“X” Marks the Spot (Part 1) – NaNoWriMo 2010

Title: “X” Marks the Spot (NaNoWriMo 2010)
Series: Dragon Quest: Voyages
Characters: Mark, Speckles
Rated: G
Words: 2,770

Summary: While waiting for Mistral to come back from the city, Mark and Speckles find a little adventure after Speckles finds a map leading to treasure… and instead of gems and coin, they find a King Spotted Slime that desperately wants to find whoever stole his treasure. But with a completely empty treasure room and no clues to speak of, how will the two help the dejected monarch find his treasure?

Notes: Just felt like posting what I have. Not sure if there’s an interest to keep reading this one… it’s one of the unfinished ones.

The early morning sun peeked through the clouds as Mark laid on his back, with his arms crossed behind his head. Cloud watching had become a pastime for him ever since he’d discovered his potential heritage, and he kept hoping to catch a glance of the fabled land of Zenithia as the clouds lazily crossed the sky.

He was justified in being interested in legends; having woken up in a forest six years ago with no memory of his life before then, Mark lived with an old trapper named Curoch until recently. He learned that a single white feather was found near him — too large to belong to any of the fauna in the region — and merely touching it triggered a vision of what possibly could have been his home; Zenithia, a floating continent with winged humans and dragonmen, which was shrouded in legend and mystery from the land below.

It was still hard for him to believe, but it was the only lead he had; looking all the world like a normal 18 year old, Mark was of average height, had green eyes and long brown hair that he kept tied at the back of his neck. Having survived in the wilderness for the last few years, he was fit enough to hold his own, and his proficiency with a bow made him toned and trim.

The feather wasn’t the only thing that was found next to Mark… a young silver-spotted slime, a drop-shaped gooey creature with colouring that was decidedly unusual for that region, had been hovering around him. He named him Speckles, and since then, the two had become inseparable; Mark considered him to be his greatest friend, despite the fact that Speckles had a tendency to eat… well, everything.

At the moment, however, he admitted that he was pretty bored; Mistral, a Zenithian he met not long ago and who was looking for a way home, had returned to town to investigate a potential lead, and he and Speckles had spent the last two days in the forest on the outskirts waiting for her. He actually wasn’t worried about her well-being, and he was quite confident that she’d be able to take care of herself, but at this point, he almost wished that he’d come with her, if only that it’d be more exciting than watching the clouds and otherwise doing absolutely nothing.

A rustle behind him snapped him out of his reverie, and he glanced back to see Speckles coming back to their camp. He looked like he was beside himself, and Mark turned over onto his stomach to see what the fuss was about.

“You look happy… Did you manage to find some food or something?” Mark didn’t bother to quantify that with a single type of food; given that he was close to being a run-of-the-mill slime, Speckles could eat almost anything; Mark has seen him eat everything from candy, meat, grasses and even rocks (though the latter gave him a stomach ache in the end). Mark looked at Speckles in surprise when he saw that his friend was carrying something in his mouth; it looked like it was a scrap of undyed cloth, and he reached over to take it rather gingerly – Speckles had drooled on it – and laid it flat in front of them so he could take a better look at it.

“Found inside log,” Speckles said with a prideful look. “Is map.”

Mark blinked at the cloth; Speckles wasn’t usually that smart, but he was indeed right. A very crude map was scrawled in charcoal on the thick but now tattered cloth; it was smudged, but it was otherwise still readable. It seemed to depict the section of forest that they were in, and there was a gigantic X – it was circled multiple times and had arrows pointing at it, so it couldn’t possibly be missed – farther to the north east, a direction that they hadn’t bothered exploring since they had no reason to.

“Hunh…” Mark blinked, and he looked at Speckles curiously. “Want to go check it out?”

“Yeah,” Speckles said with a nod. “Might be map to treasure food.”

“Treasure fo-…” Mark chuckled and shook his head; figured that the first thing that Speckles would think of would be food. “Do you think it’s safe to go back there, though? If Mistral comes back while we’re gone…”

“Umm… bird lady take care of self,” Speckles said with a sagely nod. “Will be happy to have more food.”

“You’re assuming a lot, Speckles… what if it’s a map that leads to money and jewels and all that?”

“Money and jewels not food?” Speckles asked with wide eyes.

“Nevermind,” Mark grinned as he got up. He was more worried about the notion of Mistral coming back and chewing the two of them out for running off without her, but if that happened, he thought, he’d somehow manage to deal with it. Somehow.

After Mark got his bearings, the two started their trek into the forest. The landscape wasn’t anything they’d never seen before, and it was an easy walk for them. It took a while for them to reach their destination, though, as Speckles was eternally hungry, and he kept making side trips to check for tasty food.

