Drip-Fed Pt. 03

Gorging itself on the many, many different kinds of herbs Gizmo planted in his garden combined with Apexus' natural affinity to grow more upon plant consumption, had caused the slime to now be as large as a guard dog. Gizmo had measured it to be 68 centimetres across.

Smiling, the old man reached out, his glasses already sat on his face, as they always did when he worked on his potions. In those moments, when he wasn't interacting with the slime, the old man always looked the most vulnerable.

Apexus had to hold back to not flutter his wings and attack the man like an angry pigeon, the moment Gizmo picked up the cracked body. However, it managed to keep its reaction to a nervous quivering, which slowly subsided as he watched the delicacy with which Gizmo handled her.

"Yes, it seems my initial prognosis was correct," he confirmed to himself after putting her down on a piece of cloth. He slowly ascended up a two-step stool. He was now face to face with a part of the shelves that was hidden behind a lock. "The good news is that it is easy to treat, as long as one has the necessary ingredients," he announced, fishing a key out of his stained robes. The slime perked up. "The bad news is that this old man lost the means to enact the proper rituals."

Apexus sank together until he was a thin, small-winged puddle on the table, exuding the smell of misery through his pheromone ducts. "Don't be saddened, I have some of the necessary stuff in storage. We can use that to start the process. We will just have to improvise on the rest," Gizmo said and pulled out three flasks.

They looked different than all the other bottles around, who were just basic cylindrical containers with a bottleneck and sealed with a piece of cork. These were elegantly curved and covered in golden lines that looked like they had dried yesterday. A piece of perfectly fitting glass, with a pointy extension to pull at, kept the liquids inside from spilling out of the thin neck. One contained a black, the other a white liquid but both contained swirls of gold. The third was a vile green.

"Essence of Natural Depth...," Gizmo said, putting the black flask down on the left side of Aclysia's head. "...and Essence of the Ordered Omni-Verse," the white one followed at the right. "Mixed with Essence of Divinity, the three basic ingredients to create an immortality potion... or to restore the connection of a divine being to this world." He placed the third vial at the side after looking at it for a moment. He mentioned it with no further word.

Apexus almost became a square at how shocked it was. This man would give up immortality just to help it? Gizmo was as quick as always and picked up on this with a saddened smile.

"I have lived a long, long time, Apexus," he said in a tired tone, "and that life doesn't deserve to be eternal. In no small part because of why I happen to possess these things." He carefully, aware of his own jittery hands, opened the flasks. "That aside, as I said these are the basic ingredients. There are more things outside of the leaf that I would require to concoct a proper one. Better to use these essences in the service of a good for the oddball that keeps me company."

Gizmo giggled at the pun that his magic failed to translate into proper meaning. Despite that explanation, Apexus felt the deepest gratitude at witnessing this man's sacrifice. After taking a second piece of fine cloth and covering Aclysia's body with it, the old alchemist simply emptied the contents of the bottle onto her, The black and white soaked into the grey fabric.

The essences dominated the original colour and turned the fabric into a display of white and black swirling around each other, never mixing. Superfluous amounts began to run over the table, Apexus was unsure if such a waste of the probably priceless materials was wise, but Gizmo didn't move.

It soon became apparent why. The golden swirls in both liquids connected to each other and formed the outline of Aclysia's body under the cloth. From her toes, over the wings, to her ears and even her sprawled out hair, a perfect silhouette formed. Letters of providence appeared on the inner rim, forming sentences whose meaning refused to stay within the slime's nucleus no matter how often it read them. A light rose from the cloth as the superfluous liquids changed their course, flowing backwards and being absorbed.

"Ah, divinity," Gizmo mumbled and took a relieved breath, as if he had just been delivered from a sin. "it is so beautiful, but deserves to rest not in the hand of the greedy." Shadows fell back over the wrinkles in his face, there were none the fewer. "If there is one thing you remember from your time here, Apexus, even if you change your name or your entire nature, do promise me you will remember that."

The slime slowly nodded, unsure what to make of this scene.

