The beast was made out of dripping, transparent ooze, with colorful organs like creations from children’s modeling clay suspended inside. It was clearly the slime that Nic had spared before- but it had changed its shape completely.

It now moved along the ground on six stumpy legs, with a tail trailing behind it dripping blots of clear slime onto the ground. Its back was broad and flat and spiked up with strange protrusions of pastel spikes, like a flower garden of undersea corals. Its head reminded Nic of his own amphibian nature, with a blunt, broad head, large eyes, and an over-wide mouth.

A mouth that continually, constantly moved.

“Yes yes, Maker-Mine! I have so many questions!” The little thing sprinted up and butted its head affectionately into Nic’s waist, nearly knocking him down. The collision was like being slammed into by a wall of springy jelly.

Nic grinned. It looked like he’d found his missing blob. He reached down to pet the thing’s slimy skull, but the kick-happy guard slammed his knee into Nic’s back before he could reach.

“Hey! You-” The guard waved at the blob-beast. “Get away! He’s a prisoner, he can’t answer your question?”

“A prisoner?” The blob’s voice was the essence of confusion. “Why a prisoner? Did he do something? What did he do?”

It was like the worst of a yipping dog and a toddler. All bark, all questions. The guard reeled back, realizing he’d made a mistake and seeing no way out from the tide of inquiries.

The woman had to step in. Pushing her spectacles higher onto her nose, she stood firmly in front of the blob, meeting it with a cold stare until it sank into silence. In fact, it visibly sank into itself, shrinking down until it was much smaller.

“Now, Gwungo. What have I said? Repeat to me what I said…”

“Don’t bother people when they’re working.” The blob-lizard whined regretfully.

“That’s right. And your... “

“My Maker!” It cut in instantly.

“Is busy working at being a prisoner.” She paused, and then looked down at Nic. “Did you really make him?”

Nic grinned. “I guess I did. And hey, he’s turned out great. Chip off the old block.”

She didn’t understand him at all, of course. In fact she sighed as she realized she’d get nothing from Nic but his weird barking croak-language. But the blob understood, and instantly perked up, expanding in size once more.

“I turned out good?” His tail wagged back and forth.

“Yep.” Nic smiled gently, and reached out again to pet the thing on the neck- twisting his head and shooting a sudden glare at the guard he’d nicknamed Kicks as the boy moved in a way that suggested another blow was incoming. For a minute, instead of restraining his poisonous presence, Nic focused it into his gaze.

Kicks flinched back.

Nic scratched the oddly smooth surface of the slime, trying to find some sensitive point like a dog’s ears. The whole beast appeared to be one big sensory receptor, because it was immediately rolling on the ground, kicking its legs about in joy.

Glancing up, Nic saw the woman smiling faintly.

“Can I come visit you in prison?” The slime asked, all obvious hope. “I’ve never been to prison, and it must be an interesting place. And I bet you know all kinds of things! Like- like-”

Sensing another storm of questions brewing as that tail wagged back and forth, the woman stepped into the way. “No. No you can’t visit, that’s the point of prison. Now go find someone else to ask your questions.”

Nic was hauled to his feet and roughly dragged away from his creation. Only once did the woman look back at him. “That’s an… interesting… creature you made.” She said, studying him.

Nic did nothing but smile. Because what they hadn’t seen was him casually digging his fingers into the slime-puppy and scooping out a small handful of wobbly gel flesh. It was still alive in his hand, a separate organism, not harmed at all by being divided.

Capable of learning…

---

They checked every token in their possession before shoving him through the fire-gate. They clearly knew the best way out was to swipe a key- but Nic had different plans now. As Kicks did the honors of punting him through into the prison, he stared up at his dryad jailors with an indifferent grin.

It was already over. They hadn't noticed the handful of slime after he'd spread it thin across his fingers, blending in with the natural layer of slippery oil on his skin.

He walked back into the greenhouse atrium to find the five other prisoners watching.

“You’re the first of us. First to be let out.” The insect demons hissed. They spoke in perfect unison.

“Yeah, what gives, little man?” The ogre chewed on a handful of pine nuts and berries. There was little else to eat in here, but their captors seemed fine with them scrounging among the gardens for scraps of food. Looking at the ogreblood’s monstrous physique, Nic knew hunger must be eating the giant from within. “Doesn’t look like they’re letting you go…”

Nic smiled. “You couldn’t understand me even if I told you the secret password…”

Why people insisted on talking when they knew he couldn’t speak back, Nic didn’t know. Maybe they loved the sound of their own voice.

He walked past the lot of them and returned to his cell, settling down to meditate.

---

The roots of the poison flowers dug deep into his skin, chasing every drop of Essence hidden within. If he tried to shift his cultivation at all, draw out any of his power, his reward was an instant kick of blinding pain and the feeling of his life being sucked away by the hungry roots.

But Nic was learning.

