Drip-Fed Pt. 05

Apexus didn't stop on his own volition. The legs he had grown were burning with exhaustion, but his mind was terrorized. Whatever abilities Apotho had displayed there, this life draining, it was a frightening display and as such the slime continued to run until it suddenly hit an uneven ditch of a Forester Dragon.

Tired hooves sinking into the upheaved soil, getting stuck in some remaining roots, Apexus was sent flying downwards as the fragile ankle broke. A few metres away, Reysha landed, carried by the suddenly ended momentum.

The pain seared the slime's mind back into reality. What had carried it all the way here was replaced by the sudden onset of understanding as Apexus was unable to bring its legs to move again. The terror was justified, but they had fled from the imprisoned Warlock through the forest. If there was any way that ancient danger could followed them, Apotho already would have.

"Awakener, are you alright?" Aclysia asked as Apexus got rid of the deer legs. The slime nodded, it was in need of food and water, but not too urgently, and a long moment of rest would also help. They both turned towards the sprawled out tiger girl, who had suddenly begun to laugh.

"What is this shit?" she asked, raising one hand and holding it in front of the sun above. "Dungeon poisoning? So, I just survived to get into a life that's empty of all things worth living for? What a joke." Just as she feared her life to be, her continued giggling was bereft of all happiness. A dull sound. "And I almost ran face first into that old creeps arms there!" she looked over to the duo. "And you wanted me to meet that guy?!"

Aclysia landed, her wings hanging loosely in shame and loathing, "We were not aware of his true nature."

At her side, Apexus wondered where Gizmo started and Apotho had begun. When the old man had previously been that sick, in the time before the metal fairy was restored, that dark side to him had not appeared. Or, perhaps, it had and something had simply prevented the life draining from affecting the slime. What that something was remained unknown.

"Well, whatever," Reysha let her hand fall to the side again, "not like it fucking matters."

They fell into momentary silence. The forest didn't care about their misery. Birds were singing. The wind rustling in the canopies. Distantly, the sounds of splintering wood could be heard. A Forester Dragon was feeding. Time passed, then Apexus had a sudden thought.

In a sudden hurry, to try and snap the tiger girl out of her lethargy, he searched for a way to communicate. How he wished that he could simply write words on his own skin, but for that it lacked the tools of detailed pigmentation. He could only swap the entire colour at once, not some parts of it. Similarly, he may have been able to spell one letter at a time, but displaying whole sentences as bumps or tentacles was much to straining.

Perhaps one letter at the time was enough though. He already had both of the girls attention from the buzz he was making. Three simple letters were acted out through a stretching tentacle. "L-I-E," Reysha followed, "Lie? About what?" She was obviously confused.

"Lie..." Aclysia muttered more quietly, then she understood what her awakener was trying to say. "Right, Gi- Apotho could have lied, Reysha," now confronted with the idea, it was the logical conclusion. "He wanted to absorb your life force. It was in his interest to make you believe that there was no hope for you. That way it must have been easier to manipulate you."

Both times the Warlock had manipulated them, he had told them about something they already believed anyway. Hemle's caution had been dulled to non-existence, while Reysha's despair had been amplified. With Apexus, that had failed. The slime had not even a lingering wish to sacrifice the tiger girl, as such the word-based spell had fallen on deaf ears.

A sparkle of hope entered Reysha's blue eyes, "Yes, yes, absolutely. If I wanted to stab a guy, I would tell him I would put out in a dark alleyway." A bit crude, not to mention not really fitting, a metaphor, but good enough. "What do you think then? He lied about the cure but not about the symptoms? That's fucked up!" The genuine outrage filled the so dull looking tiger girl with conviction again. Her tail went into a bushy state as she rolled on all fours and hissed in the general direction they had come from. "If he wasn't all powerful looking, I would stab that asshole!"

Now that was the Reysha the slime wanted to see. Reckless, sure, but wild and beautiful. "If this was a more common phenomenon, surely they would have taught you about it," Aclysia continued on, "you did have basic adventuring training after all."

