Soul Merger

Alissa awoke to a hissed scream of frustration from Fili. That was a bad sign. Her girlfriend was overly conscientious and hated waking her up for any reason, so whatever was annoying her had to be very irritating. Did the shower fail again? Thought we'd fixed that. She pulled herself out of the slightly sticky covers of their bed and looked over towards the bathroom.

Fili was there, but instead of poking at the shower she was trying to wrangle two semi transparent blobs that were alternating between rubbing her legs and bouncing around the room.

Alissa blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the situation as her brain slowly spun up to full working power. Finally she caught on to what was happening. Somewhat. "Are those water slimes?'

"Yes! And they're very slippery!" Fili snarled. She grabbed one, her hands sticking to the creature before it blasted her in the face with a spray of slime water and slipped away. Alissa couldn't help but chuckle which got her a betrayed look. "You could help."

"I'll try, but I'm afraid seeing me naked only distracts one of the slimes here and it's not the ones we want captured." Alissa stood up, enjoyed Fili's pouting blush then moved to corral one of the slimes into a corner.

It immediately puffed up and sprayed her with slime water.

Dating Fili had quickly given her a tolerance for being slimed, but this was still unpleasant. She glared at the thing who was back to annoying her girlfriend. "Okay, new plan. Let me get my dagger."

"I'd love to murder the things but we need them alive so we can figure out where they came from! There shouldn't be two slimes in the river under normal circumstances." Fili kicked the one trying to rub against her leg before making another grab at it.

"Do we need both of them?" Alissa asked. "Because if you wanted to boil one of the little bastards until it pops I think we'd both get some satisfaction."

Fili considered it. "Getting both would be the smart thing but yeah. Screw this. Let me grab my staff."

"And I'll get a bucket." That seemed like it'd be easier than grabbing one with their hands. Fili had probably avoided using one to keep from waking her with the clanking.

They'd each grabbed their respective weapons when the door burst in. Fili yelped and grabbed a sheet to cover herself while Alissa shielded what she could with the bucket.

Kotori fluttered into the room. "Hey guys there's something really weird going on and-" The harpy blinked at them and the slimes. "Wait, did you two have kids?"

"No and close the damn door!" Alissa snapped at the birdbrained harpy.

"Oh." Fortunately Kotori quickly followed the command. "Oh right. There were a lot of slimes appearing outside. That's what Clara wanted me to tell you about. Maybe these are related?"

Alissa and Fili both blinked at that. "What."

"Yeah, slimes. All over. Not 'everywhere' everywhere but there were like four on the bank." Kotori shrugged.

Fili sighed. "Someone's done something stupid again. Well no need to worry about burning all the evidence. Let's clean up here."

"And then take a shower," Alissa said. "Their slime isn't nearly as pleasant as yours."

----

Freshly cleaned Alissa and Fili took their captive slime to join the rest of the group. Sure enough there were several normal slimes bouncing around the riverbanks. There even looked to be a few rare ones in the mix. "Wonderful," Alissa muttered. "I hope the trap door holds."

"It should," Fili remarked. "I hope people don't keep tossing slimes into the river and sewers though. That's gonna be a huge mess to clean up."

"Won't the just float away?" Kotori asked. "Or sink?"

"Some will. Some will evolve. All of them will fill the place with slime, which is bad for the normal fish," Fili replied.

They headed into the houseboat to find Clara waiting up top. The woman had already bagged her own slime, which was pretty smart Alissa had to admit. "Rosalina and Akari busy with the kids still?" Alissa asked.

"Yeah," Clara replied. "They were curious but they figured the mages would handle it. But no one else's gonna handle getting a bunch of orphans the required signatures to buy a chunk of land."

Alissa looked over at Kotori. "You didn't want to go with them?"

"No." The harpy's pout told Alissa everything she needed to know there. Well, the wound was still fresh. Kotori fluttered over to the two captured slimes. "But if the mages are going to handle it, why are we investigating?"

"Hi," Fili said with a sigh. "I'm 'the mages'. Sure the Tower is going to look at things, but they're also going to be on damage control. We'll all have to chip in if we want this handled anytime soon."

"Suppose we've got a personal investment too, given everyone's gonna be tossing the slimes at our home to get them outta their hair," Clara said. "So what do we need to do to start solving this problem?"

"First I try to figure out where these things spawned," Fili said. "Maybe their age as well. If they've started to evolve then they've been in an area with diverse environments for a while."