The flowers blindly chased his aura and Essence through his body, but they weren’t intelligent. If he could move two strands of aura at once…

If he could do that…

He could distract the brainless tendrils long enough to activate a Shard.

It was a simple plan, but as for carrying it out? Nic sweated and bled for hours. Each attempt went the same painful way. He would slowly gather focus, slowly spread his will throughout his cultivation base, careful not to disturb anything and draw the flowers’ attention before he was ready.

Then, in one smooth motion, he would draw two strands in opposite directions.

The simple willpower this took was overwhelming. Nic couldn’t rely on the System to perform this kind of work for him, and so he had to manually guide his own inner world while splitting his attention in half.

The first few attempts failed there. His focus was lacking, and the strands broke apart into sparks of scattered aura that the roots quickly devoured.

But he had nothing but time. Hours dripped by in tune with the sweat from his brow. Soon enough, Nic had qualified for the second obstacle.

Pain.

As soon as he was capable of funneling two separate strands at all, he was forced to do it under the worst conditions- fighting to maintain control as his flesh was torn apart by burrowing vines, each tendril greedily seeking for the energy he was trying to sustain.

A stab of pain. A gasp. Another attempt ended in failure, minute drops of blood welling up from around the bright-blue flowers.

He could feel that the roots were drawing deeper into his flesh, too. At some point the raw physical damage being done to his innards would reach a tipping point…

Each attempt was severing his life, inch by inch as the flowers grew into him.

But his cold fury at feeling the energies escape him yet again only pushed him to try once more. Again. Again again again…

“Stop.”

He looked up to see the woman with the warbraids and the red belt standing in the open door to his cell. His exhausted look of pain hardened into a sneer. Couldn’t he get some privacy?

“You’re going to kill yourself, and you’re not going to get anywhere before you die.” She tilted her head. “Look at me for a moment. You’ll see…”

He blinked, and tried to focus on her. His vision was oddly blurred, which before he’d written of as a side effect of pain, effort, and mental strain. But now he could see the long, branched shadow crawling across his vision, splitting his eye like a cracked mirror.

A hair-thin root had pushed up into his eye, between the lens and the cornea. Any further and it would blind his left side completely.

“Look, I’ve seen this before. It’s not just a plant, its a baby dryad. Nobody I’ve ever heard of has managed to kill one once it's inside them.”

Nic glanced down at the flowers again. So…

The dryads were like the spider then. Implanting their young. Letting them feed of others cultivation to grow stronger. Disgustingly parasitic, for such beautiful creatures.

“Yeah. Yeah, I thought that might get your attention. If you keep trying to force your way through it like that, your heart will be crushed in hours, and then another prickly bastard will crawl out of your skin like a butterfly out of a cocoon. It’s a bad way to go.”

“Thanks.” Nic croaked.

She knelt down. “I’m working on my own way out of here. From what I’ve heard, you’ve got a Settlement, right?”

He nodded.

There was a greasy flash of a grin. “Alright then. If I bail you out, you owe me…”

And then she was gone, leaving Nic to sigh and abandon his attempt. Learning to split his will into two equal fragments was simply too hard with the added pressure of the vines slowly closing in around his chest. With the Aleph-marks, the poison ash, the flowers…

There were simply too many things lodged in his body disrupting his attempts to cultivate.

As he stood, he could feel them clutching at him, wrapped around his organs and bones in a slowly contracting vise. All over his skin, little flowers were blossoming.

He was on borrowed time.

Nic left his cell, walking through the greenhouse forest and out into the sunlight.

---

A few hours later and Nic’s captors were still watching him curiously. They got very attentive whenever anyone approached the fire-guarded boundary of the prison. He was skipping stones towards that boundary, watching them crack and split into shrapnel as the silver flame surrounding the prison leapt up into their path.

He had nothing to do but wait…

And wait…

Until the children in the street decided the strange pink creature wasn’t worth trying to annoy with schoolyard taunts.

Until his jailors moved on, leaving only a single dryad watching in the distance…

Until he could unclench his fist around the lump of soft gel and whisper to it…

“Can you understand me?”

It squirmed in his hand.

“Uh, change colors. Red for no. Blue for yes. Or just don’t and I’ll know you can’t…”

It slowly turned to a deep sky-blue shade.

Nic curled his hand down around it again, not wanting the guard to see, leaving a crack between his fingers where he could watch the colors shift.

“Can the big part of you hear what the little part hears..?”

Red.

“But if I send you back to them, you can tell them what I said?” Nic picked up a stone and flung it into the flames. He was running out, a clear patch slowly appearing around him.

He glanced down subtly when the guard looked away. Blue.

“And I bet, if you learn to resist something, like fire…” He smiled. “You could teach the big guy to resist it too…”

Blue.

Nic smiled slowly. “Last question from me, then I’ll tell you some stories about my home…”

He could feel the blob shiver with excitement.

“Can you feel pain?”