If there is one thing I was impressed by, it was the humans’ efficiency in setting up their defenses. Under the instruction of Lord Pelslow and the supervision of Dorin, a wooden palisade sprang into existence in less than a week. Fear of another shambler attack spurred every able-bodied man and woman into action, leaving the older children to watch after their juniors until the defenses were complete.

  Small shacks began to crop up, each one housing two or three families. In the case of Dorin’s home, it was little more than four wooden walls and a roof. It kept the elements out, but that was all it did. Had the apocalypse come in autumn or winter instead of early summer, the ramshackle houses would never have sheltered them.

  Still, it was enough. Most days, people tended to their tasks. The harpies patrolled the skies and kept watch from the trees, while the humans manned the walls. Those who weren’t protecting the community did what they could to better it. Mattis’s father and brother took the scraps of wood from the walls and fashioned bowls and cups for utensils, while Mrs. Malsory’s son, Mordin, built small tables around the fire pits so everyone could eat.

  It was behind one of those tables that Samri hid. I watched him duck beneath the wood, keeping his hands and feet firmly out of sight to the casual observer. It was a good attempt for a human, but there was no human alive who could beat me at hide and seek.

  Luckily for Samri, Jaden was the one seeking. If it had been me, my low profile and omnidirectional vision would have made the table a rather poor hiding spot. But who knows? Maybe he’d be fooled.

  “Ready or not! Here I come!” Jaden called to the camp.

  Several adults turned to watch the blond boy—at least, everyone said he was blond and I had no reason to doubt them—step out of Dorin’s home and into the wide common area that held the firepits. His eyes swept the area, scrutinizing it for potential hiding spots. He had five targets: two humans, two harpies, and a slime.

  I had to admit, the humans had put some thought into teaching their children. What better way to teach their offspring how to hide from potential threats than to make them hide from one another. It taught survival skills. The hiders learned to keep quiet in the face of danger, while the seeker learned critical hunting skills that could be applied to a wide variety of professions. Very efficient.

  Jaden stalked to the far edge of the camp first. From that angle, he immediately spotted a bundle of feathers sticking up from a boulder on the edge of the human settlement. In my arcane senses, the owner was painted with gentle orange mana, like a beautiful sunrise, which was another reason why everyone was lucky that I wasn’t the one seeking. Sneaking softly, he approached the tuft. Only when he was close enough did he lunge forward, tapping M’neki on the shoulder. The harpy fledgling jumped with fright.

  “Wait! Really?!” she protested. “How did you find me?”

  “Your ear tufts are taller than the boulder,” he explained, reaching out to ruffle the girl’s head feathers.

  M’neki pouted and spread her wings. “You only found me because I had to hide on the ground.” She stuck out her tongue at Jaden, who returned the gesture with a smile. The little harpy joined the search, and I resisted the urge to wobble happily. They were never going to find me.

  The next to be found was Tanev, who tucked herself between a crate and the side of her house. Though she’d been hidden well out of view, the spot was obvious enough that it was the next place Jaden searched. While he did, M’neki hovered overhead, scanning the ground with hunter’s eyes.

  Tanev, being the shortest one of the group and the one who could most easily see beneath the table, betrayed her brother instantly. She pointed Jaden to Samri’s hiding spot, and the latter boy bolted.

  “You have to catch me!” he shouted as he scrambled from his hiding spot.

  M’neki frowned. “Is that part of the rules? Because if so, I want a rematch! I’m the fastest flier of all the fledglings!”

  Neither Jaden nor Samri answered as they began a small game of chase. From my hiding place, I watched them run around the camp, weaving between the busy adults preparing for the evening meal. M’neki soon added her wings to the chase, trying to block and corner Samri by the kitchens. In trying to get by her, the boy spun around, only to crash into Jaden. The two tumbled to the ground in a stunned heap before sitting up giggling. M’neki landed next to them and added her own chittering laugh to their merriment.

  “Come on! There’s still S’rina and Suri to find!” Samri said, offering a hand and pulling Jaden to his feet.

  Finding S’rina, M’neki’s sister, didn’t take long. The fledgling was laughing at the boys so hard she fell off the roof she’d been hiding on. Several worried adults glanced her way, but when she proceeded to roll across the ground, they returned to their tasks.

  “Well, that just leaves one.” Jaden scanned the area once again. “But he could be anywhere.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Good luck, Jaden,” Tanev said, sitting down on one of the stones around the bonfire pit.

  The truth was that I was in the fire pit. The bonfire wasn’t lit yet, since Dorin only did so after sundown and the smaller fires were far more convenient for cooking than one large one. They wouldn’t even think to light it for another half hour, and by then, the kids would have given up. All I needed to do was wait.

  M’neki scratched her head with a wing claw. “Mama said that he fit into a tiny crack in the wall when he tried to escape the colony. Do you think he could be in the High Ridge wall?”

  “He could be anywhere!” Samri exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “Remind me never to play hide and seek with a creature built for ambushes.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Tanev mused, “there must be some way to find him.”

  “Yeah, maybe if any of us could see magic like he can.”

  “Maybe.”

