Mist coils around our legs, turning the ground slick with black mud. Water threads down the canyon walls in thin silver lines, pooling into shallow, sucking depressions. The air smells of wet iron and old decay—no worse than the sulfur tang we’ve grown numb to. Even the faint tremors beneath our feet feel routine now, like the mountain’s slow, steady breathing.
The soft pulse from my belly-light makes shadows twitch in the fog. My stomach knots.
I sniff, wrinkle my nose, and pin Lenora with a glare.
She silently mouths not me, then jabs a finger at my butt.
I shake my head. We groan in unison.
Around the next bend, the canyon widens—and the stench hits like a rotten wave. The stone gives way to spongy peat that oozes water with every step. A bog sprawls before us, crawling with hamster-sized blobs—moldy rejects from a gelatin commercial gone feral. They wobble and squelch, translucent bodies quivering in swamp-light.
“Oh, how cute!” Jenny chirps, hands clasped under her chin.
It’s cute… until the first one latches onto my leg.
Cold floods my calf, sharp as a thousand needles—then flips to burning heat. The thing clings like a living suction cup, leeching warmth, skin, and strength all at once. I stumble forward, knee-deep in sludge, tearing purple people-eaters off me one by one. Each rip sounds like wet tape peeled from a drain.
I burst onto firmer ground, slime dripping in ropes down my thighs, and yank my bow free with a snarl.
The leprechaun charm at my navel winks—tiny arms wrapped around the glowing stud like it’s riding a thunderstorm. I knock an Arcbolt, sight past the blob dogging Frankie like a sick puppy—straight to the pond behind it.
The water ripples. Not surface-ripple—depth shifting. Layers folding like something enormous just inhaled.
“Clear!” Frankie calls. The others echo.
I plant my feet, inhale slow, and pour raw charge into the charm. It thrums against my skin—a molten spark up my spine—until a bright, happy tingle fills my core.
I let it go.
Zing!
Crackle!
Lightning erupts from my bow in a spear of red-white fury. It slams into the pond, detonating the surface into a tower of steam. Bolts fracture outward in a spiderweb of brilliance, arcing across the bog—veins of light whipping from blob to blob like divine punishment. The world goes strobe-white.
Ozone. Sulfur. Boiling algae. The air shrieks with it. Purple bodies burst in tarry geysers, droplets hissing where they land. Steam coils through the reeds, backlit by residual plasma, painting the cavern in pulses of living fire.
When the light finally dies, silence rushes in so fast it’s a vacuum.
Blackened husks steam in the undergrowth, slick bodies baked to crusted charcoal. My bow still hums. My ears ring. And under it all, the metallic tang of copper clings to my tongue—sweet, sharp, electric.
A notification scrolls over my sight:
You may now select any shade of red as the color frequency of your bolt.>
I swipe it away.
The ability to add power to my shot is both blessing and curse—more damage, fewer shots. I can usually manage twenty bolts before I collapse, but boosting each one by twenty-five percent cuts me down to fifteen. Powerful, yes, but on the battlefield balance sheet it’s the same energy. Why burn it faster? Does it hit harder, punch deeper? If so, maybe the trade is worth it.
And why would I care about the color of my arrow? Does red lightning sear more, or is it just pretty?
My musings freeze as golden script scrawls itself across the top of my sight:
[Every coin has three sides. Yours spins on its edge.]
[The leprechaun sleeps.]
I blink. What does that even mean?
Before I can puzzle it out, Frankie and Rhea tap my shoulders. Rhea presses a finger to her lips, then points toward the swamp’s heart. The water isn’t just shifting—it’s swelling.
Solenne backs away, sweat dripping in rivers as she motions for Frankie to give her the clip to her rifle.
The swamp heaves. First a ripple, then a churn, then a rolling boil that sends reeds bowing and bubbles the size of barrels bursting tar-black across the surface. It bulges upward, trembling as if something vast pushes from below. Dark ripples lash my toes, ankles, and calves, driving my team and me shuffling back toward the cavern wall. The blobs I just fried slide backward, dragged as if on puppet strings into the pond’s heart.
And then she rises.
A tower of sludge breaches the waterline, climbing higher and higher until I crane my neck to take in her bulk. She’s thick as an enraged elephant and twice as mean, a mass of gelatinous purple-black slime shot through with glowing green veins. Hundreds of tendrils unfurl, each tipped with a dead ooze corpse dangling like rotten fruit. Faces form and melt across her bulk—howling mouths dissolving into gurgle, eyes blinking open only to collapse into slime. At her core, a sickly, pulsing light throbs like a dying heart.
Every shift sends tentacles slapping stone. Some stretch thin and snap into acidic mist. Others cling, dragging rocks, reeds, and steaming husks into her mass. The cavern reeks of rot and vinegar, and I gag behind my hand.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
She roars—not with sound, but with pressure in my skull, a mother’s scream of rage and grief that makes my teeth ache. The swamp answers in kind, the water trembling in sympathy.
