DICORE [NO LONGER UPDATING]

Chapter 6

"Please don't hurt me," I desperately try to save myself. "You heard what she said. Ellie has some kind of value to you, I assume."

"Elizabeth's dead." Ectumus sneers. "And dead bodies are worthless."

I yell the first thing that pops into my head. "MONSTER!" 

"Thank you for the unique angle, kid." He says. "It's time to die like your mother. Tell me your last words, now."

"She's not my mother!" I yell in defense.

"...I guess she isn't."

"Wait, you aren't going to kill me outright...?"

"No. I understand your troubles. And no, she's not your mom. Those red wings say it all."

I freeze. Sweat pours down my back. "...Yeah. Wings. She...She said my real parents were demons."

"Demons, child?" He asks me like I'm a toddler. "You're worth more than I thought." He picks me up by the collar of my tank top, like I'm a puppy.

"You're taking me?!" I snap, struggling against his hold. "Why don't you just tap me like Aunt Ellie?!" 

"I couldn't kill you with DICORE if I wanted to."

DICORE?

Ectumus carries me outside and throws me to a band of his slime soldiers. Blobby creatures, unlike Ectumus himself, who's humanoid. I land on them. It feels like sitting on gelatin.

"Don't you dare eat this one. She's useful." Ectumus commands his soldiers. He snaps his fingers, and the slime beneath me starts rolling.

About ten minutes later, we stop at a towering starship, parked in the middle of the city square. It's blocky, and made out of a metal that looks like a sky full of stars. It hovers just above the ground, with a wide gangplank in the front, leading into a bright white space inside the ship.

"What's this?!" I scream.

"You don't know this place? Everybody knows the Slime Star." Ectumus shrugs. He snaps his fingers again, and his soldiers throw me off of their backs, onto the concrete ground.

"Oops." Ectumus says.

"Stop, please. Haven't you done enough?"

"No. No I haven't. I haven't made up for a single fraction if what your mother-figure did to me."

"At least you respect that I'm detached," I get up off the ground, dusting myself off. "But—hey, also, why haven't you caged me yet? What twisted mercy is this?"

"I'm getting to that part, kid." He snaps his fingers another time, and one of the soldiers spits out a goo onto me, trapping my hands to my sides.

I should've expected that.

He walks forward into the ship. I stay still. He stops walking.

"Boys, can you negotiate?" He asks without turning his head. The slime soldiers behind me roll forward, and I get washed into the goo, like a surfboard on the ocean coming back to the shore. They continue to push me like the tides up the gangplank, until I'm inside the ship. The slime pulls away.

"You're sick." I criticize in protest.

"You and your quips need to go to the incinerator room to think awhile."

"INCINERATOR?! You took me only to kill me! Why didn't you just--"

"QUIET! The incinerator room contains an incinerator, yes, but I wouldn't put a demon like you in an incinerator! It's worthless to do something like that." 

He sighs. "You really think I'm that twisted, do you? There's a person underneath this slime. Not the...best person, but still a person." He stares at the floor for a while.

Silence.

"Boys, take the kid to the incinerator." He snaps.