Drip-Fed Pt. 04

The odd trio was sitting around the kitchen table, or rather the area of the one-room house down from the foot end of Gizmo's bed where the old man cooked. A kettle was hanging on a hook above the fireplace, the water inside slowly boiling the tasteful and medical properties out of the herbs inside. The smell of lavender filled the air, that and Apexus pheromones, spreading a calming sensation.

Only somewhat sure why, the slime had the urge to keep the well-smelling up around its metal fairy companion Aclysia. It was looking rather plain these days, having lost all of its borrowed Growths over the last few months that had been spent around this house. Months spent doing very little of value.

As such, Apexus, having gorged itself on a mostly vegetarian diet, had grown very little and wasn't as confusing to behold as usual. It was just a clear blue slime. Admittedly, it still possessed downscaled, green wings that sat atop it like feathery ears and the colourless eyes of a cat along with a surface that was ever so slightly more abrasive than the water-surface like texture of a normal slime, but generally it didn't look that weird.

The reason why it was without head or mouth or any Growths wasn't all around its choice. After eating something called chamomile for the first time, it had its first experience of falling asleep and during that reverted to its base form. Sleep had been odd, to say the least, and the slime was still debating whether it liked the exchange of losing consciousness for a couple of hours for that refreshed feeling it had afterwards. At the very least, it made sure to remember the taste and smell of the flower to avoid it in unwanted situations.

The slime was sitting on top of a tree trunk it had heaved into the house itself. Human chairs were unsatisfactory for its elliptic shape and even if Apexus had been fine with sitting in them, the one time it had tried Gizmo had given it a conflicted look the likes of which the slime didn't like. Therefore, it had gone to melt its own chair.

Aclysia, on the other hand, was simply sitting on the table, and had most of Apexus attention. She was just so cute, sitting there and grooming her surprisingly flexible moth-like wings, combing the little hairs with her slender fingers.

The old man in the brown robe was sitting in the same chair as always. In the otherwise meticulously clean house, the two unused chairs were highly unusual, gathering dust. It was especially outstanding when Apexus realized that they were the first thing the old man saw every morning.

Speaking of Gizmo, he was knocking on the slimes exterior to let it know he was perfectly aware that it wasn't listening. "You can marvel at Aclysia in your free time," he reprimanded in the warm voice of an old man who hadn't forgotten what young love felt like. Even if Apexus wasn't exactly aware yet of what it was feeling, it would take a fool of the same level to miss it. "For now, we have been pushing back this lecture for months, so listen carefully! It is very important."

With a disappointed flutter of its wings, the slime turned its gaze towards the way less pleasantly looking, wrinkly and spotty old man. It was true that it had to concentrate pretty hard to listen. While its tremor sense had advanced far enough to be used as ears when need be it was far from practical. Its range was limited, it required focus and in fine-tuning it that way the slime lost the ability to use it as the detection sense that it actually was.

"I feel complimented that you think I am worth beholding," Aclysia stated, just as oblivious to the slime's feelings as she played with her hair. About her own view on Apexus, it was a bit harder to figure out. On one hand, she was a divine being, so a certain amount of wisdom could be expected. On the other hand, those rarely had any experience in mortal endeavours, particularly the ones oriented towards order.

When the sound of her clear voice rung through the room, Gizmo knew he had lost the attention of the adolescent blob again and sighed. "Aclysia, why don't you do the explaining on this one," the old man conceded, realizing that he had no chance to keep his pupil's attention in the presence of the pretty fairy. He unrolled a scroll on the table, layers upon layers of words were written on it, turning it into an indecipherable mess.

"As you wish," Aclysia nodded, the old man getting up with a groan and making his way over to his pot. He reached it just as it began whistling and took it off the hook with thick mittens shielding his hands from the heat.

Meanwhile, the metal fairy touched a corner of the paper. A circle of words became highlighted by virtue of them beginning to glow in a faint silver in the ocean of black scribbles. Then the words began to fly upwards, changing shape and finally taking the form of a tree.