The cloth underwent a transformation in the meanwhile. From two simple squares, laying above and below the metal fairy, they folded and warped until they gripped the outline of Aclysia tightly. She looked like a mummy, albeit a black, white and golden one. The outline of an eye appeared on her chest, between the soft rising of her breasts and where her naval would be.

"Now," Gizmo cleared his throat, "this is theoretically enough to repair a divine vessel, but we also have to call back her soul once the process is done. For that, I will need you to gather a couple of ingredients."

Under the watchful eyes of Gizmo, Apexus crossed under the lowest joist of the fence. "Remember, if you want to return you just need to seek something," the old man shouted after the slime. "The runes on this place will guide your steps towards it!"

So THAT was why the slime had found it. Personally, it had just thought it had lucked out for once. Didn't seem to be the case. As to why it was crawling into the forest rather than flying, that was because it was to find a list of things commonly found on the forest floor. Also, because it wanted to explore these parts.

The list of things it had to get was incredibly simple, which made it odd in its own way. A smooth pebble, a deep green-leaved plant, a piece of white bark and the antler of an animal. Gizmo had instructed Apexus to bring all of these things back fresh.

"It doesn't really matter what kind of pebble or plant, it's more of a symbolic thing," he had said, "but make sure to bring them back of natural origin. I don't think Hashahin will mind his sacrifices grown from you, but I don't want to risk it." Apparently, it was really fortunate that they already known under whose authority Aclysia had been created, that way they could skip a ritual that was going to take a whole lot more time.

Gizmo had tried explaining the details of the ritual to the slime, how each of the parts was a stand-in for another aspect of the 33rd deity, but that went over the still savage creature's head, at least for the most part. As far as it was concerned, a smooth pebble was a polished piece of rock, not a physical metaphor for the shining beacon of steadfast hope that was the stone-skinned angel at the side of the summer's patron.

That last part was the only thing that really stuck with the slime. Apparently, there were seasons, but this leaf, whatever that was supposed to be again, was eternally stuck in the warmest of them. Apexus wouldn't complain about that, the few experiences it had with colder times were entirely unpleasant.

One day it would learn more about this whole omni-verse, but today the slime embarked on a small and pretty easy journey. The only condition there was that It had to bring all of these things back at the same time. Which was another thing it didn't understand, but as long as it worked, it didn't care.

With more than a few days to spare, the repair process of Aclysia would take its time, the slime forced itself not to rush things. Taking unnecessary risks to get back to a body still being repaired would mean it would have to spend the time waiting in excruciating boredom and tenseness, with only Gizmo's communication lectures to spend it.

Those were okay, but the slime was more of a 'do' kind of personality. The only plans it liked to hatch were the kind used in hunting.

It slugged its way forwards and a few metres after the gateless fence was left behind, it hit the edge of the illusionary barrier. A warning flicker of bright sparks indicated that it was out and looking back the slime only saw the same woods as they were all around it.

The trees stood at an incredible density, blocking sight in every direction more reliably than but the densest of mists could. Shallow running roots covered the floor in an unsteady weave of gnarled wood, difficult to stand and step on. This was actually good for Apexus, who could traverse that kind of terrain as well as any other (or as bad as any other, in its own opinion).

It would have willingly starved itself for a couple of days for a way to shrink and use its wings to get through the forest that way instead. Sadly, that wasn't an option, so it remained earthbound, the wings downsized so they acted like a mediocre shield protecting Apexus' top half. With the chimeric head still attach to the front of it, the slime currently looked like a swan-slug-horror as it crept onwards.

In the distance, it felt the massive steps of the beast that had previously convinced it to stay away from these parts. Curiosity made it wish to go over there and finally lay eyes on the creature. All it knew about the thing was that it had to be massive. If push came to shove, the slime could just fly away using the path of broken trees made by the creature itself.

With that resolution made, and thirsty for some sort of new surprise to break up the monotony of the past month, Apexus made its way over. Greeted by an onslaught of small rodents fleeing away from where it was going, the slime was pretty sure it was heading the wrong way. Not that it was even possible to miss these sorts of vibrations.