"Incomplete, but yes," the tiger girl nodded, inspecting her feet. She had been bootless until a couple of days ago, when she had bought a used pair in the port. "I was far enough in to have frequented a dungeon with a party," she dangerously narrowed her eyes at that subject, her bushy tail swaying quickly. "Fuck that, whatever I have can't be unknown. Not like being lost and running out of rations in a dungeon is a rare thing for adventurers!"

"Yes... but I am afraid I know nothing to improve your condition," Aclysia began to carefully formulate a suggestion. "We therefore need to seek that knowledge elsewhere."

"Well, we are obviously not going back to that scary ass hut," Reysha growled. "Before I feed that lying ass, I will just off myself." Moments of silence ensued. "There got to be another place." More silence as Apexus and Aclysia waited for her to figure it out. "Oh... fuck, I don't want to," the tiger girl finally realized.

"You do not have to," the metal fairy informed her, "but you will have to search on your lonesome. I am bound to this plane for as long as my quest remains incomplete and should my awakener leave, I shall go rest in dormancy once more." That was the first time Apexus had heard of this, but it was also the first time the topic of leaving the leaf had come up outside of informal discussions.

"Gah!" Reysha plopped down on her behind and threw her hands into the air. "Fine, okay, fine, I don't want to leave you two behind even if you guided me to a horror show... you are all I have right now..." the fur on her tail slowly settled as it fell to the floor and refused to move. Her ears turned sideways in a defeated fashion. "If there is one place on this leaf that'd know, it'd be the branch of the adventurer's guild."

While she now possessed the necessary capital to offset her debt, after being treated like dirt by the authorities she almost felt it as a point of principle to not pay them. However, there was absolutely no way to hide her presence when walking into the guild itself. Not only because she was a redheaded bombshell of an exotic species, but because the recent adjustment to her physique would have made her the target of rumours within hours. Very few species brandished dark sclera or reddish nails, although the latter could be explained away with paint.

To hide these things, Reysha lacked the necessary skills and magic.

"Well then, I will crawl my ass back there," she scoffed, "maybe they'll give me some respect when I tell them I beat the dungeon on my lonesome at least." The widest grin she had worn in a while appeared on her face. Although the shock of the mild mind control she had been exposed to earlier was still lingering at the rim of her awareness, the state of her mind helped her churn through that rather quickly. Mild insanity came with its fair share of advantages.

Apexus wanted to point out that was a lie, but he didn't have lips. Also, he realized that she couldn't just tell everyone she had beaten the dungeon with him. Unless they told them that Hemle was dead and the bounty was defunct. Which had its own share of baggage and it wasn't like nobody could potentially want to murder the slime for the same reasons.

"Okay, let's force something edible down my throat and then go on," Reysha declared and got off her ass. Apexus could have rested for another couple of minutes, but it felt better to keep moving. The group set out west, to the white wood city.

'Apexus... come back... one day... come back.' The last request of his mentor echoed in the slime's mind as they walked in a normal pace rather than a fleeing hurry. Having words in his head felt weird, it had always been pictures and emotions he had thought in. Three more made their way into his mind, almost without him noticing.

'I want to.'

The city of white wood, Haralry, laid on the western fringe of the leaf Ctania. The absolute fringe in this case. Behind a city fashioned mostly from winding, supersized birches rose a funnel of lights diagonally into the sky. Woven from hundreds, if not thousands, of small strings, the display of solid energy combined into a single path.

This was the stem of the leaf, the place where people could enter or exit this world. Apexus spied on the blueish white roads in the sky, tiny dots moving about like ants. But the distance between them clearly didn't make it possible that they were ants, the slime was currently far above the ground and flapping his wings. Nothing that small could remain visible at that distance, even with his eyes.

They had to be people. That idea boggled Apexus' mind, but it was the only explanation. Once that sank in, it only became more absurd. Those dots were everywhere. Sure, only a couple were frequenting the stem, but the cobblestone streets winding between the organic tree houses were a different matter entirely.

Much of the city was hidden under the canopies, the birches making this city of eternal summer one of pleasant shade. Parts of it were unhidden, however, be it by the infrequency of nature's designs or a gardener doing his work. Where Apexus looked, he spied more people than road. There must have been several hundred of them, given the size of those spots in relation to their surroundings. Adding to that the many still burrowed in their houses...

