Drip-Fed Pt. 06

The temple of the thirty-three was quiet. It was a peculiar building, north of the city of Heralry, roughly as far distanced from it as the Birshia dungeon was, and sat isolated on the edge of the world. Literally, the semi-circle shaped build partially stretched over the end of the leaf. It was an immensely sturdy building, thousands of stones melted together as a dam against the invisible barrier that surrounded the world, preventing people from just falling off. Other flat worlds weren't designed with that kindness.

Where the circle thus passed over the edge, like a child peeking over the edge of the table, thirty-two towers grew evenly out of the temple. Each one a single chamber dedicated to one god. From Hashahin's, located at the southern edge and closest to the city, the number counted downward. Aside from the last tower in the north, dedicated to the progenitor, father of gods and godhood, they were all equally sized.

The temple of the thirty-three was quiet. The walls were thick and like every church reverberated even the tiniest sound, causing everyone to move with patience, not to disturb this aura of divinity. Ctania was not known for its religious population. Quite the contrary. As the safe leaf created by the thirty-third god, Hashahin, people here didn't devote themselves to the divine. The few that lived by the decrees of the god of actors were Priests in origin only.

Their skillsets inevitable melded with Rogues', making them Tricksters, the divine equivalent to the Illusionist. Amongst those in the clerical professions, Tricksters were seen as something like the Berserker to the Knight. Technically in the same group, but at the far fringe.

As a world made by such a god was not a place where the church would flourish, but as an organization that crossed over many worlds, they had the funds to secure a facility such as this. Even if it were just a few Priests recruited here, the Cardinals wouldn't miss the opportunity to guide new adventurers on the right path. Every Priest recruited was, after all, a potential missionary to countless new worlds. Although all created by the gods, many species in the omniverse had still to learn what it means to worship.

The temple of the thirty-three was quiet. Which was why the steps behind Mehily echoed so strongly. Still, her eyes stayed closed and her lips moved only in quiet prayer. Her cold hands clutched around her medium, raised up to the flawless block of glass in front of her. It was a mere representation of the eternal ice that was Jersoja's symbol, just like her pendant, a cube carved from crystal.

"Priestess Mehily, your prayer must end, the angels still need of you and if you punish yourself longer, there will be no more service you can give," a friendly voice, one she wasn't familiar with, spoke in a chastising manner to her, finally causing the addressed to open her eyes. The lids only raised sluggishly and her acquiescently lowered head felt stiff.

She faced infinity. Where everything in the building was stone or altar, only the floors in these chambers were made from glass. As they hung over the edge of the leaf, it meant that the believers could see the omniverse, or at least a part of it, below them.

Mehily's dry eyes saw the uncountable numbers of silver branches spread out below her. Most of them so distant they were nothing more than a thin vein, yet so numerous that they formed together a layered carpet through which only one uncovered dot fell into her eyes. A simple, not even nail sized piece of the nothing below the roots of the omniverse. Next to it, even the concept of black through a lightless midnight would have looked like a warm colour. The complete and utter void pulled at her soul and filled her mind distantly with their fear. Their endless, numbing fear.

Whoever had spoken grabbed her forcefully by the shoulder and pulled her away. "You are not ready for this revelation yet, child," he spoke and shielded her eyes from the world with his right hand as he turned her around. Below, the branches swayed and left but a glow of silver below them.

"Who...?" Mehily wanted to ask when the hand was lifted from her head again, used to better support her weak body instead. Her throat was parched and denied further words. Now that her posture of prayer was broken, she could no longer move. Weakly, her eyes fell on the man's garb. Where her own was white and blue, his robe also had the colours of dark green and red mixed into the stripes, the colours of autumn and summer gods. Combined with the thin, golden embroidery on the base of his sleeves, right around his shoulders, there could be no mistake.

She was face to face with Cardinal Remezan, one of the thirty-three members of the third highest rank in the church, subordinate only to the Ecclesiarches and the Progenitor's Chosen herself. A man several hundred years old and veteran of many adventures. Bald but with a long, bushy beard that only had a couple of grey streaks running through its black mass, the tanned man had a look that matched his friendly tone.

