Morphling

Prismordia, an untamed world brimming with life so diverse and exotic, most of it still remains a mystery to its inhabitants of untold years. Magic and wild things run rampant and free in all its corners breathing life into the world.

And yet, as is always the rule of nature, beauty and danger come hand in hand. 

Great beasts roam the land, massive dragons rule the skies, and untold horrors lurk in the deep. 

Great are its dangers and mighty are its monsters, but nothing could compare to the lands where wild magic converges; sowing change wherever it flows.

On this day, however, and in this land, a change far greater than any there had ever been, is coming…

***

Far below in the forest depths, a hulking beast in fur sat and enjoyed the remains of its recent kill. With its massive forearms, it lifted the gore and brought it to its muzzle to engorge itself in its flesh, splattering blood and entrails along the forest floor.

As it was animating itself with its meal, it disregarded the viscous entities that slithered around it while lapping up its messy remains. These creatures were considered the cleaners of the forest as they fed on detritus and corpses keeping the forest mostly free of disease and decay. Slimes, as they are called by the inhabitants, were bottom feeders and mostly well left alone by the other denizens of the forest for their role and unappetizing nature.

As the fuzzy beast merrily ate while the slimes slithered around eating its mess, a small ripple in space formed a few feet away. Sensing the disturbance in the air, the beast turned towards the ripple only to see it suddenly become a tear. Startled as curiosity turned into fear, the beast bolted into the forest to escape whatever danger the tear might entail.

The slimes, passive and unafraid in nature, ignored the tear as it continually grew several meters until a loud *pop* and a *crash* sounded throughout the forest. In the area of what was once the tear now stood a strange amalgamation of metal, wires, glass, fire, and sparks. The “machine” that appeared was cylindrical and small with a monitor and several switches still attached to it. It was currently on fire in a few spots along with several sparking wires protruding out. On the screen, words foreign to this world could be seen.

– - –

<<WARNING!!>>

<<CONTAINMENT INTEGRITY COMPROMISED!!>>

<<SCANNING..>>

<<ATTEMPTING REPAIRS…>>

<<…>>

<<ERROR. POWER SOURCE MISSING. REPAIR FAILED.>>

<<SCANNING…>>

<<SEARCHING FOR ALTERNATE POWER SOURCE…>>

<<SCANNING…>>

<<NO AVAILABLE ALTERNATE POWER SOURCE DETECTED>>

<<SEARCHING SYSTEM PROTOCOLS>>

<<SCANNING…>>

<<DUE TO LACK OF A POWER SOURCE>>

<<CONTAINMENT CANNOT BE ACHIEVED>>

<<INITIATING TERTIARY PROTOCOLS…>>

<<RELEASING SAMPLE CX2-34-516>>

– - –

As soon as those words flashed on the screen, the sound of pressurized air could be heard as the cylinder opened. Within it levitated a glass sphere which contained an unknown pale green mass which seemed to sparkle in the sunlight.

As the power soon shut off, the sphere fell from the space it levitated in and rolled off the cylinder. Hitting the earth, it shattered as it fell onto a small pile of stones. Its contents spilled forth; a viscous pale-green substance, and spread on the ground.

– - –

<<SAMPLE CX2-34-516 HAS BEEN RELEASED>>

<<INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONTAINMENT AND HANDLING IS TO BE GIVEN BY DR.ANTON.WU>>

<<INITIATING SYSTEM SHUT DOWN…>>

<<…>>

<<MAY ELYSIUM PROSPER>>

– - –

 

These were the last words on screen as the machine completely shut off. Only the occasional spark or the sound of burning can be heard. The slimes slowly slithered towards the stain which spilled near the machine. When they were a few feet from it, the substance slowly stirred. As if to shake off the vestiges of sleep, the substance shook in its entirety and slowly raised a viscous tentacle. Touching the top of its body, it made a motion as if it were scratching its head.

It turned around and slowly raised its mass as if raising its head and motioned it towards the machine. Seeing the machine, several more tendrils formed and started waving in the air as if it was expressing joy.

In its reverie, however, it failed to notice the slimes that have gotten closer. Upon realizing it wasn’t alone, it turned and noticed the slimes that stopped in front of it. Seeing these murky blue blobs, it expressed more delight as it thought that these creatures must be its siblings since they appeared similar to it.

This thought was immediately broken when the slimes surrounded it and started to consume it. Confused and in pain, the new slime struggled to free itself, but was smothered by more slimes as they went around and encircled it.

Feeling itself being slowly digested, the creature’s thoughts turned from fear and confusion to anger from feeling betrayed. Noticing the way they tried to digest it, it mimicked them and in turn tried to consume them as well. One stark difference it noticed was the degree at which it devoured the other slimes was much faster. Unbeknownst to it, the properties that make up its body are far more refined and specialized, so before it even noticed, it managed to turn the tables on the blue slimes and consumed several of them entirely.

As it managed to completely consume three, it soon noticed that there was no longer any pain. It looked around it and saw the blue slimes stopped attacking it. Confused once again, it turned towards itself and realized that its colors started matching the other slimes. It wasn’t sure how it happened, but it definitely wasn’t going to let off the slimes for trying to eat it earlier just because it was different.

As the slimes continued on with their business, they didn’t even feel threatened when the irregular among them openly attacked and consumed them gradually. As it consumed all the blue slimes, it finally felt satisfied. When it calmed down, it dawned upon it that it suddenly understood the properties that made up the slimes it consumed.