I wipe my brow, raise my bow, and spit "I think Mommy Ooze is just a little miffed."
"I can't imagine why," snickers Jenny, sparkles weave between her hands.
Frankie pounds her fists together as she, Rhea, and Tess take positions between us and the monster.
"We could use a bit more luck," whispers Tess.
I shake my head, then realize she can't see me. "My leprechaun has gone for coffee."
Frankie scoffs, "Coffee?"
Jenny tosses her sparkles over the group. "Why not tea?"
"Solenne drank the last of our tea," Rhea states.
“Oi! Weren’t nothin’ else fit ter drink!”
Jenny’s glitter lands across my arms; energy hits like six espressos.
“Pity,” Tess sighs. “We’ll have to make our own luck this time.”
“Luck is where opportunity meets my punch,” Frankie declares, slamming her fists together before striding forward.
“Frankie—!” Tess lunges, fingers brushing air as a tendril of gelatin snaps around Frankie’s ankle. It coils like an anaconda, spiraling up her thigh.
Tess clamps onto her arm. Jenny screams.
The ooze yanks.
A hundred mouths split open across its surface, drool hissing as black tongues lash outward.
Tess digs in her heels, biceps flexing, teeth bared. “Help me!”
I raise my bow, the conjured shaft crackling with electricity. Arcs crawl up and down the razor edges, chasing each other like serpents of living light.
“Shite!”
“Shoot!” Jenny’s cry splits the air—half command, half plea.
But I can’t. One spark in the wrong place and I’ll fry Frankie where she stands. The ooze’s slick mass glistens around her like an oil-slicked net, its pulsing veins refracting light in sickly purples and greens. What can I do?
The creature quivers under the chorus of Jenny’s shriek, Tess’s guttural snarl, and Frankie’s roar—a vibrating tension that hums in my bones.
A ridiculous idea sparks in my brain. A flash of memory: one drunken dorm party, bad speakers, and lime Jell-O that kept time with the bass.
“Hey! Jiggly turd!” I snap—and fire upward.
Jenny snaps toward me. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
My Arcbolt hits the canyon wall. Stone detonates. Molten shards rain down. The canyon booms, a resonant gong rolling like thunder through the ravine.
Ripples race across the pond. The Mother Ooze shudders—body shimmering like a struck drumhead.
The tendril loosens—snaps free.
Tess and Frankie sprawl backward, crab-scrambling out of range, splashing through sludge as the reverberations fade.
Lenora skids to a stop, sliding the last foot on her knees, shredding her stockings, at Frankie’s side. She yanks a flask from her bag, pops the cap with her thumb, and douses Frankie’s leg in saline. The solution splashes and runs, hissing as it washes rivulets of acid away. Frankie snarls through clenched teeth, fists hammering the ground.
Only then does Lenora grab the jar of aloe, scooping a glistening smear onto her fingers. She smooths it over the barber-pole burns striping Frankie’s thigh. The gel should sting, should only soothe—but under her touch it glows. A green tint of life magic pours from her fingertips, threading through the aloe like veins of light. The burns hiss and shimmer, the angry welts shrinking as the glow burrows deeper into flesh.
When the smoke clears, Frankie’s skin isn’t whole. Instead, the healed tissue curls into an intricate spiral, green fire tracing the outline before fading. What remains is a tattoo that looks carved from acid and sealed with magic: a coil of flames twined around a clenched fist.
Frankie blinks at it, breath still ragged, then lets out a hoarse laugh. “Guess I’m branded now.”
Countless whips of ooze lash the waterlogged sand, each strike detonating muck in geysers. The shoreline becomes a minefield of snapping tendrils and acidic spray. A rusty, rotten-egg haze coils from the Mother Ooze, shimmering around her bulk like a poisonous shroud.
“Oh, hell no!” I snap off an Arcbolt.
“LIZZY—NO!” Tess cries.
“Fart bomb!” Frankie hollers. “HIT THE DECK!”
I dive. The world bursts—
Woosh!
BOOM!
Heat whips across my back, scorching exposed skin. A shockwave flattens reeds. Fire and shadow flicker across the cavern.
“Hydrogen sulfide burns,” Tess coughs.
“And it’s deadly,” I stammer, my voice breaking, more defensive than I mean it to be.
Frankie hacks, doubled over. “So does sulfur dioxide,” Frankie rasps.
“Both’ll kill us,” Rhea wheezes, clutching her side as acrid smoke thickens, the air turning hot and poisonous.
I peer through the smoke, squinting. “Dead or alive?”
“The ooze or us?” Tess groans.