Why there always was a Cardinal on this leaf, nobody had ever quite understood. They usually were busy on frontiers or guiding the faithful where catastrophe had struck. It was not a rank known for sitting in safe leaves, neither were they known for speaking to neophytes.

Remezan produced a golden cup out of seemingly nowhere and held it against her lips, the purple red liquid inside running against her split lips. "Drink, it will rejuvenate you for a few hours," he promised, "but it will not be a replacement for a proper meal."

Undeserving of such honour, Mehily still opened her mouth and gulped down the magical drink. It tasted like the finest wine, far beyond what any vinery she had ever encountered could produce. Sweet and cold, it ran down her parched throat and spread like a cool, soothing waved through her body. When the last drop had left the cup, it disappeared as if it had never existed.

"Y-your holiness," Mehily began trying to free herself from the man's grasp to prostrate herself. However, he held on with a benevolent smile. Despite this, Mehily felt like she was on a verge of a panic attack. She had never heard of a Cardinal interrupting anybody's prayer before, she must have done something wrong.

"Relax, Priestess," he stated and pressed two fingers onto her forehead. A more intense, forceful calm settled on her mind, a state bordering on apathy. "You have been kneeling in front of Jersoja's altar for two straight days. Your devotion is admirable, but your lack of self-preservation will lead you nowhere but an untimely grave."

"I understand," she calmly nodded. "Is this why you came to help me, Cardinal?"

"No," he answered, "under normal circumstances, it would have been the angels that would have informed you about your misdeeds, but these aren't days that will pass as normal." Letting those words sink in for a moment, the Cardinal chose his next slowly. "It is... admirable that you came to report to use as quickly as you did. This... slime's existence is deeply disturbing to us. In all of the divine archives, spanning countless worlds and countless creations, I have never heard of something like it. Similar things, yes, but nothing exactly like it."

"It was a creature unfitting of any world and unfitting to procreate with humanoids, your holiness," Mehily agreed quickly. "An assortment of stolen, divinely shaped limbs in an impure amalgamation. I could not feel the slightest touch of divinity in it."

"Yes... which worries me deeply... especially with your acquaintance Reysha carrying a disease so rare... and another report about a matter I cannot talk with you about," the Cardinal kept it cryptic but quickly continued. "I will be honest with you, Mehily, we need to catch this amalgam and question it about this secret matter. These things happened too close to one another to rule out a possible involvement." Giving her an apologetic tone, "This is as much as I can tell you, my apologies."

The Priestess didn't mind at all, she was already thinking about another thing. "Then you will chase down this threat yourself?" Mehily's voice was hopeful, if a Cardinal was going on a hunt, that slime was as good as dead.

Her heart sank when Remezan shook his head. "I cannot leave this place, as is my oath. My presence here is the lock to a greater evil."

"A greater evil than a godless being?" the Priestess felt like her world was slowly getting ground down from the outside. There were so many things of terrible nature she didn't know about.

"A greater sin than being born without a divine spark is to forfeit it through hatred towards the silver heavens," the Cardinal cryptically spoke and quickly moved on, having already said too much. "And this slime you describe seems to at least have an inch of morality, it let you and your comrades live after all, did it not?"

"Who knows what abominable thoughts led it to that action!" she spewed the words out like a mouthful of poison. In her mind, there could be no empathetic reason this creature would let them go.

"...Who knows indeed," Remezan said slowly, taking a more charitable stance towards this beings intentions. There was still a chance that monster had no relations to what he feared. The fact that it hadn't murdered where convenient for it had to mean something. "By the end, I hope to know. I do not trust the Guild alone in this, Mehily, yet I cannot go myself. I have asked my gods and the angels have delivered me an answer," his brown eyes stared deeply into her, right down to her soul, a golden cross segmenting his pupil. "We are forming an Inquisition."

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"Huurgh!" Reysha cried out, as did her back. Although her body, naturally trained and pushed beyond its physical limitations through her feats of adventuring, was strong, her back very much agreed with her tone of voice. A jolt of pain let her know that she had just made a severe mistake, "Ow- ow- ow-!" the tiger girl made a series of pained noises as she moved along, despite the pulled muscle.

