Edirup had called herself my parent just now.
What was that supposed to mean?
The answer came immediately as I asked, her deep voice filling the cavern while she leaned forward on the massive throne, one clawed hand gesturing lazily through the air.
Apparently, after Edirup had her body chopped up into a hundred pieces by that human champion, the minced remains were tossed into this very cave.
And for decades she lingered in a half-death state, her essence scattered and weak, slowly pulling itself back together piece by bloody piece.
But from her cut flesh, these formless, mindless monsters appeared — the same wet, writhing slug-maggot things that still crawled and bumped around my grey blob body even now.
Myself, included.
She recognized them as "Shoggoths," because she had known one such shoggoth before — the only true one in the world at the time, a primordial thing of chaos and flesh.
Nevertheless, she also discovered she was now sealed tight.
The enchantments woven by the champion and whatever gods he served kept her trapped here, unable to move far from this area or use her full powers meaningfully.
The air itself felt heavy with layered magic, pressing down like invisible chains on anything born from her as well.
To clarify her explanation, she pointed one long claw toward a wide, open stone-looking door ahead of us, its frame carved with glowing runes that pulsed faintly.
"Try to leave, if you can," she commanded, her golden-starred red eyes watching me closely.
And, like a real slug, I moved there to try and cross.
My grey flesh flowed forward in slow, oozing ripples, golden kraken eyes swiveling in every direction as I rolled and stretched toward the opening.
The floor felt cool and smooth under me, the faint moisture from dripping stalactites making small wet sounds as my mass slid across it.
But an invisible wall stopped me cold a few feet from the threshold.
It pressed against my surface like thick, unyielding gel, resisting every push.
No matter how I oozed or extended tentacles experimentally from my sides, the barrier held firm, sending faint ripples back through my body.
Because, I was basically a part of Edirup, so the enchantments worked on me too.
My flesh carried her essence, her blood and her seal.
After what must have been a hundred years, Edirup got terribly bored of just sitting around doing nothing but watching the shoggoths multiply slowly.
Their wet bodies slapped and merged and split in endless cycles across the leveled stone floor, tongues flicking, eyes blinking randomly, mouths opening and closing with soft, squelching noises.
The sound filled the cavern like constant background static.
So she started an experiment — one that she would cultivate souls inside the bodies of the shoggoths using magic.
She described how she channeled what little power the seal allowed, weaving threads of chaotic energy into their formless masses.
She was trying to spark sentience so they would talk to her, even if it was just dumb conversations from an intelligent being to unintelligent ones.
The air during those attempts had crackled with faint dark sparks, she said, lighting up the ornate wall carvings in eerie patterns.
Of course, the experiment was a massive failure.
Being in this seal made her normally sharp proficiency in magic wane, turning precise spells into sloppy, half-formed things that fizzled out or backfired.
But she did say that one shoggoth stayed still those decades ago, after a particular serious experiment.
Just beside a large stone, it remained perfectly motionless while its siblings continued their mindless writhing and bumping.
After a long while, it began to bob and shake strangely, its grey flesh quivering in odd patterns.
Occasionally it hit itself into everything — the walls, the floor, the other shoggoths, and even Edirup's bare feet with their sharp claws.
Which would mean it didn't know how to see.
Not to mention, it appeared as if it was trying to figure something out, rolling and pressing against invisible obstacles in confused loops.
So she immediately spoke to it, a bit hopeful that her experiment had finally worked.
But it didn't listen, only kept smashing itself in a more strange way than its siblings, its body flowing and reforming awkwardly with every impact.
This made her think it was just a more strange shoggoth after all.
But she tried to speak to its mind, with the gamble that maybe it wasn't able to hear too.
And that was the story of How I Met my Mother.
"M... Mama?"
"You better desist from that nonsense!" Edirup blushed and jabbed a claw at me, the sharp tip stopping inches from my surface as my blob bounced back in a quick ripple.
A faint red tint spread across her pale cheeks, making the golden stars in her eyes spin faster for a moment. "I am the Chaos Spirit of Pride, not some... some maternal figure for a talking pile of eyes!"
As more time passed by, I realized something; my confidence with women was nowhere under the ashes like it had been in my old salaryman life.
I just hadn't been doing it for a while.
The words came easier now, slipping out in that croaky voice or through the mental link without the old hesitation.
Instead of romantic settings with cute girls in the convenience store or office, Edirup had managed to make herself out to be a tsundere Onee-chan.
And rather than even a mother — arrogant and sharp-tongued one moment, flushing and defensive the next while she lounged on her throne like she owned the entire labyrinth.
But seriously, I got to go find my heroine already!