Over Slime

Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.

Summary:

Come visit Morkrut! We have slime!


The Morkrut is a swamp in a river in a bay you want to stay away from at all costs. A bad locale wrapped in a bad locale wrapped in another bad locale, with breeds of monsters lurking the depths and foggy fringes between. Restless to make anybody brave or stupid enough to cross a permanent constituent of the haunted waters themselves.

You had to be mad to hang out here, let alone hang 'round here long-term, where you risked wandering the bogs forever in a murderous rage if your grudges or the grudges of malicious spirits got to you. The marsh was teeming with geists and horrors, the sort of unsanctified land the lowest of the low ditched inconvenient weight or cargo they needed to disappear.

Enslow was a ghoulcaller, one of Innistrad's self-proclaimed "mad." And not the wishy-washy "I hear otherworldly voices, check out mah tentacles!" delirium that was all a bloody fad during the Travails! He was a classic crazy case, who detested the cosmic trespasser which temporarily took over Innistrad two years ago. For how many perfectly available grafs were turned over to fight the infestation…The zombies now in the ranks of the greedy ghoul-hogging Gisa!

Procuring bodies when Gisa had her shovel steeped so firmly in the real estate caused Enslow and other ghoulcallers hassles. Enslow paid a crew of smugglers to assist in the transport of the chunks he could unearth back to Erdwal, but following a narrow squeeze past a menacing necropod, their galleon came to a halt in the mire.

"There's not enough salt in all of Nephalia to wither that thing," Enslow had remarked about the slug creature.

Not enough zombies. Not enough salt.

Plenty of mist, though. Morkrut. Selhoff. Entrenched in mist!

Desiccated plants on the surface of the water were spiked with hoarfrost.

The world was being robbed of daylight.

Terrible for the meek. The meek latched onto the hope Sigarda and the Dawnhart Coven promised.

Excellent for trashers of hope. Trashers of hope including Enslow.

Except this instant! The smugglers and Enslow could use the increased visibility!

A large mass of something splashed up under the ship's planks, carrying it high towards the silver light of the moon.

The swamp, seemingly alive!

It wasn't just the boat. Loam, waves, fungi-caked trees, fish, and bats flying too close were absorbed into or already part of the inexorable, consuming blob.

Spreading its essence, a thick, slick, bubbly sludge.

Condensing into bending geysers of semisolid fluid which struck ravenously. Nature's wrath by a different name.

"Defend yourselves, men! Don't fear the –!"

A sticky pseudopod wound three circles around half the pirate vessel, crushing wood, capsizing the foremast and mizzenmast, and tearing a shroud. Growing additional pseudopodia to improvise a roughly handlike shape, the moving muck closed its grip, puncturing and compressing its blue-green girth through the hull. Avacyn's sign, worn ironically above the captain's quarters, was trampled flat.

Enslow searched the smashed main deck for a weapon while holding the ratlines to not plunge backwards. A sword? A crossbow? A sharpened pitchfork? It didn't matter what!

Nothing was in reach. It didn't matter what because there was nothing for him to defend himself with. Yet assuming he had a weapon, what could he do against a monster that big and that unkillable? He wasn't an archer or ranger, and this wasn't a danger as dire (insanely) as a plain old werewolf! He saw what it did to the stuff it touched! This slop ate through everything! A silver bolt would dissolve on contact!

A number of sailors jumped overboard, believing they'd be safer swimming away.

One gave a member of his own party a fatal push, attempting to stall his oncoming end.

No honour among rogues, you see.

If they weren't simply plucked off the suspended sinking ship by their foe's mitotic appendages, crewmen died falling on hard ground from the disastrous height or falling directly into the attacking substance.

Whatever the mode of death, death swallowed them: equipment, flesh, bones, and screams.

Bravery and stupidity are often intertwined. And inside Slogurk, the Overslime, those with bravery and stupidity are intertwined as well.

Losing themselves. Oozing themselves. Losing and oozing themselves to the ooze.

To the countless maws. Slogurk's hundred mouths to feed.

Joining other brave and stupid mariners in the churning, binding death pit.

Enslow was a necromancer. The essential materials he stole for his magic – which he didn't have much of, courtesy of Gisa Cecani – had been flushed out of storage by the tripping of Slogurk's trap.

Discerning no alternative that didn't result in a hastier consumption, Enslow shot his arm towards the shifting gunk. His only chance was to retaliate from within! Awaken the cadaverous forms of his hirelings as zombies and have them exact a burning vengeance on their murderer, even if they were now an actual skeleton crew!

Alas, the bodies were either too bogged down to make it through the monstrous morass, or too gelatinized to be controlled by Enslow's call. A majority of the scalawags were unrecognizable residue at this point!

When you get into the swamp, the swamp gets into you.

The ropes hitching Enslow to the rigging snapped.

Damn!

Who do ghoulcallers pray to their fateful hour? They swear no loyalty to demons like the Skirsdag, worshipping the profane prince Ormendahl. And they obviously don't revere Sigarda or the tattered memory of Avacyn.

Patron entity or no, it was a miracle Enslow discovered himself on shore. The delicious details of his survival? Murky, considering angels don't show mercy to defilers of the dead, and black doesn't experience miracles, normally.

But he knew Slogurk would rise to finish its dinner. He still heard it bellowing loudly behind him in the mist. A wet, slow GRRK!

To err is human. To outlive, the slime.