About an hour away from their camp, the two came across what looked to be a ruined guard tower or something of the sort. The elements had worn away the battlements, and one side of the structure had completely collapsed inwards.

“Is this it?” Mark asked quietly as he looked at the map. “It looks like the right spot, but… It doesn’t look like much…”

“Hungry hungry hungry hungry…” Speckles hopped over the debris in front of the entrance to the tower and bounced inside, leaving Mark just standing there in surprise.

“Hey, wait! Rrgh, Speckles…” Mark sighed and stuffed the map in his pocket, and he followed Speckles inside, taking care not to disturb too much in case the tower was more unstable than it looked.

It was rather dark inside, but Mark could hear Speckles’ gooey-sounding bounding in the distance. He had no issues tracking him down, and his trail led him into an even darker-looking basement cellar. Mark was starting to become concerned until he saw some light ahead, along with a deep, gooey-sounding wailing.

Mark finally entered a larger room, and he blinked at the scene in front of him. At the back of the room was a throne-like seat – whoever had set it up tried to make it grandiose-looking by using old draperies and cushions. And on that seat was a very large slime; much like the slimes Mark would normally see in the wild, this one was blue with large, black spots, but this one had a white moustache and a long white beard, and he had a big yellow and blue crown on his head. The wailing was coming from him, and he was, to put it gently, bawling his eyes out. Given the puddles around him, it looked as if he’d been crying for quite a while. There were five other, smaller slimes around them, and Mark recognized them as being seldom-seen female slimes; they were orange with bright white spots. They seemed to be in a panic around the King Slime, and they were doing their best to comfort him. One was trying to calm him down by gently talking to him, another was trying to placate him with food. Speckles had stopped a ways from the scene, and he looked back at Mark as he approached with a distraught look on his face.

One of the she-slimes looked up when she noticed Mark, and she made a small squeal of alert. The other she-slimes did the same, and they immediately bolted behind the throne. The King Slime barely even acknowledged him. He stopped crying long enough to see what the commotion was, but when he saw that it was just a human and another slime, he resumed his wailing.

“No, wait…” Mark said in beast-speech. It was something he’d picked up from his time with Curoch, and though he normally spoke common with Speckles, it was a very handle skill to have. “It’s okay, I’m not a bad guy…”

“Buu? A human can understand us?” One of the she-slimes peered fearfully from behind the throne, and when she saw that Mark wasn’t making any threatening gestures, she hesitantly left her hiding place and stared at Mark. “How come you can understand us?”

“Mark is friend to slimes,” Speckles replied with an expression of pride. “Mark is good people.”

“But but but humans chase us and bop us on the head.” The she-slime said worriedly. “Humans say we’re ‘easy ex-pee’.”

“Well, I won’t bop you on the head,” Mark said gently as he drew his sword. The she-slime yelped again and zoomed back to her hiding place, but she stared at him as he lay down his sword, his dagger, and after a moment of fighting with its bindings, his bow and quiver full of arrows.

“See? Not a bad guy.” Mark said with a smile. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Huuu…” The she-slime seemed to consider what she just saw, and after a moment, she, along with the other she-slimes, gathered around Mark to stare at him in wonder. The King Slime’s sobbing had abated somewhat, and he was staring at the scene and sniffling pathetically, looking as if he was going to burst out crying again at any moment.

“What’s going on here?” Mark asked as he looked between the Speckles, the she-slimes and the King Slime.

“Oh, it’s all so sad,” the first she-slime said with a sad look on her face. “Our King’s treasure is all gone.”

“Treasure?” Mark repeated confusedly. Slimes weren’t normally known for hoarding, since they usually ended up eating whatever they ended up gathering.

“Yes… our King had a very big treasure, and it was his happiness.” The she-slime sighed. “But one morning, His Most Gooey Majesty went to spend some time in the treasure room, like he normally does every day, and it was gone… all gone…”

“All gone?” Mark blinked. “Was it a big treasure?”

“Mm-hmm.” The she-slime said with a nod. “So big that it would take many many slimes many many days to bring it all outside.”

“And it just disappeared overnight?” Mark felt silly asking so many questions, but he wanted to make sure he was understanding all of this right, and the silliness of the situation was making him doubt his beast-speech abilities. None of this made any sense to him…

“Un-hunh. All gone.” The she-slime winced visibly as the King, upon hearing the story again, began sobbing again with renewed vigour. “And His Most Gooey Majesty has been crying every since… if he doesn’t stop, he’ll run out of goo, and… and…” The she-slime looked at the King Slime worriedly, her sentence trailing off…

“Well… can you show me that ‘treasure room’?” Mark asked helpfully. “There might be a clue there that’ll give us an idea where your treasure went…”

“Okay. Come come.” The she-slime nodded and bounced back towards the throne while the others went back to their king and tried to comfort him. It’s then that Mark discovered that the ‘treasure room’ was situated behind the King Slime’s throne, hidden by one of the draperies on the wall.