  I narrowed my focus. The little girl was staring directly at the charred logs in the pit…directly at me. Was it a coincidence? It had to be. There was no way she f—

  “Or maybe we just need to pay attention. I know where he is.” She stood and faced the boys.

  “No way.” Samri scoffed. “Nuh uh. Not a chance. There is no way you found him without even looking.”

  “I found your doll behind dad’s workbench after you searched for hours.”

  “You mean you hid my figurine there so you could claim credit later,” he said with a scowl.

  Tanev stamped her foot. “I did not hide it! You set it down and it got brushed aside! I’m just really good at finding things!”

  “Fine! Then prove it. Where’s Suri?”

  To my horror, she turned and pointed directly at the fire. “He’s in there.”

  I didn’t know how she knew, but she did. Her voice was certain, and I was forced to admit defeat. Oozing out from between the old logs, I wobbled with frustration before hopping out of the fire. Within two pulses of my core, I’d dissolved the ash from my membrane.

  “How did you do that?” I asked. “I thought for sure I was hidden.”

  Tanev just smiled knowingly. “I’m not telling.”

  Samara’s high, gentle laughter filled the air. “Don’t bother, Suri. Her mother used to pull the same trick, and I still don’t know how she managed it. She could track a fly through the forest in the fog.” The bartender-turned-councilwoman beckoned us all over. “Now, I hope you all had fun. Evening Song will be soon, and K’esil will have my head if her daughters are late.”

  S’rina and M’neki nodded before speaking in perfect unison. “Thank you for having us.” Clasping their wing claws before them, they bowed politely before spreading their wings and returning to the cliffs.

  “And you three, go wash up.”

  The three kids nodded and went together towards the stream that flowed from the heights of the ridge.

  I hopped onto the table next to Samara. “Not going to tell me to wash up?” I asked playfully, which only made her laugh.

  “With your acid, you’re probably cleaner than the plates are.”

  I wobbled happily in response. Samara was nice when she wasn’t pointing a crossbow at you. Her magic matched Dorin’s for warmth but had a paler color. It was no less bright than Samri’s, despite being more like hot sands than gold.

  The children returned a moment later, along with Dorin, who set his axe and shield down by the door before falling into the chair. Everyone sat and waited patiently for Samara to serve bowls of stew from one of the fires.

  “How are the defenses?” I asked the tired knight.

  He shrugged. “Same as always. A few shamblers, but nothing on the order of those in Felsporo. Pelslow’s knights just took the night watch.”

  “Oh great,” I muttered. “That means I have to take over for them in the morning.”

  If I had to suffer through being called a “sewer-sweep” one more time, I was going to eat more shoes…and possibly the feet inside them. The knights just couldn’t help but mention every single time I saw them how every other slime they’d met in the cities were used to clean the sewers. It didn’t matter how many times I told them that I was a dungeon slime—and therefore, different from their pitiful city slimes—and that I was far stronger than slime employed to eat human filth; they just wouldn’t let it go.

  “Is that better or worse than being called the love child of a dragon and a bard?” Dorin grumbled.

  “This crisis cannot end soon enough.”

  The draken snorted and raised his mug, which he tapped against a rock I’d picked up earlier that day. It was a strange human gesture, but as far as I could tell, it was symbolic of camaraderie, and I couldn’t argue with that.

  Samara passed six bowls around the table, each one filled with a meager stew. Samri took one look at it and sighed in defeat.

  “Rabbit again?”

  “Be lucky we have meat at all,” she scolded him. “L’aera was extremely generous to share with us, as her harpies had to travel far to the west to find areas less tainted by the plague.”

  Dorin eyed the last bowl of stew. “Are we expecting someone?”

  “Mr. LaVerre said he’d be joining us tonight,” she answered.

  Jaden’s eyes lit up and he looked around the camp for the nervous servant. With his parents dead, the youngster had no one amongst the survivors to care for him. It was a common tale for many of the children, but where others were taken in by other families, Jaden was informally taken care of by Feydian. Something about being saved by the man inspired Jaden to look up to him, even if he was always the first to protest his status as “savior.”

  “He’s on the other side of the fire,” I said, quickly picking his midnight blue and rainbow magic from the crowd.

  The servant quickly made his way through the rest of the survivors. Most of them treated him with respect, as the servant of a noble. However, a few of them sneered in his direction, clearly not extending to him the same respect they might have shown his master. He ignored them, and smiled softly at the sight of us.

  “Samara, your cooking is always a delight,” he praised as he sat down before his place. “Thank you for saving me a bowl.”

  “You are part of our household,” she answered. “And unlike Suri, you don’t have an excuse not to eat it.” She playfully tossed me a pebble, which I ate greedily.

  “It’s not that I don’t want your cooking,” I grumbled. “I just don’t want to eat your limited supplies. Rocks are tasty enough for now.”

  “Well, let’s hope ‘for now’ isn’t ‘forever,’” she said as she sat down across from Feydian. “So, tell me young man. How is our illustrious ruler planning on handling the food situation?”

  He cringed and then sighed. “You won’t like it, Samara. He’s decided that all available resources will be dedicated towards teaching the civilians to fight. There’s nothing left for resource procural.”