The night after I returned to the Tinker Society, something awoke in my heart. The orb of dark stars was taken from its pedestal. I saw a slender tendril of mudbeast escape from the window, and I knew instantly what had happened. With only two hours of sleep I jumped straight out of bed and launched myself through the window. The glass shattered, cutting my arms and legs as I went through, but I shook it off. This was nothing.

On the other side of the central pyre, the orb moved quicker than most eyes could see. A shadow ran in the distance. I knew there was only one person who would be willing to steal into my room and take the object that he had asked so many questions of. Only one person would be so foolish as to ignore the horns and fangs of a demon sleeping in her room. Only one person would not fear my wrath.

I summoned the breath, touched the wind, let my being blossom forth, and bellowed out with a magnified roar that would wake the forest itself.

"MELVIN!!!"

The sound blasted outward, spreading wind as far as the eye could see. The central pyre blew outward and was reduced to embers. His name reverberated off of the trees, the mountains, the streams, and the buildings. The entire outpost came alive with torches and lanterns and all manner of humans that reside nearby. Even the mudbeasts and wisps, usually sleeping soundly, glowed and burned in the forest nearby.

Though not a single star was out in the sky, the forest was lit up with shade and flickers. All could see the power radiating off of the demon in the night, all could feel the presence of the one who had been slighted. Every creature could feel within their bones that if they stepped in front of the demon, they would be extinguished. That is surely why the boy who feared nothing ran.

That boy was fast.

No, the boy feared nothing. He was far too smart for his own good. He must have some sort of plan for the stone, for the demon, and for his life. I once again summoned the breath, stepped into the night, and ran after this fleeing child. He must know that he cannot outrun the demon, for tempting one to hunt you is to tempt fate itself. Let the chase begin.

The boy was faster than expected. The gel on his body propelled him forward, wrapped around branches, pulling him this way and that. He would be in one spot one moment, then suddenly shift to a different direction the next. The pace quickened, his movements became more erratic. The pace quickened again, and his movements became taut. The pace quickened once more and he no longer dodged. I placed this speed at his fastest, twice as fast as a dog. I could not run much faster without support, but just a little...

The chase was short lived. Merely three moments of running later we came to a clearing. I waited on the edge to see what his plan was. He dashed towards the center and placed the orb upon a pedestal made of wood. There was nothing special about the pedestal, nor the clearing, nor the land nearby. A few wisps haunted the area, enough to light the scene in deep shadow. Enough to see the glow of a young man covered in blue glowing mud and the demon's pale blue horns. This would not do.

Once again, I summoned the breath, touched the wind, let my being blossom forth, and bellowed out with a roar that would wake the dead.

"RETURN MY ORB!!!"

The boy was trembling. It was not fear, oh no. That boy feared nothing. He was trembling with excitement, breathing heavy, gel pulsing, and feet solid. Whatever he was planning, it was here that it would happen.

Melvin called out, almost giddy in tone. "Show me how this orb works! No one is around to see it and I don't think it has any magic in it at all!"

That was the wrong answer.

Everything about that answer was wrong. He was asking for a fight, to see something beyond his understanding, and to be slaughtered. He was asking to unleash the darkness itself upon the land with him as the first target. The very thing that would destroy everything in his time of need, he wanted to see out of mere curiosity.

That was still the wrong answer. Mere curiosity doesn't begin to cover the expecting gaze of the boy. It was pure interest, with eyes that could pierce even a demon's gaze.

I sighed, walked slowly out into the clearing, stood next to both the orb and Melvin, then smacked him upside the head. At least I tried; his head is covered in gel and even a half-hearted backhand seemed to do nothing. Perhaps there was something to his bravado after all. Instead of the demon, I would become the grueling taskmaster that a foolish upstart would soon come to respect.

"If you want to see how the orb works, then you can use it yourself."

That seemed to puzzle the boy. His face turned inward under the wisps' light, his expression searching for something. It was as if he doubted not what I had said, but how it was said. After a brief moment, his eyes stared directly into mine and he uttered the word "How?"

I pinched the brim of my nose and closed my eyes in frustration. I also picked up the orb and slammed it into the top of his head, assuming he wouldn't be harmed. The slam went too far down, and when I opened my eyes there was still the gel at head height, but a squatting boy under my hand. I pulled it back and assumed the Taskmaster's stance.

"Are you familiar with Sympathetic Magic?", I inquired forcefully.

"Of course. You take an object, rub some slime on it, charge it up with a slime core, and the slime gains properties of the object through its touch. This process can be repeated hundreds of times as long as you have enough cores and objects. You can attach..."

"Wait." I held out my hand. The boy opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. "Sympathetic Magic does not require a gel stone."

The boy nodded his head in agreement. Odd, that fact should have stunned him, or at least have had a followup response.