This wasn't Apexus' first experience with a Blessed Parchment. It was a special kind of paper, of which Gizmo possessed quite a lot for some reason, that could hold basic spells, divine exceptions notwithstanding. Gizmo used it to visualize most of the lectures, since the slime wasn't the most scholarly of students and didn't like reading a whole lot. Even though it was now passable at it and writing.

With that out of the way, Gizmo had moved on to lessons about the world around them a few weeks ago. He had started with all the boring things, how a day was measured, what a centimetre was, some math and so on. Now it seemed that the monkish exile was willing to show Apexus something more interesting.

"This is the omni-verse," Aclysia began, gesturing at the image of the tree that was about twice as tall as herself. It was a silver trunk with leaves of a gentle green and roots that turned dark, burrowed into nothing. For Apexus, it was small, but even it could appreciate the awe that radiated from this symbol idol. "Or rather, the standard visualization of it. The tree that lays at the foundation of all trees, blossoming new dimensions like plants blossom leaves. With roots in the everlasting dark that surrounds us.

"The silver trunk is the dimension of the gods, where they rest and form new branches. In there, with them, rest the souls of beings divine. It is a plane of raw energy, to be focused into shapes of beings that have ascended from sapient, to apostle, to immortal and then to god. Those ascended are not inferior to those that came first, but they are too numerous to all be remembered. The thirty-three original gods live high up in the ever-rising crown of the first branches." Aclysia underlined her explanations by flying around the particularly densely leaved spire of the illusion.

"On each branch hang several leaves, dimensions that exist independent from each other but are all interlinked," she continued on. "We roughly separate leaves into four categories: safe, explored, discovered and unknown. A safe leaf is as close to utopia as humanoids can hope to live, lands of stability with bountifully resources and not particularly dangerous, as long as they don't act like fools. The covenant of the divine prevents gods from easily fooling with the mortals in safe leaves, forcing them to announce whatever changes they may make to them. Ctania is such a safe leaf."

"One of the more coveted ones at that," Gizmo chimed, sitting back down on the table with an iron cup between his hands. Steam rose from the top, yet the old man held the cup as if it was lukewarm. Doubtlessly another one of the magic gadgets in the house. "The worlds of the summer gods are always more densely populated."

"Indeed," Aclysia nodded. "Hashahin, my creator and maker of this leaf, is one of the eight summer gods. Of the thirty-three original gods, thirty-two of them are divided into the four seasons, while the divine father, head of the gods, resides over all four of them and a fifth one seldomly seen in all the dimensions called Sorcia."

"The season of magic," Gizmo mumbled, staring into his cup for a long second before carefully sipping on it.

"The remaining three categories are easier explained," Aclysia continued on, glancing at Apexus to make sure he was still listening. The slime was, if only for the fact that it found it interesting that the tree and the metal fairy shared the same colour scheme. "Explored leaves are those that are widely known, but have no protection against changes and as such become playgrounds for bored gods every so often. Generally, the adjustments made are small in scope.

Then come the discovered leaves, worlds that are known to exist and have basic information available about them, but remain a mystery to all but those who inhabit them. Most of the times, not even they know all about their worlds.

Lastly are the unknown leaves, as the name implies these dimensions haven't been touched by any non-native species.

We call the people that explore the subtle changes in explored leaves Walkers, those that seek out to find out more about discovered leaves Climbers and those who explore the branches of the omni-verses in search of unknown leaves Branchers. In order of general difficulty," Aclysia took a small pause to let all of that sink in.

A pause Apexus needed. The sheer scope of things was blowing its nucleus. From a drop in a pond to the idea that there was an effectively infinite number of worlds out there, hanging from a tree so big it couldn't even fathom, the slime had been on quite a journey to even get to that idea. The sight of the illusionary tree growing and growing as branches and leaves were added to it by invisible hands helped somewhat.

"The leaves of the omni-verse have but one thing in common and that is magic," Aclysia continued on. "For they are all made from the same, they all obey the same rules of magic, even if the gods decide that gravity is reversed in a dimension or if the world is round rather than flat, possesses moons and no suns but no tides, whatever the design of a dimension is, the rules of magic remain the same. There is only one kind of being, one that does not stem from the omni-verse and does not follow the laws of magic. We call them Parasytes."