It looked inwardly towards itself and realized that while its properties and make up are completely different, it can somehow alter itself to match the slimes it consumed. Seeing the properties of the slime, it immediately concluded that it was useless to it and changed back to how it was. It already possessed the ability to consume most types of matter, much more than the blue slimes and was even better at it, so it considered it a pointless addition to itself.

Seeing all around it, it saw the vast forest and the vegetation that was present. Curious, it tried to consume plant matter to see if it could mimic its properties, but found it couldn’t mimic it entirely. Outside of photosynthesis and being able to breathe through its flesh, it couldn’t create limbs of wood or plant fiber. Its body somehow was able to automatically filter the properties it could use and those it couldn’t.

It didn’t fully understand this about itself, but it somehow knew that it was important to keep consuming different kinds of biomass if it means to grow. That didn’t stop it from trying to digest rock and soil however, but while it could corrode it, it found that it couldn’t use the minerals and elements for its body directly so it simply expelled it. It would need to consume a creature that would have properties that allowed it to consume such matter so it was only a matter of time.

It looked towards the machine one last time, before it made to leave. After moving a few feet, something very important immediately dawned upon it. It was moving much too slow.

Racking its questionably existent mind, it needed to find a means for its body to move in a way that doesn’t involve dragging its mass across the undergrowth. As it was scratching its “head” and shuffling around some pebbles, it noticed that a round pebble was rolling along the floor. Seeing this, the little creature trembled uncontrollably in reaction to its epiphany.

Pulling its mass towards itself, the creature made a few experiments by altering its shape while layering a thicker membrane around its body. After several minutes of experimentation and the recent memory of its prior state in the machine, it finally managed to find a near perfect spherical form. Again, trembling in joy at its success, it proceeded to roll for several feet before it found another problem. As it rolled, the world appeared to spin around it.

Having to experience the world literally turning for the first time gave the creature its first brush with dizziness and nausea. Since it was a sphere, it also failed to realize that it couldn’t control the direction it moved and was systematically launched into the air when it rolled towards a log forming a natural ramp facing upwards.

 With the membrane that it formed around it being thick and rubbery to protect its insides, as soon as it landed on the hard ground, it immediately bounced several feet into the air. This continued for a few more times bouncing around multiple objects until it found the cause of its predicament and immediately released its round form. Turning into a formless blob once more, it splattered onto the ground as it landed and remained unmoving for a good long while.

Once it started to feel better from its recent roller coaster experience, it again reflected on its recent predicament. Rolling was now out of the question. Unless it found a way to stabilize or focus its senses while rolling, it never wanted to try that horrifying experience of wanting to expel its innards again.

Once more, it pulled back its mass towards itself. Thinking about how it bounced around, another realization came to it. Instead of immediately acting on it, however, it decided to take action much more slowly. Instead of forming a complete sphere, it turned itself into an oblong shape that covered more area of the ground. Forming the membrane once more, it then struck a pose as if it was getting ready to jump. Throwing its weight upwards and forwards, it flew a few inches off the ground before it landed and bounced a little bit forward from where it landed.

Seeing this, the little creature made adjustments until it was satisfied and bouncing along the forest floor. Rather than the slimes which looked like puddles of ooze, it simply looked like a pale-green jelly-like bean that was hopping along the vegetation.

Finally excited that it made a giant leap with its innovative means of travel, it bounced around like a happy green bean until it landed on something wet and warm.

Looking down, it sensed that whatever it landed on was a viscous liquid. Seeing that it wasn’t directly harming it, it decided to have a slurp and found that it contained biomatter. Overjoyed, it moved to continue siphoning it unto itself when it bumped onto something soft and fuzzy. Raising its senses upwards, it finally noticed the massive corpse of a creature before it.

Seeing a large amount of biomass from what used to be an animal, it was incredibly elated at having found material to grow with so soon. Seemingly looking towards the left and then right as if it was checking to make sure it was alone, it then proceeded to gorge itself with the carcass.

Minutes flew by, but the corpse didn’t seem to grow any smaller as the little blob slowly digested it. Soon it started to realize the difference in size between itself and the corpse it’s currently consuming. If the little blob was the size of a melon, then the creature it was consuming was probably seven to eight times its own mass!

This was an incredible amount of biomatter for it and its joy only grew further. This joy, however, was soon interrupted as a loud explosion rocked the forest close to it.

Panicked, it made for a dive inside the remains of the carcass and laid motionless. It wasn’t until a few minutes later of nothing happening that it decided to slowly come out and look for the source of the explosion.

Several meters away from it, it saw the cause was the machine it came out from. In the time the little fellow was doing its experiments and consuming the carcass, the machine continued to burn. The fire must have reached something it shouldn’t have and caused the machine to explode.

Seeing the destruction, the little jelly was worried that it wouldn’t be safe here. Not wanting to waste the biomatter it found, it instinctually encased it in a green substance forming a sort of cocoon around it. Once this was done, the little blob went underneath it then flattened itself to cover as much surface area it could.

Normally, it wouldn’t have been able to do this with its original size, but after having consumed at least a quarter of the corpse, it managed to gain more biomass and was now at least the size of a large watermelon.

Slowly, as it lifted the corpse on its back, it rolled across the undergrowth like treads. Going slow so it wouldn’t feel sick, it slithered away into the depths of the woods with its prize.