Chapter Text
Now, if you asked Avery what happens during her everyday life, she would reply with her usual routine of waking up, taking a shower, taking care of the flock of sheep outside her house, then going outside to do god-knows-what or exhaust herself with skywars battles, before collapsing into her bed back home. Needless to say, her life was more on the mundane side, with little difference or specialties.
Avery would have replied with this—if she was not in some random cave with an unconscious woman right in front of her?!
Clouds swirled into a dizzying myriad of colours reflecting off from the sunset, flowers danced in the chilly wind from the transition of day to night, shadows grew bigger and a few trees had hints of yellow and orange touching the surface of the leaves. A green, goopy woman was heading down the path from a village, sporting a thin, white coloured cropped shirt with a black short-sleeved flannel with a pattern of tropical flowers decorating the plain jacket. Paired with khaki coloured shorts and a warm brown pair of sandals, Avery looked just about a regular tourist on vacation.
The woman continued walking down, feeling the cool air howl past her arms and making her flannel flow around her waist. It was supposed to be normal like every other day. That was, until she felt a huff of abnormally warm air brush past her ear, almost like someone breathing a little too close for comfort. At first, the slime just chalked it off as the air, continuing with her journey back to her beloved home a little faster. However, it was starting to get more annoying with each passing moment, the breathing being barely noticeable before it was not.
Avery tried not to think about it—to brush it off as if it was nothing, to skip down the path with more energy than normal, to play around with the cracks embedded deep into the path by jumping over it. She stopped dead in her tracks when she heard something. A whisper. She knew she was alone at that moment—she should be. So, why was she hearing something no animal or environment could produce?
Each step she took did not make it any better. The whispering only got louder and louder, growing in volume—forming increasingly incoherent words as if it were in an ancient tongue. The slime slowly wrapped her arms around her torso, feeling the intense sensation of overwhelming uneasiness creep up her spine. ‘Gibberish’ that did not in fact make sense in her brain, bristles of mysterious wind coming from almost nowhere, and the burning of eyes watching her back did not help either.
Her head was pounding with unspoken questions stemming from paranoia. Why were there sudden whispers? Why did it feel… uncanny? Almost human, yet not quite? The whispers curled around her body, wrapping around like a vice. Avery was about to start tearing up from how uncomfortable it felt despite there being nothing—until the ancient tongue slowly started to formulate actual, coherent words. She didn’t know why, but she could almost… understand the whispers, compelling her to look into the east—to head in that direction and find answers to something, whether or not it quelled her curiosity.
She tried to resist, tried to stop her foot from taking another step, tried to stay put—but there was no use. The temptation to seek out into the depths of the caves and search for the truth of the whispers. Eventually, the slime’s body betrayed her and step by step, she began to run in the east, desperately trying to find out the cause of the sudden curiosity.
A few minutes later, she arrived at a seemingly normal cave—yet the stone walls hummed with the same, familiar whispers. Avery huffed a little, deeply exhaling and inhaling with the same intensity as she wiped some sweat off from her forehead. With an anxiety-induced tremble in her hands and the inevitable weight of fear pressing on her, she chose to enter the depths of the stone covered opening.
Her footsteps echoed in the darkness, rebounding against the stone as her torch illuminated her surroundings with a sharp light following her around. As Avery ventured deeper and deeper into the seemingly ordinary-looking cave, she realised that it was already mined, with carefully carved stones stairs descending her lower and lower into the cave. The slime felt even more weirded out by the minute—unless this was a cave she had previously already discovered, mined, and forgotten about, it was highly unlikely it was hers’ since the stone seemed deliberately planned and shaped.
That should have been the case, if she weren’t the only person living in the forest, and that there should not be anybody there.
Avery shakily swallowed down a thick ball of saliva down her throat before trying to skip down the stone stairs instead of letting the fear consume her entirely, attempting to remain optimistic despite the sheer impossibility of the situation even happening. Humming a wavering, trembling tune, she finally reached the end of the stone stairs and walked further down, only to be met with an empty space made of the same grey stone, a normal wooden chest in the middle, and several doors located towards the sides, similar to the entrance area of a strip mine.
She quickly sighed out a breath she was unaware she was holding, allowing her shoulders to sag in relief that the whispers had eventually fallen silent, and only herself was left. Regaining her composure, Avery was admittedly confused, scratching her head in puzzlement. This was not exactly what she had expected…? Most would think that there would be a secret magical entrance to another world, or maybe a mysterious door that would reveal the secrets of the world—yet, this was an exceptionally normal strip mine, save for the chest in the middle.
A few more steps forward, the slime opened the chest, only to find a journal with a scratched, leather cover and crusty corners from the thread gradually decaying. Out of curiosity, she opened the book—and a page of scribbled writing revealed before her eyes.
Messy handwriting was scrawled across a few pages, all of them saying “At the crosswords, don’t turn left,” in what seemed to be panic.
Avery stared at the pages in bewilderment, observing the handwriting in utter confusion. There were more questions left unanswered than before, and the slime had absolutely no clue who was the author. Looking around, she yet again did not find anything suspicious, even after entering the doors and making it halfway down to check for signs of abnormality.
Sighing in defeat, she gazed at the page once more. Where were the crossroads? What happened? Was there something as crazy as an eldritch old being? The slime did not, and most likely would not know.
Just as she decided to leave the mine and search for more clues surrounding it, she heard the sound of stone breaking. Immediately the slime whipped around, pulling a sword out of her inventory and was prepared to challenge anyone who dared to practically give her a heart attack for the last half an hour. Instead of a mob or an entity, however, she was face-to-face with a person covered in gold armour, appearing like a knight as blood dripped down from her arms to her head—stumbling forward onto the slime.
Avery instantly shrieked, throwing her sword onto the ground out of instinct as the dame crashed into her, knocking the wind out of both of them and sending the two straight to the ground. In a heap, the slime rubbed her head a little, before focusing her vision onto the injured, unconscious knight leaning her head over her shoulder.
The slime quickly landed her palms onto the dame’s shoulders, moving her forward as she checked on the other’s pulse. She sighed in relief, calming her nerves down as the knight luckily still had a steady pulse, despite it being a little faint.
Avery was about to try and call to the woman to see if she would wake up, until she caught a glance at the dame’s eyes—and god, if mesmerising was an understatement, then nothing else could compare to the sheer beauty in the shimmering gold colour on her face. The slime stared at the knight’s face, wide-eyed even though she could only see her eyes. They were really, really, pretty. A faint tint of blush dusted the slime’s cheeks before she slapped herself out of embarrassment.
She could admire the stranger’s eyes later—but now she has an unconscious dame to deal with. Picking her sword back up, Avery made sure she had the journal in her inventory before hauling the stranger up onto her back, stumbling due to the weight of her armour weighing the both of them down. The slime had to take the knight back and at least take care of her injuries—especially if she was the one that had written the warning for her.
The slime zoomed up the stone stairs, attempting to shake off the same clammy feeling of uneasiness as she made her way up with a new found determination; getting the dame back to her home.