Aclysia's hand gestured down to the dark roots of the tree. "They stem from the great darkness where the omni-verse is rooted, where it absorbs the power of the space that is not. Those are the root dimensions, and the closer to the darkness one gets, the more corrupted and demonic the creatures one encounters. To meet these beings of malevolence, one must either summon them or travel to the root dimensions. The Parasytes themselves, luckily, are unable to enter leaves. Instead they nest on the branches, chipping away at the great tree in an attempt to drag it and all of us back into the endless dark. That is the basis of the structure we exist in."

The tree that had started merely twice as big as the small metal fairy had turned into a huge structure of silver and green that reached underneath the ceiling, its ephemeral roots spread all over the table. Cracks appeared on the bark as Gizmo added a last comment. "One day, so the divine father, the omni-verse will no longer be able to hold all the fruits of godly labour, or the many ascended wills contained inside its trunk. Then, it will all collapse under its own weight." Bark and branches began to fall off, leaves tumbling into a greedy black mist that crept up from below to the cries of billions of souls.

"An age of darkness will follow. Paraytes will feast on or, at the very least, corrupt every leaf they touch," the tree withered away completely leaving nothing but the dark mist. "However, some leaves will resist and successfully weather the assault. Even if they won't, some gods will have prepared mighty fortresses inside the bark. Seeds of a new tree," spots of silver light appeared, slowly blossoming into saplings. "And from the remains, new omni-verses will be born, making the name somewhat inaccurate. Whether this process has already happened before or whether this tree is the first of its kind, we do not know."

The mist and saplings all faded away, scattered into letters and were absorbed back into the Blessed Parchment. Gizmo rolled it back together and sealed it with a simple string. "Put this back for me, would you, Apexus?" the old man asked in a coarse voice, beginning to cough heavily soon thereafter.

"We will continue with some math, once you can multiply properly, we will continue with what can be found on the leaves."

"You are a very peculiar creature," Gizmo mumbled, somewhat impressed, as he watched Apexus work on a number of problems it had presented it with in text form. Many of them were simple mathematical questions. It solved the basic ones at a moments notice, not even stopping to think for an answer no matter the numbers involved.

Normally, that would have indicated at least some natural skill with math, but the second the slime hit something more complex it slowed down to a crawl. Then, when it hit questions that had mathematical problems packed into text form, it usually wrote down an answer that utilized no numbers whatsoever but instead the tools of its body.

A sapient monster it may have been, but Apexus was still a monster. The ability to count and calculate the amount of Growths it currently maintained as well as situational thinking had always been more important than the question of how much water fit under the curvature of a twenty-metre bridge. In the first place, the slime had never asked itself something like that, it sounded like a highly irrelevant question as far as it was concerned. It wasn't going to build a bridge, it had eaten and developed wings, it could just cross the river as it was.

As such, Gizmo decided to end the test he had devised for the slime early. Obviously enough, it had no talent for advanced math. Glancing over to Aclysia, who took the same test and had already arrived at the last question, he didn't worry too much about his pupil's future, however.

Drawing the letters in thin, artistic lines by dipping her finger into normal pot of ink right next to her, Aclysia mumbled her progress. "As I know the angle and the two adjacent sides I can calculate the hypotenuse, thus acquiring the height of the halved triangle. Using that as the radius for the circle at the base of the cylinder I get the volume of the figure B..." a few moments and fluid calculations latter she had correctly finished the calculation for the size of the top hat.

Gizmo gathered that test as well and, after looking over them for just another second, waved them in his hand. Magic poured out of his hands and into the Blessed Parchment, causing the inlaid spell to activated and wipe the ink right of the paper. Having only a limited amount of it and being too weak to press new sheets himself, this was how Gizmo kept his stash of writing utensils stocked up.

