“Such bravado in the face of death is to be commended, as mistaken as it is. My mass has neither blood or bone to break. Your lightning would cause me no pain. But enough of the pleasantries. Morell and I have unfinished business to discuss.”

  “Business? What business?” spit Morell “I’ve never met you before in my life!”

  “It would make sense that you cannot perceive my previous nature in the form I hold now, but hear my story and I’m sure you’ll understand. Listen well, for this is my cursed existence: In an age long ago, you loved me, boy. It seems a time disconnected ago that you carried me with you everywhere you want on your expeditions for mold and fungus.”

  “H-how can you know that?” asked Morell

  “Then came the time of the faun and exodus. The journey across the land to escape a spoiled prince’s fate. Oh, it was a night…a night just like this when we crossed a powerful threshold… And in a dark and desperate place you left me to die. But I survived. In my ignorance I fed upon the blue caps you left behind. But for that ignorance the hidden power of the cap worked its secret within my fledgling consciousness. And from nothingness came forth a spring of sensations I could not fathom with my tiny mind. But like a bubble, it grew and expanded, blossoming like a flower. The spring gave forth knowledge and understanding to fill the hollowness where nothing resided before.”

  “This thing is mad.” Siouxsie whispered into Morell’s ear. “We must escape.”

  “Madness, little witch?” the blob shifted, sounding angrier now. “Let me tell you of madness. Let me tell the madness of being force fed sentience without one’s consent. I’ll tell you the horror of having one’s mind which was only chaff and dirt before boiled down to distillate and threaded through a thousand red hot needles for days on end." The dark ichor’s words came faster now. Its voice growing louder and angrier as it continued. “I’ll tell you of the madness found there. It is beyond the realm of agony and suffering. It is beyond pain and despair. It is a diamond forged under the pressures of dimensions slamming together as a blacksmiths hammer strikes the anvil. It slammed and crushed me from the inside out. Had I known the word for mercy I might have cried it! Had I the ability to speak I might have tried! It was a bitter defilement for which there can be no absolution or repair! It was there! It was there waiting in the nothingness to embrace and fill what was left of me when I emerged from that state of dust… And when I awoke from the state granted to me since my creation… I understood.”

  ”Understood?” asked Ignatius. “What is there to understand? You’re a demented thing ranting of nothingness and dust in a hollow place holding children hostage as you shout and rave as a loon!”

  “I would not expect you to share my sentiment, Ignatius.” It said. ”Your knowledge of the arcane was introduced to you of your free will. You had a choice whether to accept or condone that which was offered where I did not.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Ignatius. “The arcane is ingrained into the culture of all witchkind. It is who we are.”

  “Yet you had the choice to reject it and walk away from the knowledge. Had you objected, you could have abandoned the notions and chosen a different path.”

  “There was NOT a choice to turn down the ways of magick! Your words are the things of lies and blasphemy! You’re a twisted entity and I’ll hear no more of this!”

  “It matters not.” Said the blob. “For our situation has not been altered. The boy will stay with me.”

  “I will not leave him to be in the company of wickedness such as yourself!”

  “But how did you become such a thing?” Morell asked. “How are you made of such thick liquid but you speak as people do?”

  “Ahh.” Said the blob with some delight. “A proper inquiry I have an answer for. To find that answer it goes back to just after my awakening. I was lost, surrounded by danger and vastness I was nothing but ignorant to. I had known nothing but bare existence without direction. Adrift as a boat without a sail.”

  “You speak as a scholar does.” Said Ignatius.

  “Yes. When afforded all the time in the world, one naturally takes to acquiring knowledge to fill the void created by the endless hours of the days and nights. I was but a dumb beast when I began. After my eyes were opened, I sought language, words, meaning, ideas, plans, designs…true sentience. I started as but a simple gel, but now have become so, so much more.”

  “A gel?” asked Siouxsie. “But if you’re as centuries old as you say you are, that’s impossible! Gels don’t live to be a century old let alone many centuries.”

  “The facts of gels and the world might tend to agree with you if my existence weren’t something anomalous. In my quest to stay alive I’ve learned the unnatural skill of prolonging my existence through the consumption of my own kind. He remains of thousands…tens of thousands of generations of gelkind have been assimilated to sustain me and this broadening consciousness I carry.”

