We walked with Tib at the front leading the way, and me in the back marking any area we’d turned with chalk. After about a half hour, Tib began turning a corner, but hesitated, holding up his hand for us to stop moving.

I began hearing some kind of squelching noise coming from the path Tib was looking down, and shortly after that I began to smell something sweet and citrusy. Everyone crept up next to Tib to peer down the path. There was a massive green block of goo blocking one direction. It was filled with what looked like goblins, giant spiders, and even a kobold, all in various states of decay. It was moving slowly in our direction, even as we stared at it.

Before we could discuss what we should do, the slime started to pick up speed and move toward us. Tib went to draw his weapons, but Millicent grabbed his shoulder.

“Swords won’t do us any good. You’ll just wind up with your arm inside the creature, unable to get out.”

Nica stepped onto the path and began loosing arrows as the creature closed in. She moved down the opposite path from the creature, drawing its attention. It moved past us, focused on the most extreme source of stimuli available.

Patience moved into place behind it, and pulled out a small ring with a ruby on it. She placed it onto her right hand and I felt a hum of magic as a cone of flame shot from it, scorching the back half of the creature as it moved, and evaporating part of it. There was no sound of agony, but the way that the creature jiggled gave the impression that it was very painful for it.

The slime didn’t turn to face Patience, but instead simply reversed its trajectory to move in her direction. She began running the opposite way as Nica, who was still firing arrows at the beast.

That’s when the slime surprised us, and began to go after both Nica and Patience at once. It divided into two halves and each of those halves chose a different target.

I flung a partial stone-toss at the one chasing Patience to get its attention, and that caused it to divide a third time creating a new slime to chase me. Even as reduced as it was, it still reached my chest in height. I was surprised that it didn’t create appendages or spit goo, but instead seemed content to simply try and catch up to each of us, consume us, and let us drown inside of it.

I went to turn around and run down the way we’d come, but realized that Tristus, Millicent, and Tiberius were working furiously to create and light torches behind me. As I hesitated, I felt a warm sensation overtake my left arm. I turned to see it already almost completely engulfed by the green slime. I tried to yank myself free, but instead found myself pulled even further in, losing a portion of my shoulder to the slime. I turned my head away, and activated a fireball through the hand that was inside the creature.

It exploded, covering me in goo and splattering the walls of the maze all around me. I scraped a pile of green slime off the side of my face, and looked around. The two remaining slimes were quivering the same way they had when Patience burnt it, that meant that the separate parts all still made up a whole of some kind.

Patience and Nica were dodging around the slimes as they closed in, but I was worried that we’d be separated from them if they were forced to flee too far down the opposite paths of the maze. I turned to see that the rest of the party had managed to create several torches, but were having trouble lighting them. I moved over to them, and began casting spark until we each had our own source of fire. Millicent and I ran after Patience, and Tiberius and Tristus ran after Nica.

Patience was trapped at a dead end when we reached her, and was doing her best to scramble up a wall, using her daggers to aid in her ability to climb, but the slime had her foot and was slowly dragging her down.

Millicent took her torch and pressed it against the edge of the slime where it began to boil and jiggle.I followed suit, and noticed that the areas we pressed the flames against were evaporating. After a few minutes of this, the slime was completely gone, allowing Patience to remove her foot and leaving behind a pile of bones, corpses and a single rusted gauntlet.

The gauntlet drew my eye, so I quickly shoved it into my pack as I ran back in the direction we’d seen Nica run, with Patience and Millicent following closely behind me. By the time we’d caught up to them, the portion of slime they’d been fighting had been destroyed, though Nica was clutching her leg, an arrow protruding from it.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She nodded. “Arrow trap. Ran into it and didn’t have enough time to react.I’ll be okay.”

In spite of her words, Tib’s face was scrunched up in concern. He pulled his sheathe from his belt, and put it in her mouth. She bit down on it, and when he pulled the arrow from her leg I could hear the sound of the leather creaking between her teeth. He ripped off a piece of his toga to wrap the wound, but before he did Patience handed him a bottle of booze. He tore the cork from it with his teeth, and poured some onto the wound, before drying it and wrapping it up. Luckily the arrow had a straight head rather than a triangular one, and the wound didn’t seem to be too deep. Tib helped Nica to stand back up, and she was able to move on her own, but with a limp.

“We should find a safe corner to rest,” suggested Tib.

“I’m fine,” countered Nica. “We need to find Zev.”

Tristus leaned against a wall of the maze. “Well I’m afraid I’m too tired to keep going, so we’ll either have to rest soon, or you’ll need to leave me behind.” He looked at Nica as he spoke.

Nica put a little weight on her leg, and grimaced, then looked at Tristus. “If he needs to rest then we have no choice.”

I saw Tib shoot Tristus a grateful smile. “The other direction ends in a dead end,” I suggested. “If we set up camp there it will be easy to keep a lookout for anything that may come after us.”

“Do you think Zev will be alright?” asked Millicent.

“I do. I think he’s probably the one of us most suited for this maze. He knows stealth, traps, monsters, and if his equipment isn’t too damaged he’ll probably be able to just fly himself the rest of the way out.”

Millicent nodded, with only a small stain of doubt clouding her expression. I was projecting a lot of confidence that Zev was okay, but I was just as worried as she was, if not more so. Still, it wouldn’t do us any good to get ourselves killed pushing too hard. Millicent was out of spells, Nica was hurt, and we were all still more than a little rattled from our impact with the ground.

We made our way back to the corner where we’d slain one of the slimes and took the time to clear it and make camp. Because of the citrusy scent of the creature, in spite of the fact that it had dropped a large number of corpses and rusted metal as it had died, the camp smelled as if it had been recently sprayed with industrial cleaner. I checked my notifications.

Congratulations! You’ve slain a Slime (lvl 9)! You gain 400 xp!

A solid XP gain for the work we’d done, though I’d have preferred to avoid the fight altogether. I pulled out the gauntlet that had caught my eye and turned it over in my hands. I could feel a faint touch of magic to it, but wasn’t sure of what it was. It had been iron, but was now brown with age and rust, clearly its best days were behind it. I stood and took it over to Millicent who was examining Patience’s ring.

“It looks like it only has a single charge per day. I could normally restore the charge myself, but until I sleep I won’t be able to do that and by then it’ll have restored its charge anyway from the residual magic in the air.” She handed the ring back to Millicent.

“Where’d you get that one?” I asked.

She shot me a smile. “Dominic’s. Don’t worry though, I only intend on wearing it while we adventure. Too easy to recognize it.”

“Oh I’m not going to criticize. Without the ring we might all be floating in green jelly right now.” I handed the gauntlet to Millicent. “This was in one of the slimes. I think it has an enchantment of some kind.”

She looked it over, put it on her hand and made a fist, then handed it back to me. “It’s a Gauntlet of Rust. You touch any metal with that and focus your will, and it will cause it to corrode.” She smiled. “I’d keep it away from Zevrack once we find him. He may find that a bit threatening to his research.”

I smiled, and slid it into my pack. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Now, before anyone else asks me for anything, I need to sleep.”

I nodded, and left her be, moving to my own bedroll next to Patience. I looked up at the night sky, and that’s when something surprised me. There was something new on the moon.