The Slime's Escape Into Darkness

Story So Far

The reservoir runs low from the return trip, and the silk-wrapped egg receives the last charge; the red-gold veins brighten, the shell pushes outward, and the reservoir goes empty as the egg keeps growing under the birch. In the root hollow, nine open nodes feed from birch roots and the mill run, and the egg opens to reveal a Drakmere hatchling with clear red-gold eyes before the current goes quiet and afternoon fades.

Carrying the hatchling through Millhaven, the protagonist brings it into The Broken Antler and sets it on Petra’s counter. Petra inspects its translucent scales, amber-brown spine, and red-gold eyes, says Torvin’s collector will not pay for a hatchling because the bounty was for an egg, and asks what the protagonist wants with it.

The protagonist says the hatchling is staying and will be raised personally. Petra suggests names like Cinder, Shard, and Kael, says it already knows who it belongs to, warns it needs raw meat soon, and says Drest might have scraps from the tanner’s yard.

The hatchling is named Kael and goes outside with the protagonist. South past the gateposts in the pines, Kael lunges at a digger, pins it, kills it after the bond pushes him to finish, and the reservoir is fed back toward full after the protagonist drains two more diggers.

The protagonist brings Kael out of the pines and stops between two iron corner pins on the flat strip by the mill run and tree line. Kael steps onto the land, smells it, and makes a slow circuit while the strip remains unbuilt and unmarked except for the pins and Kael’s first clean footprints.

Crouched in grass, the protagonist blows wind through it, cuts it, then sends a short fire burst while Kael tracks and holds his ground. The protagonist rises on air, drifts sideways over the mill run, lands, and then uses wind gusts for Kael to snap at as he keeps moving with his spine bright amber in the low sun.

Whistling once, the protagonist gets Kael to heel north through the gateposts toward the tanner’s yard. Behind the main structure, Ulf and Cob inspect the permit drawing, call Kael a Drakmere and a hatchling, and say the protagonist can build only after paying a four-gold deposit, with ground broken day after tomorrow and the basement drain still a week extra east toward the tree line.

The plan changes to leaving out the drain, building the house, and skipping the channel, with Cob and Ulf revising the price and insisting on four gold before any shovel work. Ulf says they will stake the corners in the morning, start the foundation pour by midday if the ground holds, and Kael watches while the rolled permit drawing is held out.

The protagonist finds only 246 silver in the pouch and no gold, says everything needs converting, and is told the moneychanger works out of the granary annex at the standard rate. Ulf keeps the rule that they do not break ground until the four gold is in hand, and Kael returns to the protagonist’s side to watch.

At the granary annex, a narrow man watches Kael enter, and the silver becomes four gold for eighty silver. Back at the tanner’s yard, Ulf pockets the coins and sets the job for day after tomorrow, and by morning Petra has two postings on the board, including a live specimen from the Hollow.

Petra holds an Ashfen courier strip and a Hollow specimen strip with Kael nearby. The protagonist takes the Ashfen strip, Petra ties a red cord around the Hollow strip and says it is held for three days before returning to the board if the door is not found, then she face-downs it beneath the counter while the protagonist pockets the Ashfen strip.

The southeast road out of Millhaven stays quiet, and Kael trots ahead before stopping at a wheel rut. The protagonist lifts Kael on a compressed air shelf, and by Ashfen’s well a heavyset woman reads the strip, keeps it, and counts four silver into the protagonist’s palm while Kael lands on the well rim and later manages six or maybe seven counts aloft on the walk back.

The protagonist pockets the four silver, rides a compressed shelf northwest over the pine road with Kael climbing beside, and returns to the Broken Antler. Petra says the three-day hold still has time and offers it back for forty silver, live and uninjured, while Kael skids in beside the protagonist, breathing hard with spine plates flushed dark amber.

Petra takes back the red-corded strip and then trades it for forty on return, alive and uninjured, saying the buyer wants something from inside the foundation stones within three days. Kael ranges ahead on the east road to the Hollow, where a small quilled creature appears under the largest slab, and the protagonist uses air shelves to pin it against the stone.

The protagonist carries the grey silk-wrapped creature back toward Millhaven with Kael at heel, after binding its legs and quill-ridge and tucking it inside the canvas coat. After three hours they reach the south gate and The Broken Antler, where Petra says the buyer picks it up tomorrow and the protagonist does not need to be there, then sets forty silver on the counter.

The granary annex moneychanger is two streets north, and Kael goes with the protagonist after the protagonist heads south through the gateposts. At the build site, Ulf and Cob say they staked the corners, pulled them back up, and left no deposit or pour, and the protagonist pockets forty silver to bring the total to 258 while Kael sniffs the pulled stake hole.

At dusk by the barred window, the protagonist exchanges the silver twice and gets back five gold, while Ulf, Cob, and Kael speak over the payment and work order. Kael is told to stay, Ulf says first light before breakfast and day after tomorrow the walls will go up, and he pockets the gold before leaving north with Cob and the sharpened stakes.

Kael calls after them before they reach the gateposts, and Ulf asks if Kael can swing an adze while Cob says Kael has a scythe and a Drakmere. Cob and Ulf insist the ground must be clear at first light, with no gear near the corner pins and no creature digging at the stakes, and that Kael must keep it off the foundation line and be there when they pour.

Before light, Ulf and Cob arrive with stakes and a mallet, Cob drives the first pin into the northwest corner, and Kael lunges at it and wrenches it sideways. Cob says Kael cannot be on the foundation line, and Ulf says Kael must be tied off past the tree line while they work or they must come back when the protagonist has a solution.

Kael crouches with one foot on the pulled stake, spine plates burning amber, and the protagonist turns Kael’s head and points east toward hunting small things in the roots. Kael steps off, walks six paces east into the trees, Cob resets the stake, and Ulf drives it in with three blows while a small rustle goes silent in the pines.

In the first line of pines, Kael is found crouched over a dead digger in the needles. He holds it the way he was shown, drops it deliberately, sits back on his haunches, and watches as another digger burrow lies torn open nearby and the other digger gets away.

The protagonist presses a palm to the dead digger and tries to draw it inward through opened nodes, but nothing answers and a thin thread of reservoir is lost. The failed pull leaves the digger cold and still, Kael carries it deeper, drops it, then lies with his chin on its back in the shadow while the foundation line goes in without the protagonist.

The protagonist later approaches Kael, crouched with chin on the digger and spine plates pulsing low amber. Kael presses his snout into the offered palm, a grey spider silk tether is looped around his neck and tied to the nearest pine with six feet of slack, and Kael is told to stay there and can sit, stand, turn, and reach the digger but not the stake line.

Back on open ground with open nodes, the reservoir is enough as cold current from the mill run warms the protagonist’s arms. Ulf measures the south line while Cob starts the south-east post-hole, the protagonist cracks clay with a compressed wind burst, clears the hole, loosens the perimeter, and presses fill tight around each stake before carrying stone for the foundation trench as Ulf says they are a day and a half ahead of rain.