Arrhythmia

Every scale on Arrythmia’s body rattled in the aftermath of the explosion.

Maybe explosion was the wrong word. Perhaps it was more of a “sudden blast of goop and shards of what was once a cauldron flying everywhere and possibly breaking one or more valuables”.

Yeah, that was more like it. Arrythmia blinked her eyes open, coughing on the soot in the air. Of course, now she was covered from snout to tail in neon green goop—which wouldn’t be so bad, except for the fact that it was pulsating, and glowing like one of the mushrooms of the Tangled Woods. Not the most pleasant experience, if she does say so herself.

Shaking herself out—which meant flapping her wings aggressively and lashing her tail to try and dislodge a particularly stubborn glob of now-semi-sentient goo—Arrythmia made her way over to the scorched (and now slightly bioluminescent) piece of parchment she scratched out her notes on.

Creating a new life form out of glow mushrooms and goop stolen from Baldwin’s cauldron when he was looking the other way:

Pros— semi-successful. Lifeform glows. Very sticky. Seems at least somewhat sentient.

She glanced up from her notes to see two blobs of goop trying to escape through what wasn’t a window until about three minutes ago when a shard of her cauldron broke a hole in the wall. She nudged one with a talon, and it made a sound that almost seemed indignant.

somewhat sentient. Completely sentient.

Cons— exploded upon creation.

She scanned what was once her functioning lab, and then glanced down at her own scales, before adding, makes everything—including dragons—in the immediate area glow slightly blue.

Arrythmia could already hear what her clan mates would have to say about this. Some of them would certainly be amused with her new coloration, and tell her that she should really stick to orange and gray—blue and bioluminescent doesn’t compliment her eyes as much, you know—but some would certainly be irritated with the damage done to the room. After all, she wasn’t technically a mad scientist anymore, partially due to experimental mishaps like this one. No, she was a battle alchemist. After all, when a dragon has an almost supernatural ability to cause things to explode in the way she does, what better use of their skills is there? Regardless, sometimes the call of science is too strong to resist.

Or, in this case, the call of glowing mushrooms and the mental image of cute tiny mushroom creatures was too strong to resist.

She moved away from the table, taking stock of the damage. She would need a new cauldron, for starters. And she would have to fix the whole in the wall. She would also need to move all of these goop monsters... somewhere. Where does one even keep a small army of sentient glowing goo, anyway? Maybe in the bestiary, then she could claim it was some new type of familiar.

She scooped one up in her claws to get a better look, only for it to immediately roll out of her paw and onto the floor. She half expected it to explode into a million smaller versions of itself, but instead it simply hit the floor, remained entirely still for a moment, then began to slide off in a different direction.

Honestly, it was almost cute.

She watched two of them collide, expecting them to bounce off of each other and continue in separate directions. Instead, the two of them merged together into one larger goo creature. This large goo creature then proceeded to approach another small one, and again, merged into a bigger one. And on and on it went. Arrythmia watched in mesmerized amusement for a moment, before turning back to her parchment. In the pros column, she added, “can combine into one larger mass. Potentially helpful in battle (?)”

She watched the goo creature, now about the size of her late cauldron, slide slowly around the room. Once it had appeared to gather up all of the smaller creatures into its mass, it slid over to Arrythmia, stopping directly in front of her.

If you asked Arrythmia why she did what she did next, she would certainly not be able to tell you. In the moment, it seemed like the right thing to do. After all, the goo had just cleaned itself off of every surface in her semi-destroyed lab.

She reached down and gently patted the goo creature on what she assumed could be its head. “That’s a good goo creature, doing the helpful thing and combining into one goo mass.” The goo, somehow happy to have pleased her, bounced once, twice, three times, and directly into her arms.

Holding the goo creature with one arm, she made one final adjustment to her lab notes.

potentially helpful in battle potentially a great friend.

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