Around the city was a large plain, the first one Apexus ever saw, of nothing but grasslands. Fences were around everywhere and confined cattle and crops to their individual areas. 'Boring hunts,' Apexus thought simplistically. What thrill or accomplishment was there in successfully felling prey outside its natural habitat. Although those cows and pigs did look rather delicious with how fat they were.

A single farmer, close enough to be made out in more detail, turned towards the slime. Quickly, before somebody realized that he wasn't a bird, Apexus turned around to go to where they had set-up camp. Not wanting to attract unwanted attention, the amount of time he had spent in the air had already been risky enough.

After closing in on the ground, the slime flapped his wings a few times in an effort to reduce his momentum to a minimum. While flying, any of the legs he had would have been in the way. Few things ruined aerodynamics as badly as deer hooves dangling around underneath him.

Normally, when he had the time and was trying to land, he grew the legs out now and gracefully put them down. It was a lengthy landing process and, in a desperate situation, wouldn't have been an option. Being far more comfortable than dropping on his proverbial ass the last metre or so, Apexus still preferred to go about it this way. Even if growing new legs made him somewhat hungry from the energy consumption.

The problem with that was that their current hideout was located at the side of a cliff. Facing away from the city and with an entrance several metres off the ground, it was perfect for a monster that didn't want to be found. Apexus dropped in the daylight covered entrance area and looked behind him one time to make sure there wasn't anything new that had happened in the surroundings. That confirmed, he moved deeper in.

Dank air grew heavy inside, tiny pools of water forming from condensate on the ceiling that was dropping into them. The stone walls were impersonal and the cave didn't go particularly deep into the tiny mountain it was part of. Despite all of that, Apexus greatly preferred this place to the house he had spent so much time inside in his recent life.

Not only because of the bad end to that particular chapter, but also because that place always seemed so cramped with purpose. Everything in there had to be something and be there for something. Compared to that, the arbitrary simplicity of nature seemed more closely aligned with Apexus' nature.

Didn't prevent him from being immensely bored, however. "Awakener, you are back!" Aclysia enthusiastically fluttered her way over. She had been killing time by gathering pebbles throughout the cave and neatly stacking them in one corner. Not the only bored person around here, the slime was quickly used as a cushion as the metal fairy threw herself atop him.

Blushing slightly at her own, overly attached actions, Aclysia happily hugged the slime as best she could. Not being around him just felt wrong and every time he came back was a reason for her heart (or rather the bundle of magical veins inside her body that served as the effective counterpart) to jump in her chest.

Apexus folded his wings and arched his back into the embrace, basking in the electrifying cuteness of the smaller female as well as her magical aura. This helped to stave off the monotony for a bit, as they moved to cuddle around in varying positions of slimy and hugging embraces, for about ten minutes.

There just wasn't a whole lot to do for these two. Apexus didn't stand a snowball's chances in a lava world to not get discovered when trying to infiltrate the city. Best he could do was eat some animal and assume most of its body shape. That plan was ruined by the fact that Apexus was not a blank slate. Back when he had no permanent Growths, he could have been a perfect copy of an animal that he copied all Growth off (at least on the outside, growing a hide didn't change the slime underneath). With the wings, the eyes and the ears already present, that plan was in massive jeopardy.

Even then, they may have been able to sell him as a very exotic creature found on another leaf if they had a team member that could have stood-in as a Hunter, a Tamer or something else along those lines. Aclysia couldn't do, doubtlessly Hemle had left descriptions of her with the bounty, and Reysha was a known Rogue.

The best course of action, as unhappy as it made the slime, had therefore been to leave the tiger girl on her own in going into the city. The only alternatives were running the immense risk of going with her or leaving her to deal with her condition out here in the wilderness. Neither of which felt particularly viable.

Reysha had departed just a few hours ago, but the waiting was already boring everything out of both of them. Even Gizmo's lectures had been better than just sitting around for hours and waiting for somebody to make their way back.