By now the slime's original sense encompassed a metre around it in absolute detail. Everything that touched the ground around those parts carelessly was immediately detected. It still had to be wary of predators that could soften their movement or didn't touch the ground at all, such as snakes and birds. As the sense didn't suddenly stop at the metre mark, what the slime felt beyond that were immense tremors.

Such as the foot-steps of an eight-legged reptile that was fifteen metres long, covered in scales of red and had one eye in the centre of its elongated head filled with the tranquillity of a herbivore as it mowed down entire trees with its jaw, easily large enough to swallow the whole and then some.

The slime was seriously awe-inspired by that thing. Its scales looked too thick to be destroyed by anything. Thousands of small little antlers stuck out like chimney's and exuded a thin smoke in the air that filled it with an ashen smell. Half of the monstrosities entire length was dominated by an immense, muscular tail that it swung around with the kind of laziness that could shatter every single bone in an attacker's body.

It moved its feet, round and flat like tree stumps, and took a step forward. Its mass casually tore down a couple more trees, which it then began devouring leaving only splintered wood and scattered leaves. Behind it, the creature left a path of fresh, brown earth. The slime wondered how far it had to travel down that way to find saplings and eventually trees again.

Much more did it wonder if it had just stumbled into an eco-system whose highest-ranking member was an herbivore. That just felt wrong, but from the way absolutely nothing was even attempting to move on this extremely slow creature, there was no other explanation.

Apexus guess was indeed correct. This was the Ctanian Forag Drak or Forester Dragon as they were commonly called. While not actually related to any dragons in any other way that its creator god had also created some dragons in its time, this oversized, herbivore lizard bore several striking resemblances namely size, shape and the existence of a fire bag. The massive difference being that, for the Forester Dragon, it was used as part of their digestion process rather than as a weapon to spew fire.

Due to its massive size, intimidating smoke effect and organic armour, the Forester Dragon had no natural predators. In the first place, the Ctanian central forest was a pretty forgiving biome, with only big felines and snakes being the hunters around this area.

It was too bad for the Forester Dragon that it and its antler-like chimneys had entered the attention of a certain slime. Searching for a nice pebble amongst the upheaved ground, Apexus was crafting its plans.

Sapient hunters were unfairly good at killing big game.

Being sapient didn't just give Apexus the magical power to kill the Forester Dragon. Although it probably did help with learning magical abilities. Not the point. Apexus needed to prepare a few things for this next step. For that, carrying a nice and polished pebble inside it, the slime took to the sky. Once up there it noticed about half a dozen of the faint smoke signals in the distance.

Forester Dragon's continuous smoking weren't just a warning signal for predators, but also served to see each other from a distance. Generally, these lizards were seclusive, but during mating season they had to find each other somehow. The smoke signals females gave off were different enough that other members of the species or experienced hunters could tell.

The slime couldn't, neither did it care. Instead, it was trying to understand and predict the path these giants took and would take. That was easy, as they progressed on fairly straightforward ways, only course correcting if a particularly juicy tree tickled their fancy. Once Apexus had looked over a fair number of the faux-dragons, it picked the perfect specimen for its plan.

For once the question wasn't which was the easiest or oldest target, but instead which was crossing certain points the likeliest. Once it picked its target and prepared everything for the ambush, the slime had to wait.

Apexus was really bad at waiting.

Therefore, rather than sit on its below, it went to find the remaining two things required for the ritual. As it had a huge boulder and a smoking faux-dragon as its landmarks, the slime wasn't too worried about finding its way back.

Finding a deep green-leaved plant was actually surprisingly difficult. Most of the trees that were around, Apexus would have described as light or average leaf green. It even found the white bark before that plant, although it had to eat something with claws before it could scratch some off.

Something with claws was, in this case, a black cat creature that tried to cross the road left by a Forester Dragon at a bad time. Ambushing from the sky was just entirely unfair, the impact force basically transporting the entire cats right into the slimes inner layer. There was a load of struggling afterwards, the slime having a hard time containing the writhing creature within it, but ultimately the cat caught a lungful of acid and died.