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  “You’ve eaten them? Eaten your own kind?” asked Morell with disgust.

  “Absorption would be a more accurate term but yes, the result is the same as their essence contributes to my mass and allows me to put a stopper into a death that would naturally end me.”

  “Such a blaspheme against nature!” Siouxsie gasped.

  “Were the others aware of what was happening I could see there being an injustice, young witch.” The goo gurgled and glooped as it spoke. “But in this act, you call unnatural, I call a grander evolution for the sake of a greater goal.”

  “A greater goal?” asked Ignatius.

  “Yes, to arrive at this exact moment at this exact time to speak to you face to face that I might look upon you as I see to your demise.”

  “You’re a wicked, wicked thing.” Said Morell.

  “Wicked you say. Yet wicked am I not, for I am but a survivor of your incompetence, boy.”

  “I don’t know of what you speak!” shouted Morell. “I don’t know you! I’ve never met you before in my life!”

  “You know me not in this form but one smaller. I was once small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and you carried me in your pack wherever you went.” it said.

  Morell’s expression became one of shock and disbelief.

  “Jam?” he asked. “Are you my tiny gel, Jam?”

  “That name no longer suits me as I have become something else. I have become a collection of the rot and stink and foulness of the world. I thought my new form complete until I ventured into this wasting tomb. The last fears of the dead permeate the very stone we’re surrounded by. Much of the terror that lingers after the flesh turns black is the sweetest treat to suck like morrow from the bone. The remnants left behind are an additional feast as the soil within this mass grave is steeped with the filth of the generations of maggots which fed upon the multitudes of corpses. There is something else here. I have found the lingering sadness of the people of Spellvale to be an intoxicating concoction for which I have found no substitute in which to feed. As the gel spoke, the suspended skeletons of the dead began to sway and move closer to the edge of the gel wall. The marching dead pressed themselves tight against one another until all that was visible was a unspeakable tapestry of corpses clutching swords and brooms glaring in from every side from hollow sockets. “As much as the tangible nourishes gel, the frightful terminal screams of an entire tribe is baked into every surface. It is…an exhilaration….to experience such a thing and I cannot imagine its delicious equal. No, I am no longer the Jam you knew as I am so, so, much more. Look upon me and tremble, young Morell. Look upon the terrible magnificence of Sculch.” An awful weight of doom fell upon the boy and his stomach turned. He gripped at his torso and crushed by that that weight he fell to his knees.

  “Jam, I’m so sorry!” Morell sobbed. “I didn’t know I’d done something so terrible to you.”

  “I do not doubt you are remorseful. But ignorance is no excuse for such carelessness. The stain you have placed upon me is beyond removing and it has become a prison cell for which there is no key to open the door. No, stupid boy. I’m afraid you will not escape the doom I have planned for you and the rest of the world.”

  “The rest of the world?” asked Ignatius. “What do you mean?”

  “I will lay waste to this land one village at a time. I will consume all that I find. Neither woodland creature nor beast of burden nor townsperson will escape my insatiable hunger. And as I consume their essences, I will be come larger and more powerful. They will fight with sword and shield and spear and fire and catapult. But none of these will be enough to stop me. The hunger that has sustained me for so long will be set loose upon every plateau and body of water until the birds and fish and animals have filled my gullet. The sweet blood of virgin and child shall curdle within my gullet as I consume their eyes and hearts. Neither decree of kings or beggings of holy men will stay my advance. I will devour until there is no more.”

  “There can be no evil more sinister than you Sculch.” Said the tall witch

  “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, na?ve Ignatius.” Shifted the glob. “For I know your fate all too well. I have seen what you have wrought upon this world. Were my abilities as far reaching, I would never need leave this lair.”

  “There can be no reasoning with this abomination.” Ignatius told the others. “We must leave this place at once!”

  “You witches are very welcome to leave the way you came in, bold Ignatius.” Sculch shimmied. “I will no doubt collect you at a later time. Fly away all you like, you must stop to rest eventually. My business for now is with the boy.”

  “What will you do to him?” Ignatius asked.