"My deepest apologies," Aclysia flew over to her back and began gathering energy from the surroundings. A safe leaf's magic was always easy to absorb, it helped that her mana was the same that laid on the foundation of this world. Through a simple touch, she eliminated the back pain.

"For not helping me lift this FUCKING HEAVY PIECE OF SHIT?!" Reysha screamed as she finally heaved Apexus body out of the wooden bowl and onto the flat floor of the reopened entrance. There was no easy way back to the entrance this time, neither would they have taken it if there was. With it being guarded, it was simply not the wanted escape route. "Or for being such a massive bitch lately?" she almost felt Apexus jab her in the side again. "Sorry, that was out of line."

Aclysia swallowed down what was the first thing that came to her mind. If those last few days and the fact that her beloved had actually jabbed her multiple times had proven anything, then that the quick answer was not the one that lead to a desirable outcome. "I meant to apologize for the former, but I can apologize for the latter too if you so desire."

"Nah, spare me, we both said things we didn't need to," Reysha said and thus the entire thing was done for her. She wasn't one to dwell. "Why did he have to grow so much before falling asleep, though?!" having a much more present and physical problem definitely helped. "Not like it's hard enough to pull the fucker in the first place!"

Apexus was still knocked out and had put on at least ten centimetres. Theory had it that this substantial increase in size had come from the boss being largely made from wood, a material the slime's physiology used more reliably to increase his mass. Either that or the slime had actually grown steadily the last four days and both Reysha and Aclysia had simply not given him enough attention to notice. Given how preoccupied they had been with bickering, their only real moments of interacting with Apexus being complaining about his voice at that point, that sounded all too possible.

"Now I have back pain and feel bad!" the redhead growled as she let out another sound of prolonged strain, taking a slow step backwards and dragging the semi-liquid body with her. Parts of the slime got stuck on bark or other uneven parts of the ground, ripped off and turned into harmless drops of water. The nucleus magic, taking what was once just water and turning it into a membrane around acid, evidently got lost the moment part of the slime's body got properly separated.

Still, given how much surface area Apexus had, dragging him was a massive chore. It would have been already under normal circumstances, now that his elliptic smoothness had made place for, what Reysha would describe as, the aesthetic of a half-molten piece of cheese, it was just that bit worse. Didn't help that there was no real place to grab the slime.

The wings were the first place she had attempted to pull him by, but there was no proper way to get a grip on that. Not without skewering her hands anyway, below the soft feathers laid their sharp quills after all. The second attempt had been to lift him, but it was downright impossible to lift something that was giving away under her hands. Which was also why Aclysia wasn't helping, attempts to shove Apexus from behind had only been met by her bulging in the membrane until she actually mustered enough force to sink in.

Reysha could have tried to get under Apexus and put him on her back, but she had no idea how to get there, if she even could lift herself up afterwards nor if she could secure the slime in position, given his back-heavy form, with the wings and the new carapace and whatnot.

In the end, she had found that the only way to move the unconscious blob was to put her hands into the wing-gap in his new back plating. This only enabled her to drag him sideways, since those slits were located on the broadest part of the slime, by putting both hands into one gap and then going backwards.

"Pretty stylish thing," Reysha commented on the new Growth. Although originally birch wood, like any other permanently acquired part, it had changed quite a bit upon becoming part of Apexus body. The light blue, wood-like material was mostly smooth, only a few black cracks running through it and giving the segmented whole a cohesive feeling.

Although gapless in its protection of Apexus's back, there was a clear separation of different plates both in length and width. The latter was much more visible, a thick middle row and two side rows that grew off it shortly behind Apexus's ears. They were directly adjacent to the middle row for most of Apexus's length, only a circular and complete parting present where the wings reached out.

The design had to compromise there and create that large opening for aerodynamic reasons. Showing the wings was nice and all, but they also needed to have the space to flap around. There were no such gaps along the length, though. Starting with a triangular one between his blue fox ears, the plates grew above the base of the ones succeed them, forming a protective ridge. They weren't quite as well locked as the Archwood Roller's had been, so Apexus wouldn't be able to curl together like the boss had, but it was still a pretty great defence.