In good news, that meant the slime finally had access to some new Growths it could use. It kept the vulture-deer-snake combination active for the moment, simply because it liked the poison and the long neck, but now it could also wobble around on the cat's legs. Or that was the plan, but the legs proved simply inadequate to reliably support the slime's weight. Therefore, Apexus opted to not use them after getting some of the bark.

Keeping digestible things inside it with the expressed purpose of not eating them was really weird, not to mention straining. It was like keeping a mouthful of drink and not swallowing. Eventually that turned out to be too uncomfortable and the slime decided to place the piece of bark and the pebble somewhere safe.

Namely, in a tree top that it had given the same treatment as its old den on the mountainside. Within the carved in the trunk, these two items were left securely while it went out to take care of the rest of its stuff.

After a few more days of searching (always keeping an eye on the ever so sluggishly moving Forester Dragon) the slime finally got what it needed. It was more of a stroke of luck than anything else. The white barked trees were at least common within the forest, so tripping over one of them was just a question of time. In contrast, what Apexus picked as its final offering was anything but.

A plant that a bored god had infected with a version of vampirism, the blood-vein ivy was a species found in numerous dimensions of the omni-verse. It was an odd one, its life cycle consisted of attaching to a tree and sucking it dry of any and all sap. Once it had finished one off, the ivy then grew a stilt that anchored on another tree. From there, all nutrients of the old ivy were absorbed into that stilt, proliferating the growth of the new network.

Lucky for forests on all leaves everywhere, the blood-vein ivy in all its forms could not truly procreate. Being a vampire, and as such largely immortal, the plant was practically an undead creature. Sometimes normal ivies got infected by vampirism, but that happened on a fluke. While this forest-eating pest couldn't truly be eradicated, it also didn't spread at any alarming rate either. It was just another part of the forests eco-system.

And one of the exemplars was currently being devoured by the slime. While vampirism, being akin to a curse, wasn't something that the slime could replicate, Apexus was still hungry, interested in growing and in need of a part of the plant.

Might as well eat the display on this tree. With its current size, it could pick the bark clean in a few hours. The hooks, used to draw out the sap from underneath the bark, were something the slime didn't really know what to do with, but the dark green leaves with the blood-red veins running through them surely qualified for the ritual.

Now it finally only needed the antlers and then it could head back to revive Aclysia, the anticipation positively reverberated in its body as it sat atop the boulder and slowly brought it out of balance.

The reason why sapient creatures were great at hunting big game was quite easy. The larger a creature was, the more they relied on their defences and power. The best way to counter that combination was intelligence.

If one lacked the capabilities to slash through fur, why not to try stabbing with a sharpened piece of wood? If one was afraid of the counterattack from mighty claws, tails or whatever else a giant could be armed with, why not try throwing the piece of wood? If one had no idea how to make tools and was faced with a foe that had impenetrable scales, what was a slime to do?

Wait until the prey made the unwise decision of eating its way by a cliffside and then drop a giant stone on it, that was the conclusion the slime had come to. The boulder tipped past the point of no return and slid off the edge. The slime flapped its wings franctically, having used its own bodyweight to set this into motion.

An unpleasant, wet sound, like somebody slapping their hands around a patty of fine mincemeat, and the green and brown forest had a whole lot of red added to the canvas. The brutality was both disgusting and entirely ethical, as the fifteen-metre-long creature had the middle of its body crushed and thus splattered out underneath it, killing it pretty much instantly.

Small birds all around were flying away, rodents running even further from the walking deforestation, all of them chased by a small explosion from the Forested Dragons fire bag. It was too weak and short-lived to catch onto anything anywhere.

Apexus nodded its snakehead to itself, deciding it had done good and swooped in to grab one of the many broken off antlers. The clean kill thoroughly reimbursed it for the many hours spent digging away at the dirt that had kept the boulder in place. Hells, it had even accidentally caused another one before finding the correct balance with that second one.