Whatever had been in there before was gone. The stone room looked to be where the previous occupants had kept wine and other spirits, given the large number of empty kegs and barrels. A cursory examination produced nothing, and it almost seemed to Mark that whatever had been in there had completely vanished without a trace.

Mark was about to give up when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He crouched down near the “entrance” the treasure room and looked at the almost transparent trail of slime that was smeared against the sharp edges of the hole in the wall. Mark ran his finger in it and rubbed the substance between two fingers, and he frowned at the slight burning sensation he felt; while it felt a lot like the same type of “gooeyness” that Speckles and other slimes like him had, the burning felt more like that of a babble.

“Er…” Mark got up and wiped his fingers on his pants – there was thankfully so little of it that it probably wouldn’t burn a hole through the fabric. “I don’t suppose there’s a babble among your numbers, is there?”

One of the she-slimes gasped at Mark’s words and fainted with a pained gurgle; the lead she-slime shuddered and shook herself vigorously.

“No no no no… no babbles here. Babbles bad… try to take His Most Gooey Majesty’s castle before… but we chased them away with… uh…” The she-slime paused for a moment to figure out how best to phrase her words, and she settled for shaking herself in a way that made Speckles widen his eyes and blush. “Like this.”

“I… uh… see.” Mark really wanted to ask how a she-slime could use what looked to be ‘feminine wiles’ to chase away babbles, but now wasn’t the right time. “Well, this gives us a hint, at least… if you already had a run-in with some babbles, then they might have done this to get back at your king…”

“Oh!” The she-slime nodded. “Yes, yes, that could be.” The she-slime looked at the King sadly. “Then that means the babbles have the treasure, and it will be hard and long to find them…” She winced as the King started wailing again, and Mark could have sworn that he felt the cellar shake a little at the force of the crying. “Huuu…”

“Is okay,” Speckles said. “I help.”

“Help? Help how?” The she-slime looked at the King Slime with a distraught expression. “He won’t stop crying until the treasure is found?”

“I let King Slime sleep,” Speckles said with pride. “Gives us time. Ahem hem hem…” Speckles cleared his throat, and he started singing.

“La la la la… la la la laaa… la la laaa, la la laa laa la-la la la, laa la la laaa…”

Mark recognized the song as one of Speckles’ lullabies, and he smiled to himself at his friend’s resourcefulness. Putting the King Slime to sleep wasn’t the ideal solution, but it was the fastest way to let the poor Slime get some rest, and it would no doubt allow his she-slimes to get a bit of rest, themselves…

“La la la la… la la la laaa… la la laaa, la la laa laa la-la la la, laa la la laaa… laaaa la…”

Soon, the sound of wet, sniffly snoring could be heard from the throne as the King Slime fell into a deep slumber. The she-slimes looked at the scene sadly, but none of them seemed to resent what Speckles had done.

“You find His Most Gooey Majesty’s treasure soon, yes?” the lead she-slime said worriedly as she watched the King snore. “He won’t sleep forever, and when he wakes up…”

“I’ll do my best,” Mark said affirmatively. “Babbles can’t hide their trails very well, so I hopefully won’t have a problem tracking him down…”

“Thank you,” the she-slime said with a grateful expression. She made some kind of semblance of a curtsy, if slimes could curtsy in the first place, and she hopped over to Speckles and planted a wet-looking kiss on his cheek before scampering off to join the other she-slimes, who were eyeing Speckles and blushing.

Mark looked between the she-slimes and Speckles, the latter who was quickly reddening like a tomato, and he nudged him out of his stupor with his foot.

“C’mon, you…”

“Mmkay.” Speckles took one last look at the she-slimes before doing the slime equivalent of a shy wave, which looked more like a wiggle than anything, and he bounded after Mark.

Outside, Mark paused as he stepped outside with a thoughtful yet confused expression. Yes, tracking a Babble wasn’t all that difficult – they tended to make a mess of things on a good day – but what would he do once he found it? Or them, from what the she-slimes were alluding? It’s not like he could just simply walk in there, take the treasure (whatever it was), and leave, since they might retaliate against the slimes, and they’d be right back where they started.

Mark sighed, suddenly wondering what he’d gotten himself into. With any luck, he’d be able to take care of this before Mistral came back from town…

Current Mood: Pensive