Reysha's feet hit the brambles and she groaned. At least the bowl had been smooth. "Well, good thing you are unconscious, Apexi," the tiger girl joked as the branch-woven ground tore more and more small chunks out of the slime until she finally succeeded in shoving the heavy liquid into the healing fountain. Aclysia had already tried healing the slime, but that hadn't done anything. Therefore, they didn't expect Apexus to wake up from this, but they couldn't let him lie in the boss room either.

It seemed he had simply fallen asleep from exhaustion and no spell (at least none Aclysia knew how to use) could fix that. Since they had no idea how long he would sleep for, they couldn't risk him laying there when a new boss spawned in. Also, there was a chance the slime was dehydrated or something, so they decided this was as good a place as anywhere.

. "...He can't drown, right?" Reysha asked and hissed at Aclysia when the white-haired flying girl raised an eyebrow. "He is a batch of primordial soup that can grow fucking legs, I know he is basically made from water but how the fuck would I be sure?!"

"I did not mean to condemn your assumption with my glance," the metal fairy apologetically lowered her head. "To the best of my knowledge, Apexus has been born inside an underground lake. This information is based on a conversation had on paper when he was less fluent with words, however, so it might be incorrect."

"Well, we can ask him ourselves when he wakes up," Reysha said and rubbed her exposed back while stretching like a middle-aged man after chucking wood the whole day. Just about twenty times more enticingly, since she pushed her fairly sizable chest out in process. The motion transformed into her stretching just about every limb she had. Tension falling off her as she yawned. "Alrighty, I am going to check if we got any rewards," the tiger stated, since they had nothing to do but wait anyway. She headed back into the boss room. "Going to be back in a bit."

"I'm so booooreeed, wanna play a game?" the question reached Apexus' ears as he slowly shifted out of unconsciousness. Although he heard the words, he wasn't really able to make sense of it. The part of his core that was tasked with listening comprehension hadn't quite woken up yet. Instead, he only slowly got control of his senses one by one.

First to awaken was the most fundamental sense the slime had, being its tremor location. The water running over it made the sense pretty unreliable, everything outside its direct surroundings was as if observed through multiple layers of tinted glass. The second most valued sense followed soon after, being the slime's tasting. Not that there was much to taste, just the faint sweetness of magic-infused water.

Beginning to move, Apexus carefully stretched his feathers. His right wing felt numb and was tugged uncomfortably underneath him. Oddly angled, the other was partly drenched and partly dry. Also an unpleasant feeling.

"I think he is waking up," yet more words that his ears picked up but his nucleus refused to decipher just yet. At least he identified the voice as Aclysia's, wherever he was, he was clearly not in danger. Otherwise, the metal fairy wouldn't sound that relaxed.

"Sure he is, it's totally not him just moving in his sleep again," the other voice he realized as Reysha's. "Anyway, I spy with my little eye something that is-"

"Is it black and called the sky?"

"Dammit!"

"We ran out of subject to guess at a while ago... No, I am certain he is awakening."

Apexus opened his eyes and closed them again immediately. They were awfully dry, despite the overabundance of water around him, so he clenched his eyelids in hope that it would change. Opening them just minuscule gap again, there was a giant silver light that caused the squinting slime to want and keep them closed. However, if he ever wanted to see, he had to get adjusted to the light, so he blinked his way back to his eyes working, at some point along that process, his thoughts also started working again -- his hearing with it.

"Apexus!" the happy voice reached his ears as he crawled out of the water. A moment later, most of his vision was blocked by moth-like wings and the body of a small person, but big fairy. Aclysia was hugging his face dearly. "Are you okay? Do you need to be healed? Have you slept well?"

A series of questions that he forgot for a second he could actually answer. Well, if he remembered how to use his voice again. "I hungry..." he stopped when his previously deep and pleasant voice sounded oddly sick and dull. After a moment, he realized that the wood was so soaked with water that it caused the reverberations to sound odd.