Sea Slimes Ch. 10

Loweina had activated one of the geyser sticks, and the Goo Queen had been hit almost directly in the chest. Her human body was covered in hideous burns, and most distinctly, the strange tattoo of hers had been partially seared away, replaced by ugly red boils. Snatch felt his arousal fading quickly. He stooped and retrieved the knife, not taking his eyes off the Queen.

The possessed mermaid looked at him with eyes of burning hatred. "Damn you all!" she cried. "Look what you've done to my Rubripie—to me!" She gestured all over her scorched body. "She was perfect! She was—she was mine!" Her tone was less one of compassion and more one of a child whose favorite toy had been damaged.

Snatch leaned over, helping Loweina to right herself. "I'll cover her six from left," he said, rushing forward. Adrenaline was giving him strength—he could tell he had been burned, as had Loweina, but the tubeworms had ironically shielded them from most of the real damage. Pain gave him energy.

"Right by me," Loweina said back, streaking off through the water.

Snatch leaped onto the Goo Queen's right side, brandishing the little knife. She snarled and lurched away. Snatch realized just how badly hurt she was. Her fish half looked almost raw. She was vulnerable in this body. They needed to kill her before she could exit.

Loweina appeared on the Goo Queen's left side, twirling the second of the four geyser sticks in her fingers. She had been burned across her face, but it was superficial. Hopefully. She winked at the Queen. "Want another, your majesty?"

Snatch started to edge around the Queen, moving into position to flank. He had to cut off her escape if Loweina broke another stick. He'd probably get burned in the process—Loweina wouldn't hesitate for his sake—but he was ready to take that chance.

Then, Snatch felt something... bend.

He swallowed.

For a moment, it was difficult to make sense of what was happening. At first, things just felt slightly... wetter. But then he realized what that meant, and why every step suddenly felt a hundred times more difficult.

The spell—Larya's spell—was beginning to break.

"Shit," he muttered, and speaking the single word felt like he was blowing into a balloon made of lead. Feeling suddenly very queasy, he managed another step to the right.

So this really was a one-way trip. Well, best to make it last. He moved to cover the Goo Queen's flank as Loweina raised the stick to her eye level. "Any last words, Your Majesty?" she asked, her voice full of poisonous honey.

The Goo Queen stared at her a moment, a sprite in the wisplights.

A small smile appeared on her face. "You know something funny, you little urchin?"

Loweina's own smile didn't drop. "What's that, then?"

Snatch swallowed. Oh, great. Here I am with... I dunno how long left, and she's setting her up for one-liners.

"I thought it was very cute that you didn't know about the tubeworms," the Goo Queen said, her smile widening. "And now I think you really weren't allowed in these gardens often."

"I... dabble," Loweina said. She sounded less sure, now. Snatch half-wondered if it was a sore spot with her and half-wondered if she could hurry it up a little.

"Well, tell me this, dabbler," the Goo Queen said, borrowing Loweina's poison-honey voice. "Did you never bother to learn that we slime girls have many ways to communicate with each other?"

Loweina blinked.

She and Snatch barely turned. They barely even glanced. They were professionals, after all, and there was the main target to focus on.

But they saw the six mermaids and two slime girls hovering in the water before them. Snatch particularly recognized the two angler maids from before, as well as—he swallowed—Chrysa. Chrysa giggled and waved her fingers at him.

"Take her," the Goo Queen commanded. "Confiscate those hateful twigs and bring her to me screaming."

Loweina looked at Snatch. It wasn't so much a look of sympathy as of measurement. Acknowledgment, maybe. Snatch supposed he appreciated the thought.

Then she turned and bolted, her tail flicking in the water like a frantic propeller.

"Stop her!" the Goo Queen screamed. "Capture her alive and do not let her burn that pretty face!" The possessed mermaids were already taking off, followed by the slime girls. "I want to see her beg to drink me," the Queen hissed. "Beg to replace this damaged vessel. Ah!" She pointed a long painted nail at Snatch as he started to edge back. "Chrysa, you stay."

"Oh, boy!" Chrysa squirmed happily, the jelly maid's lower half spiraling around like a spinning skirt.

Snatch felt his breaths getting heavier. At this rate, he guessed he had a minute, at most.

The Goo Queen turned to Snatch and gave a sly smile, either not noticing or not caring about his impending death. "You didn't think I'd forget about you, did you?"

He took one more step back before Chrysa struck. Panicking, he swung the knife at her. It was a fatal mistake he instantly regretted. He should have stabbed with it. Swinging in this dense water was like pushing through pudding. Chrysa easily grabbed his arm, knocked the knife from his shivering fingers, and pushed him—almost gently—into the sand.

And then she was on top of him, giggling. "Together again," she cooed.

Snatch said nothing. He was no longer sure if he could breathe, so he kept his mouth tightly shut and did not try. He could feel the pressure slowly increasing, but almost nothing was as unbearable as the sudden cold he felt.

The whole world seemed to be twisting and collapsing. Pain from the burn hissed through his breaking body, but it paled before the sheer cold, the sheer wrongness. He was not supposed to be here.

"Poor boy," Chrysa murmured, tickling his chest with a finger. "Poor, meddlesome boy. If only I could have made you happy."

"If only he didn't have to fight," the Goo Queen said, giving a mock-sigh. She chuckled. "We could have given him such pleasure, if only he'd have asked. Well, I guess ..." The rest of what she said was lost as the total din of silent oceans took over. Snatch could no longer hear.