"The sympathy of the object you are working with does not need to be the object itself. Instead of causing a gel stone to give sympathy to a rock, you can instead use yourself as the medium and cause the rock to give sympathy to metal."

The boy nodded his head again, in agreement. He had a knowing look on his face. This went against almost everything the Slime-Craft guild taught and against how almost everyone understood slimes, but no one could really test things properly if they didn't know why. I wonder...

"If your target is something beyond your capacity, then it extends outside your reach. All you have to do is grasp it."

"Like this?" The boy reached out with his arm and grabbed the orb. He held it high above his head, like a prize, and wrapped his gel around it, encircling the entire object. It moved in an undulating pattern, gradually growing outward in the way a mage would summon fire from the palm of their hand. It grew and grew to the size of a head, and then nothing.

Melvin spoke again, his tone flat and dissapointed. "I don't understand. If slime is not the medium, then I am the medium and the slime is the target. This should do something, right?"

I shook my head. He was close, but had exactly the wrong idea. "Are you a slime?"

"As near as I can tell, yes."

What?

I spoke again, this time unable to wrap my head around what he had just said. "You can't be a slime. If you were a slime, I'd be able to sing you a song of control and contempt the likes of which you'd never be able to unhear. The boy's eyes lit up at this.

"Show me! Show me the power of the Siren of Slimes!"

"Alright, but I will have you go beyond your capacity so many times that you'll wish you left it at that."

Steady, calm, focus. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe into the nose, out through the navel. Hands flat, held upward at the chin to guide the air in. Hands flat, slowly moving downward to guide the focus downward. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Breathe in until the very state of being fills your entire body, breathe out until the focus flows into the earth itself.

Breathe in once more with the sound of music and sing a song of guidance. Dance with the grass, pirouette with the leaves, move slowly forward to the singer, start laughing at...

No, that's not right. The boy was doing exactly as the music rang down into every fiber of his being. His gel had turned from blue to gold and he was laughing. A huge smile was plastered all over his face and he was laughing all the while.

"Why did you stop? That was so fun, I was so energized and free!"

I couldn't explain it. Not only did the song work on him, he was free to enjoy it and dance to his heart's content.

"I've never met a talking slime before. What happened to you boy?"

He looked up at the black sky. A distant, serious air had taken over his body. He had transformed from a large carefree child into a small adult who had seen far too many things to keep track.

"I fell into a slime pool. I woke up two hours later like this. I am a slime core, the master of gel and motion. All of my hair was sacrificed to the pool, and in return I have more senses than anyone ever should. No one is like me in the entire world, and even if I felt so lonely that someone would be interested in doing what I do, no one wants to be like me."

That made little sense. Too many of her fellow scouts had fallen into slime pools and either climbed out immediately or were not heard from again. Every time she had seen this happen, it did not end up like this.

"How did you live through the fall?"

"I... don't know. All I know is that when I got out, I was thirsty. Very thirsty. I went and drank from the pool, from the stream, from a fallen deer, and from a tree. Only the tree stayed down."

It was time to make a show of this. In the best Taskmaster guise I could muster, I spoke.

"Melvin." He stiffened up at attention. "I will accept that you are a talking human slime. Now you will use the orb of dark stars. Reach beyond your grasp with your mind, focus your breath on that one point, draw on the orb, and use yourself as a medium to attach it to the air."

To his credit, he did exactly as I asked. First, he pulled the orb out of the gel and laid it on his fingertips. Second, he held it upward, breathed in, and the gel wriggled and coalesced around the orb as if his arm was the stem of a flower. Third, he extended the gel outward.

"I... may have given you poor instructions. This is something that may not make sense. Instead of attaching it to the air, attach it to the veil."

"What is the veil?" He sputtered instantly, a huge grin on his face. I gathered my courage and tried to speak as best as I could.

"The veil is the place between all things. It is the place that borders life and death, sanity and sorrow, thoughts and bodies, fury and fatigue. It is the realm in which your body must exist independent of your mind, lest both be taken apart piece by piece and put back together in a different place."

The slime around the boy flowed and twitched for a bit before settling. "I don't get that. How am I supposed to attach to something between something else? It's everywhere, like here and not here?"

"No, it's separate from where we're at. You could travel there. It's the..."

"Is it why I can't see past your skin?"

This boy, he is infuriating. That makes even less sense than the explanation.

"I think I get it. You exist in more than one place at the same time because your body is between here and the veil. You're talking about the foundation of reality, something that we can't interact with easily because it's made of more than one thing. Merdiwen talks about that a lot."

Merdiwen. I could not stand that name. A growl escaped my lips almost on instinct. The boy looked stunned, but focused back on the orb.

"Okay, I'm going to try this. Here goes everything."