“We’ll be dead soon enough if we can’t clear the air,” Lenora rasps, managing to sound clinical despite her coughing.
Sparkles flicker a few feet to my left. Jenny giggle-coughs. “Giveme a second.”
Her magic whirls from a glittering sphere into a miniature cyclone. Air rushes in from the corridor at my back, tugging at my outfit and whipping grit into the air. The fog spins, roaring like glittery ice in a blender, before collapsing into a column that narrows and slams into the sand with a thump.
The air is clear.
And there’s the monster.
Burned and blackened slabs of flesh slough from the Mother Ooze, sizzling as they fall away. Beneath, her bulk is smaller—but the hundred new faces glaring from her surface twist in fresh, furious rage.
She spits something large green, sick, and smoldering. The ground bubbles. A score of hatchlings slither out, wriggling toward us in a crawling tide, an army of acid-dripping slugs on a single, terrible mission.
I conjure and nock an arrow, crackling arcs chasing each other up the conjured shaft. “I can take out the little ones with an Arcbolt—but what do we do about Mommy?”
Jenny, impossibly sparkly even knee-deep in slime, raises a finger. “I have an idea…”
Frankie squints. “We’re listening.”
“Just follow my lead.”
She starts… dancing.
Stomp-stomp-clap.
Stomp-stomp-clap.
Echoes bounce off the canyon walls in perfect rhythm.
Lenora freezes. “Is that—”
“Queen,” I mutter, deadpan.
At their pace, the baby slugs won’t be dangerous till next summer, so I sling my bow and step beside Jenny. If we’re dying, might as well die on beat.
Stomp-stomp-clap! Step left.
Stomp-stomp-clap! Step right.
I mirror her—spin, stomp, clap—and notice two things:
First, Tess, Frankie, Rhea, and Lenora gape like we’ve lost our minds.
Second, each impact sends a visible shudder through the muddy ground, pushing the purple blobs backward toward the swampy canyon floor.
Even better, Mommy Ooze is jiggling.
I twirl my hands, stomp twice, clap. “Dance! It’s working!”
“Medic! Psych eval, please,” Frankie mutters.
Lenora hesitates, then cracks a grin and joins three beats later. Solenne spins in next—sultry, Cockney, belting out the tune with fearless gusto.
Frankie’s jaw drops. “What the—”
“Come on,” Tess sighs, exasperated but smiling. “Not the weirdest plan we’ve used.” She joins the line.
Stomp-stomp-clap! Hand twirl. Step left.
Stomp-stomp-clap! Hand twirl. Step right.
Ripples build into waves.
Frankie finally stomps in. “Bloody hell!”
Jenny’s boots BOOM with each impact, arcs of blue light racing up the canyon walls.
BAM-BAM-BOOM! Hand whirlwinds. Step right.
BAM-BAM-BOOM! Hand whirlwinds. Step left.
“Calm down, Solenne!” I hiss as sparks flare from her jumpsuit seams, each Snapcord glowing cherry-hot.
The hatchlings pop like corn kernels, each beat a burst of light and steam. The canyon vibrates like a living drum—sound bouncing off stone until the air itself feels solid.
But Mommy Ooze isn’t jiggling anymore. She’s boiling.
“This isn’t doing anything,” Frankie snaps.
“Wait for it,” I breathe, eyes locked on the shuddering bulk.
Frankie groans. “Can’t wait to tell my mates at the pub about the floor show we put on for a slimy pint of bitter!”
“Physics,” Tess pants, wiping sweat from her brow.
“We’re dancing!”
“Yes—and not in route-step!”
“Huh?” Frankie blinks. “Oh! Clever girl.”
“Each stomp adds energy,” Tess gasps. “Turning into heat.”
“So we’re cookin’ the bugger!”
“Exactly.”
“How long?”
“Almost there!” Jenny beams. “One more thing…”
She pauses, poses, and mimes a screaming guitar riff—
BOOOOOOM!
The canyon detonates.
Rocks and dust rain down the cliffs like shrapnel as a column of superheated ooze erupts upward, a fountain of fire and acid framed by the open sky. Light bursts through the mist in molten ribbons of gold and violet, shards of crystalized slime raining like confetti.
Then—impact.
A shockwave rolls down the canyon, flattening reeds and hammering our chests like a live bass drum.
Hot ooze spatters stone, sizzling. The air reeks of sulfur and vinegar.
“Never again,” Frankie groans—still unconsciously stomping the rhythm.
Jenny giggles.
Solenne collapses to a crouch, breathless and wide-eyed.
Lenora cracks open a box of baking soda.
Tess leans against my shoulder, laughing.
And me? I grin. Burns, stink, absurdity and all—we’re alive.
Out in the swamp’s heart, half-buried in muck where the Mother Ooze fell, something glitters—
golden, pulsing—waiting to be claimed.