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Avery didn’t know what to do.
He had lost count of them.
The slime hybrids dying on his lap, on the floor, everywhere around that godforsaken cave.
It didn’t make sense.
As far as he knew, there were two, maybe three slime hybrids in all of existence. Himself and slimecicle. And yet, he was being proven wrong by the sheer volume of them leaving the cave only to melt to death.
Those that could speak warned him not to go down there. That He, whoever He was, wanted him.
That D3rLord3, while trapped, was safe.
Safe because D3rLord3 was bait for Avery.
He never knew their names. Never knew them long enough to ask them for names. For all he knew, they all shared the same name. All coming from, he presumed, the same mother slime trapped within the depths.
He was tired of his kind getting the, the yellow rot in them, making them sick and causing them to melt into nothingness with contact with the sun.
He had to laugh about it, otherwise he would cry.
Had, in fact, cried.
For each one he found, he collected their remains. Made a little graveyard, and for each one his very soul felt like it got heavier and heavier.
He imagined living with them all. Dozens of siblings, all chattering over each other. Fighting over breakfast cereal, over the TV remote, over who wore whose clothes, over whose pet was whose, and.
And he cried at the graves of each new little sibling he was never allowed to know. Over each hand he held as their slimy exterior gave out and they became puddles of goop.
He assigned each one something, anything, he could pretend belonged to them. To the first, who he had called Mark in his head, he’d decided loved flannel shirts. To the eighth, who he’d been calling Maria, he’d woven her flower crowns. To the sixteenth, who he’d mentally called Alex, he thought would have loved horses and left a small wooden figurine of one at the headstone. Each one, he had chosen one thing, one arbitrary trait, so he could pretend he knew them.
And each one took up a spot in his heart that he hadn’t known was there.
Avery knew he had a big heart. That he had so, so much love to give. It was part of why his mother slime had kept him around, even after he became a player that she should have hated. It was part of how he had charmed the guards at the city to let him in without his papers, so he could get those papers.
It was also why he knew he loved all the slimes coming from the depths, from the bottom of his heart.
They all deserved to be remembered, even if they didn’t have the time to tell him their names.
This one, too, cradled carefully in his arms, deserved to be loved. Loved as much as his aching heart could handle, even though he knew that this one would, too, melt into a goopy corpse soon. The yellow oozing from eyes and mouth were a sure sign of that.
But…
But, Avery had a golden apple, this time. Maybe, just maybe.
Maybe this one could live?
Carefully, he fished the apple out of his inventory. Cut it into small slices.
Hoped beyond hope that this would work.
And put a piece into the mouth of the barely-alive yellow-green slime in his lap.
…
…
…
The slime absorbed the slice.
More slices, then, until all are in.
Avery felt his non-existent heartbeat in his throat, concern and fear and sheer unbridled hope swirling in him.
He wiped some of the yellow goop from the slime in front of him, clearing it off of eyes and mouth and nose.
And…
And the slime relaxed.
Relief, sweet relief, crashed into him.
He had done it.
He had finally done it.
Avery had finally saved one of the slime hybrids from the cave. At least, for now.
Avery would keep them safe.
With a slight grunt, he scooped the other slime up in his arms, turned, and hauled ass back to his base.
The slime would be touch-and-go for a while, but Avery was confident that there was a path forward, now. That there could be an end to the deaths.
Finally, someone would get to live.