Apexus took the comment made by its teacher in stride. Not being told it had done something the wrong way generally meant that it had done something right, so it would take the victory. "I do have to admit that your problem-solving skills are pretty good and utilize creativity. That is good, that will get you far in life," Gizmo elaborated, the slime glowing with pride at the compliments. "However, your handwriting is still barely decipherable, your grammar slips at points and at the speed at which you calculate anything beyond basic additions is bound to make you like a buffoon. We will practice that more in the future." The slime deflated into a puddle that sat miserably in its bowl of a tree-trunk. Aclysia giggling a bit at Apexus' expense only made it feel worse.

"I am very sorry, awakener," the metal fairy apologized seeing the sorry state, flying over and landing atop the blue puddle of misery. "I find bluntness entertaining. You shouldn't beat yourself up over it, these are problems you can fix with enough learning."

"Indeed, rinse and repeat..." the old man laughed, an unusual undertone underneath the usually friendly sound, "getting you a proper hand would he-" a shocked expression hushed over Gizmo's face, then he tried to play it off by waving his hand dissuadingly. "...no, no, forget I mentioned that. It will be fine as is."

The slime, pulling back into the proper elliptic, smooth shape, tilted its eye's positions in perfect synchronicity with Aclysia's head atop it. Both of them looked questioningly at their host, who continued to wave off.

"It is off no matter," he insisted, patting the slime on the top in nonchalant fashion. Gizmo was never afraid to touch Apexus, no matter how many times he had seen the slime dissolve things within it. "You will do fine with what you have... for now," he mumbled those last two words in a way that sounded like they slipped out against his better judgement before hastily following it up with. "Enough of math, then, how about we continue our lessons about the omni-verse we inhabit?"

That was an immediate and effective topic change, as Apexus was much more interested in hearing more about the details of the world it had to survive and eat through. "There are a couple of topics more we should clear, mostly regarding magic and fighting arts, but for now we should continue our talk from last time and clear what usually can be found on leaves."

Confused again, the tilted eyes made their return. Apexus had been under the impression that the leaves were so different from each other in manners of appearance that linking them outside of their existential condition was impossible.

Gizmo laughed, in his normal benevolent tone, and leaned back in his chair. "I can see your befuddlement. Let me explain. Albeit we seldom know what manner of weirdness or grandeur, from the most chaotic swamps to the greatest of golden cities, the gods come up in a particular leaf, there are many similarities between them that we can explore."

"We also haven't talked about fruits yet," Aclysia added.

"Ah, indeed," Gizmo nodded, "let us keep that for the end, as we need to cover the bases before we get to the final product." The old man stopped, his coarse throat turning his voice raspy and unpleasant before he began coughing strongly. He grabbed his teacup but found it empty. Quickly he extended a quivering hand towards the kettle, the other raised to his mouth to quell the unhealthy sounds.

Quick for an old man perhaps, but Apexus was still quicker, grabbing the uncomfortably hot thing and pouring its mentor a fresh cup. With a thankful glance, Gizmo downed the strongly herbal smelling brew and cleared his throat. After a few more gulps and repeats of the process, the sound Gizmo made no longer raised the suspicion that one of its kin was living at the back of the man's maw in the slime anymore.

"My apologies," the old mage mumbled, his voice mostly recovered. "My old age and its problem aside, the topic at hand: leaves, as different as they may be in execution, usually have three things that can be found in all of them." Gizmo used the empty test sheets and the writing utensils already on the table to illustrate. "Histories, monsters and dungeons. Let's start with the first one."

As he spoke, Aclysia flew off Apexus and over to the alchemy area, gathering the necessary herbs to put a new kettle over the fireplace. She didn't need the lesson and was worried for the mentor's health. She lacked the physical strength to actually lift the thing, especially once it was filled with water, but she could do that much. Doubtlessly without a fuss, her awakener would do the rest.

"We say a history rather than a people for two reasons. Sometimes, gods like to create simple staging grounds for their newest beasts to compete for the food chain, or as peaceful paradises for herbivores to simply live out their days in. Experimental or zoo-like places without much thought put into them where the history is merely the shifting of the land over time. Other places don't have a sapient race inhabiting it anymore by virtue of them being wiped out. Whether an apocalypse was caused by their own greed, the violent ascension of a god, a powerful adventurer wiping out the place or something else entirely, what history that place has lies in the ruins."