Tales of PulchraGea, Vol. 1

Chapter 11: Shadows the World Casts

So let me save some time by skipping the aftermath of the inauguration. It was like if chaos and Battle Royale had a baby, then that baby opened Pandora's box and had a baby with whatever was inside. It was all I or anyone else could do to keep Katy out of Mount Spilmor. The political tension was unreal; no king had ever been challenged before, let alone found wanting. Suffice it to say my maxed out speech stats saved everyone's ass by convincing whoever thought they were currently in charge to let us find the last keystone, to prove my worth as Chosen King. I shall also gloss over the weeks of study leading to its location.
I shall, however, tell you we were leaving PulchraGea to find it. On foot. See, the 'powers that be' really wanted us to biff it, never return. Thus, they dropped us off on the edge of Narakh-sha's border between the Forest of Illusion and the river Rage. Oh, and by "us" I mean the usual crew of me, Doug, Crystal, and Katy. Decked out in light gear with low provisions, and only our signature weapons. I didn't even get my laser pistol, just my glassy quantanium karambits. I mean, so what if they were dropping us off in literally the most hostile location on the whole planet, right?
With that in mind, here we are sauntering south using some of the most ancient legends of the Green Tribe and a whole hell of a lot of guesswork. We march without complaint for days, with Crystal occasionally shooting us some small animal, usually the green squirrel-like Lutée (don't hurt your brain, it's pronounced loo-tay). After several days and a hundred miles one of our half-educated guesses pays off: something called the 'air-colored bridge. It seems like a hollow frame, but when you step on it ripples like a pond, except not radiating out from the disturbance, but rather in toward it, as if some sort of energy is coalescing to keep your feet in the air. If I had to guess, I'd liken it to our modern tactile holograms, even if by comparison it's a little more crude than the holographic flight controls we have these days. According to some Green Tribe oral tradition from before the Unification of the tribes, this bridge across one of the Rage's subsidiaries marked the true boundary of PulchraGea in the south and the edge of a territory of an unnamed threat that was said to have driven them from their ancestral home in the southern rainforests.
We stopped to make camp on the other side of the bridge.

I woke up groggily the next morning to someone digging in my backpack. I turned over to find it overturned but otherwise unharmed. I could still hear noises from its direction though; it sounded like something was unwrapping the emergency protein bars I had stashed at the bottom and chewing on them.
"Om nom nom," a voice said suddenly. "This thing good."
A semitranslucent pink mass peeked over the edge of the pack, beady black eyes staring straight at me.
"There's more?" the creature asked.
You know that face when someone insults you in a way that's more confusing than offensive? I made that face and said,"No. Get out of my backpack, you little shit."
I got up and tried to shoo it out of my tent, but it merely flowed around me like water and continued rummaging. I tried to grab it, but it started to cry like a toddler.
"No!" it hollered. "You leaf me lone or I poke you inna eye!" Then, it flailed at me with a suddenly appearing gooey appendage. Where it struck me began to feel like a mild sunburn.
I blurted a couple of four letter words very loudly, rousing the camp.

As long as we kept feeding it, it kept talking. It was a Blob from Nowhere (as in the middle of) and apparently some sort of genetic anomaly of a shadowclaw or something similar. Blobs, however, seemed capable of at least semi-sentient thoughts and definitely speech. It described the societal structure of its species, wherein the coloration of a Blob described its societal placement. There were blue Blobs, green Blobs, and red Blobs. There were not, however, pink blobs.
That brings us to its name, Red-356. Apparently, Blobs don't get names, they get identification numbers in accordance with their color; since pink was just not a color that Blobs came in they ID'd him according to the closest color. It seemed, though, that there was an omen attached to his odd color, a prophecy that he would bring an end to the Blob way of life, and thus he was cast out of the Blob city.
Everyone's heads popped up in attention when he said it was something about a stone.
"Can you take us there?" Crystal asked.
The Blob looked at her pensively. "Is long way," he said. "Need lotta food for that far."
She hefted her bow and promised they could arrange something.
"Otay," he said with a satisfied bob, almost like a nod. I'd noticed during his tale that he did that alot, especially when he seemed to get more excited.
"If we're going to travel with you, we can't call you Red-356 all the time," Katy said. The Blob bobbed in agreement.
"Is long," he admitted. "But is all I has."
"Bob," I said. "Bob the Blob."
Everyone looked at me intensely, as if wondering how I came about it. "TV character," I explained. "Bob the Blob. And all that bebopping he does, bobbing up and down like a sea buoy."
"Bob der Blob," he repeated, eyes sparkling in amazement. "I has a name!"
He geit so excited, rolling around the camp shouting his new name for the world to hear. It was the kind of hooping and hollering that was almost guaranteed to attract the wrong kind of attention. Sure enough, almost immediately there was a rustling at the edge of the clearing we were camped at. A pygmy zilla charged forth, looking for a fight; pygmy zillae are always looking for a fight.