Apexus was playing with the thought of going hunting, something wisdom indicated he should only do at night when the risk of being seen was at a minimum, when Aclysia made a much more sensible suggestion. "If you would desire me, awakener, I would currently be open to having sex."

That very much was something to do while Reysha was gone.

Reysha walked through the streets. Unlike a certain slime, she found them to be almost empty. Ctania was a small world and the narrow roads reflected that, every person there had more than enough space to walk. It was very much unlike her homeleaf Ragressa, which was large and heavily populated due to her people's tendency to fuck at any given moment.

The lack of space had been one of many reasons she had left that world to find her luck elsewhere. If she had found it was up to debate. The fact that the smell of the bazaar, a normally rejuvenating mixture of spices and herbs brought in from nearby leaves by daring cross-world traders, was only dully reaching her nose made her currently lean towards no.

With every passing day, it seemed her senses were just getting more and more distanced from reality. Thankfully, the misery was limited to her sense of taste. At least something amongst the plainness that could be described as a silver lining.

She attracted several gazes on her path, as was to be expected when a fiercely hot redhead was parading through the streets in a skin-tight one-piece. Most of the city's inhabitants were long-eared elves of a creamy brown colouration. Wood elves, they called them, a species that appeared on many forested ever-summer worlds. It was only a majority by rank, however, as Ctania was a popular world both for vacations and beginning adventurers. Dozens of different races were buzzing the streets and of all of them there were some interested in the tiger girl. Having always been someone who drew attention, be it with her looks or her mannerisms, Reysha paid it no mind and continued making her way through the city.

One dullness she was thankful for were her otherwise keen ears. After the symphony that was the wildlife, with all of its quiets and all of its roars, the constant cacophony of the city seemed suddenly unbearable. Were it not for the metaphorical layer of foam in her ears, she would have drowned in the storm of talking.

The trees loomed over her as if their branches were long arms about to descend in a deadly embrace. Growing hollow in their adulthood, these thick birches were the most common houses in the city and entered a somewhat symbiotic relationship with whoever lived inside them. Between individual trees stretched facades of stones, smaller houses but houses nonetheless.

She increased the speed of her step, the quicker she got both her answers and out of here the better as far as she was concerned. Back, back into the wilderness and back to Apexus and Aclysia. To a world with little rules and nothing but the sky above, the ground below and the hunt for prey as rules. Not this social place where the houses looked as much like walls as the people inside, erected around them in search of normalcy, safety and routine.

Reysha left the bazaar with its many shops behind and crossed a street to enter a large plaza, surrounding the largest building on the leaf. All roads in the city ended or started there, at a two-storey tall fortress of untouched stone, much wider than it was tall. Hashahin himself had placed it there, a gift to those that would administer this leaf.

All newcomers and those who wanted to leave were forced to wander through its sturdy gates. An easy way to control otherworldly influx and keep criminals locked. Like every system, there were ways around it though and Reysha originally had wanted to stick it to the elf and do her best to subvert this whole thing, smuggling herself out in some way. The money on her hips would have gone a long way in that regard.

Instead she had to swallow all of that and make her way to one of the many impressively large buildings that also lay on this plaza. As it was the first place every new person saw upon entering the leaf, it was also the place any organization stretching over multiple leaves had set shop at. Only one of which Reysha was interested in, being the Adventurer's Guild.

Aside from its size, it wasn't much, just a bunch of cobblestone, wood and glass stacked together into the shape of a large block with a wooden sign dangling above the entrance to make stand out more from the wall it was part off. Reysha suppressed her urge to hiss at the wooden door as she opened it, then she decided to do it anyway. Everything inside her hated to go back in there, but it had to be done. At least the annoyance washed the dullness right off her senses.

Of course, walking in hissing and looking ready to jump on the first thing she saw netted her a lot of attention. "Look what the cat dragged in," a slow voice belonging to a broad-shouldered person with a large body greeted her in the tone of someone who was particularly proud of the joke they just made. Reysha thought otherwise and the guy pretty quickly learned not to make jokes about a tiger girl in an assault pose, especially when he was hanging around without his armour on.