Fili fiddled with her spell chips before looking over the slime. Meanwhile Alissa sat back and thought. "You hadn't heard about there being a problem with slimes before today right Clara?"

"Nope. At least not from the merchants." Clara thought for a moment. "Ah I see what you're getting at. We should have been hearing about these little critters earlier."

"Well the waterways could carry a lot of them," Kotori said, tapping on the bucket that held the water slime. "That'd let them travel fast right?"

Alissa shook her head. "The sound that feeds into this river has a dungeon in it. The giant fish would be slurping the things up. Though I guess maybe there could be too many for the monsters to clean up."

Fili looked up. "They'd show up more near the waterways if that was true. Kotori are your eyes good enough to see where people are dealing with slimes?"

"Uh, maybe? I'll go look!" The harpy took to the skies.

As Kotori did her circling and Fili did her inspecting, Alissa let herself gaze out over the city. "Hm, there does seem to be more fires than normal. People boiling the slimes maybe?"

"That'd be a good guess," Clara replied. "Probably the best way to clear them out without magic. Don't suppose you can tell where the fires are clumped up?"

Alissa squinted for a moment then shook her head. "I don't remember what it normally looks like enough to make a good comparison."

Kotori slowly circled down, landing on the captain's cabin before hopping to rejoin them. "I kinda see slimes everywhere. Well people trying to clean away slimes. Can't see the individuals that well from up there."

The trio looked to Fili who was frowning at her subjects, occasionally casting a spell and poking the creatures.

Finally she sat back and folded her arms. "It doesn't make any sense. They're too different."

"More different than a normal slime and a water slime should be?" Alissa asked. She wasn't sure about how this was supposed to work.

"The way you create slimes is by inducing an artificial labyrinth and pumping life energy into it," Fili said. "So all the slimes from the same batch should have nearly matching magical properties. But these two don't! I'm going to have to grab a few more to check into this."

"Well we aren't short on subjects," Clara said with a look at the nearby batch. "Let's each grab a regular slime."

"Sure," Alissa replied.

----

A very quick hunt and a lot of muttered curses from Fili later, the mage tossed down her staff. "I give up. It doesn't make any sense."

Alissa moved to rub her girlfriend's shoulders which got an appreciative look from Fili and an eyeroll from Kotori. "What did you find?"

"A whole lot of nothing." The mage pointed to two of the slimes they'd grabbed. "Those two are close enough to be related, assuming the mage that was creating them was an incompetent fool who can't properly balance their magical inputs. But none of the others match. It's like a dozen different people were breeding slimes and just tossed them all over the city at once."

"Hm," Clara stretched. "What if the person is incompetent? Like total idiot with a lot of power kinda thing. Because competent people don't fill the city with slimes."

Alissa chuckled. "That's a fair point. Is there a way a stupid person could make what you're seeing?"

Fili thought for a moment then shook her head. "Not via the usual means. Even if you're a moron you just can't make a virtual labyrinth without some level of control over your magical power. If you screw up that badly it'll just bleed out into the air and you'll just have a lot of ambient magic."

"Uh, like how it is now?" Kotori said cocking her head at Fili.

"What do you mean?" the mage asked.

"There's a lot of magic floating around. More than normal. Like I don't need to borrow as much as I normally do from Akari," the harpy replied. "It's not quite as good as a labyrinth but I could probably last a long time on my own." She grimaced. "It's kinda similar to the atmosphere at the place the creeps were holding us. At least when it comes to magic. Not the horrible death and stuff."

A chill ran up Alissa's spine. "Didn't that demon Nostramus say the world was supposed to become a lot more like labyrinths?"

"Yeah," Clara replied. "But this is a bit sudden ain't it? Hell of a leap from where it was before."

"Oh. Shit," Fili blinked a few times. "I think I figured it out. Someone wasn't trying to make a fake labyrinth. They're trying to pump magic into the area for some reason." She sighed. "And somehow they succeeded without any of the tower training that tells people exactly why that's a really really stupid idea. For example, if you pump too much magic everywhere slimes start to form."

Alissa stood and stretched. "Joy. Well I should grab my gear, because we're going to have to find this person and tell them to stop."

"Yeah." Fili shook her head. "Well the good news is that we'll have other people helping us look once we tell the Tower what's happening."

"What's the bad news," Clara asked.

Fili made a sweeping gesture around the city. "If they're able to pour out this much magic, they're either very strong, or they've got a powerful device they don't know how to control."

And wasn't that just a lovely thought.