Unable to stop himself, Snatch's mouth opened. He began to choke. His whole world was going pitch black, and it suddenly struck him that the last thing he was going to see in this life would be a naked jellyfish mermaid and a scarred queen laughing at his pain. What a sight.

Then, a cool, clear voice broke through the gloom. "Wow. I'm gone for three hours—"

For a moment, pure song tore through Snatch like a whirlwind of noise and sensation. He cried out, and suddenly found that he could cry out. The World Base surged through him, and pulled him back from the edge screaming. He sucked in a deep breath of clean ocean air.

"—and look at all the fun I miss." Larya floated there, about ten feet above them. She was completely naked, and her dark hair had become knotted and messy from too much time swimming, but her eyes smoldered with authority and purpose. Her arms were crossed over her breasts. Beside her floated two mermaids—normal mermaids—holding her up by the waist. They looked familiar to Snatch—redheads with green-scaled fish tails, peachy skin, and clear blue eyes. Each had a pair of starfish attached to her breasts.

The guides, he remembered, though this explained next to nothing. Hadn't they been too afraid to come along?

The Goo Queen was staring at Larya, too, he noticed, and her expression was one of rapture. "The druidess," she said. "Finally."

"Hi. Goo Queen, right?" Larya raised an eyebrow. "Boy, either my memory's played tricks or you have not aged well." She raised her hand.

"You can me mine!" the Goo Queen enthused. "My—you can replace this shell, little girl! Surrender! Embrace endless pleasure! Submit to me! Drink from me!"

"Burn," Larya replied.

Chrysa shrieked and ducked her head against Snatch's chest. The Goo Queen darted away as a blast of boiling bubbles surged through the space she had been in, arcing straight from Larya's hand.

Snatch was still recovering when Chrysa straightened, staring at him with bright pink eyes.

He tried to rise, but the slime girl just smiled and pushed him back down. "Oh, no," she cooed. "You'd better stay here while—ooh!" She turned too late to dodge as two redheaded mermaids barreled into her, knocking her from Snatch's chest and bearing her down into the sand. Snatch heard her shrieking and squealing in surprise, but he didn't look. He'd just spotted something much more important.

There was something right by his feet. Something Loweina had dropped—perhaps on purpose, but likely not.

He thrust his fingers into the sand.

"Larya!" he yelled. Larya glanced toward him. Her arms, too, were immersed in sand, and she was using this to animate the ocean floor into some sort of attacker. The Goo Queen staggered back as the earth itself struck at her.

He held up the geyser stick. She blinked in confusion. "Clear me!" he called.

Larya blinked again.

She didn't know what it was, but the Goo Queen did. The Goo Queen whirled, seeing him holding the stick. Her eyes bulged, and she dove at him—a good deal faster than he'd expected. "You petty fucking—"

Just before she reached him, he snapped the stick.

As she bore him down, her eyes registered this. Snatch wondered if she'd expected him to go through with it. Maybe she'd hoped he wouldn't have the nerve. Or maybe she really had panicked.

It didn't matter. He closed his eyes.

Suddenly, he was surrounded by cool, soft mud. Up above, he heard the dull roar of the geyser, and a shrill, inhuman scream that seemed to crawl into his ears and grow spines.

After a moment, he was lifted back out of the mud. Larya stared at him, looking rather cross. "'Clear me'?" she snapped at him. "Was I supposed to know what that meant, Alrek?"

Snatch looked around, and swallowed. Despite all his years, the sight of a scalded humanoid corpse never failed to disturb him. At least the spell didn't appear to convey the smell—oh, no, good, there it was. What a nice odor. What a handy spell. He grimaced and looked away. "Apparently you did, seeing as I'm not that."

"Uh-huh." Larya scowled. "Since when do you go in for heroics?"

He shrugged. "It's not heroics if there's someone there to save you."

There were a thousand more things he wanted and needed to say. There was also no way he could say about nine hundred ninety-seven of them.

So he just looked her in the eyes and gave a small grimacing smile. "It wasn't shitty of you to come back, druid."

"Hm." Larya tilted her head, looking a bit uncomfortable. "Well, we've both done a lot of shitty things today. It's good that we managed to do something right." She extended a hand. "Look, you weren't all wrong. This was ... a fucked up situation. I wish we'd had more time to talk things out. But from now on, we trust each other, alright? We don't leave each other. Not unless we have a plan, which, by the way, I did."

Snatch took the hand and shook it. "Well, this is probably the last mission I do with a partner, anyways, but—" He stopped as a loud moan cut him off. "Shit, they're still at it, aren't they?"

They both turned to look at Chrysa, who was now immersed in the nubile bodies of the two mermaids. "I can't tell who's winning," he muttered. "How'd you get them to come down, anyways?"

Larya gave a little smile. "Well, funny you should phrase it like—"

The ground gave a lurch, and she staggered. So did Snatch. They heard a low rumble.

A loud hissing sound hit their ears. Snatch clutched his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Shit!" he cried, as the needling pain struck again.

"Alrek?" Larya sounded nervous. "Are you—"

"Can you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

His eyes opened. His hands were shaking from stress. The sound tore through his ears like a razor. "It's not over," he whispered.

At that moment, the ground exploded.

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TO BE CONCLUDED