the sli doesn’t have any bones, Balthazar.”
The crabby rchant’s eyestalks arched inwards in annoyance.
Big as it was, it was still just a sli, hardly a match for a crab determined to get his pincers on a pile of gold.
If it’s smart enough to threaten a bunch of skeletons, it’s smart enough to understand what I say.
“I’ll sort your pest problem,” announced Balthazar as he skittered towards the gate.
“What?!” exclaid Tom. “Are you crazy? Co back here, what do you think you’re going—”
But it was too late to dissuade him, Balthazar had already pushed the double doors open with his claws and stepped inside, filled with determination in his step, as well as an unreasonable amount of loot greed.
A guttural, stuffy voice echoed around the chamber, like a big barbarian with an awful case of throat congestion.
“Finally, lunchti. I started to think I would have to bring these pillars down on—” A pair of bubbly orbs that vaguely resembled eyes rolled inside the sli’s translucent body to face Balthazar. “You are not one of the usual skeletons.”
“Hah, very observing of you!” the crab cheerfully said as he stepped into the room with a casual attitude. “I’m a traveling rchant. Balthazar is my na, and I’ve heard so much about a fascinating golden sli that I just had to co and see you for myself. Quite magnificent, you are!”
The sli observed him lazily before speaking in a bored tone.
“I am Montgory, the Great Destroyer, and you’re not fooling , I know you’ve co to try and get my precious gold, crab.”
Well, darn it, that didn’t take long. And who the hell calls themselves that?! Balthazar thought.
“Oh, ha ha, you are right, but only partially,” he said with a chuckle.
The sli eyed him quietly, perhaps even with so bubbling interest. Or maybe it was just gastric reflux.
“As I said, I am a rchant,” the crab continued. “Of course I have an interest in gold, why would I hide that? Gold is great, I’m sure you agree. I an, look at you, that much is clear to see!”
Montgory continued quietly bubbling, unfazed by Balthazar’s attempt at a joke.
The rchant glanced at the beckoning coins within the monster, his heart beating faster at the shiny gold glowing through the layers of mucus separating them from being together at last.
“What is it you want?” asked the ooze in a bitter, congested voice. “I am hungry, and my patience runs thin.”
Balthazar tried to take his focus out of the coins and back into how to get them out of the sli.
“Well, you’re incredibly smart, I hear, so isn’t it obvious? I’m here to bargain! Make a deal. A trade. So exchange of goods. Perhaps sothing of mine for sothing of yours, like… coins, maybe.”
The ground shook once more as the creature suddenly slamd the old dungeon stones with its heavy body mass, nearly knocking the crab off his feet.
“You think you will scam out of my delicious al, crab?!” Montgory shouted. “There is nothing you could possibly have that I’d want over my coins!”
Balthazar gulped nervously. The angry sli sure looked bigger and more intimidating up close. On the other pincer, the loot pile also looked much bigger the closer he got.
“Co on now, everyone always wants sothing more,” said the rchant, tentatively stepping closer, unable to resist the appeal of so much gold at near arm’s reach. “It’s only a matter of negotiating. Let’s make a trade, shall we?”
“You’re right,” said Montgory in a poisonous tone. “I never tried crab before. I bet it’s delicious.”
[Gift of the Crab: failure. Target’s INT too high.]
A portion of the sli’s body suddenly reached out like a tentacle, wrapping around one of Balthazar’s legs. He tried to shake it off, but the gel-like substance stuck itself to him like glue, slowly slithering its way up and pulling him closer to the blob.
“I’d rather just skip the negotiation part,” uttered the sludge with evil glee in its voice.
The crab turned his eyes to the exit in a panic, stuck in place by the sticky ooze, but all he had ti to see was Tom and Sal running towards the room right as the gates slamd shut in front of them, leaving the skeletons out and trapping the crustacean inside with a very hungry sli.
“Oh, crabapples…” said Balthazar as he watched the acidic muck creep over his leg.
[Warning: you are being digested.]
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