To describe what happened next would be to describe what was happening if you saw a person take a lesson to heart and become a twisted copy of you. His form shifted from the solid to the border in a way that was purely physical, not just of the mind. The gel on his body grew spiraling tendrils of inky darkness until the entire pattern was black. His eyes, once blue and vibrant like the gel, lost all color and light. Nearby wisps moved closer to gather on him as they sensed the light disappearing, then scattered as his black pattern began glowing brilliantly in the night. The light of black sun was upon him.

A story, once learned, cannot be unlearned. A song, once sung, cannot be reclaimed. To see your very self reflected in the creature that could not ever learn what you taught, yet made it through the ordeal with manifest power that could not be denied, that is what I faced. The utter corruption of my strength from travelling parallel lands of death and discarded dreams into a black child of laughter. The demon huntress of the night was to become prey to an incomprehensible, senseless boy and his stone.

I ran. I needed my weapons, my wits, and my willpower. None of that was here in this moment. All of that could be gathered in front of me, or so I thought. By some blasted miracle Selena was watching at the edge of the clearing and she was glowing as bright as Melvin. Where he was a smooth mass of black, she was the Queen of the Wisps.

Selena spoke with a fey accent, different from her usual straight voice. "I taek it you taught our young genius ah magic trick?"

Mouth agape, I could only shake my head.

"Well he's a genius in strange skin. Do yeh reckon eh's dangerous?"

"Yes. If he has anywhere near the power I possess, he will kill everything around here."

One of Selena's eyebrows popped up in a quizical manner. These Tinkers, I swear they value knowledge and reason more than their very lives sometimes. It was absolutely maddening to see black ooze tendrils flailing around, a laughing child in the center with dead eyes, wisps either fleeing for their very souls or gathering around Selena, and all she can do is stand with one hand up against a tree, boots crossed, and a question on her face.

"Kan eh best yeh if yeh have the sword of ground splitting while yeh be singing?"

One of the wisps illuminated the trunk of the tree, and sitting up against it was my axe sword. I grabbed it, spun around, and charged directly into the heart of the beast.

Selena could recount the battle much better than I. It lasted for four moments, wildly swinging from both sides, with shrill laughter piercing the forest. More and more of the outpost's citizens were showing up by this point. I tried everything I could to wrest the orb from inside the gel, but the gel kept growing and the orb kept moving around and everything in his power swung without purpose or form. Half of the time blows that should have been clean didn't connect. The other half was dodging.

He showed no signs of wearing down. As much as I have trained, four moments of the highest skill I could muster on two hours of sleep after the earlier run was draining to the point of exhaustion. I could keep going for some time, but I could not protect everyone in that clearing. Just as I was reaching my limit, he showed up.

Merdiwen. The green haired man. The fey. First Tinker. The impossible to summon sword mage who took everything and nothing seriously. He showed up right next to Selena, walked right into the fray, smiled, touched one of the tendrils, and from the point he touched a warm light erupted outward. Melvin's gel was glowing like the moon itself had landed in front of us. When the light faded, Melvin was on the ground. Asleep. And upside down.

The green haired man was holding the orb in his hand. He was looking at it intently, before he turned to me and held it out. "I see you've grown Skyla. You seem to have caused a tiny bit of trouble over here. Could I ask why Melvin was sleepwalking into the veil?"

That smirk. Always that smirk. Everything was a game to him. Everything was worth looking at, toying with, and turning on its head until it did something interesting. He has no limits on interest of any kind and will hear anyone out, yet doesn't appreciate having his time wasted by something he's seen before. It's a living contradiction of the highest level that is impossible to reconcile in any way that doesn't leave room for a reasonable interpretation of logic, feelings, ideas, or spirit.

Maybe I could play at his game for once. I think I'd like to win that.

"Come back in two days and I'll show you why." I tried the same smirk that he always gave off. From the deep smugness on his face, I may have pulled it off well enough.

Both of his hands rose to the air, like an actor performing on a stage. "Your special training in two days is not nearly enough to understand the meaning of the veil, its essence, or how to use it like a slime. You may understand the nature of the world's borders, but you could not possibly know enough to stand against me. Not yet, at least."

His body shifted to a different pose. One hand high in the air, reaching out towards a sword floating above it. The other hand in front of him, chest high, elbow outwards, hand in front of his chest, empty. One foot was in front of the other. This was meant to be a grand gesture.

"Six weeks from now I shall return to this place. Bring the strongest heroes from the realm, the most talented knowledgekeepers from the ward, and the harshest Taskmaster that you can muster. On this sword and the life I hold, I swear to you this one time. I shall accept your demand for acknowledgement. Six weeks hence, I shall accept any request you can make."

He bowed a deep bow. The sword above his hand pierced the ground, and he fell into it. He was gone.

Gone. A mirror broken and a challenge issued. So much the better. I have come to resolve the past, its challenges, its traitors, and its secrets. I have come to become the most fearsome creature imagineable. If the white skinned creature of light and life could give me a true fight, then I would gladly accept.